This is a guest post from my bestie Aisling Keenan who writes a very wonderful Substack over here. She is writing on my one this week about what it’s like to be the friend of the person who needs a lot of support, the friend whose child is autistic and struggles to cope in the world. Over to Aisling…

There’s a particular kind of helplessness in watching someone you love go through something you can do absolutely nothing to fix.

The instinct, for me, is always to ask ‘what can I do?’ and to mean it.

So, at least once a week, I find myself Whatsapping Caroline saying a version of “is there anything I can do to help?” Nine times out of ten, there isn’t anything I can do to help her parent Caelan, her adorable, clever, kind PDA profile autistic son. But this week, taking writing a Substack piece off her plate was something tangible (and conveniently in my wheelhouse) that I could do. So here I am.

To write about what it’s like to be a friend to an Autism mam is a bit intimidating, to be honest. Like (I’m sure) plenty of us, I don’t know all the right terminology, I’ll probably mess up often with things I say, but the core message couldn’t be clearer, for me. All I want to be to Caroline, and to anyone I care about, is a totally non-judgmental safe space.

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My little boy turned six. The height of him, it’s madness. I’m so proud of us for getting here. Not that we wouldn’t have gotten here, but it hasn’t been easy. And it really does feel like an achievement. Most people say ‘oh my God, how is he six already?’ But truthfully — and this won’t be a shock to any of my regular readers — we have crawled our way towards six, hoping to eventually reach some point of more easily won regulation, calmer days becoming the norm, fewer eggshells on which to stand and just an inch more independence. The years have not gone by in the blink of an eye. When I look at photos of myself before I became a mother, I hardly recognise myself. I feel I’ve aged at least a decade, and that’s with the help of botox.

We’re told ‘the days are long but the years are short’. But when you’re at home with your child every day, save for a few hours of unpredictable childcare here and there, with no creche, no preschool, no school, no activities that don’t involve you going along, no other adult with whom he’ll leave the house, the years can wind up feeling pretty long too. But this is what we have had to do for him and I wouldn’t have it any other way, given what I know he needs. I’m his mother, I’ll spend the next six or sixty years holding his hand if need be — I’m ready to sit outside his school for as long as it might take for him to feel comfortable, even if it’s a full year — but would it be nice to make some progress? I’d love that, for him mostly, but for us too. I need to heal.

I wanted to reflect on six observations or learnings I’ve had in our six years. A reminder for myself, but hopefully a comfort to other parents who expected to be out of the trenches by now but are still two feet deep.

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Dear reader, I am back. I’m writing to you, surrounded by boxes in my new house in North County Dublin after a successful move. The sound of sea waves are lapping gently nearby and my kid is finally ready and genuinely excited to start the school we’ve been prepping him for for well over a year. The school we’ve moved for. The basket we put all of our eggs in. The stars are aligning, our hard work finally paying off. It all feels right.

LOL, just kidding. In reality, that whole life changing plan fell apart in spectacular fashion. And of course it all went to shit at the eleventh hour, torpedoing us into a stress my body (my body, the one that’s intimately familiar with stress to begin with) had yet to experience. That’s saying something. I can kind of laugh about it now. Kind of. We had one particularly intense week, in the midst of it all, where our nightly question of ‘what will we have for dinner?’ became ‘and will you be having a Xanax or a whiskey this evening? Or both?’ My poor husband — otherwise a pretty chill guy — zombied his way around the house with one hand permanently glued to his chest as though he could rub out the worry right at the site. He appeared suspended in a state of chronic hyperventilation, like he was just stuck, making the kinds of facial expressions you make when your body first hits the ice cold water on a January sea swim. Constantly braced, hoping a breath deep enough would allow the body to adapt. My way of coping was to just cry and drink and cry.

So let’s rewind. What happened?

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Dearest reader, thank you for being here.

I wanted to give you some life updates and tell you that for a while, I need to put this writing on hiatus.

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This week I want to talk about bodies. Or my own, more specifically.

I’ve been thinking about this because of two people. One is Rosemary MacCabe, whose Substack I subscribe to every year. She recently wrote a brilliant, provocative piece about bodies and how, given where we’ve landed culturally, with the rapid return of the heroin chic aesthetic, we have to talk about them again.

We have a responsibility, especially for younger generations of women growing up in this era, to talk about bodies. And that feels uncomfortable, because for so long we’ve been telling ourselves and each other not to comment on physical appearance. It’s nobody’s business.

Or is it?

Individually, no. But collectively… maybe. I think, even if we’re not saying it out loud, we’re all feeling it.

The second person is Lena Dunham, whom I’ve long adored for how unapologetically herself she is. She’s currently doing a big media run for her new book Famesick (it’s on my list), and in one interview she made a point I haven’t been able to shake.

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Come with me inside the mind of an author whose book comes out next week. One question that keeps coming up in interviews is:
“So… how is your anxiety now?”

And the answer always seems to surprise people.

There’s an assumption that I must still be living in a chronic state of anxiety. Probably because I talk about it so much, and with such urgency. But the truth is, it really doesn’t impact me these days. At least nowhere near the way it once did, when I was properly unwell with it.

Back then, anxiety shaped everything. Every thought. Every decision. It moved through my mind and body like something intent on making me feel as bad as possible. Those days are well and truly behind me. And I never thought I’d be able to say that.

