Mudpies and Sand Castles

Anna and Ethan after water fun, last summer

The summer Ethan was 1 1/2, we were serenaded by a familiar sound most days we'd play outside.

Whaaap. Whaaap. Whaaap. Whaaap.

It was the sound of the sliding screen door on the back deck. Back and forth. Back and forth. This was what entertained Ethan. At that time he didn't possess the natural curiosity you see in most kids. He didn't spend much time dumping, tasting, squeezing, dropping, looking.

Whaaap. Whaaap. Whaaap. Whaaap.

The next year, when he was 2 1/2, I noticed Ethan had developed "routes" in our backyard. In his toddler mind, he appeared to have come up with a schedule that went something like this: Push around the toy lawn mower. Run up the basement storm door. Climb up the swing set. Repeat. When he tired of that, he'd head back to his safe spot, the screen door.

Last summer, it was the trike, the swings and the hose. Ethan still wanted little to do with the sandbox (of course Anna never liked the sandbox either, preferring to dig her little fingers into real dirt). He still sometimes wandered around almost anxious, as if he needed a play routine or schedule or he didn't quite know what to do with himself. Once in a blue moon, he'd head back to the door.

Now the warm weather is beginning to appear once again, and again I watch and plan and think as the kids venture outside. Anna is of course bursting with ideas, many of which involve dirt, leaves, sticks, and water. And Ethan? Well, like Dr. Milanese said, like the beach erosion analogy, again I see his play style continue to ever-so-slowly change and grow. He still has his routines. He still has his set list of things he likes to do. But these past few weeks I've caught him exploring. He's moved from one thing to another not unlike a two-year-old full of ideas. They're immature ideas and he doesn't quite carry them out for long, but I catch him experimenting. I catch him inventing, and I am in awe and filled with gratitude.

He created a game in which he puts a bowling pin on the bottom of the slide and attempts to slide down and knock it over. This seems so simple...yet it's not, when your child primarily only repeats games he's seen in the exact way he saw them.

He told me there was a monster in the garage.

I caught him smashing a brick over and over, trying to break it into pieces.

I chided him for whacking a stick on tree trunks, and he told me he was trying to cut them down.

He's dumping water and watching it sink into the ground, and shouting, "It melted!" to me, trying to understand.

I found him hauling sand in a bucket and dumping it on one of the swings. How could I complain? No one told him to do that. No one else came up with the idea. He just wanted to. When you've spent over two years suggesting play ideas to your sometimes-aimless son, this is big.

And then, then minutes later I caught him with his hands in sticky but firm, dark mud, pounding it into a bucket, then flipping it over to make a sand castle. "Look what I did!" he shouted excitedly. He kept tilting his creation to peer underneath. "What's under there?" he asked. He was totally filthy. But how could I possibly complain?

I now see that I haven't been crazy to keep introducing play ideas to Ethan. As with any child, the results of our efforts are rarely immediate. But the ideas sink down and in time some of them hold fast, waiting to reappear at an opportune time.

...like the seeds soon to take root in that soil Ethan's been playing in, the ones that will settle in and start to sprout long before anyone can see the slightest hint of any change.

Play Lessons

After having conversation #3 with some of Ethan's teachers in which they recounted nearly verbatim the same statements (He might just never be "into" pretend play. When he's older and playing video games, he'll have an easier time relating to other kids.) I was going to launch into a wordy tirade on how I disagree. But really, I like Ethan's teachers. I don't feel like being vindictive, because really, they just approach autism from a different mindset, from the ABA-driven, play must be taught and kids should be rewarded for playing rather than the Floortime-based, play is emotionally driven and kids will play in their own way, when they are motivated internally.

SO, I decided to share a few things I've learned over the last few years when it comes to making play attractive to Ethan. I should explain if I haven't before that Ethan has never been one of those kids on the spectrum who sits spinning wheels on cars or lining up toys. No. Generally he either prefers the toy is electronic, and then he will play it to his heart's content, or that it's a puzzle or board game, and he will play it to the puzzle or game's logical conclusion. However, if I use a few tips I've learned from a great website that's no longer updated (autismgames.org), playing other types of games with Ethan is successful. We haven't made too much progress on him playing independently this way, but, one thing at a time.

Tip #1: Make the game not to difficult, but not too easy.

