🎧Why I Built The Harbour And Why It's For You

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http://www.chaos-to-calm.org.uk/PodcastForMums

Hey, welcome back to Chaos to Calm. I'm Sami, and if you're new here, hello, I'm so glad you found this.

This podcast exists because a few years ago, I was sitting in my kitchen at 2am, completely exhausted, completely lost, and completely alone. And I couldn't find a single place that felt like it was made for someone like me. Not a therapist. Not a helpline. Not a Facebook group where people seemed to have it more together than I did. Just somewhere for a mum who had absolutely no idea what she was doing, who was terrified, who was grieving the life she thought she'd have, and who needed someone to just get it.

Today I want to talk about something I've been building quietly in the background. Something called The Harbour. And I want to be honest with you about why it exists, because the reason is personal, and it's probably your reason too.

If you're listening to this podcast, chances are you're living a life that most people around you cannot even begin to understand.

You might have a son or daughter who is struggling with emotional dysregulation. Maybe they've been diagnosed with BPD or EUPD. Maybe it's CPTSD, panic disorder, severe anxiety, depression, or some complicated combination of all of the above. Or maybe you don't have a diagnosis at all. Maybe nobody has given you a neat label or a clear answer. Maybe you're just living with the chaos every day and wondering what on earth is happening to my child.

And either way, diagnosed or not, label or no label, you wake up every morning not knowing what the day is going to bring.

You've probably cancelled plans. You've probably sat in a car park outside a supermarket trying to pull yourself together before you go in. You've probably smiled and said yeah, we're fine thanks, to someone at work when inside you were running on empty.

Because here's the thing nobody tells you. There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes with this. It's not just tired. It's the kind of tired that gets into your bones. It's the kind of tired where you've been on high alert for so long that you've forgotten what it feels like to just breathe.

And on top of the exhaustion, there's the isolation.

Because you can't really talk about it, can you. You don't know who to tell. You don't know how much to share. You're scared of being judged, as a parent, as a person. You're scared people will look at your child differently. You're scared they'll look at you differently.

And when you do try to talk about it, to a friend, a family member, even a GP sometimes, you get that look. That well meaning but utterly useless look that tells you they don't really get it. They can't. Unless you're in it, you genuinely cannot understand what this is like. That's not their fault. But god, it's lonely.

My daughter has emotional dysregulation. She also has BPD, CPTSD, panic disorder, depression, and anxiety. Her struggles are rooted in childhood trauma. But I want to say something really important here, and I'll come back to it.

When I was in the thick of it, really in it, I felt like I had nowhere to turn. I didn't understand what was happening. I didn't have the language for it. I didn't know what emotional dysregulation even was. I didn't know what BPD really meant beyond the stigma I'd absorbed from somewhere. I didn't understand why my daughter could go from zero to absolutely overwhelmed in what felt like seconds, and why nothing I did seemed to help, and sometimes seemed to make it worse.

I was searching for answers at 1am on my phone. I was reading things that scared me more than they helped. I was trying to be everything, the calm parent, the crisis manager, the researcher, the advocate, while also just trying to keep my own head above water.

And I kept thinking, there must be other mums doing this. Where are they? Why can't I find them?

There were forums. There were clinical resources. There were things that felt very medical, very detached, not really written for a mum sitting on the bathroom floor at midnight. What I needed wasn't more information. What I needed was a place. A place where I could say I don't know what I'm doing and someone would say me neither, but here's what helped me. A place where I didn't have to explain the whole story from scratch every time. A place where I could be honest about how hard this is without feeling like I was failing my daughter by admitting it.

That place didn't exist. So I'm building it.

The Harbour is a community space, a membership, for mums and parents who are navigating exactly what I've just described.

And I want to be really clear about who it's for, because this is important. You do not need a diagnosis to belong here. I said my daughter's struggles come from childhood trauma. But that is not a requirement for joining The Harbour. Whether your young adult has a formal diagnosis, whether they're still being assessed, whether they've refused any kind of help, whether there's a clear reason or no reason at all, it doesn't matter.

What matters is that you're living it. That you're the mum who's holding all of this. That you're running on fumes and love and sheer determination and you need somewhere to land.

That is enough. You are enough. You belong here.

The Harbour is designed to be the thing I wish had existed for me. A place where you're not alone in the chaos. Where you can find support from other mums who genuinely understand, not because they've read about it, but because they're living it too. Where you can access tools and guidance and gentle, practical help without it feeling clinical or overwhelming.

It's not a therapy group. It's not a crisis service. It's a community. A harbour, in the truest sense of the word. Somewhere to come when the storm has been going on too long and you just need somewhere safe to rest for a moment.

Here's something I didn't expect when I started this work. I thought I was building it for other mums. And I was. But somewhere along the way, I realised I was also building it for me.

Because the act of creating this space, of saying out loud that this is real, that it's hard, that mums like us deserve support too, has been part of my own healing.

For a long time I put everything into my daughter and left nothing for myself. I think a lot of us do. We pour and pour and pour until we're empty and then we wonder why we're not coping.

The Harbour is built on the belief that you cannot sustainably support your young adult if you are completely depleted. That's not a luxury belief, it's a practical one. You matter. Your wellbeing matters. Not instead of your daughter or son, alongside them.

So if part of you is hesitating because you feel like focusing on yourself is somehow a betrayal of your child, I want you to hear this. Taking care of yourself is one of the most important things you can do for them.

The Harbour is opening soon, and I genuinely cannot wait to welcome you in.

If you want to be the first to know when the doors open, you can find all the details over at chaos-to-calm.org.uk and I'll put the link in the show notes.

And if today's episode resonated with you, if you heard yourself in any of what I said, please share it with another mum who needs to hear it. Because that mum is out there, sitting in her kitchen, thinking she's the only one. And she's not. She never was.

I'm Sami. This is Chaos to Calm. And I'll see you in the next episode.

Your calm in the chaos

Show Notes

Link: https://chaos-to-calm.org.uk/the_harbour

Free resources: http://www.chaos-to-calm.org.uk/The_Calm_Hub_Support_Resources