There’s a moment in every crisis when something inside you whispers,
“I can’t do this… and I don’t know how to keep going.”

It may come during a custody dispute.
Or when your child is taken unexpectedly.
Or when a breakup, betrayal, addiction, or high-conflict battle fractures your home.
Or when your child is hurting, and you don’t know how to fix it.

When crisis hits the family, parenting becomes more than logistics and routines. It becomes a test of emotional survival, nervous system endurance, and the ability to lead when your own soul feels unsettled.

When Crisis Hits, Your Brain Goes Into Survival Mode (And Parenting Feels Impossible)

Whether it’s legal battles, betrayal, alienation, financial collapse, or emotional warfare, trauma in the family activates your survival brain. The body floods with cortisol and adrenaline. Logic shuts down. The ability to nurture, communicate clearly, or hold boundaries with compassion becomes difficult not because you’re failing, but because your nervous system is overwhelmed.

You may notice yourself:

• Arguing or lashing out at your co-parent or child
• Shutting down or feeling emotionally numb
• Using alcohol, scrolling, or overworking to cope
• Feeling paralyzed and unable to make decisions
• Panicking about losing your child emotionally or physically
• Wondering if you’re even capable of being a good parent right now

These behaviors are not moral failures they are survival strategies. But survival strategies are not sustainable parenting strategies. When we stay dysregulated, we unintentionally pass our panic, anxiety, and fear onto our children, even when we love them deeply.

To show up as a steady, grounded presence for our kids, we must first help our nervous system remember what safety feels like.

Regulation Before Reaction: How to Shift from Chaos to Clarity

Here are a few simple practices that begin to move the body from survival mode back into regulation:

• 5 things you see
• 4 things you can touch
• 3 things you hear
• 2 things you can smell
• 1 thing you can taste

Regulation does not erase the crisis but it equips you to respond instead of react.

When One Parent Heals, the Family Dynamics Shift

This truth came alive in a powerful way through my recent conversation with Greg Hill Jr., CEO and Co-Founder of Our Children Have Rights. Greg walked through a season where legal decisions left him cut off from his son. In the early months of that fight, he spiraled into drinking, despair, and emotional collapse. But eventually, he made a choice—to rebuild himself so he could fight for his child, not just against the system.

He didn’t just learn the law he learned regulation, mindset, and emotional accountability. And that shift transformed everything.

Listen now:

🎙️ It’s Your Story to Tell — Two-Part Episode with Greg Hill

In Part 1: From Broken to Brave, Greg shares the raw emotional cost of losing access to his child—and how survival mode nearly destroyed him.

In Part 2: How to Build your family after divorce, we unpack practical steps for stabilizing your mind, regulating your body, and strategically advocating for your child without losing yourself in the process.

Parenting Through Crisis Requires Tools, Not Perfection

Children do not need a perfect parent.
They need a present one.
A regulated one.
A parent who can say, “This is hard, but I’m learning to lead with calm instead of fear.”

Healing is not instant but it is possible. And when you heal, your children receive something powerful: a parent who becomes a safe place rather than a reflection of the chaos.

Your healing becomes their inheritance.
Your regulation becomes their roadmap.
Your courage to go first becomes their access to peace.

If you are a parent walking through crisis—or supporting others who are you don’t have to navigate this alone.

Sacred Presence is a free 6-week transformational journey designed for parents who are walking through conflict, trauma, alienation, or emotional storms and need to become the steady, emotionally safe anchor their children can depend on.

From January 19 – March 6, 2026, we’ll walk together through:

• Nervous system regulation in the middle of chaos
• Trauma-informed parenting tools
• Emotional processing without spiraling
• Responding with wisdom instead of reacting from fear
• Stability practices that shift family dynamics

Live group sessions: 7 pm EST, 6 pm CST, & 4pm PST

• January 22
• February 12
• February 26

Get signed up for the January session.