Kids with autism tend to have a lower tolerance for frustration than typical kids. But at the same time you want to challenge them, so it's important to find middle ground. For Ethan this might mean, if we're going to do blocks together, something he gets easily frustrated by, we work on something simple rather than elaborate, because he's not that sophisticated at building and wants to quit quickly if the blocks keep tumbling down. But if we're going to do something else, let's say navigate a little obstacle course I've set up in the house, I'm going to make it complicated, because he's become pretty good at following directions and will enjoy the challenge rather than getting frustrated.

Tip #2: Keep the game familiar and slowly introduce unfamiliar elements.

Many kids on the spectrum prefer routine and have trouble coming up with something different than the same games they play over and over. Rather than introduce an entirely new or foreign game, it's a lot easier to take a familiar game and add a bit of a twist. We've done this with board games lately. Ethan could play board games endlessly, and there's nothing inherently wrong with them, except that they're not the best for introducing creativity and pretend play. So lately, we've been playing pretend with the Candy Land characters once the game is over. Maybe one cries because he lost or the other pretends to go for a walk along the board game path. Ethan gets the game he knows and loves with the one unfamiliar element -- making the characters talk and interact, which works so much better than say, me taking out a bunch of Fisher Price people he never plays with. There are countless variations on could do on this theme. Maybe a child wants only to push a train around a track -- build a bridge with blocks to make an obstruction and get the child talking about it. Or maybe you play chase all the time, and you decide to add some pretend play themes to the regular chase game (a monster is chasing you; you're running away from a tornado).

I've found Anna to be the best playmate in the world for Ethan -- and one reason is because she carries out these two tips without even trying to. This child who has an endless flow of creative ideas in her own play never ceases to amaze me when it comes to Ethan. Most of the games she invents with him involve a lot of repetition with a twist thrown in for good measure. A lot seem to include made-up songs with little words but some sort of exciting element.

They were just playing a game at the hotel we stayed at last night. Basically it involved each of them going over to the phone and taking turns pretending to talk to the person of their choice. The simplicity and repetition made it a hit with Ethan. He knew what to do (talk on the phone) and when (take turns with Anna). The only thing that changed was the person they were talking to, and sometimes, what they were pretending to talk about.

I really feel the cliche rings true -- children are the best teachers. Sometimes I think what would happen if you turned a bunch of motivated 6 or 7-year-olds loose with kids in the ABA room at Ethan's school. Who knows, really? Who knows...

One of the themes that seems to run through whatever we do is that if it's familiar, make it more challenging. Up the ante a little bit. But if it's new or if it's an area Ethan really struggles in, you can't make the play simple enough. I'd rather he start from the beginning and move slowly than skip over different developmental play stages just to get him up to what's appropriate for his age. Right now, at least at home, so what if we're working on some kind of play maybe a typical 2-year-old might engage in? What's the rush, really? As I read somewhere, when your child has grown and is 40 years old, did it really matter if he mastered a skill at age 2 or age 8?

This is why I am not ready to throw in the towel and send Ethan off to play video games. All kids can play in some way, shape or form. You will never convince me otherwise.

The White Van

All over town, I see the white van.

When I drive with Ethan to the railway station to see if a train is roaring by, I notice the white van parked. The backs of heads inside.

At the library coming out of story time, the van is there once again. The occupants aren't going into the library. They are just sitting there. Waiting.

Sometimes I see them boarding the van in the morning as I'm getting cash out of the ATM. I wonder where they are going. I wonder if they are truly going anywhere.

I've read somewhere that there are several group homes for mentally challenged people in our town. My guess is this van full of people I never clearly see is somehow related.

I know I don't know the whole story. I know I don't see the entire picture. I come across the van every few days for mere minutes. I have no idea what these people do with their time.

I also know that 50 years ago, these people I don't know might not have been sitting in a van, well-fed, clean, and safe, but in the dank corridors of an institution.

I try to picture Ethan 20 years from now, sitting in those cushioned seats. I can't. I don't know my son's future, but I know it is not that.

I see them at the railroad station, parked and waiting. I wonder what they are waiting for? I wonder if they are bored or amused, content or lonely.

I wonder about their stories, their families, those who have loved and who love them.

I wonder.

The Music Class

Ethan loves music. He's the kind of kid who wakes up first thing in the morning and shouts "Hooray!" because that day is music class at school. For awhile he and another little girl were taking a class with a music therapist, but then the girl had other things to do, and honestly, the class is rather expensive, so we stopped. Since then I've been looking for another opportunity. In the midst of that I got an email about a free 2-week music class offered at a local community center for kids on the spectrum, and jumped at the opportunity.

