When I first saw this caricature of myself, I smiled.
It’s fun. It’s colorful. It captures a lot of what people see when they look at my life—writer, speaker, podcast host, sales leader, advocate. The microphone. The books. The ideas. The stages. The conversations.
And yes, those hats are real. I wear them all proudly.
But there’s one hat you don’t really see in the illustration—the one that quietly anchors everything else.
I am a full-time parent caregiver to my nonverbal, profoundly autistic adult son.
That role doesn’t come with a microphone, applause, or a title slide. There’s no clocking out. No clean boundaries. No neat separation between “personal” and “professional.” It’s the hat I wake up in, go to bed in, and carry with me into every other role I hold.
People often ask me, “How do you do it all?”
And the honest answer is: I don’t really know.
I don’t have a perfect system or a secret formula. What I do have is lived experience—years of navigating therapies, systems, advocacy, transitions, exhaustion, grief, growth, and resilience. I’ve learned things the hard way. I’ve learned them while tired. I’ve learned them while scared. I’ve learned them while loving my son more fiercely than I ever thought possible.
And somewhere along the way, something shifted.
I realized that everything else I do—writing books, speaking on stages, hosting conversations, sharing our story—isn’t about wearing more hats for the sake of productivity or ambition.
It’s about paying it forward.
Because when you’ve been on this journey long enough, you start to see how desperately other families need what you didn’t have at the beginning:
Perspective. Language. Validation. Hope that doesn’t sugarcoat reality.
So I share.
I speak.
I write.
I show up.
Not because I have it all figured out—but because I’ve walked this road long enough to know how isolating it can be, and how powerful it is to hear “you’re not alone” from someone who truly understands.
This caricature may show many hats—and that part is true. But every single one sits on top of the same foundation: being my son’s mom and caregiver first.
That hat isn’t the loudest.
It isn’t the most visible.
But it’s the reason all the others exist.
If you’re a parent caregiver reading this and wondering how you’re supposed to keep going—please know this: you don’t have to do everything, and you don’t have to do it perfectly. Sometimes simply surviving and sharing what you’ve learned is more than enough.
If you’d like to go deeper into this journey, I’ve shared our story and the lessons I’ve learned in my books, through my speaking, and on my podcast—all created with the hope of supporting families walking similar paths.
You can find my books and learn more about my work at lauriehellmann.com.
Everything I do beyond caregiving exists for one reason: to make this road feel a little less lonely for someone else.
