-
15 Surprising Ways to Find Relief from Anxiety
Rush hour slows all four northbound lanes of highway traffic to twenty miles an hour…fifteen… ten…and holds at a five-mile-an-hour crawl. I’m boxed in by cars, SUVs, and a few semis. No off ramp in site. No way to cross to the shoulder. Not two minutes later, even the crawl ceases. The engine idles roughly in my fourteen-year-old ride that’s clearly feeling the aches and pains of its two-hundred-thousand plus miles. In the last year, this van has stalled at a major intersection, blew out two tires in one day, and purged its radiator in the middle of a highway construction zone. And I just know I’m going to get…
-
Black Hole Moments
When I got pregnant with my daughter, Maddy, a few of my other pregnant friends were choosing to give birth au natural. My thought—Why not? I’d had epidurals with my boys, but because I’d progressed quickly, I didn’t get them until well into labor. The pain early on hadn’t been that bad. My friends had done it. I could woman up. If you’ve had children, naturally or not, you’re laughing now. You may be laughing even if you haven’t given birth. And you should be. Fourteen years after the trauma of labor and delivery au natural, I can laugh too. Most of that day has faded into memories and stories…
-
STRANDED
I’m afraid to fail. I always have been. The day we did kindergarten placement testing, I came home crying because I couldn’t answer every question—when most of the questions weren’t meant to be answered. Because we all came from diverse backgrounds, the assessment was a gauge to help the teacher know who would need extra help with letters and numbers and colors. Some of us lived and breathed Sesame Street. Others not so much. That test wasn’t an indicator of how we’d do in college. But even at five, I took it that way. Today, I’m a wife and a mother to kids way past kindergarten age. And nothing’s changed.…
-
Courting Catastrophe
The gun was small and black. It looked plastic. A party raged in the apartment next door—music blared, people laughed. Oblivious to the nightmare transpiring in my living room. My mind sprinted forward, sorting through the possibilities of how the next few minutes could play out, while my body melted into the couch, overloaded with the mental pictures my mind produced. I should yell. Run. Do something.
You May Also Like
Grieving Grandma