The other day we walked in right at the stroke of 10am. The first thing I saw was a kid sitting on the floor playing "Temple Run" on his iPad. Ethan plopped down beside him and immediately began to watch.

The next thing I saw was an older girl refusing to enter the room, hands gripping the doorway, while her dad silently pleaded with her. I thought of Ethan and the playgroups, back when he was younger. The scene was achingly familiar. Another woman sat next to me, whispering fiercely to her little boy, who was about Ethan's age and not cooperating. "You WILL sit in the circle," she was saying. Yes, been there, I nodded inwardly.

Everyone got into a circle and the class started. "Miss Emily," another music therapist, was excellent and obviously used to working with kids on the spectrum. She wasn't phased at all by the limited back and forth conversation she was getting from her class participants. I spotted a little boy from Ethan's school and another family I knew from...somewhere. We sang some typical and no-so-typical kid's songs. Some kids got so excited they ran around the room, yelling, flapping their hands. One sweet, enthusiastic boy loved to repeat back whatever Miss Emily said. Many kids needed urging to share their names, even if they were say, 8 or 9.

As we sat and sang, the question presented itself.

Do we belong here?

This used to bother me more, the frustrating fact that when it comes to finding specific ways to get Ethan involved and interacting, he's sometimes a little too on-the-spectrum for a regular activity, but a little too typical for ASD-specific activities.

In a group of typical peers, unless they're trying hard or have adult assistance, there's a chance that Ethan will get lost in the dust. His reaction time is slower when it comes to communication (kids don't want to wait!). He sometimes doesn't know quite what to do or how to follow directions without help. He still often prefers (or gives the impression that he prefers) to be alone.

In an autism group Ethan is comfortable and communicative -- with the adults there. The other kids are obviously not usually making any kind of effort to talk to him. No one is modeling the skills he needs to learn and practice. Sometimes in fact they are making noises or body movements that Ethan finds distracting, a little frightening, or even tries to imitate once he gets home.

What to do? What to do?

I used to think there was only one answer, that it was all or nothing. But as I sat there that rainy Saturday morning, I realized I could also choose to see this as an opportunity. I could, rather than thinking "there's no place where my kid fits" (or even, "there's no place where I fit") I could see all I had before me.

We have the autism groups to spend time in that kind of place where it's okay to just be, where Ethan doesn't have to work so hard, where I can connect with other parents and where no one bats an eye if my kid doesn't say hi or look someone right in the eye.

But thanks to Ethan's milder form of autism, we are also blessed with the chance to expand his world and delve into typical life...to get him around kids who will demonstrate how to play and interact, and where I can be around parents who I might also connect with -- and maybe through our story, help them to understand autism just a little bit better.

There is no one or the other. There is each, with its own blessing and opportunity and chance to make connections and learn and grow. If I really think about it, how can I complain about that?

Facing My Giant (Part 4)

After having kids, I think many moms naturally struggle with two big fears: 1) What if something happens to them? 2) What if something happens to me? I had faced the first-one head on. I felt a strength in me that I think was always there, but that I’d never known I’d had. I knew enough now to understand that, as the scripture says, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33).

I had opened up my arms and let go of having complete control over everything that happened to me. But was I trusting? Was I resting? Eh. I was letting go, but was I entrusting my life and my kids and my circumstances to God, to anything, or just letting it all float out into the atmosphere in a Zen-kind of way?

Last month I went to the doctor for every woman’s favorite: the annual gyn exam. Is there anything worse than shivering in a paper gown in a box-size room while waiting to be manhandled? During the breast exam, the doctor suddenly “thought she felt something.” I couldn’t really figure out what she was talking about. That’s not to say I hadn’t come to the appointment battling my usual array of What if she finds this? What if she finds that? Old habits certainly do die hard.

The next thing I knew, I was being scheduled for a mammogram and ultrasound. A whole 10 days later. Plenty of time to think. Plenty of time to not sleep.

And so the patterns were back. I tossed; I turned; I wondered. I felt so tired of being tired. I felt so tired of feeling the fear. I thought I was beating this, I thought miserably. I was, in reality, but of course sometimes we can’t beat something until we face it. I’d already learned that with Ethan.

Our church had a ladies breakfast with a guest speaker last Saturday. She stood up and told us she felt she needed to share that God wanted us to be overcomers; that we have more in us than we think we do; that sometimes we need to not only give God more credit but ourselves more credit. God gives ordinary people the ability to do extraordinary things, she said. Afterward she asked if anyone wanted prayer and at least 15 women went up to her. When it was my turn I told her what was going on and she started praying and then stopped. “Hon,” she said. “It’s all about control. You’ve got to let it go.”

