And you know what? That was exactly as it should be.

My nervous system was doing its job - flooding my body with the adrenaline and energy I needed to haul hundreds of litres of water for hours. I couldn't have done it without that activation, that alarm and that energy. And I couldn't have done it without him. We stopped the house from flooding. That was our work.

We were literally designed by the brilliance of mother nature, NOT to feel our pain and our emotions that day.

We were literally MEANT to defend against anything that did not help us to stop the flood.

That’s what gave us the strength to get through.

We don’t want to parent like this day to day and we don’t want to get stuck in this mode outside of a crisis however, inside of a crisis - you are literally meant to be activated and not feeling your feelings, that’s the very purpose.

To the dear parents in the midst of the fires right now, or any other crisis:

You're not meant to be calm right now.

You're not meant to be balanced.

You're not meant to be worrying about feeling your feelings.

You're not meant to be worrying about the perfect words to use.

Your nervous system is doing exactly what it needs to do to keep you safe.

There is an added challenge when you're dealing with evacuation - all that survival energy courses through your body with nowhere to go. This is why anxiety can spike that lasts. That energy is designed to be used to solve problems and if it’s not, it ruminates in the mind.

It’s not the perfect words or the validation that children need to see right now, they need to see you taking action. They need to see you using that energy to solve problems. This is leadership and action in a crisis. Let them see you putting that energy to good use.

When you can direct your emotional energy toward solving problems, it doesn’t allow the mind to ruminate and the anxiety to surface (as much) because the energy is at work in the way it’s meant to be.

This is the work of alarm.

In our flooding situation, even my children were using their activation energy to solve the problem. And because that energy found a release through action (and because the crisis is over and our home is now safe) we all woke up this morning emotionally fine (though physically exhausted).

So please remember:

In a crisis, you're meant to be unbalanced.

You’re meant to be alarmed.

If you can use that energy toward solving the problem, do.

If you can't, find another way to release it - solve any problems you can, even other people’s problems - it needs an outlet.

The processing, the careful words, the feeling your feelings - they all come later.

They’re not meant to come right now, that’s not your work.

They're not even for considering until you're safe, whenever that might be, and that's okay.

When the time is right, feeling your feelings will be the answer. The grief, the tears, the sadness will all become a necessary part of the healing.

But healing comes once you’re safe. Until then, you take action and move and you don’t worry about perfection.

You've got this. One foot in front of the other. This is the design of a crisis.