Our children are here to teach us more about the world than we ever could have found out on our own. It's not just the gift of getting to experience everything through young eyes again (only this time as a grown-up thinker). It's also the differences in your personalities and the stuff that you learn about others and yourself as a result.
I've always been a confident, fearless sort of person. I don't have a lot of anxiety about my place in the world and if I ever felt differently as a child I don't remember now. So it's a true learning, growing experience to have a son who is anxious and fearful about so many things. And because he's also a charming, imaginative little soul, there are always lots and lots of things to worry about.
I find that his anxiety sometimes rubs off on me.
I naturally feel anxious for him and my girls as they go about the sometimes overwhelming business of life. Which is all part of being a parent! But sometimes I've also felt the uncomfortable and somehow painful sting of generalised anxiety. I'm awake in the night worried, but I don't know what it is that I'm worried about. I just feel like I'm hurtling through life - confused, untethered, groundless - towards a painful landing. Just when I think I've pinpointed where the worry is coming from, it slips away like an ominous shadow in the night.
It makes me realise how dehabilitating anxiety is and how grateful I am that it's not something that has plagued me in this life. It also makes me determined to take my son's worries very seriously and help him learn ways of coping that will hopefully banish the pain of anxiety in later years.
[Lovely car image: Ferry Halim] / [Awesome anxiety girl image: nataliedee]
I naturally feel anxious for him and my girls as they go about the sometimes overwhelming business of life. Which is all part of being a parent! But sometimes I've also felt the uncomfortable and somehow painful sting of generalised anxiety. I'm awake in the night worried, but I don't know what it is that I'm worried about. I just feel like I'm hurtling through life - confused, untethered, groundless - towards a painful landing. Just when I think I've pinpointed where the worry is coming from, it slips away like an ominous shadow in the night.