The Feelings That Wouldn't Wait
By Simone Mazloumian, Founder of Eklektik Mama — Abu Dhabi's community for mothers | March 19, 2026
What do your emotions do when you’re too busy to deal with them?
Do they queue? Sit politely outside your brain in an orderly line, clutching little numbered tickets, waiting to be seen? Grief in sensible shoes. Fear with her laminated folder. Rage, restless, checking her watch?
No. Obviously not. They don’t queue. They don’t wait. They find other ways in.
Grief shows up as snapping at your kid over something so small you can’t even remember what it was an hour later. Fear becomes lying awake at 3am reorganising the mental logistics of approximately everything. Rage is the one that catches you off guard — in tears, suddenly, over something completely unrelated to anything, because that was apparently the thing that broke the seal. You weren’t crying about that. You were never crying about that.
This is what emotions do when you don’t have time for them. They don’t disappear. They don’t file themselves away and wait for your convenience. They costume themselves as something else entirely and detonate in the wrong room at the wrong time, leaving you standing there thinking what just happened and also I need to apologise to someone.
Now. The wellness industry would like you to know that what you need is to make time for your emotions.
Journal. Breathe. Book a sound bath. Carve out sacred space in your day for emotional processing, because you are worth it, mama.
For most of us — and especially right now, and especially in this region, and especially if you are also managing the feelings of multiple children who are home, all day, every day, with nowhere to go and a lot of questions you don’t have answers to — this advice lands somewhere between useless and actually offensive.
Make time. Where? You’re home but you’re not home. You’re present but you’re performing. Half your people have left the country. The ones still here are in their own spiral. The group chats are going at a pace nobody can keep up with and everyone is trying to be the calm one and everyone is exhausted from trying to be the calm one.
The idea that emotional health is something you schedule — a treat you unlock after everything else is handled — is a fantasy. It is also, not coincidentally, designed to sell you things.
So what actually works? Probably not what you think.
It’s not an hour. It’s a minute. It’s sitting somewhere for thirty seconds and not doing anything. It’s saying I’m not okay today out loud to one person instead of performing fine to everyone. It’s the voice note to a friend who gets it, not because she has answers but because she says same, honestly, same. It’s letting a feeling arrive — not diving in, not unpacking it, just noticing it’s there instead of immediately slamming the door on it.
Small. Unglamorous. Nothing you can build a retreat around.
The other thing that actually works is knowing the difference between carrying a lot and genuinely not coping — because right now we are carrying a lot. Our own fear and grief and uncertainty, yes. But also our children’s, which we are translating and repackaging and delivering back to them in a calm, age-appropriate format while quietly terrified ourselves. Our friends’ anxiety, pinging in from wherever they’ve landed. Our families’ panic from other time zones. The news. The not-knowing. The relentless performance of stability for everyone who is looking to us to be stable.
That is a weight. It’s allowed to be a weight. Naming that is being honest about what’s actually happening.
But there’s carrying a lot, and then there’s when the weight stops feeling like weight and starts feeling like nothing. When you go numb. When one of those disguised emotions stops being an occasional detonation and starts being the entire weather system, permanently.
Not the hard days — hard days are just days. The sustained stretch where something is different. Where you’re going through the motions so convincingly that nobody would know, and you’ve stopped being sure you would either.
Things worth noticing, if it’s been a couple of weeks:
∙ Feeling low, empty, or like nothing is going to be okay ∙ Anxiety that’s no longer background noise — it’s just everything, all the time ∙ Snapping, spiralling, repeating — not occasionally, but on a loop ∙ Sleep that’s either impossible or the only thing you want ∙ Disappearing into your phone, into wine, into anything that isn’t your own head ∙ Just knowing something is off, even if you can’t name it
And if it’s not you but someone in your circle — a mum who’s gone quiet, who keeps saying she’s fine in a way that doesn’t sound fine, who’s present but not really there — that’s worth reaching out. Not a formal check-in. Just: I’ve been thinking about you. How are you actually doing. No agenda. No fixing. Just asking.
Abu Dhabi has a free 24/7 mental health line running right now, set up specifically in response to what’s happening regionally. Qualified professionals, no waiting list, no referral needed.
📞 800-SAKINA (725462) — emotional distress, anxiety, psychological first aid 📞 800-YOU (800-968) — urgent situations and access to clinical care
You don’t have to be at the bottom to call. Being this stretched is reason enough. We don’t have all the answers. Nobody does right now — and anyone confidently claiming otherwise is either lying or trying to sell you something.
What we do have is each other. And sometimes the most useful thing isn’t advice or a hotline or a five-step framework for emotional resilience. Sometimes it’s just someone saying ‘me too’. Someone who isn’t performing fine either. Someone who is also lying awake at 3am, also snapping about nothing, also holding it together for everyone else while quietly wondering who is holding it together for them.
That’s what this community is. Not a solution. Just a place where you don’t have to pretend. You’re here. We’re here. That’s not nothing. That’s actually quite a lot.
