The System was AlWAYS the Problem

March 13, 2020 proved it. Yet 6 years later we’re still pretending it didn’t.

March 13, 2020 Didn’t Just Change Our Schedules.

It changed what we no longer pretended not to see. Friday the 13th gets a lot of hype for being “unlucky.” But the last time March 13 landed on a Friday was 2020.

Let that sink in for a moment.

March 13, 2020 was the day everything we thought we knew, everything we relied on, everything that felt “normal”… evaporated. School. Work. childcare. routines. access. plans. certainty. Gone. Poof, just like that.

We all went home. Dysregulated, unsupported nervous systems were basically told: good luck, do life from your kitchen table.

Go home and learn.
Go home and teach.
Go home and work.
Go home and parent.
Go home and manage your anxiety, your ADHD, your sensory overload, your grief, your fear, your financial stress, your family dynamics… quietly. Preferably while smiling on Zoom.

Was it hard? Sure as hell it was. But six years later, I think the most important thing about that moment wasn’t that everything changed.

It was what we couldn’t unsee after.

Because as the weeks turned into months, something got exposed that a lot of people still refuse to admit.

The old systems were broken.

Not “imperfect.” Not “could use improvement.” Fundamentally broken.

And what makes that hard to swallow is that many of us already knew it. We just didn’t have language for it, or power to challenge it, or the energy to fight it every single day.

We lived in workplaces designed like productivity factories, built around policies that reward masking and punish anyone whose brain doesn’t match the template.

We watched kids try to survive classrooms where the environment itself was a threat. Too loud. Too bright. Too fast. Too many transitions. Too many unspoken rules. Too much shame attached to “not trying hard enough.”

We called it behavior.

But behavior is often a nervous system response.

And that’s the part most systems don’t want to acknowledge because if you acknowledge it, you have to change the system. You can’t keep demanding compliance and calling it inclusion. You can’t solve a system problem at the individual level.

Then overnight, the usual environment disappeared. The machine paused.

And yes, remote and virtual had its own mess. Isolation. Screens. blurred boundaries. exhaustion. New inequities. New kinds of cognitive overload.

I’m not romanticizing it. It definitely sucked. But it also showed us something that mattered.

It showed us what brains and bodies can do when they are not under constant attack.

When transitions are manageable.
When sensory load is reduced.
When autonomy exists.
When you can control your light, your sound, your pace, your space.
When you’re not performing “professionalism” as a trauma response.

It proved the environment was hostile. It proved we need better design, more humane.

This is why I spent two years developing what I call Whole-Body Design™. Not a buzzword. As a framework that brings together what we keep treating as separate: neuroscience, education, environments, policy, and lived experience. Because the human is not “extra”. The human is the point.

Because humans experience systems through their bodies and not in a vacuum. Not through mission statements. Not through values posters. Not through HR policies written by people who have never tried to regulate through a Tuesday. They operate inside systems. Inside environments. Inside expectations.

Through noise. Light. Temperature. Pace. Predictability. Choice. Access. Recovery.

And when those structures are broken, you don’t fix the humans.

You fix the structure; the systems FIRST.

I see this in education constantly.

A student can’t focus in a room that overloads their senses and their working memory, and we treat it like a character defect. We lecture them about effort. We penalize them for late work. We label them “unmotivated.”

But if your environment constantly drains executive function before a student even starts, you’re not measuring capability. You’re measuring survival.

And I see it in adulthood too.

So many adults have been told they’re the problem when what they’re actually experiencing is the predictable outcome of policies, processes, and environments that are designed for a narrow version of “normal.”

That’s why March 13 still matters so much to me. Not because I want to relive 2020. TRUST me I don’t.

Because it made the truth visible.

And I can’t unsee it and neither should anyone else.

We won’t get another Friday, March 13 again until 2037. Eleven years.

What will we do with the next eleven years?

Will we make the changes we keep claiming we want?
Will we build schools and workplaces and communities that actually support regulation and access?
Will we stop punishing people for having human nervous systems?
Will we stop trying to solve system problems at the individual human level?

Or will we keep rebuilding the same broken “normal” and calling it progress?

I know what I’m choosing. I’m choosing to keep naming the truth and building better systems, one environment and one policy at a time.

Because once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

---

If you’re reading this and thinking, “Okay… but what do I do with this?” start with your environment. One small change that reduces friction. One support that makes regulation easier. That’s where change actually sticks.

Kelly Colón is a neurodivergent professor, executive functioning coach, writer, and advocate. Her work sits at the intersection of neuroscience, education, the built environment, and lived experience.