personal essay

(August 2025)

It's been a hard year.

Early this year I was thrown into the world of having lost a parent. My dad hadn't been doing great, and we knew he was declining, but a major stroke is sudden and permanent and devastating. There are no true goodbyes. By the time I arrived to the Albany, GA hospital (a 3-hour drive as I divinely was nearby in the FL panhandle), he was intubated and unconscious - I think an induced coma because his brain was naturally freaking out. The next day the doctor showed us the brain scan with one side of his head essentially filled with blood. I spent a few nights with him (was it two or three? I can't remember) in the ICU. My sister flew in. The room was filled with people who loved him. By Wednesday (I think) of that week we sat around the table with his doctor in a little room and discussed the pros and cons of keeping him on life support. It was quite amazing he had survived the stroke at all, but the only way he'd continue to live would be in a fully supported facility with a breathing tube and feeding tube - and he would never be himself again. The decision was made to move him to hospice. I flew home (maybe Thursday), to be with my kids, and my sister went on to the hospice center with my stepmom. He hung on until Sunday morning, February 9.

So I had made it home during this time. The waiting period was difficult; trying to be normal but knowing news - bad news - was coming. The morning of the 9th I got the call and I cried, hard. The kids comforted me, and a couple of people stopped by. We did have plans that afternoon though - for the school ski club - so I thought, well let's get out and get some physical activity and sunshine. It was our third week of the four-week class, and the other weeks had gone well! I skied for a bit, but my head wasn't in it, so I stopped to chat with the other parents. Sometime during the last hour of skiing, murmurs of something happening on the hill started to trickle in from some of the young skiers in our group. Someone had gotten hurt, and that someone was my daughter. I didn't have my gear on anymore - and in hindsight I wouldn't have been able to ski the hill she had attempted and gotten hurt on - so I sent some of the other kids to check on her. "It's her ankle, she broke her ankle..." or "It's her knee..." but thankfully "Ski patrol is helping her..." Goodness gracious this it was a painful wait that was at least 45 minutes for them to get her down the hill. I met the vehicle at the first aid trailer; my daughter was completely bundled up like a little Eskimo baby, lying down on the back of this vehicle, clearly in shock. Her right leg was stabilized by some strange cardboard brace. We had to complete some paperwork about the incident and then they suggested we go straight to the emergency room. Another parent kept my youngest, so the two teens and I went off to the ER. They weren't able to tell us what was wrong except that, nothing was broken, she had badly hurt her knee, and we needed to follow up with the doctor. They put her in a brace and sent us on our way. Well it turns out she had torn her ACL. Definitely a major injury and one that would shape the rest of her year, as it involves surgery and 9 months of recovery. Still, I'm so grateful it wasn't worse, and there was no head injury.

So that brings us to surgeries... yes, plural. The year in which I experienced the first surgery of one of my kids, there were actually two. On the same kiddo. My daughter also had to have a tonsillectomy, just recently, in July. And holy cow, having a kid have surgery is stressful. Not just the day of, but the recovery is sleepless and intense - for both mom and child. And to do this twice in one year, four months apart. I take the same highway exit as the children's hospital when I go to my office and honestly, I tense up thinking of driving that way.

That's a lot of hospital time - my dad, my daughter. And early this year, my friend R was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. R used to be my upstairs neighbor in our old place; we lived next to each other for four years. And not just neighbors - we had community meals together, game nights, work days, etc. So over the course of a few months, I found myself at a different hospital visiting him. Sadly, R passed away at the end of July. So, another memorial service; another emotional gathering of friends and family. 

And that's on top of normal life stressors - of raising three kids in the year 2025, which truth be told hasn't been the easiest year in this country. 

These are uncertain times. For me personally and for society as a whole. 

What does OCD feed on? Uncertainty.

So I find myself in its throes once again. And I cannot afford to hit the bottom again - that was quite a terrible place to be. 

So I must pull back from the noise. The rest of 2025 will be about resetting my nervous system, one day at a time.

(August 2021)

I have long been afraid of death.[1] I suppose that is not a rare feeling to have among us humans. I have been afraid, in general, for as long as I can remember. And my fears, over the years, have taken different forms. But it seems they are all rooted in the idea of separation. I did not have an emotionally secure upbringing. Looking back, I can see depression in my mom, anxiety and alcoholism in my dad, and well, five of us children who needed love and support. Neither of my parents were capable of providing any sort of secure, healthy attachment. I used to hold this against them quite a bit, but I have since developed compassion for the reason they lacked capacity.

