The Morning Meltdown

Mel Watts~ Artspire Therapy
5 days ago
6 min read

Because sometimes even grown-ups throw tantrums.

We all have those mornings. The ones where everything goes sideways, the elastic band snaps, and suddenly you’re a fully grown adult having a toddler-level meltdown. This is my story of a hormonal storm, a poop explosion, a bruised heel, a good laugh, and a reminder that rupture and repair are part of being human.

💥 This Morning Was… a Shit Show

“This morning… was an absolute shit show.”

That was how my text started yesterday. My poor husband — the steady recipient of my cognitive dumps and nervous system offloading. (A surprisingly effective regulation strategy, by the way — Mel Robbins even talked about it on her October 19th podcast on overwhelm and stress. Linked below if you'd like to listen)

I wish I could dress it up nicely and call it “a moment of mindful dysregulation,” but no. It was a full-on, hormonal, foot-stomping, curse-under-my-breath disaster. One that left me with a bruised heel and a painful limp.

It all started with me trying to do way too many things at once. You know the kind of morning where your brain thinks it’s a supercomputer? Yeah. Except mine glitched.

🧍‍♀️ The Tantrum (a.k.a. Adult Meltdown, Live Edition)

Effie (my sweet, innocent, completely blameless puppy) didn’t get out in time because I was busy searching for rain pants, snacks, and my sanity. She snuck into the playroom, and by the time I realized, the poor thing couldn’t hold it anymore.

There it was. All over the floor, the fort couch, the toys.

And then came me.

A blood-curdling scream escaped my mouth — one of those primal, guttural “the straw just snapped the camel’s back” kind of moments. And then… I stomped my foot. Repeatedly. Like a full-grown, tantrumming toddler.

My hormones were just raging. My body was overheating from the inside out. Cramps. Back pain. Head pounding. Sweat dripping. And now a throbbing foot — my brilliant attempt at regulating through stomping had backfired. But strangely… it felt better to let it out.

The dam had cracked. The elastic band had snapped. And there I was, in the middle of it all — a grown woman, a teacher, a mom, a counsellor — having a moment.

🌧️ Rupture. Repair. Repeat.

After the storm came the cleanup — literally and emotionally.

I cleaned up poor Effie’s mess. Threw in the laundry. Flipped out a few more times (let’s keep it honest).

Then paused. Breathed. Gathered myself.

I found the damn rain pants. Fed my kids a warm, homemade bowl of protein-rich oatmeal. Packed the pizza I was making, the missing snacks, all the things.

And when we finally made it to the forest, we shook it out together. Like animals after a storm. A full somatic release.

“There was laughter. There was breath. There was repair.”

And yes, I limped up that hill with a big bin like some slightly unhinged forest warrior mom — because once you’ve screamed over dog poop, there’s really nowhere to go but up.

💬 Why This Matters

I NEED my kids to know this: my emotional storms are never their fault. Ever.

I want other children to learn the same.

I want to help be the voice. Express the emotions for those who cannot find the words.

That’s why one of my quiet but determined dreams is to publish one of my children’s books soon — so they can grow up understanding that when I have my moments, it’s about me, not them. I want to give them language and love around emotions, not silence and shame.

Growing up in a generation where big feelings were too much for adults, sent to rooms, told to shrink, quiet down, deal with it alone. This messy, stomping, crying, shaking-it-out morning? It’s part of me rewriting that script — one muddy puddle at a time.

🪫 Elastic Bands, Take Two

Some people are naturals at honouring their limits. I, apparently, prefer to stretch myself like a rubber band until it whacks me right in the face. Then I sit there — slightly sweaty, limping, clutching snacks — realizing maybe I need to slow the heck down.

We live in a world that glorifies doing, achieving, consuming. But our bodies whisper long before they scream. And when we ignore them… we end up stomping in a puddle of dog poop at 8 a.m.

🫂 Humility, Humanity & Hormones

I hesitated to share this story because, let’s face it, it’s not exactly my most glamorous parenting moment. But when I later shared a piece of it with a client family, it landed like a quiet exhale. A “me too.”

Because we’ve all been there. Hormones or not, forest hill or not. We rupture. We repair. We keep going.

🎨 Learning to Repaint Ourselves

Parenting (and adulting in general) is an endless act of repainting ourselves with each new layer of knowledge. We’re raising children in an age of big feelings and even bigger expectations — and that’s both beautiful and overwhelming.

We’re all just doing the best we can, just as our parents did before us. Hopefully, we have people around us to gently remind us of that on the hard days.

Many of us are reparenting ourselves in the process — unlearning the “be quiet,” “stop crying,” “go to your room” messages of our childhoods. Our parents truly did the best they could with what they knew. We’re simply swimming through different currents now — louder, faster, more demanding ones.

And isn’t that the hope of each generation? To grow, to learn, to evolve, and to do a little better?

They carried their own stories and survival strategies, born out of love and necessity — even if they left behind tender places in us. As adults, we can see their world with more compassion. We understand it differently now.

Many of us grew up pushing down uncomfortable feelings, told to shrink or sit with them alone. So it’s no wonder that letting others in often comes only when safety is felt. Meanwhile, this new generation is being raised with a language for emotions, by parents doing their best to break cycles while carrying their own histories.

“It’s messy work. Brave work. Exhausting work.”

🌿 Dandelions, Orchids & the Rest of Us

Some kids (and adults) are like dandelions — hardy, adaptable, able to bloom just about anywhere. Others are like orchids — sensitive to their environments, needing a little more care and the right conditions to thrive. Neither is “better.” Just different.

Most of us fall somewhere in between. We push through, trying to bloom even when the soil’s dry and we’ve forgotten to water ourselves. And then we’re surprised when we wilt.

It’s easy to look back and wonder what could’ve been different. But the truth is: each generation does the best it can with what it has. What matters is how we keep learning — and choosing to soften some of the hard edges we inherited.

🫀 The Real Work

So here’s the lesson from my not-so-graceful, hilariously overstuffed morning:

Slow. Down.

I don’t have to do it all.

Neither do you.

We’re allowed to have off days. We’re allowed to not be the elastic band stretched to the limit.

I’m learning — slowly, awkwardly, imperfectly — to give myself credit. To forgive myself. To accept that some days, I’ll be the superhero and other days, I’ll be the slowly deflating pool float.

“Both are valid.”

And maybe, just maybe, if we all had someone to gently remind us of that on the wobbly mornings, the snap wouldn’t hurt quite so much.

🌱 For the Next Generation

We’re raising kids in a new era — one where we’re learning to reparent ourselves while parenting them. Some of us are dandelions, some are orchids. Some days we’re steady; some days we’re stomping and limping our way through. All of it is human.

Our parents did the best they could with what they knew. Now it’s our turn to keep growing, to soften a few of those sharp edges, and to offer our children what we’re still learning to give ourselves.