The Shift I Asked For (And the One I Got) On

Cycles, Crashes, and Trusting the Process Anyway

Wendi Kehn/Hellbloom Haven (Also featured on Substack & Medium)

Jan 09, 2026

Section 1: A Morning Spiral (In Real Time)

Ever have one of those mornings where you wake up and everything immediately starts going wrong and irritating you?

That’s how this morning is going.

It’s only 8 a.m. and I’ve already been on a rollercoaster and feel pretty done with the day. I’ve been awake since 4:30 this morning because my youngest needed snuggles to go back to sleep, which, honestly, was really sweet… minus the part where I’ve been awake since 4:30.

My brand-new phone, the one I was so excited about, the one I spent money I really didn’t have on and paid for next-day delivery, arrived yesterday and is currently sitting in a box, completely unusable. I accidentally entered the wrong password too many times thinking I was signing into a different account, and now it’s frozen for two weeks until my new number can be verified.

Then there’s my sourdough starter. I’ve spent a full week building it, checking instructions every morning, trying to do everything right. This morning, flustered and distracted, I discarded too much and fed too little. It’s not ruined, but it’s weaker now and needs to be rebuilt.

By this point, I could feel myself spiraling.

All I want is a cup of coffee to calm myself down and ground myself again. Of course, that turns into a thing, too. I push the button once, nothing. Twice, nothing. A third time, still nothing.

I finally snapped and told my roommate, in what I can only describe as a slightly unhinged voice and tears streaming down my face, to just push the damn button and make me my coffee.

First try. It works.

So then I’m in the bathroom letting myself finish the spiral. I cry. I stare at myself in the mirror. Telling myself, out loud, that we are going to be okay. I take a breath. Then another.

When I walked back out, I made a quiet decision: I’m not going to let this morning ruin my day and I will pull it together before my kids wake up.

I did just that. I drank my coffee, reminded myself that nothing is broken, nothing needs to be fixed, no one is hurt or dead. I just need to sit and relax and trust everything is falling in place, not apart.

Section 2: What Regulation Changes

The most beautiful thing about learning to regulate your nervous system and your emotions is how differently you show up inside moments like this.

I think about my older kids a lot when I’m in these states. When they were little, I was eighteen, then nineteen, babies thirteen months apart, barely surviving, trying to raise children while carrying trauma that hadn’t been named yet, let alone healed.

I know I loved them. I know I tried. I look back and I can see myself doing my best to show up as loving, playful, and kind. But I can also see the truth I wish I didn’t have to carry: more often than not, they got the unregulated version of me. The impatient, overtired, depressed one who was running on fumes and fear and survival.

That truth still breaks my heart.

I have spent my life trying to heal, always wanting to do better, to be better, especially for my kids. And when I had my youngest, my last, at thirty-two… something was different. She’s six now, and while life has been wild since she was born, she has gotten a version of me that is more healed, more stable, more grateful, and more present.

There is deep grief in that realization.
But there is also immense pride.

I can mourn the mother I couldn’t be back then while honoring the mother I am now. I can hold regret without letting it erase the growth. I can see how far I’ve come without pretending it didn’t cost me anything to get here.

Regulation doesn’t mean I don’t spiral anymore. It means that when I do, I can find my way back. It means mornings like this don’t define the whole day. I can sit on the bathroom floor, cry, steady myself, and come back out as the mom I always knew I was capable of being.

Section 3: It’s Never Just the Morning

I should probably say this before I keep going: writing helps me regulate.

So if this feels a little scattered, just stick with me. I promise there’s a point in here somewhere, even if I’m still finding it as I write.

Because the truth is, mornings like this are never just about what’s happening in front of me. This isn’t my first morning like this. And now that I’m calmer, I can see this one more clearly.

When things start going wrong, my first instinct is almost always to internalize it. To make it mean something. To turn it into punishment. Shame shows up fast, what did I do wrong, what am I missing, why can’t I just handle things better? And once that door opens, it spirals.

Suddenly it’s not about the phone, or the starter, or the coffee. It’s about everything. Stress. Pressure. Fatigue. Life piling up quietly in the background until one small thing tips it over. The moment starts carrying the weight of every other hard moment that came before it.