Not when the physical symptoms were so relentless. Not when it felt like there was no way out — like this was just who I was.

It wasn’t.
And it isn’t.

Now, I experience anxiety in the way most people with a beating heart, living in this batshit world, experience it.

I feel it as a mother, carrying very real worries about my autistic son. I would challenge the most relaxed, chill person alive who has never had a brush with anxiety to remain unflappable while raising a child with a disability.

But still, I don’t get those spirals. I don’t have panic attacks.

And more importantly, I don’t fear them. The fear of the fear was IT for me.

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Because for me, overcoming anxiety was never about never feeling it again.
If that were the case, I’d still be looking over my shoulder, waiting for it to come back. I can honestly say I would be okay if I had a panic attack today. Or tomorrow. Even on the day my book launches. Not because I want one but because I understand it.

Anxiety is no longer something sinister or separate. It’s a part of me. A signal. Something to pay attention to, something that sometimes needs reassurance, other times just needs listening to. And ironically, because I no longer resist it, it doesn’t need to shout.

Most of the time, it’s quiet.
Like a backseat passenger.

Of course, weeks like this… it sits up a little straighter. It scans the road ahead with a little more vigilance.

And that makes perfect sense to me because this week, I’m asking a lot of my nervous system. I’m doing more than usual all the while having the same child at home with the same needs.

I want the interviews to go well.
I want to do as many as possible.
I want the book to succeed — not just emotionally, but financially, after a year and a half of work.

So yes, there’s activation. It feels like a fizzy, frenetic energy (very physical) that sits somewhere between anxiety and excitement. Like having a million tabs open in my brain (figuratively and literally) flitting as I am from emails to my calendar to Instagram notifications, wondering if I’ve said enough about pre-orders, or too much, or whether I’m pacing it all wrong. My attention feels splintered. My blood flow feels carbonated, not still. I’m sitting beside my son watching an episode of Rubble & Crew, pretending I’m fully there when I’m many places at once.

There’s the performance energy of live media.
There’s the social anxiety of a launch event — worrying no one will come… and also worrying what if they all do. Add to that the worry of my son melting down right as I need to leave and cannot afford to back out of this one. I know he won’t go to bed without me that night. I hope he can fall asleep on the sofa with his Dad who will go home sooner than me to be with him.

There’s the small, human stress of having to stand up and say something meaningful in a room full of people I’m deeply grateful to. I have to find a way to gently ask people not to leave the party without buying the book (publisher’s orders which I fully support).

And underneath it all, there’s uncertainty.

I was reminded of that reading something Louise O’Neill wrote recently about her own book launch — the fear of being taken out of context in interviews. I’ve just been tagged in tomorrow’s cover story for the Independent Weekend Magazine, with the line: “there is a crisis for mothers.”

Do I remember saying that? Not at all. What crisis am I referring to? Fuck if I know.

And now I find myself wondering how it’s been framed, what’s been pulled, what might be sensationalised, because I have a tendency to speak very freely, without thinking about how it will read in print and assuming the person interview is automatically my very new best friend.

But if I’m honest, the core anxiety — the one underneath all of it — is this:

The stakes feel high because I’m backing myself. I’m placing myself front and centre, asking people to listen, to trust me… and ultimately to buy something I’ve created. The self-promotion is uncomfortable. Borderline nauseating.
But it’s also unavoidable if you have any intention of pushing your creative work as far as it can go.

Anxiety, at its core, is often an intolerance of uncertainty (read more on that in the book obviously). And right now, I am very much in the uncertain part.

I’ve done everything I can. I think. Have I? Probably not. But now I have to let it land where it lands. Interviews are being moved around and I’m not in control of any of it. I have to be ready to pivot. I have to ask a lot of my support system next week to jump in when I need to run to a rescheduled interview. And ultimately, with the book, I can’t guarantee success.

I can try to root my sense of success in the fact that I wrote the book in the first place — and I do — but I also want more than that. I think that’s allowed.

Maybe it’s about creating something sustainable for our future because realistically I cannot work full time at this point in our lives. Maybe it’s about giving myself the space to be fully present for my son in the years ahead.

Maybe it’s both. And maybe that’s enough reason to keep trucking.

Get the book here. Come to my gorgeous pilates event here. And join me at the launch (6.30pm 16th April, Hera Restaurant, Drumcondra) if you fancy a glass of vino!

Dear reader, I have just about recovered from last week’s article. I did not anticipate the unique anxiety that would arise when new subscribers signed up only to find a graphic tale involving my bowels as the most recent post. This week, there’s nothing to squirm about. In fact, I’m quite excited as my book hits shelves next week. NEXT WEEK! That’s a big moment, and one I don’t know how to feel about yet. It’s strange writing and working in solitary confinement for over a year and then having to emerge from your goblin cave and share it with the world. I quite liked it, tucked away in there; it was cosy and there was nobody but me and the belief that maybe I was writing something that would make a difference. Now, it’s time to see if it does.

I finally got to see the finished product last week. I went to the Gill warehouse where I signed 400 copies. Somehow, my hand is still attached to my wrist. And oh, she’s beautiful, if I do say so myself.