As a child, my coping mechanisms were to 1) hold on and 2) control my environment. In holding on, I cried incessantly whenever my parents left the house or if they left me somewhere (school, for example). It was separation anxiety, and, it was the 80s, so it went untreated and unacknowledged. In controlling my environment, as an example, I checked the doors of the house at night (sometimes even getting out of bed to do so) to make sure they were locked – even when I should have trusted that the grown-ups would have taken care of that. I always knew where everyone was – wanted to keep everyone together. I refused to do things that I thought were unsafe – ride elevators, for example. I followed nearly every single rule that was entrusted to me. “If I keep those I love close to me, avoid uncertainty, keep things under control, and just follow the rules, I will be safe.” Of course, I wasn’t conscious of these coping mechanisms or aware that that’s what they were, but as an adult with ten years of therapy under my proverbial belt (I don’t wear actual belts), I can see what was going on.

I had several healthy years in middle and high school, mainly (I think) due to almost nonstop physical activity. If I wasn’t in school or sleeping, I was dancing or playing soccer. High school and college came and went, and I hung out with some guys and had a couple of serious boyfriends, but was somewhat independent, and went off to Chicago for my post-university AmeriCorps “year of service.” It was during that time that I started dating my husband-to-be, let’s call him T, and use he/him pronouns (as that’s what he did at the time). And all of the sudden I had someone to care for, someone to attach to, someone to worry about.

We called it “falling in love” but we became extremely codependent and remained that way for over a decade. My anxiety manifested in ways such as asking him not to go out for fear something would happen – an example, I convinced him not to go to the National Mall for fireworks (I was not there) because I thought there would be a terrorist attack. We talked on the phone nonstop whenever we were apart – even at times such as when he was riding his bike to work… he’d have headphones in and be talking to me. This fear of something happening affected me, too, and I became somewhat paranoid about being away from home. In grad school, I went to therapy and took medication for the first time because I thought people were following me – this was pretty debilitating anxiety. I got pregnant, though, and stopped the meds – and the therapy – cold turkey.

Having children increased my anxiety exponentially. This was complicated by the fact that we were living in a city with a high crime rate. Our friends were mugged and saw shootings; one day driving to work I heard gunshots. I know they were gunshots because I checked the news and sure enough there was a shooting in that area at that time. Other than going to work, I rarely left the house, and I didn’t want T to leave either, unless it was necessary. I had a recurrence of my paranoid thoughts and I had fixated them on a particular person who I imagined was planning to harm me. As I was soon pregnant with our second child, I didn’t want to take medication for this anxiety because I was worried it would harm my unborn baby or my first child who I was still breastfeeding.

T would have loved us to have more independence as parents (i.e., a social life), but I resisted because I only entrusted care of our first child to my in-laws, and they didn’t live in the same town. I could not even fathom getting a babysitter, though that is a completely normal thing to do! We ended up moving from that city to one with much less crime, shortly after having our second child. But I soon learned that the problem wasn’t the city; the problem was my fears. A few months later I hit rock bottom and was diagnosed with perinatal depression and anxiety (finally… I probably had it since being pregnant with J). I sought help from an incredible mental health network for new moms through which I was connect to an amazing new therapist and went back on medication. Regarding the medication, it still made me scared to begin taking it because I was worried it would get into my breastmilk, but shortly after beginning to take it, that anxiety eased up – showing that that fear was more anxiety-based than reality-based. I invested my time and energy in getting better because I finally accepted that if I wasn’t mentally healthy, my children would suffer. And I had an incredible support system. I was able to stabilize, but being still a bit afraid of the long-term effects of the antidepressants (I had no scientific backing for that fear) so after about six months, I stopped taking them. I could manage, sure, but was I mentally healthy? No.

We moved again, and not long after that T went through a major depression which required an outpatient hospitalization program. I began working again. A couple years after we moved, I became convinced I had cancer. I had some pain in my stomach; it was for sure cancer. I thought a lymph node was swollen; no doubt, cancer. If I had a migraine that was unlike my typical headaches; cancer. You get the idea. I also had a couple of anxiety attacks in the airport and couldn’t board flights because I was certain I was going to die (one of these happened actually pre-kids). I was still in therapy and had another stint on medication and I was really working to heal. We both were, and we decided in 2015 to try for one more baby.