I thought I had. But as I thought and prayed I realized I hadn’t, completely. I had a long list of things I hadn’t let go of: Needing to know why. Having to understand why bad things happen to good people. Thinking my life HAD to go a certain way. Accepting God on my terms only.

This is the problem that goes back to the dawn of it all. Wasn’t the original sin about having to know all the answers, the temptation that led to eating from the Tree of Knowledge? Wasn’t Lucifer’s fall due to thinking he knew better than God?

In the book of Job, horrible things happen. Job cries out to God, and in the end God answers Job’s complaints. He comes through. But He doesn’t answer Job’s questions. He never answers the “why.”

I thought of Lucy again, the woman who died and left her two sons, and of all the wrongs I had held against God. And this time, I thought of another line from my favorite book series, The Chronicles of Narnia. Aslan, the Great Lion, says it often, when asked why something happened to a certain person, or what would have happened if they’d made a different choice. “That is their story,” he says.

I couldn’t keep holding on to Lucy’s story, or anyone else’s story. How could I hold God accountable for things I just didn't know? How could I claim only I knew the best version, the best ending for my own story or anyone else's? It pained me to accept, but my indignation was really nothing more than pride. I would never break free until I let go.

I was living my story. It was not a story free of pain or loss and I was never going to know how it turned out until I got to the end. In my head I kept hearing a song we'd listened to with the kids called “Jump Rope:”

Up Down
Up Down
Up Down
Up Down yeah
Cause it will get hard
Remember life’s like a jump rope

On Sunday, the day before my appointment, I found the song and turned the music up loud and began to dance around the living room with the kids. I looked like an idiot. I laughed. Sometimes, that's the best way to we can do battle – sometimes we just have to dance. Not because we have the solutions. Just because.

The song goes on:

I want to tell you that everything will be okay
That everything will eventually turn itself to gold
So keep pushing through it all
Don't follow, lead the way
Don't lose yourself or your hope
Cause life's like a jump rope

Twenty-four hours later, I was in the doctor’s office. If there were any circumstances under which I would have chosen to have my first-ever mammogram, these would not be it. The lady running the machine meant well. Saying “good luck” to me might not have been her best choice of words. Neither was the moment after as she was going through the films where she was quiet and then asked, “So, so said you didn’t feel anything over there?”

“No,” I answered.

Silence.

Sitting back in a curtained room, I faced my humanity. Her statement set me preparing for the inevitable. This is it. This is the moment, that moment, the one I’ve always imagined. Someone might be coming to tell me I have cancer. I felt as if water were filling over my ears, like that long ago afternoon in my cousin’s pool. There was not an angelic peace that settled over me. I didn’t have my worries drift off and float away. Instead I felt a gritty resolve. I would do what I needed to do. I would take one step at a time. His grace is sufficient for me. I had no guarantees that I wouldn’t have to walk through the fire. But I was convinced like never before that He’d be there with me.

An ultrasound tech, not a doctor, appeared around the corner. We went in and did that. Then she was calling the doctor in just to double-check. In ten minutes both of them were telling me everything looked fine.

And for the first time in my life, after having a worry eliminated after a time of great stress, I didn’t feel buoyant and manically happy. Thankful, yes, immensely thankful. Sobered, because some woman that day may not have gotten the same news. Does it make any sense to say I felt more alive? I saw life and its inevitabilities for what they are. But I also saw more clearly than I ever had that when the time came, and only when the time came, I would be able to bear what came along. The grace would be imparted to me. I wouldn’t just be opening up and letting go. I would be walking into an embrace.

When I started this blog, I wrote up there on the masthead, “I’m opening up my arms and letting go of a life I can’t control. While the idea can be a little bit scary, I’m willing to hold my breath and take a leap, knowing I will not drown.” I read that now and think back to that day in the pool, and I realize that while that moment in the pool once taught me about not trusting, it also teaches me about faith. I stayed under the water a little too long. Things got uncomfortable. Fear gripped me. Then I burst out of the water, coughing and gasping but still breathing blessed air. I may have been scared and sputtering that day, but he didn’t let me drown. He didn’t let me drown.

________

So what have I learned? Does this mean I will never struggle with fear and anxiety again? I am not naïve. This was not the final battle but the turning point; the day fear stopped owning me.