And for the first time, to launch the book (my fourth book to date) I am putting on a gorgeous, cosy, intimate event. And if you’re able to get to Dublin on April 25th, I’d love to see you there. It’s going to be very straight forward: an anxiety-soothing pilates class with the wonderful Lorna O’Shea, followed by a very relaxed talk on anxiety and the roadmap on which the book is centred, hosted by my friend and fellow Substacker Aisling Keenan, and featuring yours truly. Tickets include a copy of the book and a load of goodies worth quite a bit, including the really wonderful Relax supplements from Fabu which themselves are €30 a bottle. And to make it even more personal and low-key (and also, to be honest, to save on extortionate catering fees) my lovely mammy is coming up from Dingle to bake a rake of nutritious and virtuous snacks and treats that I promise will not taste like grass and misery. I had a DM from someone asking if it would be bananas to attend such an event on her own. Absolutely not, it’s the perfect calming event to come to on your own but equally as enjoyable with a friend. There is no obligation to mingle, or even get involved. I won’t be enforcing participation in vulnerable anxiety chats. That’s what I’m there for. But equally, whoever wants to share and throw in their two cents is more than welcome to! So, will you come? I hope so. Tickets and details here. There will only be 25 spaces so move fast if you’re keen!

Before the madness kicks off (which will be a full-on juggle as I manage my son’s needs while trying my best to hit the ground running with media appearances) I wanted to share an excerpt, just for you. This is a piece on self-compassionate accountability - what it is, why it’s the secret to moving forward when you get to a place of having overcome the severity of anxiety that may have led you to my book in the first place. This appears towards the end of the book. I hope you enjoy it.

Self-compassionate Accountability

You’ve arrived at the final stop on the roadmap. But what about the destination? How will you know when you’re there? And – dare I ask – are we there yet? Don’t panic if you’re reading this while still feeling the full brunt of anxiety. You are not expected to be anxiety free by the end of a book. That would be like trying to heal a broken leg by reading about physiotherapy – it misunderstands what anxiety is and where it lives. Anxiety isn’t resolved through insight alone. It takes root in the body, shaped by time, repetition and survival. So it makes perfect sense that unwinding it takes time too.

The goal here has never been to ‘fix’ you or eliminate all anxious feelings. It’s been about guiding you back to yourself – out of the overwhelm and into clarity. And if you’ve worked through the roadmap gently, at your own pace, you’ve likely arrived at a place where your relationship with anxiety looks and feels very different.

If I’ve done my job, you now have a deeper understanding of anxiety – not just as a concept, but as a personal pattern. You’ve stopped trying to justify your experience to others. You’ve started turning inwards with curiosity and compassion. You know your nervous system now – not vaguely or theoretically, but like someone you’ve travelled with for years. You know its quirks, its limits and its early warning signs. And just as important, you’ve begun to recognise what serves you and what doesn’t. You know the difference between your personality and your fear, between what genuinely goes against your values and what’s just plain anxiety. My hope is that this knowledge has brought a kind of peace – not the entire absence of anxiety, but the end of its control over you. And going forward, let me reassure you: You’re in the driving seat now.

Before we part ways, we need to talk about what comes next. What it looks like to carry this work forward, without turning it into another pressure. How to stay grounded in your progress, even when anxiety reappears. What to do when you wobble or wonder if you’re ‘back at square one’ (spoiler: you’re not).

I want to leave you with something both reassuring and useful: an introduction to self-compassionate accountability, a gentle guide to troubleshooting those inevitable moments when anxiety resurfaces. No rigid protocols – just a few check-in questions, a perspective shift around what success really looks like, and a necessary reminder about radical acceptance.

As much as I wish I could say otherwise (and plenty of charlatans will), you will have moments – days, even weeks – where it feels like you’ve gone backwards. But you know enough about your nervous system now to understand that it’s not a dormant system. It’s alive, responsive and always adapting to what life throws your way.

I wish someone had told me this plainly, because when I hit those speedbumps early on, I made far more out of them than I needed to. I panicked. I blamed myself. And I forgot what I knew.

So let me say it clearly:

Just because you feel it again doesn’t mean you’re failing.

There’s no winning or losing here. You cannot go all the way back to the beginning, because you’re not the same person any more. You’re not operating with the same understanding or tools. If anxiety returns, there’s a reason. It’s energy passing through. And as surely as it arrives, it will dissipate.

You know what to do now.

Success doesn’t mean never feeling anxiety again. It means recognising it when it comes, responding to it with the tools you’ve gathered, and allowing it to soften in your presence.

Self-compassion is what carried you through this roadmap. It got you through the sharper turns and tougher climbs – those moments when stopping altogether felt easier than inching forward. But self-compassionate accountability is what will carry you from here.

Self-compassionate accountability is the bridge between kindness and consistency. Between ‘I understand why this is hard’ and ‘I’m still going to show up for myself anyway’. Between self-soothing and self-stewarding.

It doesn’t mean pushing through at all costs – the cost is your wellbeing, and that’s something you’re never going to compromise again. It doesn’t mean pretending you’re fine when you’re not. It means meeting yourself with the same patience and encouragement you’d offer someone you love – while still holding yourself to the kind of loving followthrough that real growth requires.

I first came across this idea in conversation with Kimberley Quinlan, a US-based CBT therapist who helped me untangle compassion from indulgence. We talked about the trap so many anxious people fall into: believing that if something feels hard, it must be wrong. But if we only ever led with what anxiety wanted, we’d choose safety over expansion every time. And no real healing could happen.

