Screaming, Crumbs, and Clarity

How Emotional Fog, Parenting, and Leadership Collide

They say people hate change, but I’ve come to believe that’s not quite true. We willingly make huge decisions all the time — moving, changing careers, starting families, leaving relationships, saying yes to new beginnings. It’s not the change we fear — it’s the fog that comes with it.

That murky in-between.
That place where you don’t have enough information, where your footing feels uncertain, and your brain starts spinning stories before reality has even caught up.

Lately, I’ve been in the fog.
Navigating change, asking questions I can’t yet answer, holding my breath and hoping that I’m still doing this whole leadership/life/parenting thing with some level of grace.

And then yesterday, life handed me a very real, very loud reminder of just how far I’ve come.

The chaos story (but really, the growth story):
This past weekend, we were getting ready for a pool party. Kyle was wrapping up a last-minute job, I was cleaning the house, wrangling the kids, prepping snacks — the usual flurry as we get everyone ready to go out. Maddie had just come home from a sleepover, and she, like me, does not do well without sleep.

The minute she walked in, I saw it coming — the tension, the edge, the unraveling.

She made it to her room. And then came the scream.
Not just any scream — an ear-piercing, soul-clenching shriek that I could recognize in an instant. I didn’t even need to open the door to know what it was about.

Let’s rewind. The night before, plans shifted at the last minute, as they tend to do with preteens. What started as a simple sleepover turned into a divide-and-conquer scenario — one set of girls here, one set there. Because Allie was already sound asleep, we directed Olivia and her guest into Maddie’s room. And while I should have checked to make sure things were put back the way Maddie left them… I didn’t. I rushed. I overlooked it.

And now here we were.
Maddie, overtired and overstimulated, standing in her room — her safe space — and finding it in chaos.

Normally, I’d snap.
The sound alone would be enough to push me into a meltdown of my own. I’d tell her to stop screaming, to calm down, to “take it down a notch.” But not this time.

This time, I took a deep breath before I even opened the door.
And when I saw her — red-faced, tears streaming, unable to get the words out — I didn’t say anything.

I just hugged her.

I held her as she sobbed, as her body shook, as her nervous system tried to make sense of a room that no longer felt like hers.

Then she cleaned up. I helped her vacuum.

And no, I didn’t go make her sister fix it — though maybe I should have. But at that moment, Maddie didn’t need the chaos of a sibling confrontation. She didn’t need to be told it wasn’t her fault or be forced to explain herself.

She needed quiet.
She needed the crumbs gone — the ones that made her skin crawl under her bare feet.

And I knew that because that’s what I would have needed.
That’s what I needed this week. Not solutions. Not lectures. Just someone to see me and let me feel what I needed to feel.

That moment wasn’t just about parenting — it was a reflection of growth. Of how change, even the painful kind, has helped me become a more grounded version of myself.

Years ago, I held my first real leadership title — manager. I shared the role with a peer, but it was anything but equal. When I wasn’t there, she spent her time trying to prove I didn’t belong.

And truthfully? I didn’t handle it well. I was reactive, defensive, constantly questioning myself. I let her chaos pull me under. I didn’t lead — I survived.

Eventually, she was transferred. The tension lifted immediately, but the impact stayed. It took time to rebuild my confidence — to lead from a place of clarity instead of fear.

Looking back now, I see the same lesson in that chapter that I saw in Maddie’s meltdown — growth means choosing presence over panic.

In both moments, the easy response would’ve been to react. To snap. To let the chaos dictate my behavior. Years ago, I let it. I didn’t have the tools — or maybe just not the clarity — to respond with intention. I was too caught up in proving myself, in surviving someone else’s storm, to notice I was losing my own voice.

We don't hate change. We hate how unmoored we feel during it.
We hate not knowing how it ends, or who we’ll be when we come out the other side. But sometimes, if we’re lucky, a chaotic Saturday morning will show us exactly how far we’ve come.

If you're in the fog right now, hang on. The clarity will come.

Your reactions will soften. Your heart will strengthen. Your confidence will return — and maybe one day you’ll look around, in the middle of the chaos, and realize: this used to break me… but it doesn’t anymore.

That’s growth.
And that’s something worth holding on to.