I wrote all of this, at the risk of being way too transparent, in the hopes that it might be able to help someone out there who is also tormented with fear. This is only my story. These are only my lessons. But I feel compelled to share them.

Today I now know:

I can choose my thoughts and what I put into my mind -- and should be very watchful about what I put into my mind.

I can’t prevent fear from coming but can prevent myself from dwelling on it.

Fearing something will happen does not somehow magically prevent it from happening.

Being afraid is not a sign of weakness. Taking a step while still feeling afraid is actually a sign of courage.

And also:

I could never conquer fear until I let go of control.
I could never let go of control until I accepted I didn’t have to know every “why” question.
I couldn’t stop asking “why” questions until I realized my own pride.
I couldn’t see my own pride until I accepted the futility of my human efforts, and my absolute smallness in the grand scheme of things.

And last: Never forget to dance.

Facing My Giant (Part 3)

After getting married and having kids, every once in awhile I’d think of my brother’s situation and wonder: What would you do if you had a child with autism? With Anna I was able to keep this fear at bay very quickly. Girls are much less likely to have autism, and from the start she was a very social baby who was usually ahead on her milestones. When I got pregnant again and we decided not to find out what we were having, the little whisper was back. It was an undercurrent that ran through the pregnancy. What if something’s wrong with the baby? What if something’s wrong with the baby? At night I’d wake up in a sweat and beg and plead with God.

Then Ethan was born a few weeks early and had jaundice. He was a very sleepy baby who seemed less alert and less social from the start. The drumbeat pounding of my heart grew louder. On mornings when Anna was in preschool the thoughts would sometime consume me. When Ethan was four months old and the guy at the Target portrait studio couldn’t get him to smile I drove home crying and shaking. A month later I took him to the pediatrician. She couldn’t find anything off, but suggested I see someone for anxiety. No kidding, I thought ruefully.

I spent the next six months scouring the What to Expect milestones and trying to engage Ethan. Some days everything would be fine and other days the fear would creep back. When Ethan was about 15 months old I did a freelance video shoot at a home with a little girl who was several months younger than him. I watched the way she tried to reach out and communicate. She seemed so different than Ethan, and while I told myself it was because she was a girl, something didn’t sit right with me. Some nights I’d go into his room and watch him sleep and silently pray, tears slipping down my cheeks…Please God, please God…

One April day when he was 16 months old, I knew. My mom was watching Ethan while I went out somewhere. I went to say goodbye and he just looked at me, or maybe through me. He didn’t care that I was leaving. He showed complete indifference, and I knew.

Ethan had autism.

I got on the highway and drove and began crying so hard I could barely breathe. I don’t know how I could see the road but somehow I drove for awhile and then pulled into a parking lot and called the Christian counselor I’d finally started seeing for my anxiety. A month later, Ethan was evaluated in the home by early intervention. It would take another four months to get an official diagnosis.

As we began Ethan’s therapy appointments and adjusted to a different way of life, two opposing thoughts kept churning around in my mind. One was the familiar Why? Why did the thing I fear come upon me, upon my son? But the other was more freeing: This happened, and we’re still here. We’re making it. This may sound rather silly, but then again, I think it’s not. There was a part of me that somehow had thought that by fearing something, I would actually prevent it from happening. Now I knew that not to be true.

A lot of what drives fear is really about control. People had told me all of my life to let go and let God take care of things, but I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to because I didn’t trust God. He allowed bad things to happen. In more recent years, it seemed every time I'd try to do that, something would remind me why I couldn't trust. Remember Lucy, my mind liked to whisper.

Lucy was a woman who’d gone to our church right around 9/11. She had two boys and had drifted far from God but had come back. She was getting her life back on track when she accidentally overdosed on a wrong combination of medications. She died the same day the plane crashed in New York City a few months after Sept. 11. Her boys went back to their father, a man who I’d heard was far from a model parent, and I added that to my list of things wrong with this world and reasons God is not good.

That mantra ran somewhere in the back of my mind, but as we adjusted to Ethan’s diagnosis something peculiar was happening. In the midst of a terrible time as we tried to readjust our vision of the way we thought life would be, I would have these amazing moments of just knowing God was with me. Maybe it would be an autism blogger I’d find online or a therapist who would come our way; an encouragement from a friend or a Bible verse that would just jump off the page as if it’d been written for me alone. I’d always heard these clichés about God carrying people through tough times, but they’d been nothing more than that, words. I hadn’t had the experience. Something inside me started to chip away. A wall was beginning to come down.