‘Self-compassion doesn’t mean we get to just lie in bed forever,’ Kimberley explains. ‘It means we get to recognise how hard something is – and move forward gently.’ That’s the heart of self-compassionate accountability. It’s not fluffy. It’s not ‘do whatever feels good’. It’s not perfection. It’s not discipline-as-punishment. It’s structure that feels supportive, not shaming. It’s showing up even when you’re not ready – and saying, ‘I’m not ready, but I’m willing.’ That’s enough. It’s about having your own back.

Because healing isn’t linear. You will wobble. You will loop back. But accountability isn’t there to scold you – it’s there to catch you with a soft place to land, and to remind you of the next small step forward. If the anxious part of you is a scared child, self-compassionate accountability is the adult who kneels beside them and says: ‘I see you. I know this is hard. Let’s do the next bit together.’

That’s the voice you’re practising now. And it matters more than the one that got you off track in the first place. Your job going forward isn’t to ‘get it right’ every time. It’s to be gently committed. To choose consistency over intensity. Kindness over perfection. And to keep coming home to the tools, the mindset and the version of yourself you’ve been slowly, steadily returning to throughout this book.

If you’d like to buy the book, you can get it here and it will be widely available from April 16th. Thanks for your support.

Dearest gentle reader, I thought twice about writing this. Why would I utterly mortify myself and henceforth be known as the grown-ass woman to whom this happened? But then I figured life is heavy, we wake up to various horrors drip-fed through our newsfeeds every day, and a little levity, at my expense, wouldn’t hurt. So consider this a treat. Be glad it wasn’t you, and appreciate your fully functioning bowels if you’re that lucky.

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Dear kind readers, thank you for being here. A few things today. First of all, I want to extend an invite to anyone who subscribes here to join me at my book launch in Dublin on April 16th; it would be so lovely to say hello in person. If you’re interested, send me a DM on Substack or email me at caroline.foran2@gmail.com. Also, if you haven’t yet pre-ordered Everything I Wish I’d Known About Anxiety, you can still do so (linked here) and be in with the chance of winning a €100 Penneys voucher when the pre-order is done via Easons. We all know far €100 goes in Penneys, right?

Secondly, apologies for the slower pace of content. I’m now juggling the influx of press appointments before the book comes out (which is exciting!) with my son’s needs (which seem only to be increasing) and as it so often goes, something’s gotta give. To save myself from maxing out mentally and physically, I might have a slightly longer gap between posts for a short time.

And now to what I wanted to write about but am more than a week late to the party on: International Women’s Day. On social media, I let it pass me by (I did the same with Mother’s Day, and come to think of it, I had no great celebratory post on being Irish yesterday). With IWD, something doesn’t sit quite right with me. So let’s tease out why this annual moment seems to do more talking than it does walking.

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I know a few of you are eagerly awaiting this post. I had hoped it would be an encouraging guide to navigating NYC with an autistic PDA child — sensory-friendly restaurants and the likes — but alas, it’s not that kind of post.

In many ways, New York was a mistake. A very expensive one. And I didn’t share half of it on my Instagram stories. When it comes to social media, I still feel a pressure to frame things in a positive way, or at the very least leave followers with an upbeat takeaway or a shift of focus towards what worked, what went right, what wins we did have — even if they were small and hardly worth noting. Focusing on the wins is what helps pull me (and no doubt fellow autism parents) out of the sadness and despair. It’s a reframe I need often. But sometimes, you’re just scraping the barrel for some semblance of a win. Sometimes it feels forced. Sometimes you’ve just had a shit time and you’d rather you hadn’t done it at all — especially when the outcome is a child thrust back into burnout, with weeks of recovery lying ahead of you.

I’ll be honest here, where I’ve always felt safe enough to be that vulnerable, and where I’ve more room for context.

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I’ve joined a support group. Not an ironic Jacob Elordi will never be our boyfriend support group but a real one with real humans needing genuine support. It’s a PDA support group, full of parents of PDA kids.

I have gone back and forth on the idea of joining such a group since we first got our son’s diagnosis. At the beginning, I was reluctant. I just didn’t want to be overwhelmed by too much advice, too many suggestions, too many voices in the mix. I wanted to go through it on our own, letting the dust settle, before throwing myself full force into a world of new information and things to try. I defaulted, as I always have, to simply broadcasting what we were experiencing, be it on social media or writing about it here, and I felt buoyed by the few people who would reply and say they totally get it. I also didn’t know where I would best fit, in terms of support groups. Yes, my son is autistic — but we don’t see his autistic experience mirrored very often, and a lot of interventions for an autistic child would not actually be helpful for a PDA child.

But after a particularly rough start to the month, and finding myself exhausted, trying to articulate our experience in such a way that parents of neurotypical kids would really understand it, I joined this particular group.

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If there’s one thing parents across the globe can agree on, it’s that they’d like their kids to sleep. Because they — the parents — like to sleep. Because humans need sleep to function. Unfortunately, plenty of kids seem to perceive our biological need for slumber as a mere design flaw, and so they oppose it, fight it, and do everything in their tiny (yet considerable) power to extend their days and keep their eyelids lifted. Even when they’re newborns, when they can do little other than sleep (I mean they can’t even burp by themselves), they resist it. Why, when something is so integral to our development and survival, do the vast majority of kids not want to do it?

