When Life Doesn’t Let You Breathe - Do This

Mar 23
3 min read

…and there I was, in the middle of the ocean, the surfboard leash tightly fastened to my ankle. With every wave that rolled over me, I felt the relentless pull of the board dragging me under. I had barely surfaced from one wave before another crashed over me - then another, and another. I gasped for air, only to have it knocked out of me again almost instantly. It was relentless. I remember thinking: this won’t stop. I was trapped in the wash. A panic, I had never felt in my life before, was rising in me.

This was ten years ago - BC (before children) - when I was learning to surf.

And yet, not long ago, that exact memory came flooding back to me.

Because there I was again… only this time, the waves looked different.

I was deep in postpartum life - juggling work, a home, and three children.

And just like in the ocean, everything came at once: A sickness. A last-minute substitute class. A missed email. A construction emergency. A parking issue. Sleepless nights stacking on top of each other. A body still aching, not yet recovered.

Wave after wave after wave.

Motherhood - parenthood - can sometimes feel exactly like that.

Like being caught in a relentless onslaught of demands, problems, and tiny emergencies that leave you breathless, disoriented, and wondering when you’ll finally get a moment to come up for air.

But here’s what I didn’t know back then, and what I had to relearn now:

Even in the wash, there is always a way out.

In the ocean, when I truly thought I couldn’t take another wave, I found the strength to paddle - not aimlessly, but intentionally - towards a break in the crashing water.

A calmer channel, a space where I could breathe again.

And this time, in the middle of my very different storm, I did the same.

I handed the baby to my husband and said, “Please take him for a moment - I need a break.”

I put on my shoes and walked - fast - straight into the forest.

Forty-five minutes. That’s all it took.

Forty-five minutes to breathe. To let the mental noise settle.

And then, when I got home, I transferred everything from my swirling mind onto paper.

What you need to remember and what we know from psychology:

when thoughts and emotions remain unprocessed, they don’t simply disappear.

They accumulate. They amplify. They create a sense of overwhelm not because of their individual weight—but because of the sheer volume we are trying to hold all at once.

Your brain is not designed to be a storage unit but rather, it is a processing system.

Think of it more as a factory.

When we try to “keep it all in our heads,” we overload that system. Cognitive load increases, stress hormones rise, and our ability to think clearly, prioritize, and regulate emotions diminishes. It’s why everything can suddenly feel urgent, heavy and unmanageable. And that doesn't serve anyone: not your kids, not your partner, not yourself.

But the moment we externalize what’s inside - whether by writing it down, speaking it out loud, or simply stepping away long enough to gain perspective - we shift from reacting to processing.

That’s exactly what happened on that walk and when I wrote everything down: Every worry, every task, every loose end. I then realised that, instead of facing an overwhelming wave, I was looking at individual ripples - things I could approach one by one.

This is a strategy supported by research in cognitive psychology: breaking down perceived overwhelm into manageable parts restores a sense of control and reduces stress. It allows the prefrontal cortex - the thinking, planning part of your brain - to come back online. And with it comes clarity.