339: When Hope Feels Heavy: Permission to Start A New Year Without Optimism, with Penny Williams

There are moments in parenting when hope doesn’t feel light or motivating — it feels heavy. Like something we’re expected to carry when we’re already exhausted. If you’re walking into a new year feeling worn down instead of inspired, this episode is for you.

I recorded this specifically for New Years, a day filled with pressure to feel optimistic, goal-driven, and ready for a fresh start. But the truth is, I wasn’t feeling hopeful. I was tired. Uncertain. Emotional. And rather than masking that or forcing a shiny version of hope, I wanted to talk honestly about a different kind of hope — one that doesn’t require belief, certainty, or high energy.

This episode is about redefining hope in a way that actually works for parents of neurodivergent kids. Hope that sounds like: I don’t know how this will turn out, but I’m still here. Hope that lives in tiny steps, support, steadiness, and permission to begin without confidence.

We talk about burnout as information, not failure. About why pushing harder never lifts burnout, and what actually does. About capacity instead of goals, responsiveness instead of consistency, and support instead of pressure. And about why your child doesn’t need a “new year, new you” — they just need you, depleted less and supported more.

If you’re starting this year feeling heavy, unsure, or worn thin, you’re not alone. You don’t need optimism to take the next step. You need care. Support. And a reminder that you don’t have to do this alone.

Listen in for a grounding, compassionate reframe that meets you exactly where you are.

You can find additional resources at parentingadhdandautism.com and Regulated Kids.com — because it’s not just about the struggles, it’s about progress, one step at a time.

Show notes and more resources at parentingadhdandautism.com/339

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/beautifully-complex--6137613/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
There is another kind of hope that doesn't require pretending
that we're okay. It doesn't require masking, and it sounds
more like I don't know how this is going to
unfold yet, but I'm still here. I don't have answers,
but I have not quit, and I am allowed to

(00:23):
begin without belief, just a willingness to begin. Welcome to
Beautifully Complex, where we unpack what it really means to
parent neurodivergent kids with dignity and clarity. I'm Penny Williams,
and I know firsthand how tough and transformative this journey

(00:43):
can be. Let's dive in and discover how to raise regulated, resilient,
beautifully complex kids together. Oh and if you want more support,
join our free community at hub dot beautifully complex dot life.
Hi friends, thanks so much for joining me in this

(01:04):
episode of Beautifully Complex. It is January first. If you
are watching or listening to this episode on the first
day that it comes out, it's a day with a
lot of expectations. Right, we are taught to set New
Year's resolutions. We're taught to work harder at goal setting

(01:26):
and at achieving goals than we have done so far. Right,
we're taught that we need to do more so that
we can achieve more, and that that's what New Year's
is all about, this fresh start. And as I was
thinking about how I wanted to really record a hopeful

(01:47):
message for you, I was brought to tears this morning
because I'm not feeling particularly hopeful right now myself. I
am really struggling, and I really am always about showing
up for you in a real and genuine way, and

(02:07):
so I was trying to consider how could I bring
you a message that was going to help you to
keep going while also being genuine about my own feelings
and my own struggle and my own sort of love
hate relationship with Hope, which I've had for a long time.

(02:28):
I wrote a blog post back in twenty fifteen about
how Hope and I have this love hate relationship because
I get really hopeful and then if I get let down,
then it hurts, and it feels like it hurts more
than if I just didn't hope that much and accepted
what comes right. And what I sort of came to

(02:52):
after a lot of consideration, is that there is really
a genuine message of hope that I can share with
you right now. It's not that shiny, forward looking kind
of hope that we usually associate with New years. And
I think that's exactly why it actually matters. I'm not

(03:13):
feeling hopeful because hope asks for certainty, and uncertainty is
what I am struggling with. So much uncertainty and keeping
my business going and being able to continue to help
all of you. Uncertainty with what the future looks like
from my kids, uncertainty with getting older and all that brings.