In our house, sleep has gone through several rebrands over the last five years. At first, our child was a truly terrible sleeper, and we were lucky if he managed to link two sleep cycles across one night. It almost never happened. Then, at six months, under the guidance of an expert, we sleep trained. And it really worked. Nights improved within a few days, but naps were a whole other battle — one I never succeeded with and later learned that neurodivergent kids nap a whole lot less anyway.

Of course, it was unbearable listening to him cry out for us while trying to count a certain number of seconds or minutes before going in to reassure him; every instinct in your body tells you to run to their side immediately and offer comfort (and this instinct exists for a reason — one I thought I had to override at the time). I suppressed it because I was delirious from cumulative sleep deprivation and fully believed it was for his own good, as well as ours. He had to be taught how to sleep.

Assuaging our worries that we weren’t completely cruel, his mood during the day improved enormously once he started consolidating his sleep, and to our surprise, he began to love bedtime. Never fought it. For about a year — between maybe ten months and just before he turned two — our nights were locked in. Bedtimes were a dream. We’d place him in his cot following a well-oiled routine; he’d smile and happily let us walk away. We couldn’t believe our luck. That’s it cracked for his entire childhood now, we thought.

He’d babble away to himself sometimes for up to an hour, and only once or twice when he was genuinely unwell did we have to go in during the night. Most mornings, we’d find him slowly rousing or greeting us with a smile, happy to see us and ready to start his day.

Then it all went to absolute shit. And I panicked.

I have to fix this. I can’t let this unravel. Otherwise, we’d lose our sacred nighttime sleep and I’d descend straight back into the black hole of despair where I’d spent the first six months of his life. I had a disproportionate level of fear toward something that was always going to happen. Kids aren’t robots; they don’t sleep like programmed machines forever. It was born out of my need to control the few things I felt I could control.

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I’ve written before about the fact that my husband and I have always been on the ‘one and done’ side of the fence when it comes to our family. I also wrote about how we thought having one child only was our decision, something we’d have chosen anyway, a lifestyle choice. But as more time passed, and as we began to understand our child better, we realised that wasn’t quite true. The situation had dictated the decision. It felt as though the choice had been made for us, or taken away from us, and we had to convince ourselves that having just the one was what we wanted.

In reality, it was less about what we’d imagined for our life, and more about what we could cope with. Paying attention to the latter felt, and still feels, like the responsible thing to do. Would a second child take our already stretched capacity and obliterate it? Would it be fair to our son, whose needs are extremely high, though often invisible? Given the intensity of our days and the challenges ahead of us, it felt like a no-brainer. Logistically, emotionally, practically, we could not do this.

Then something neither of us expected happened.

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This week on dispatches from the frontlines of parenting a neurodivergent child, I massively put my foot in it. With my son, to be specific.

It’s one thing, as a parent, to absorb and process the information that your child is autistic — that their feelings, behaviours, and idiosyncrasies can be understood through a particular framework. We’re adults. Our brains are fully formed. We can grasp nuance, the wide spectrum across which autistic experiences are lived. And even then, it’s not always easy.

It’s another thing entirely to introduce that idea to your child — the one person who arguably needs to know more than anyone. And it’s something I’ve been quite anxious about, for fear of getting it wrong or giving him any reason to negatively self-identify as an autistic person.

But I’m so new to this. I have no script. I’m also relatively new to parenting. I haven’t had to have these kinds of conversations with five-year-olds heretofore. Invariably, I’m going to stumble along the way.

I’d heard from parents who are a few years ahead of me, and from autistic adults whose autism was never addressed in childhood, that it’s really important for kids to have that information early — before it becomes a thing. It shouldn’t be whispered around them, as though there’s fear or shame attached. It should be normalised, casual, no big deal.

And for a lot of kids, it probably is.

But for a child who wants clarity — who asks follow-up questions, who wants to know why, and who else, and what that means — you need to have some sense of how you’re going to frame it from the get-go.

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Happy New Year to you all. New Year, same me and all that jazz — assuming we’re still on the anti-resolution bandwagon. Actually, I do have a few resolutions, but they’re more like forced changes which I have no choice over, given my temperamental digestive system. One resolution, which I hope not to sack off come the third week of January, is the act of chewing my food thoroughly.

It seems so small, but if I managed to change how I eat, it would change how I feel.

This may be TMI, but over Christmas I had a big meal and a few drinks when out with friends (as you do) and promptly threw it all up. My stomach couldn’t handle the stretch, the heavy food, and the rate at which I horsed it into me. It was a low point — narrowly making it to a bathroom stall in a Charlie’s Chinese and managing to vomit all over my beloved suede boots.

One look at the, erm, sick, and I realised my food came out almost exactly as it went in: unchewed.

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It was a big wake-up call. Not just because I’ve realised I’m currently in the throes of post-infectious gastritis/reflux, which means I can’t stomach much, but also because it made me aware of how I’ve been eating — as though there’s a gun to my head. I wolf my food in, conditioned over years of parenting to be ready to flee should my child throw a wobbler or need me. Parents who’ve attempted brunch with a two-year-old will know the style of eating: like it could be the last chance you have to eat before you die.

Of course, this just signals stress to the body and does nothing to please the digestive system — after all, the digestive process is supposed to begin in the mouth, and we’re meant to chew our food until it’s essentially puréed. The result for me has been bloating, discomfort, pain, IBS-like symptoms, and now, unfortunately, vomiting.

