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Mar 27 •
START HERE! 👇
🎉Welcome to the place where we stop pretending this is fine. If you're here, I'm guessing you're a little tired of parenting spaces that feel like they were designed for a completely different family than yours. The ones where "have you tried a reward chart?" is the answer to everything. Yeah. Not our people. This is Effing Happy, and we are absolutely your people. I'm Jennifer, and I've been in the trenches of complex-needs parenting for over 20 years. I've done the hospital waiting rooms and the 2am phone calls and the cleaning up of things I never thought I'd be cleaning up. I've also done the DBT training and the Family Connections program and the suicide prevention work, because when you're parenting kids in crisis, you become a very specific kind of expert whether you signed up for that or not. This community exists because parents like us need a place that can handle our reality, the whole messy, exhausting, sometimes-terrifying, still-somehow-loving reality of it. ➡️So let's do this. Drop a comment and tell us who you are and what brings you here. You don't have to sanitize it. You don't have to make it sound okay. Just tell us what's real, and watch how fast you feel less alone. I'll start: I'm Jenn, I'm a mom of four, two of whom have complex needs that have kept me on my toes in the most demanding way imaginable, and I built this community because I spent years looking for it and it didn't exist yet. Your turn.
16d •
The 4 Minute Reset.
Four DBT-informed tools for when you are about four minutes from losing it completely. No baths. No journaling. Just fast, real stuff that actually works when your nervous system is on fire. Go grab it. It's yours, and you probably needed it yesterday. And while you're here — what's your current go-to when everything goes sideways? The thing you *actually* do, not the thing you tell your therapist you do. Drop it below. I'd love to hear it.
23d •
Nobody was saying these out loud. So I did.
Something new just landed in the classroom, and I want to tell you why I made it. I've been thinking a lot lately about how most affirmations just don't fit our lives. They're beautiful and well-meaning and written for someone whose hardest day looks pretty different from ours. "Good vibes only"? Absolutely lovely. It is also not what I need at 11pm after a school call, a meltdown, and coffee I reheated twice and forgot about - both times. So I wrote some that do fit. 30 affirmation cards built for parents who are in the thick of it, covering everything from why your body deserves rest to why other people's opinions about your parenting are noise, not data. Honest ones. True ones. The kind nobody says out loud but everybody needs to hear. You can find them in the classroom. Download, screenshot, print, do whatever works for you. What hits home for you? And, if you're brave today: what would you add to this deck?
26d •
What do you wish the other parents in your life actually understood?
Not the polished version you'd say out loud at a school pickup, the real one. The thing you've been carrying around that nobody in your regular life quite gets, no matter how hard they try. Drop it in the comments, as much or as little as you want. This is the room where that stuff is welcome, and where someone will probably say "oh my god, same."
28d •
You’re not going to figure it all out today…
The quiet Sunday you’re sitting in right now? It’s not a trick. It’s real, even if it doesn’t last, and you’re allowed to just be in it for a minute. But I also know what’s running underneath it. This time of year is its own specific flavor of hard. If your kids are in school, you might be painfully aware the school year is winding down, which sounds like it should feel like relief, except if you’re parenting a complex kid, “school’s almost out” actually translates to: fewer structures, fewer hours of predictability, and a whole terrifying summer to figure out ahead of you. If you’re homeschooling, you’re somewhere between “do I keep pushing through the curriculum?” and “do I just let this be a lesson in surviving May?” Either answer feels like it has consequences. Here’s what I want you to hold onto today: you don’t have to have the summer figured out by tonight. You don’t have to have the plan locked in or the schedule printed or the commitments made. What you have to do today is get through today, and based on the fact that you’re here - you are doing that. What’s the one thing that feels most unresolved for you heading into summer? Drop it below. You’re not alone in it.
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ADHD, mood disorders, behavioral issues (oh, my!). If you're parenting in the deep end, this is your community. Real tools, real talk, DBT-backed.
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