Too competent to help, too angry to believe

The impossible performance of grace in systems that harm our children.

Holding two pieces in tension

This essay is written alongside a truth that cannot be softened. A truth that spills out, unsanitized, unmanageable, and fully lived. A truth that takes the form of intrusive thoughts, violent imagery, desperate poise, and carefully practiced restraint. That piece—How do you live with yourself—is not here to perform calmness. It does not bend itself into acceptable shapes so others can keep pretending that harm comes gently or by accident. It tells the truth in the voice that exists after too many betrayals, in the body that has endured too much smiling harm, in the mind that has learned to survive through imaginative rehearsal and unbearable control.

This companion essay is here to frame that truth, to hold it up against the cultural mirror and ask why it feels so dangerous to name what has already happened, why mothers who burn quietly are believed, but mothers who speak while burning are not. It is here to say: this voice is credible. This voice is deliberate. This voice is strategic. This voice is feminist. This voice is mine.

The impossible performance of motherhood

There is a particular performance expected of mothers—especially disabled mothers, especially mothers of disabled children, especially those who dare to speak of harm—and it is a performance that demands composure at all times, even under siege. We are expected to be articulate but not strident, informed but not insistent, emotional but only in the key of heartbreak, never rage. We are expected to smile as we ask for help, to say thank you for what we never received, to be unfailingly likable while our children are being stripped of the support they need to survive.

We are told, implicitly and explicitly, that if we are too intense, too angry, too complicated, too traumatised, too political, too truthful—we will be dismissed. Or worse, we will be blamed. And so we learn to contort. We learn to speak in ways that soothe the people who are hurting us. We learn to say “I’m just concerned” instead of “this is a violation.” We learn to nod while our insides scream. We learn to perform grace while holding unspeakable knowledge in our bodies.

And the more competent we seem, the more invisible we become. Because if we can still write the letter, still send the email, still hold the meeting, still advocate with clarity and specificity, then surely we are fine. Surely it isn’t that bad. Surely if we were really in crisis, we wouldn’t be so articulate. Surely if we were credible, we wouldn’t be so upset.

Children as reflections of parental composure

This impossible demand does not stop at mothers. It extends to our children. Because when a child is visibly distressed, the first question asked is not “what has been done to them,” but “why didn’t the parent prevent this.” When a neurodivergent child becomes dysregulated, the behaviour is treated as pathology, as evidence of disorder, as proof of poor parenting. And when that same child masks—when they freeze or fawn or fall silent—the school calls it success.

Compliance is mistaken for wellness. Distress is mistaken for defiance. And underneath it all is the belief that a well-behaved child reflects a well-controlled mother.

This logic is not just unjust—it is cruel. It means that the more distress our children show, the more blame we carry. It means that the more effectively we mask their distress, the less help they receive. It creates a system in which harm is hidden, pain is punished, and love is criminalised if it dares to look angry.

Feminist disability critique: Poise as social currency

Poise, serenity, emotional regulation—these are treated as moral currencies in systems that have no intention of keeping us safe. They are demanded disproportionately from women, and especially from women who are racialised, disabled, queer, poor, or otherwise marked as deviant. The closer we are to their idea of risk, the more calm we must appear. The more we are feared, the more we must smile.

This is a familiar pattern to feminist disability scholars, to abolitionist caregivers, to mothers who have been called hysterical or dramatic or unstable for describing exactly what happened. What looks like composure is often fear. What looks like politeness is often exhaustion. What looks like grace is often strategic masking—learned after too many meetings where the room got colder when you cried.

In this economy of composure, those who speak with fire are punished, and those who absorb the fire are praised. But the violence remains. And the cost is immeasurable.

Why the rage is real, and necessary

The raw piece that accompanies this essay is full of intrusive thoughts—vivid, unspeakable images of death and revenge and inner rupture—and I name them because they are real, not because they are threats, and certainly not because they are dangerous. They are the residue of a life spent holding in what cannot be held. They are the consequence of watching harm and being expected to thank the person who inflicted it. They are not what make mothers dangerous. They are what make us survivors.

There is a reason so many of us dream about the meetings, about the hallways, about the rooms where we were silenced. There is a reason our bodies react with panic at the sound of school bells, the ping of emails, the soft professional tone that precedes the latest denial. We are not unstable. We are living with trauma that was delivered politely, routinely, systemically.

And the rage is necessary. Because the alternative is silence. And our children cannot survive our silence.

Toward an ethics of truth, not serenity

If credibility requires serenity, then it is a tool of oppression.

If truth must be whispered gently to be believed, then it will never be spoken by those most harmed.

What we need is not more calmness, but more clarity. Not more composure, but more connection. Not more strategic restraint, but more collective witnessing of the truth.

We are allowed to say: I am angry. We are allowed to say: I imagined your death. We are allowed to say: I smiled while you smiled, and I was dying inside. We are allowed to say: I will never perform serenity while you harm my child.

We do not owe grace to systems that refuse to see our children as human.

We owe them truth.

And that is what I offer.