(03:37):
That message typically looks like I know it's going to
get better. This year is definitely going to be different.
I see the path before us, right. That kind of
hope requires energy and vision and nervous system bandwidth, and
I just don't have those things today. I am not

(03:57):
showing up for you today in that type of energy.
When we're tired, like really really tired, those things just
aren't accessible. But there is another kind of hope that
doesn't require pretending that we're okay. It doesn't require masking,

(04:20):
and it sounds more like I don't know how this
is going to unfold yet, but I'm still here. I
don't have answers, but I have not quit, and I
am allowed to begin without belief just a willingness to begin,
a willingness to start if I'm scared to start, if

(04:43):
I don't feel really optimistic about the outcome. And so
many of us, as parents have neurodivergent kids, we enter
January exhausted, not inspired. We've had half a year of
school struggles, we have had family interactions, parties, the stress

(05:07):
of the holidays, because let's face it, as a parent,
there is stress that comes with holidays, especially if you
can't afford the extra expense. And December just takes a lot,
and parenting takes a lot. And now we're putting those
two things together, we're layering them on top of each other,
and then we're supposed to just slide right into January first,

(05:29):
like everything is hunky dory and it's all gonna be
better and everything is right with the world. Right, So,
if you're starting this year feeling heavy instead of hopeful,
like I am, I want you to know me too.
I am too. I am feeling heavy, I am struggling,

(05:51):
and it is okay. It is okay to feel however
we feel. As I said, as I prepared to record
this episode, I really struggled with how taught for you
hope when I'm not feeling very hopeful myself. And as
you can tell, that brought a lot of tears, and

(06:12):
I texted a couple of friends about it, and my
dear friend Sarah picked up the phone and called me,
and as you can imagine listening to me right now,
for the first few minutes I could barely speak. She
mostly just listened to me sob and then she listened
to what I'm going through and how I'm feeling with

(06:34):
so much empathy and compassion. So here, I am trying
to help you walk into another new year with self
compassion and grace while also being very real and very
genuine obviously, So what can we do with how we

(06:56):
are feeling right now? We can reframe the idea of hope.
Hope is typically framed as a belief in a certainty,
a clarity that things are going to improve, that the
future is going to be better and brighter, and it
requires that type of energy to envision change. We have

(07:19):
to have some energy to imagine that things can be
different and better because we have to contribute to that,
right and when you're burned out, it's so much harder.
We have all of this nervous system fatigue. We're living
more often in dysregulation than not. We're in this sort

(07:42):
of chronic problem solving mode. These things are hard, these
things are challenging. We're struggling with this. I need to
figure out how to go forward. That requires a lot
of problem solving, and we are spending years of our
lives advocating, adjusting and trying to hold it together, and

(08:09):
sometimes we just can't. But here's the bright spot of burnout.
If we can find a bright spot, this is it.
Burnout is information, just like behavior is communication, and it's
a signal. Burnout is the same. It is telling us
what we need. It's not failure. It's not a failure

(08:32):
of being able to keep it all together into perpetuity.
It's information. Our body is saying, I need less, I
need less demand. I need less problems to solve right
at this moment, I need less input, I need less
sensory I need less struggle. I don't need more resolve.

(08:56):
I don't need to pull up my big girl panties,
put on a brave face, pretend like everything's okay, and
go forward that way, right, That's what we tend to
think of as New Year's It's like this renewed resolve
for making change. But if we're burned out, we need
less of all of that. And what I've learned over

(09:20):
the years when I felt like hope has carried me
and then let me down, is that when hope feels inaccessible,
we can't force it. And I think that's kind of
what I was trying to do here this morning. I
was realizing that, you know, weeks ago, I had planned

(09:40):
to record this message of hope and optimism to help
inspire you to keep going, and when I showed up
to do that, I didn't feel genuine. Hope just didn't
feel accessible to me today, and I could have forced it.
I could have tried. I told back the tears, pretended

(10:02):
that everything's hunky dory, right. I could have masked and
recorded this really disingenuous message about how hope is going
to carry you and how that's what you need. But
I didn't want to do that. I always, as I
said right from the start, I want to be real
and genuine with all of you, and so we need

