Gripped by fear

I am gripped by fear. Its cold hand clenches around my heart, it sits with all its weight on my chest and it tangles around my throat forcing my voice to break and tears to spring from my eyes at the mention of its name.

I am going through some things that feel akin to living a nightmare and I feel powerless.

I try to rally myself with the usual platitudes. As I know, there are most certainly people going through far worse things than I. But trivialising my own fears and emotions, hasn’t helped this time.

Yes, they are first world problems, but they’re my problems and I’m having to live with them right now. And I feel lost, and scared.

I’m scared of the unknown. I think that’s what it really boils down to. I’ve certainly had my fair share (or more!) of curve balls in life and I like to think I’m pretty resilient and able to quite quickly spring into action and embark on a path to resolve the situation. Or at least I should be able to look the situation in the eye (figuratively speaking) and confront it, or accept and move on from it.

Often I think of myself, of humans, as being like trees. Our roots are our foundations that hold us to the ground and stabilise us. Our branches are all the different aspects of our lives and how we reach out and grow in many directions – as a family, as a parent, our engagement with community, our interactions with friends, our business paths and our emotional journey are all interwoven and grow increasingly stronger as a noble tree does.

Then there’s our leaves and flowers, all the things that we take pride in presenting, that can change with the season, that can blossom and bloom in the right conditions, that bring joy and hope – the very tips of our living and breathing and definition of who we are.

I’ve always believed that life can shake the tree, and sometimes the leaves and flowers will drop, but if your roots are strong you’ll never fall.

This fear is attacking the very roots of my existence, the foundations upon which so much is built. It is fear born from the traits of this latest curveball – it is by nature, literally eating away my foundations. It feels sinister, as it is not visible to the eye but its damage is. I have no way of knowing the path it is taking, the depth it has reached, or the true level of its destruction. It is hiding from me and I feel powerless not knowing what is happening.

It’s hard to empower yourself with action when you don’t know what is going to happen.  But it eats at your very heart. At your root level. At your foundations.

This may be something that is emotionally unbalancing you – such as heartbreak, grief or illness, or it’s physically attacking your careful plans, taking out your hard work, your business, your property or assets.

It is a threat that rocks you to your core and has you wide-eyed desperately trying to look into the future to see what will happen. It is a waiting game.

But here’s what I’m learning. I do believe that some things happen for a reason, even though at times it’s nearly impossible to understand why.

Or maybe a better way to look at it is, we do learn something from everything that happens – even the truly terrible, undeserved and scary things that life throws us.

I am learning that fear is just an emotion which is largely based on the unknown. Hope is another emotion, and this is also largely based on the unknown. They both require you to believe in something you can’t see – so I’m focusing on switching my fear from overtaking my body and mind and trying to let hope shine some light into this darkness.

Hope can’t take it away but it can maybe see opportunities that fear can’t. And isn’t it better and more noble to live with hope, than with fear?

I leave you with this quote today, something that I really want to share with you.

“Life is amazing. And then it’s awful. And then it’s amazing again. And in between the amazing and the awful it’s ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful and relax and exhale during the ordinary. That’s just living, heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life. And it’s breathtakingly beautiful”. LR Knost.

Know you’re never alone, and trust that awful days will become amazing days again.

With much love
Abby

Thank you for some beautiful emails last month, I look forward to hearing from you at [email protected].

Don’t forget you can join me on Facebook and Instragram @abbyjanecrawford xx