So yes, in 2026 I will try my best to mechanically break down my food before it hits my stomach like a high-speed freight train. I’m already feeling so much better for it.

That was a lengthy aside to start with, but what is Substack if not a place to indulge in a stream of consciousness?

I put as much as possible off until January, assuming I’d have the energy and enthusiasm to face it all once Christmas was behind me. I assumed I’d hit the ground running. But guess what? I haven’t. I can’t.

And before I could berate myself for procrastinating or wanting to lie down more often than be upright, I stopped myself. Because when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Intentions and resolutions aside, January is arguably the worst month of the year to expect ourselves to achieve the kind of output and motivation we might have in springtime. We feel (or maybe just I feel) drawn to the couch and the bed and the fire and the kettle because that’s what nature asks of us. It’s darker than ever, we have no twinkly lights, it’s cold as f*ck (unless you’re reading from Australia in which case none of this will be relevant) and we’ve got the post-Christmas come-down to boot. Maybe it feels so damn long because it forces us to slow down.

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Since I was a child, my mam has always given me a free pass for feeling tired at this time of year by saying, “Think of the bears in the woods — they’re hibernating and you are too.” It was always comforting and logical to me. It’s why going back to school in January felt harder. Of course, my husband now likes to remind me that I am not a bear, and that maybe not everything my mother has ever told me is gospel. But on this one? She’s right.

This is a time for wintering. For box-sets. For going slow. For getting things done gently. It’s not the time it’s marketed to be, where we throw the kitchen sink at ourselves, optimising and overhauling our lives beyond recognition. If you do that when your body is craving nourishment and comfort and slowness — because that’s what nature intended — it will not only feel impossibly hard, it will also be massively dysregulating. And you’d be bolloxed by the time February rolls around.

This idea of fresh starts is always arbitrary and could really be embarked upon on any day, any week, or any month of the year, if a fresh start is required in the first place. But because our culture shoves workout plans and liquid diets in our faces come January first — along with journals and to-do list diaries that make you feel as though you should be doing far more than you are — all we succeed in doing is feeling bad about ourselves.

I have a book coming out this spring. I should be blasting through content creation, developing marketing plans, increasing my output on socials ahead of it hitting shelves. But I just can’t yet. And that’s perfectly fine. It’ll get done.

I’m also feeling an added pressure — aka an unmerciful, elephant-sized weight on my chest — because this is the year my son has to start school, and we’ve no idea what that looks like yet. And we can’t afford to get it wrong.

By all means, you may be reading this and thinking, No — January is the perfect time to achieve a German-level of life optimisation and I’m loving it. And if so, more power to you. But if, like me, you’re spending a little longer making the cup of tea, writing shorter to-do lists of things that feel manageable, savouring soups and hot drinks, and managing little more than a walk wrapped up like a lagging jacket — you’re likely incredibly attuned to what your nervous system requires at this point in time. And that’s no bad thing.

So if you leave the gung-ho, go-get-’em, max-output energy for a brighter month of the year — when we’ll be more naturally inclined to feel that way — do not see it as a failed attempt to begin your 2026. But do chew your food.

As this is my first Substack of the year, I would love to ask you, dear readers: what do you want more of from me, what types of posts are you most interested in? I know some people are here purely for the updates on parenting an autistic PDA child and others might just like my style of writing in general (thanks!) but I’d love to be a bit more intentional with this Substack this year. It fell off a bit of a cliff last year and while I’m quick to assume that must mean I am just shit, I do think it has a lot to do with the sheer volume of writers now on Substack and how hard it is to ask people to subscribe to you when there are so many wonderful writers to fill your inbox with. I really appreciate everyone who has been here since the beginning, so please do tell me what you’re enjoying more of.

The year is drawing to a close and while to-do lists seem to sprout extra tasks by the day—and you could probably do without one more thing on your plate—I wanted to offer this week’s Substack as a chance to take a breath in the midst of the noise. A space where you can slow down and reset any expectations or perceptions that may have skewed out of proportion at this time of year. I write these notes and reminders as much for myself as I do for you, my lovely reader.

It happens. I panic-ordered a set of matching festive pyjamas for myself and my son from Next this morning. €70 later, I realised I had once more succumbed to the manufactured picture of how Christmas should look. Sure, part of it is about wanting to make an occasion of things and create memories that feel a bit more special, but there’s no denying we’ve been expertly duped into believing that sequins and red tartan are how you do it. I’ve also had pangs of that all-too-familiar panic over whether I’ve got ‘enough’ under the tree for my son — the same son who is currently having the time of his life playing a made-up game with his grandparents that requires no toys at all.

Something I plan to do, and recommend wholeheartedly, is stepping away from social media for the week of Christmas. Not because you ‘should’ be more present — we’ll all be craving an escape when your racist aunt gets on her immigration soapbox after her third glass of Creme de Menthe — but because social media is the thing amplifying all of those ‘shoulds’. You don’t need to see extended families packed around dinner tables and wonder whether you’re having enough fun. You don’t need to see Christmas Eve present set-ups and doubt your own efforts. You certainly don’t need to drink a Christmas morning mimosa made with cranberry-and-orange-juice ice cubes unless you really want to (I do).