(10:24):
a new definition right that doesn't require us to believe
in something that we can't see or know to be true.
Yet it doesn't require us to have this high energy
around it. Hope doesn't have to be optimism, and this
is something new for me. It is not a thought

(10:46):
that I've ever had before. But hope doesn't have to
be optimism. Instead, it can be support, It can be steadiness,
it can be permission, it can be just one tiny,
next doable step. Sometimes just moving forward in the tiniest

(11:08):
of ways is actually practicing hope because we're moving forward.
So what I have come to today for myself, and

(11:29):
hopefully this rings true for many of you as well,
is that we need to start without certainty. We need
to start scared, we need to start anxious, We need
to start slow and small. Beginning doesn't require confidence. We
think it does. We definitely think it does. We think

(11:51):
that confidence is the fuel to start doing something, But
it really doesn't require confidence. It just requires us of
safety and a feeling that you are not alone, that
there is someone else in your corner too, someone that
you can lean on. Sometimes the most helpful thing isn't

(12:14):
believing that it's all going to work out, And gosh,
it took me a long time to get there. I
wanted everything to work out. That's what we do. We
love our kids. We love people and we want things
to work out, but what we have to understand is
that's not the human experience. Sometimes things work out, sometimes
things don't. So instead of trying to force ourselves to

(12:39):
believe that everything's going to work out, we can just
choose not to carry it by ourselves. We don't need
to know what next year is going to hold and
we can't. Instead, we need a place where we can
set things down when they get hard, where people can

(13:00):
help us to hold things up that need to be
held up even though they're hard. So let's talk about
some more small reframes. We've reframed hope. It does not
need to be optimism. It can be starting small. It
can be taking a tiny step forward and leaning on others,

(13:22):
finding support and using that support. So thinking about instead
of what needs fixing, we can ask ourselves what feels
hardest right now? What is the one thing, not the
ten things, but the one thing that feels hardest right now.
Instead of thinking about goals, I want you to think

(13:44):
about capacity. Each new year, I choose a word of
the year, and it's not really about a goal. It's
not about money or things or particular trips or vacations.
I try to pick a word that it's going to

(14:04):
help to carry me, a word that I really want
to focus on, because I know focusing on it is
going to help carry me. And this year, I'm thinking
my word is likely going to be capacity, because I
have to start focusing on my own capacity too, not

(14:25):
just what needs to get done. And then, instead of consistency,
because oh my gosh, consistency is so hard when things
are hard, right, consistency it just feels undoable when everything
is so heavy and you're carrying it all. So let's
not think about being consistent. Let's think about being responsive,

(14:47):
responsive in the ways that we want to. How can
we respond to the needs that our kids and our
families have without taking on all of the burdens ourselves.
How can we be responsive in showing up in the
way that we want to show up for others, for
our kids, for our partners, for our families. And then,

(15:09):
instead of doing more, because please, please please stop trying
to do more, it's something that I am working so
hard on myself, instead of doing more, we need to
reduce the friction, and we need to focus on feeling better,
feeling good, because when people feel good, they're able to

(15:31):
do good. If we don't feel good, we are not
ever able to do good. It just isn't possible. It
isn't possible. Your kid doesn't need some new and transformed
New Year's version of you. They just need you. They
need you depleted less, they need you supported more. They

(15:56):
need you minding your capacity. I have seen families that
I coach change not through more effort, but through support,
through learning how to make pivots that honor capacity, that
are neuro affirming, and that are foundational for our kids

(16:19):
to thrive and ourselves to thrive. Through pacing, not trying
to change everything at once, but prioritizing and pacing what
we're working on, and of course through that nervous system
first approach, perspective and care, because our nervous system dictates

(16:41):
how we feel, and we need to feel good to
do good. Burnout is not going to lift because you
try harder. It lifts when we stop doing it all
and we stop doing it alone. I really want that
to sink in. Burnout lifts when we stop trying to

(17:03):
do it all and we stop trying to do it alone.
I hear parents say, I just need to catch my breath.
I need a reset. I myself often think I need
a reset. I need someone to walk with me, not
tell me what I'm doing wrong. Now this podcast episode

