The Things I Know Now

By Kelli Knight Since 2019, I have lost my brother, my dad, my wife and best friend, my home, and the career that had defined so much of who I thought I was. I lost people I believed would be here for the rest of my life, a future I assumed I was building, and the sense of security that comes from thinking you understand the direction your life is headed.

For a long time, it felt like everything was being stripped away from me, one piece at a time. And while I would never pretend those losses happened for some greater purpose, they did force me to examine my life in a way I probably never would have otherwise.

As the world I knew fell apart, I became far more aware of the world I was actually living in.

I began to understand more deeply how homophobia, systemic racism, misogyny, capitalism, and other systems of power shape nearly every part of our lives. They shape who is believed, who is protected, who is punished, whose pain is taken seriously, and who is expected to quietly endure harm without making anyone else uncomfortable.

Once I began to see those systems more clearly, I also had to confront the ways I had been shaped by them. I had to acknowledge the things I did not know, the perspectives I had dismissed, and the beliefs I had defended simply because they were familiar to me.

That was especially difficult because I have always been stubborn.

Growing up, my stubbornness often showed up in ways I barely recognize now. I had to be right, even when somewhere inside me I knew I might not be. I would argue until someone believed me, sometimes when I was not even sure that I believed myself. I could be uncertain about the reliability of my own memory or understanding and still fight as though admitting that uncertainty would somehow make me less intelligent, less credible, or less worthy of being heard.

For years, I thought stubbornness was one of my worst qualities. What I have realized is that stubbornness was never the problem. The problem was what I was using it to protect.

I used to be stubborn about defending what I already believed. Now, I am stubborn about learning what I do not know.

I am stubborn about researching beyond the first answer I am given. I am stubborn about examining where information comes from, listening to lived experiences that differ from my own, and encouraging other people to dig deeper, especially when the truth is inconvenient or requires us to reconsider something we have believed for a long time.

Someone who is completely unwilling to change their perspective is also unwilling to grow. When we are presented with new information, credible facts, and the lived experiences of people whose realities we have never had to navigate, our opinions should change. They have to. Otherwise, we are not actually learning anything. We are just collecting information while continuing to protect the same comfortable assumptions, even when those assumptions contribute to the cruelty people experience every day.

Being wrong does not make us unintelligent. Refusing to examine why we were wrong does.

Some of the greatest growth in my life has come through failure because failure exposes the limits of what I know. It shows me where my understanding ends and where I need to begin researching, listening, or asking better questions. I cannot address a gap in my knowledge until I am willing to admit that the gap exists.

This has become especially important to me as a mother.

My brother had severe ADHD, much like my son Jeremy does. Looking back now, I can see how frequently my brother was met with frustration instead of curiosity, punishment instead of support, and judgment instead of an attempt to understand what was happening inside his brain.

People often saw the behavior without asking what was underneath it. He was treated as though he was intentionally difficult, irresponsible, disruptive, or exhausting. Over time, that lack of patience and understanding took an enormous toll on his sense of worth. When someone is repeatedly made to feel as though the way their brain works is an inconvenience to everyone around them, eventually that message becomes part of how they see themselves.

My brother died from an overdose at 39 years old.

I would never reduce his death to one cause. Addiction, trauma, mental health, shame, family dynamics, access to support, and countless other factors can all become tangled together. But I also cannot ignore the pain he carried or the years he spent feeling misunderstood, inadequate, and incapable of being the person everyone seemed to expect him to be.

I wish I had understood him better. I wish I had been more patient, more curious, and more compassionate. I wish I had been the kind of sister who looked beyond the behavior and asked what he needed, rather than becoming frustrated by what I did not understand.

I cannot go back and become that sister.

But I can become a more compassionate mother.

When I look at Jeremy, I sometimes see the same intensity, impulsivity, sensitivity, and inability to regulate that I saw in my brother. I also see how quickly adults can lose patience with a child whose brain does not allow him to move through the world in the way they expect. I know what can happen when a child begins to believe that struggling means he is bad, lazy, broken, or impossible to love.

I cannot give my brother the understanding he deserved, but I can give more of it to my son. I can work to separate his behavior from his worth. I can learn the difference between defiance and dysregulation, between a child refusing to listen and a child who is too overwhelmed to process what is being said. I can make sure he knows that his brain may require different tools, but it does not make him less intelligent, less capable, or less deserving of patience.

This is not about condemning the generations that came before me. In many cases, they did not have the language, research, resources, or understanding that we have now. They responded with the information and tools available to them, and sometimes those tools caused harm even when harm was never their intention.

But I have information they did not have. That means I have a responsibility to use it.

Knowing better does not automatically make me better. It gives me the opportunity, and the obligation, to put in the work.

And the truth is, that work is hard.

I am easily triggered. I was not taught how to identify many of my triggers, much less regulate my response to them. Noise, repetition, chaos, arguing, being ignored, and feeling out of control can activate something in me before I fully understand what is happening. Sometimes I react too quickly. Sometimes I raise my voice, become defensive, or expect my children to respond to my emotions in ways that are not their responsibility.

I am not suddenly a perfectly patient mother because I have learned more about trauma, ADHD, or emotional regulation. There are days when I know exactly what I should do and still struggle to do it.

But I am trying to recognize what is happening inside me before I make it my children’s burden. I am learning to pause, apologize, repair, and try again. I am working to communicate with my kids instead of simply demanding obedience, because I do not want them to learn that authority is always right or that love requires them to remain silent when something hurts.

I want my children to be intelligent and knowledgeable, but I also want them to be emotionally intelligent. I want them to recognize injustice, question what they are told, communicate what they feel, and remain open to information that challenges them. I want them to understand that empathy and accountability are not signs of weakness, and that changing their minds when they learn something new is evidence of growth.

In the middle of all of this, my animals and my garden brought me back to some of the most basic forms of care.

Plants and animals cannot always communicate their needs in a way that is convenient or obvious. A plant cannot tell me that its soil is wrong, that its roots are drowning, or that it needs more sunlight. A dog cannot explain why she is anxious, overstimulated, or afraid. Chickens cannot describe the social dynamics happening inside their flock.

I have to observe. I have to slow down. I have to notice patterns, research what I do not understand, and accept that my first interpretation may be wrong.

Caring for them requires consistency, patience, responsibility, and a willingness to respond to what they actually need rather than what I assumed they needed. It has reminded me that care is more than a feeling or an intention. Care is a practice. It is paying attention closely enough to recognize when something is struggling, especially when it cannot clearly explain why.

That lesson has followed me back into motherhood and into the way I understand other people.

I am happier now than I have been in a very long time. That does not mean I am grateful for everything that happened, and it does not mean the losses were necessary for me to grow. I would give almost anything to have my brother and my dad back. Some grief never becomes a gift, and I refuse to force meaning onto pain simply to make it easier to accept.

But I also know that I am more honest with myself now. I am more willing to question what I believe, acknowledge the harm I have caused, and admit when I do not have enough information. I understand that I can be deeply committed to something and still discover that I was wrong.

I cannot change the sister I was, but I can allow that regret to change the mother I am.

I cannot undo every time I defended myself instead of listening, but I can choose to listen now.

And I cannot remove my stubbornness, nor do I want to anymore. I can take the same stubbornness I once used to protect my ego and use it to protect my children’s sense of worth. I can be stubborn about compassion, stubborn about learning, stubborn about digging deeper, and stubborn about refusing to repeat harm simply because it is familiar.

I can keep getting it wrong, acknowledging it, learning from it, and trying again.

Maybe that is what growth actually looks like.