After seven months of trying, I did get pregnant, hooray! I was in therapy, and my therapist and I agreed that if, after our baby was born, I was feeling more anxious, I would go back on meds. For the first few months I was good, but once I began working again, the increased stress lead to more anxiety and I started back on meds. This was 2016, and I have been on an antidepressant ever since. What the medication does for me is this: it brings my baseline level of anxiety to a manageable level. I no longer feel paranoid, at all. But, even currently, my first reaction to physical sensations can be panic and self-diagnosis, so I have to consciously remind myself that physical sensations are ok and don’t mean the end is near. In the recent past, I’ve had to take a different anti-anxiety medication in order to sleep because of one pain or another that my brain was convinced was something more serious. (At the time of publishing this, I have been without that prescription for 3 months and am sleeping well.)

When I began to really examine the anxiety around my health, I started to connect the dots between my health anxiety, fear of death, and my childhood separation anxiety. Try to stay with me here. When I would get afraid that I had cancer or something more urgent (for a few months, my focus was blood clots), I was just so afraid of dying. And not for fear of the pain of dying or what my family would do without me - it was centered, strangely, on what death would do to me… that I would no longer be alive and conscious. Death is my number one fear because death is the ultimate separation. If I die, I cannot be with the ones I love. I need the ones I love in order to feel safe; if I’m dead I can’t have that, so in death, I am not safe, and that is terrifying to me, because one of my main coping methods is to keep things under control so I feel safe. If I am dead, I have no control.

Interesting line of thought, right?

I mean, you gotta give me credit, I know how to overanalyze the shit out of anything. And you know, overanalyzing is just a coping method to try to gain control over a situation… (oh hell, that’s another coping mechanism. I did that as a kid, too). But I’m not going to focus on that right now. Because I am glad to have worked towards these insights. I enjoy being a “seeker.”

I want to break to say that self-doubt is creeping in and I think, “this doesn’t make sense… I’m not making sense…” but I am not going to listen to self-doubt and I am going to write on.

Back to 2021. A few months ago I walked into a used bookstore downtown. I had to run downtown on a work errand (printing/binding some stuff), and I had about fifteen minutes left on the parking meter (that probably nobody was checking – this was mid-pandemic). So I browse this giant used bookstore and am looking for the biography/memoir section… I find it and pick out two books: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. The former I had read and loved, but didn’t own, so I picked it up. The second – well, I had heard of Joan Didion but hadn’t read any of her writing, and the title struck me, as well as the mention of her husband’s sudden passing in the book jacket, so I bought that one as well.

I want to go on a bit of a tangent here and say that I have not been very close to death in my life. Only two people that I have been very close to have died, my maternal grandparents. My grandmother’s death was sudden and very difficult to process; I was 16. My grandfather’s came later – he was 87 – and he had already beaten colon cancer when lung cancer killed him. He was sick for a while before dying, and I was able to say goodbye. My parents are still living, as are all of my siblings. I haven’t had any sudden deaths of close friends, and I haven’t been as close to other family members that have died. It’s just not something I’ve been forced to deal with and so for better or for worse, I’ve been able to avoid dealing with it.

Our society, too, is quiet on the subject of death. It’s not talked about much.

The Year of Magical Thinking. What an unexpected effect this book had on me. This effect is partially the book itself, and partially the path of learning that it sent me on. And for you to learn more about that, I’ll have to write part two of this essay.

[1] As I write this, I can confidently say I am not as afraid as I used to be.

Somewhere in Scotland 1986

(self-transcribed voice memo - Jun 2021)