I’m convinced this frenzied sense of getting things done and forcing ourselves into the festive mood is almost entirely fuelled by social media. That’s where the pressure, the comparison, the self-doubt all originate. On the contrary, the world gets smaller, slower and more peaceful when you step away. There’s no better time than the end of the year to give yourself that treat.

It’s a double-edged sword for me, because social media is so tightly wound up with my work — and unfortunately, my worth (it’s unavoidable). I can’t afford to lob my phone into the sea and carry on, but I can take a little break. That’s when my actual worth, value and priorities come back into clearer view.

A break over Christmas also gives you the headspace to reflect on the year you’ve had. There’s likely a lot you’ve gone through without a second to process. I, for one, am looking forward to sitting down with my husband over a drink and digesting the fact that our life and future now look very different after our son’s autism diagnosis — how our reference points have shifted and how beautifully we’ve handled that.

This time of year invites round-ups, highlights and outward achievements, and while I’m proud to have written a book this year, it was my hardest year yet, certainly as a parent. There were many low points, and my mental health took a proper beating. But I’m most proud of how willing I was to sit in the discomfort of my parenting experience until the thing I didn’t want — a diagnosis — became the very thing that allowed everything to slot into its rightful place. The discomfort turned to comfort.

So I recommend you find something like that — something that’s not an accolade or accomplishment you’d post on LinkedIn, but a moment when you treated yourself with compassion, or turned towards yourself when you most wanted to turn away. Let that be the highlight with which you tie up your year.

Looking ahead, I’m already bracing for the aggressive shift that hits the moment January arrives. All the arbitrary ‘fresh start’ content. Overhaul your skincare. Sign up for Hyrox. Switch to whole unprocessed foods because you’ve been spooked by one too many supermarket influencers. But again, all of that pressure comes from what your algorithm is serving you.

You can decide to make a gentle, almost laughably small change on a random Tuesday in November, and it can be the one shift that sticks. I started moisturising my legs daily in October. I know this is minuscule. It’s something most people do. But I’ve had the driest, scaliest, reptilian legs and never bothered taking care of them because I didn’t think it would make a difference. I envied those who committed to full-body maintenance. I just felt too tired all the time. Anyway, I got a large tub of inexpensive moisturiser, plonked it beside my knicker drawer, and each time I got dressed, it was right there to grab. It was nothing — an extra mindful moment each morning — and now I have soft, happy (though still hairy) legs. More significant than no longer resembling a rhino, I’m chuffed with myself for making a lifestyle change so small and quiet it simply became part of how I care for myself.

So maybe — if you feel the need for change (and you often don’t) — pick one tiny thing. Oh, I also started adding a spoonful of milled flaxseed to my porridge because my cholesterol crept too high. Just something small. Don’t take on the mountain. And don’t force yourself to begin in January, the month we deny ourselves every joy when we need comfort most.

If you feel up to it, choose one tiny act of care or comfort you can offer yourself this week. Nothing grand, nothing for January, just one small thing that signals: I’m on my own side.

Happy Christmas to you, dear reader. I hope you’re proud of yourself and the ways you’ve shown up for yourself. Go easy, go gently, go quietly, and I’ll see you on the flip side.

I’ve been thinking about the idea of parenting on “hard mode” — I shared a post about it on Instagram recently. I remember feeling such fierce validation when a friend said to me: Caroline, it’s easier for me to parent two or even three neurotypical children who go out with other caregivers, who let Daddy do bedtime, who walk into crèche and school without a wobble, than it is for you to parent one neurodiverse child.

At the time we didn’t know he was neurodiverse, but we knew it was harder than regular hard — that something must be up. I needed something to be up. A lot of parents rush to say “no, no, they’re nothing but a blessing,” but I was drowning. Pretending everything was fine wasn’t helping; I was being talked down from my mental brink on a daily basis. I didn’t need advice or for anyone to fix it. I just needed to be seen, heard, understood. That one friend did that. And my whole nervous system settled.

I had the opposite experience with someone else (now no longer a friend). She said, “you think it’s harder for you than everyone else.” I didn’t — not at all. But when she asked how my week was going, I couldn’t help but say, “tough… a hard few days.” Her response: “But isn’t it always with you?”

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Buckle in for a journey inside my head, where parent-induced cortisol has left my amygdala temporarily trigger-happy.

Today the school application rejection letters have started rolling in. Each email spiking my panic. As such, the energy I usually reserve for worrying about school and the future and my son has trebled. My stress cup runneth over. I’m sickeningly worried about my autistic son starting school next year, so I’m writing down all the reasons why. Maybe you’ll relate. Maybe it’ll simply be therapeutic — a way to get the worries pinballing around my head at three a.m. out of my body and onto a page (or screen, if we’re being pedantic).

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You know when you have such a visceral reaction to a character on screen that they get under your skin in the worst possible way? The kind of character who makes you want to hurl the remote at the TV or watch them meet a slow and painful death? And yet their very existence is a win, because it means the writing is effective and the acting is spot on. We’re supposed to feel something.

People often mention Rory Gilmore as a character they love to hate. I never really understood it. Sure, she’s entitled, but I never despised her. Someone I have wanted to punch straight off the screen recently? That honour goes to the absolute waste-of-space husband to Dakota Fanning’s character in All Her Fault (with the ever-brilliant Sarah Snook of Succession fame at the helm). His name was Richie but I had to Google that becauase I was too busy hating him to pick up on it mid-watch. My groans got louder with every scene he slithered into. I found myself repeatedly thanking my husband for not being a sly piece of shit. Well done, I guess.