(17:25):
and the message that I'm sharing with you, it's not
about promoting anything. I promise this is genuine and from
the heart. But I'm realizing as I have been talking
to you, that I was actually seeing this need in
other parents before I was really seeing it in myself.
Because I have been working on a growth sprint called

(17:48):
burned Out to Back on Track, and it is a
six week done with you mentorship to help you and
your kid through this season of being burned out out
and getting back on track and being able to move
forward again and feeling good again. I created it for
this exact reason that we're talking about right now, and

(18:11):
it just clicked for me that I actually saw that
need in others and didn't even recognize it in myself
until I started thinking about hopefulness and optimism in my
day today in this moment. So I do want to
share with you about burned Out to Back on Track

(18:32):
if you think it's something that you might be interested in.
It is part of the Regulated Kids Project membership. It's
very affordable at thirty five dollars a month. There will
be continual growth sprints throughout the year, or you can
buy one particular sprint for seventy dollars. They're really short
on purpose. They are going to feel very doable when

(18:55):
things are heavy. They are going to feel very supportive
because it's not about saying, it's not about me pushing you.
It's just about stabilizing and rebuilding capacity. The whole first
week in this growth sprint, we work on acknowledging, identifying, noticing,

(19:15):
having awareness around your capacity, your kid's capacity, and the
things that we can do to build capacity. It's about
nervous system first, always, and that is one of the
four core principles that I lean heavily on in parenting,
in my own parenting and the parenting that I teach

(19:37):
and guide others through. We have to parent nervous system first,
because if a kid is disregulated, none of any of
the greatest strategies in the world are going to work.
We have to be regulated. I also lean heavily on
the fact that small steps that are achievable build success.

(20:01):
We can't go from my kid can't ride a bike
to literally one second and your kid is out there
like doing mountain biking race courses and winning. Right, we
can't even go in one second from can't ride a
bike to fully on their own riding a bike. But

(20:21):
we tend to want to change things in that timeframe
and in that way. But what really matters, most of
what really works best is if we take this tiny
steps that we can have success with because success breeds
more success. Success breeds the attitude that I can keep trying.

(20:44):
We have to feel like things are doable, even if
they're challenging, to keep trying. That's true for our kids,
it's true for us as well. Relief over results as
one of those four core principles. How we feel and
how we make others feel matters way more than what
we do, what we achieve, what we attain, what we

(21:06):
have right. How we feel and how we make our
kids feel and other people feel is so important. And
then lowering pressure and increasing support that is where these
shifts start to happen. We're not pressuring because pressure shuts

(21:29):
people down. We're supporting. This isn't about becoming a different parent.
It's about feeling like yourself again, and it's about being
able to show up for your kid in the way
that you want to and in the ways that are
going to help them to find their own successes, to
help them feel good, to help them get back on

(21:51):
track at school, to help them, you know, have smoother
afternoons and evenings. So we're not just looking at in
this burned out to back on track grows sprint. We're
not just looking at capacity and how we feel and burnout,
but we're also looking at what strategies, what rhythms and

(22:13):
flow can we put in place so that things are
doable again. So if this is the year that you
stop pushing and you start supporting yourself, I'm going to
be there. I am so there for that. Stop pushing
and start supporting yourself. You don't need hope to take

(22:35):
the next step. I have been struggling with hope all year,
but I continue to get out of bed every day,
I continue to show up. I continue to lean into
my purpose of helping others, and it helps me to
keep taking that next step. So you just need care.

(22:57):
You need support, and the ability to keep going will
naturally evolve from that. Please take good care. I'll see
you in the next episode. I see you. You're doing
hard and meaningful work, and you don't have to do
it alone. If you found this episode helpful, share it

(23:18):
with someone who needs it and leave a quick review
so others can find this support too. When you're ready
for next steps, the Regulated Kids Project is here with
the tools, coaching, and community to help you raise a
more regulated, resilient child. Get more info at regulated kids
dot com.