So, it is June … 16th … 15th … (sigh). I actually don’t know. Um, it’s a Wednesday, I know that much. And I’m out for a run – slash – walk, mostly walk. Um, and, so there’s gonna be background noise. Um, and I want to … write something. And, I don’t know if it’s a book or (sigh) a short story or an essay, maybe? But, I’m tired of um, oh I’m just tired of hiding myself, and what I really think. I … my brain is constantly going, with thoughts, and uh, and I feel a fear that if I write them down and share them publicly in any way that, oh people will probably think I’m crazy. Um, but what if people saw that, that that’s who I am and that my brain is overactive and that you know, maybe they’ll see the real me a little bit more and this is not, it’s not like a judgment on what is … “am I healthy or not? am I … ” Um, it’s not, I don’t have any answers. This is not, you know this wouldn’t be any sort of self-help thing. Um, you know I was kind of inspired – a lot inspired – by Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking, where she writes about her grief, and just, you know puts it all out there. Says that, you know, she’s saving her husband’s shoes in case he comes back, and that’s … I … I feel like that’s something I would do. And, yeah, someone might read that and say she’s crazy, but, she put it out there, and … I think when you put shit out there, like, people relate to it, and I don’t, it’s um … I don’t know, I have a really complicated mind. I overanalyze everything, and … um … it’s not served me terribly well in life. Um, I mean I’m successful, it serves me well in work, but … … I have tense muscles. I have headaches. Um … I question a lot. I don’t think I trust people … to … um … accept me. I … I don’t think people accept me. I think I’m too much, or … um … yeah. So, I think in the past I’ve wanted to like, sugar-coat things, and be like “oh yeah, here’s the struggles,” but, “oh here’s what I’ve done to get past and …” I mean, to be a bit honest, I’m still struggling with many, many things. And, like, it feels like some things I just won’t get past … (sigh) despite years of therapy, and medication, and you know, all the self-care I can possibly fit into my schedule, which is … not a minimal amount. You know, I do 60 miles a month, on foot, um … I try to sleep. Eating – well, I think, it’s possible I have an eating disorder. I could write about that, too. Um, not major, but pretty sure I have some disordered eating. Um … yeah, I don’t know, I just … I … I worry about what people think about me. I have these relationships with people, long relationships, and you know it’s like I’m more afraid of the separation of those relationships or losing those relationships than to … truly show up as myself and, you know like I don’t want to be seen as a complainer or anything, but like this is my life, and I am grateful, and I am happy, but I’m also really incredibly stressed out and, for what? I mean, it’s so hard to say, ‘for what?’ I mean, I, you know all of these things that we stress ourselves out with … we don’t have all that control over anyway. You know, especially like, say the kids. Right? Like, we can try to … um … influence or guide them and teach them what we know, but like they’re gonna grow up and take off and succeed or fail - or succeed and fail – and over and over again. And I don’t know I guess I’m just trying to figure out what … (sigh) how to make sense of all this.  … I’ve been having lots of existential anxiety … um … about death, about dying, about how it can happen at any time. I’ve been thinking that like – and I’ve only told one person this, but – you know, that it’d be easier to … just die … so that I know that it’s over and I don’t have to worry about it anymore, even though I wouldn’t know that, because I’d be dead. Um, and I’m not suicidal. I’m not … I’ve never been. But I am exhausted from thinking about it [death] all the time, and from you know reaching and reaching to different things to make me feel comfortable. I don’t know, I kinda think I’m a little bit crazy, and so maybe I should just write it out. I had this, uh … book idea, well it was just a joke… I picked up a book on the shelves at this … I don’t know a couple of years ago … and it was called The Book of Inspirational Verse and I thought it was – my first read of it said it was The Book of Irrational Verse – and I just got the biggest kick out of that because … that’s what I should write! I mean, not that I’m … you know that’s the fucked-up thing is that I think we all have this shit going on in our heads and we just feel like we have to gloss over it and … and … act like things are fine when like … I don’t know, I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to be myself, and myself, you know, I am very um … my brain is … kinda weird. Um … and I’m thinking of doing [something I'm not ready to say publicly] to try to get some clarity there, because it does feel like it’s a tangled web of … overthinking and, um, yeah, just too much … information. I’m very smart. I can make sense of things when I need to make sense of things, but if I can’t make sense of things, I am constantly overthinking, and for what, right? Because I have no control over any of it anyway. Like I’ve always thought, “oh I’ve always been this way,” right? And I have. I’ve always been anxious, you see it in my four-month-old video – I’m like an anxious fucking baby, literally, sitting there, looking around for some sense of security. And all my memories of childhood are mostly anxious. (sigh) And it fucks up any relationship I’m in because I just want to hold on for dear life, which is so stupid, because it’s not like any partner can give me any security … of life … I will die when I die. And I cannot – I have to start facing that – I have to. ‘Cause it’s gotten in the way of living – 100%. I mean it’s just … debilitating at times – this overthinking, the rumination, the … (sigh) And like maybe, you know, it’s like, it’s a whole industry of like self-help and like, figure out your shit, I don’t know … I just don’t know if that’s the way. I mean it feels good to exercise, and it feels good to talk about things in therapy – [Interruption for a little dog, Stella, who wanted to say hi]. I mean, I don’t know, is that the answer? Like, I gotta go deeper … I gotta go deeper. (sigh) I got … talking about it anymore is just not, I don’t know. And I also maybe need some more weird friends. I mean, I have [friend’s name] … she she … has some really wild anxiety like I do. And I have my brother. But like, I don’t know, I don’t know, maybe, I don’t know, I just … I … I just keep looking for the answer and it’s (sigh) … whew … Anyway, so I want to write it. No fucking filter. No filter. I want to write it and I want to show, like, I want to write the inner workings of my brain and hey! If nothing else, it might help my kids down the line to understand where their mental health issues – and I don’t even want to call it mental health issues – gosh – but where their personality might come from. Because that’s valuable. So even if it’s not published and valuable to anyone else, it could be valuable to them. Or they could just say, “Mom’s crazy.” And that’s cool. At least they’d know. I certainly don’t have any writings of, you know – barely any, anyway – my dad, or my grandmother … I don’t have that. It would definitely be helpful to know what they were thinking, at certain times. So anyway, this is my commitment – I’m gonna write it – I’m gonna write. I don’t know what it’s gonna look like. I already did write one - a couple things … of irrational verse. [Interruption from runkeeper app] Ok, well there you have that. Um, I can’t remember what it was, but it was, uh, yeah I wrote something, an irrational verse. Um … and, and maybe it’s a way to process through stuff you know that, thoughts that I have that come up and, uh, my god, my brain is exhausting, it is exhausting, I-I do not want to ruminate, as I currently am, about everything. So, first entry, we’ll see where this goes – bye.