As we looked ahead at Ethan’s future, I truly knew that we had no way of knowing what was going to happen or where he’d be in one year, five years, or 20 years. No amount of worry was going to change that. I was going to have to learn to live life knowing some things were out of control. That’s when I started my blog. I knew right away what the title would be. Open Up and Let Go: to open my arms and let go of everything I’d held so close to me, thinking it was mine, when really it was not at all.

To be continued...

Facing My Giant (Part 2)

If you came here looking for an update on Ethan or autism, I'm sorry to disappoint, but I had to take a little detour. I've been on an interesting journey the last few weeks. It's not one I necessarily would have chosen to write about, but I feel compelled to. Thanks for understanding.

As a teenager I spent a lot of time in my room watching TV movies that usually involved some sort of family tragedy: AIDS; homelessness; cancer. I filled my head again and again, tears streaming down my cheeks as I sat in the dark. I read Stephen King and then wondered why I had sweaty nightmares.

Then the hypochondria started. That’s the funny thing about fear. It takes different forms. Maybe for awhile you worry about the state of the world or someone getting killed in a car accident. Then you feel like you’ve gotten past that but suddenly you’re afraid something is going to happen to you. Sometimes you go through long stretches of not being fearful at all (these usually happened when I was nice and busy with life) and you think, hey, I’ve beaten this thing, only to see it rear its ugly head once again, in time.

Over the next 20 years, the list of conditions I at one point or another was convinced I had is downright laughable. Lyme disease, MS, ALS, brain tumors. Stomach cancer. Lung cancer. Throat cancer. Bone cancer. Any kind of cancer. I would never visit doctors claiming to have any of these ailments. Instead, I’d go in for a much smaller complaint…a sore elbow, an infected cut in the mouth. In my mind, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. I kept waiting for the moment when the doctor would come in and put her clipboard down and sadly take my hand in hers and share the devastating news.

When I was 26, married but not yet with kids, the September 11 attacks occurred and suddenly my fear had a new focus. The hypochondria faded as I dwelled on the horror and tragedy and everything in its aftermath…the anthrax scare, the ever-smoldering buildings and missing people, the fear of flying. A typical person would have walked away from the news coverage after awhile. I didn’t realize it then, but I actually had an addiction to upsetting and troublesome things. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. And all the time in the background it fed the soundtrack that played even as I went to church and prayed and acted like a good Christian…

God is not good. I can’t trust Him. Bad things keep happening.

Three years later, Anna was born. You might think I then would have immediately jumped into adding my new daughter to my worry list, but no. An interesting thing happened. I disappeared into a baby bubble. I had two scares – the ultrasound that showed a “shadow” on her heart that turned out to be nothing, and a head injury when she was five months old that had us overnight in the ICU. I told myself I had learned to give my daughter over to God, that she was in His hands. Then I got blessedly busy with being a mom and loving life. I had an adorable baby, a loving husband, a new home. I was living the safe life I’d always dreamed of. The demons faded, until the night we got a phone call from Dan’s parents when Anna was about 18 months old. Dan’s mom had had a recurrence of melanoma. Nearly Stage 4 cancer. I looked online 10 minutes later and saw she had only a 60 percent chance of living 5 more years. That night, I tossed and turned all night.

The fear was back, big time. The bubble had burst. Somehow I had had this idea that I’d left the past behind me and done my dues, and that now I would live some sort of charmed life. I had always been looking for that time when there’d be nothing to worry about. I was beginning to realize that time was never really going to come.

This is the thing: fear is a thief. It robs you of the present; it robs you of joy; it robs you of strength and sometimes it robs you of your sleep and health. For me fear was a whisper that often came when I was in the midst of enjoying something. It visited when I was alone. It tormented in the quiet and dark hours until in time I didn’t remember what it was like to fully rest.

People cope with fear in different ways. Some numb it or bury it. Some people ignore it and act strong (I know several people, for example, who have addressed their fear of doctors by simply refusing to visit them). Some people talk to a professional and try medication. I don’t think this is a place for a debate about anxiety meds, and I do think they can be helpful, particularly for those whose brains are really wired to be fearful. One could say that was certainly me, and I wouldn’t argue. I can only say that I didn’t go the medication route because I always knew deep down I was missing something in this fight against fear. I needed to find it.

Something told me that part of this fight with fear had to everything to do with facing it.

To be continued...