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Every now and then, a celebrity comes along and puts their foot in it so wildly, so unabashedly, you wonder what motley crew of monkeys they must have around them. The latest is Shay Mitchell of Pretty Little Liars fame. Well, that’s how I know her. While that show might only appeal to a certain pocket of millennials, one look at her socials tells you she’s carved out a seriously impressive following as an influencer-slash-entrepreneur, with a couple of acting credits sprinkled in for good measure (most notably as the friend in the first season of Netflix’s YOU who clocked early doors that Penn Badgley’s Joe was, indeed, a psycho stalker).

And for the most part, she’s been getting it right. A bag collection. Some genuinely covetable suitcases. A collaboration with Selena Gomez. Relatable motherhood content (insofar as a super-wealthy celebrity can ever be considered relatable). She’s funny, self-aware, not afraid to laugh at herself. I liked following her.

But then she launched a skincare product for actual toddlers and suddenly everyone knows her name, but for all the wrong reasons.

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I don’t know who failed to point out the shitshow this would inevitably cause. Surely someone’s getting sacked. Maybe she saw the pitfalls and didn’t care; maybe she saw only a business opportunity. I do wonder sometimes if celebrities are more strategic than we give them credit for, dabbling in rage-baiting as a kind of marketing tactic, knowing full well that outrage drives clicks, and clicks drive sales. After all, what’s a viral backlash if not a prelude to a redemptive comeback (and, inevitably, a bestselling memoir)?

Look at Sydney Sweeney’s white-supremacist-jeans debacle. The internet is rightly furious, but you can bet her name recognition just spiked. When we hold celebrities accountable — as we should — is the joke ultimately on us? Are we simply galvanising their platforms, keeping them relevant when they might otherwise have slipped off the boil?

And so, to Shay’s latest misstep: sheet masks for babies. A launch that’s caused uproar and, frankly, deservedly so. Unlike Kim Kardashian’s recent bush knickers (which people can buy if they’re suckers with more money than sense and simply want in on whatever’s trending) Shay’s products are actively harmful. Unless the bush knickers cause a bikini-line rash, in which case, more fool you.

With a quick sleight of language, a switch from self-improvement or beautification to self-care, we’ve entered a new and rather sinister era: one where toddlers, specifically female toddlers, will soon look in the mirror and wonder if they’re good enough. The brand boasts that the masks contain “nothing harmful,” but when it comes to psychological harm, they might as well come with a hazard warning.

Because even if that’s not the intention — even if Shay and her team genuinely believe they’re promoting bonding time, or introducing “self-care” as a sweet little ritual — the result is the same: conditioning. Conditioning tiny humans, humans young enough to poop their pants, to see their reflection as something in need of work. To associate care with consumption and needing the latest thing. To link worth with perfection. Before they can even pronounce those words.

It’s the same tired cycle, just starting earlier and it’s happening because we’ve obviously run out of other corners of society to exploit. Teens. Tweens. Now toddlers. Next it’ll be in-vitro serums to ensure your newborn comes out with an Instagram-worthy glow, marketed as “healthy.”

Of course it’s the parents who are also being exploited, facing pressures from all angles to give their kids the ‘best’. The beauty industry has always been a master at monetising insecurity, and now, apparently, it’s not enough to target exhausted mothers. It’s time to hook their daughters too. Under the banner of empowerment and self-love, we’re still selling the same thing: the idea that there’s something wrong with you, but don’t worry, we’ve got just the product to fix it.

And if that sounds dramatic or cynical, it’s just working very well on you. While we could laugh it off as a world gone mad — and others will surely rush to Shay’s defence, saying she’s just a girl, doesn’t deserve to be attacked, only wants the best for kids, and meant no harm — we have a moral obligation to resist the direction the beauty industry is heading: younger and younger.

The argument goes that kids will dabble in their mother’s makeup bags anyway, so we may as well make it “suitable for their skin” and embrace their curiosity. But there’s a difference between emulating mummy’s red lips and interfering with a skin barrier still in its infancy (literally) setting that child up for a lifetime of linking their value to their appearance. Make no mistake: this is not skincare, it’s indoctrination.

Thankfully, influencers with any sort of moral compass have flocked to the posts promoting these sheet masks, calling them what they are: disappointing and downright terrifying. Not afraid to be seen to bash another woman because that is not what they’re meaning to do. And while part of me can’t help but empathise with the woman who should know better — but was probably surrounded by one too many Yes People, chequebooks, and flashing dollar signs, we have to draw the line somewhere. This has gone too far.

Maybe we are feeding the monster. Maybe all this outrage only increases the monetary value of the very thing we’re trying to reject — controversy as currency. Look how it’s worked for Trump. But this is one monster that needs to be stopped. Not Shay herself, but the industry at large.

And yes, I’m writing this from a salon chair, mid-hair-extension install. Of course I am. That’s the blurred line we’re all dancing on: between empowerment and the quiet urge to improve ourselves, between self-expression and self-correction. In my defense, this is less about improvement and more about satisfying one of the many personalities living inside my head. On Friday, when I get botox, I won’t have a leg to stand on. The only difference is that I’m an adult with a fully developed prefrontal cortex, just self-aware enough to question it and to know when to call bullshit on a sheet mask for babies.