So I just finished my run, and had a little more thoughts, um … (sigh), so I’m gonna call it This is Who I Am Now – working title anyway, because I think that people need a new introduction … not just to ways I’ve changed, but ways I’ve hidden. And, um, yeah I put it out there. Like, if they don’t wanna read it, they don’t wanna purchase it, if they don’t wanna … yeah, they don’t have to. But if anyone does want to get to know me, the real me, then they can. And this kinda takes the pressure off of me of telling people myself, which I-I-I don’t know, you could think about that a couple different ways, but you know it is a … it’s a huge burden to tell people who you are, unfiltered. God I hate that about our society, these masks we wear, right? Like … because if I … I am on the outside, I am a successful mom, working mom, who has gone through a big shift in her relationship, who has been accepting of her former husband’s new identity, and you know I think a lot of people are like, in awe. But if they could know what, you know what goes on in the inside, then maybe it’ll spark compassion, not just for me but also for other people who are successful on the … on the outside. And I think we need more compassion, we need more like ‘lifting the mask off’. And I’ve always kinda done that, like to some extent, like I was open about my postpartum depression, I’ve been open about changes in the marriage and – well, not like super open on social media or anything but friends and stuff all know about that and, you know, just uh … um [interruption from runkeeper app]. So I’m nursing an injured knee which is why my pace is pretty darn slow. Um, but uh … yeah, I guess you know I’ve always kind of pushed the envelope as far as, like, being open about struggles, but this, this is, This is Who I Am Now will take it to a new level. Um, because I really do feel like holding stuff in is not good for me, and uh … it’s gotta come out somehow. And if doesn’t come out of my body, then my body’s gonna hold it … and I know that’s not good. Because I’m 41 years old and I’ve got chronic back and neck pain. So, this is gonna be an exercise to accept myself where I am … and to project myself as I am, because I deserve that, and who knows what might happen? Um … so that’s it, and sure as hell is a lot easier for me to say this into a voice memo and then probably transcribe it later than to sit and type it cause I can do it during my walking time, which is fantastic. Um … yeah, and we’ll see where this goes. You know I don’t know that there’s a lot of literature out there on … I mean, I know people write anxiety memoirs and things like that, but you know thinking about like Untamed or Glennon Doyle, Brene Brown or something, they’re all … you know they pull it together, they bring a positive message, they give you something to do – to get, to get through it. And you know my message is just gonna be like accept yourself as you are and this is super cheesy but, project yourself as you are. I-I just came up with that, by the way – on this day, in this moment, in this voice memo. But I kinda like it. So maybe that is my message going from this – accept who you are and project who you are and take off the mask … and I think we’d all be a little bit better if we did that. Maybe I will. Um … well I guess that is it for now. And, I’m coming up on home, so I’ll stop anyway – but yeah, welcome to my little project.