Then I peel back another layer and realize something important: the timing isn’t random. I’m in the crash part of my cycle. I know this pattern. I have very high highs, energy, clarity, momentum, and then very low lows. And no matter how many times I’ve gone through it, my brain seems to forget that on crash days.

I don’t wake up thinking, oh, this makes sense.
I wake up already spiraling, already convinced something is wrong. Like the world around me is crumbling and I’m drowning in it.

Which makes the irony hard not to laugh at.

Yesterday, I wrote a poem called On the Edge of Change about sensing a shift underfoot. About knowing something was coming before I could name it. Turns out I wasn’t wrong, I just didn’t expect the shift to arrive like this.

It reminds me of a scene in Oz the Great and Powerful, where Oz falls into a river and panics, convinced he’s drowning, until he stands up and realizes the water is only knee-deep.

That’s what these mornings are like.

When I’m in it, it feels catastrophic. Dark. Overwhelming. Like I’m being pulled under by something I can’t control. But once I slow down enough to get my footing, I can see the truth: I’m not drowning. I’m standing in a familiar place, reacting to a surge that feels bigger than it actually is.

Seeing that doesn’t make the crash disappear. But it does change how I move through it.

I don’t have to fight the water.
I just have to stand up.

And once I can see that, I can loosen my grip. I can stop treating this moment like a verdict and start seeing it for what it is, information.

Section 4: Choosing a Different Story

I don’t actually know why things unfold the way they do.

I do notice patterns. I always have. I see timing, repetition, echoes. I see signs in things, not because I think everything is orchestrated or meaningful in some grand way, but because paying attention helps me stay present.

I actively choose to believe in magical things.

Not because I’m naïve about the darkness, but because I’m deeply aware of it. I’ve seen enough of it to know I can’t control that part of the world. What I can control is where I place my attention. What I nurture. The light I let in. The small joys I choose to notice and protect.

When I’m dysregulated, my brain wants to tell a harsher story. That this morning is punishment. That I did something wrong. That life is pushing back because I got too hopeful, too excited, too ahead of myself.

That story shows up fast and automatically, and I know where it leads.

So I try to tell myself a different one. Not because I know it’s objectively true, but because I know what believing the worst does to me.

I pray for my business to succeed. I pray for a way forward, for strength, patience, momentum, results. And when I start to see even a little progress, I notice how quickly I want more. Faster answers. Bigger movement. Clear proof.

And when it doesn’t come the way I expect, I’ll be honest, I get frustrated. With God. With the Universe. With the waiting. It’s easy in those moments to read the pauses as resistance instead of invitation, to assume I’m being blocked instead of guided.

But when I slow down, I can see another possibility. Maybe these moments aren’t punishment at all. Maybe they’re practice. Chances to learn patience instead of forcing momentum. Invitations to pause, to center, to ground myself before moving forward again.

I don’t always get it right. I still catch myself bracing, arguing, asking why now? But more and more, I’m learning to meet the frustration with curiosity, to ask what this moment is asking of me instead of assuming it’s working against me.

Healing my back has taught me something important about that. Sometimes it isn’t about strength at all. it’s about stamina. And stamina isn’t something you suddenly have. It’s built slowly. Carefully. By listening when your body says not yet.

This morning is starting to feel a lot more like that.

I don’t need to believe everything happens for a reason. I just need to believe that things aren’t happening to punish me. That good things are allowed to happen to me, even when they come in pieces instead of all at once.

Choosing that story doesn’t fix everything, but it changes how my body feels inside the moment.

Today, that feels like enough.

Closing: If You Made It This Far

If you made it this far, thank you for sticking with me.

This piece isn’t about answers (sorry if I misled you haha) but
it is about awareness.

It’s about what happens when you stop reading hard moments as proof that something is wrong with you, and start recognizing them as part of being alive in a body that feels deeply. Hard days don’t mean you’re broken. Emotional crashes aren’t character flaws. Feeling overwhelmed doesn’t erase the growth you’ve already made.

Sometimes regulation looks like nothing more than noticing the spiral as it’s happening, staying with yourself through it, and choosing not to let shame have the final word.

If any of this feels familiar, the cycles, the constant self-monitoring, the hope that keeps returning even when it’s tired, please know this: you’re not alone. You’re not behind. You’re not failing at healing or at being human.

Thank you again, lovely souls, for being here and for letting me share something real.

With love,
Wendi Kehn

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