Anxiety

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Blue Nights (2011)

  Arcelia, who cleaned the house and laundered the wisps of batiste, busied herself watering, as anticipated. “As anticipated” because I had prepped Arcelia for the visit. The thought of an unstructured encounter between Arcelia and a State of California social worker had presented spectral concerns from the outset, imagined scenarios that kept me awake at four in the morning and only multiplied as the date of the visit approached: what if the social worker were to notice that Arcelia spoke only Spanish? What if the social worker were to happen into the question of Arcelia’s papers? What would the social worker put in her report if she divined that I was entrusting the perfect baby to an undocumented alien? The social worker remarked, in English, on the fine weather. I tensed, fearing a trap. Arcelia smiled, beatific, and continued watering. I relaxed. At which point Arcelia, no longer beatific but dramatic, flung the hose across the lawn and snatched up Quintana, screaming “Víbora!” The social worker lived in Los Angeles, she had to know what víbora meant, víbora in Los Angeles meant snake and snake in Los Angeles meant rattlesnake. I was relatively certain that the rattlesnake was a fantasy but I nonetheless guided Arcelia and Quintana inside, then turned to the social worker. It’s a game, I lied. Arcelia pretends she sees a snake. We all laugh. Because you can see. There is no snake. There could be no snake in Quintana Roo’s garden. Only later did I see that I had been raising her as a doll. She would never have faulted me for that. She would have seen it as a logical response to my having been handed, out of the blue at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, the beautiful baby girl, herself. At the house after her christening at St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church in Brentwood we had watercress sandwiches and champagne and later, for anyone still around at dinner time, fried chicken. The house we were renting that spring belonged to Sara Mankiewicz, Herman Mankiewicz’s widow, who was traveling for six months, and although she had packed away the china she did not want used along with Herman Mankiewicz’s Academy Award for Citizen Kane (you’ll have friends over, she had said, they’ll get drunk, they’ll want to play with it) she had left out her Minton dinner plates, the same pattern as the Minton tiles that line the arcade south of Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, for me to use.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  Instead, ourselves the beneficiaries of this kind of benign neglect, we now measure success as the extent to which we manage to keep our children monitored, tethered, tied to us. Judith Shapiro, when she was president of Barnard, was prompted to write an op-ed piece in The New York Times advising parents to show a little more trust in their children, stop trying to manage every aspect of their college life. She mentioned the father who had taken a year off from his job to supervise the preparation of his daughter’s college applications. She mentioned the mother who had accompanied her daughter to a meeting with her dean to discuss a research project. She mentioned the mother who had demanded, on the grounds that it was she who paid the tuition bills, that her daughter’s academic transcript be sent to her directly. “You pay $35,000 a year, you want services,” Tamar Lewin of The New York Times was told by the director of “the parents’ office” at Northeastern in Boston, an office devoted to the tending of parents having become a virtually ubiquitous feature of campus administration. For a Times piece a few years ago on the narrowing of the generation gap on campus, Ms. Lewin spoke not only to the tenders of the parents but also to the students themselves, one of whom, at George Washington University, allowed that she used well over three thousand cellphone minutes a month talking to her family. She seemed to view this family as an employable academic resource. “I might call my dad and say, ‘What’s going on with the Kurds?’ It’s a lot easier than looking it up. He knows a lot. I would trust almost anything my dad says.” Asked if she ever thought she might be too close to her parents, another George Washington student had seemed only puzzled: “They’re our parents,” she had said. “They’re supposed to help us. That’s almost their job.” We increasingly justify such heightened involvement with our children as essential to their survival. We keep them on speed dial. We watch them on Skype. We track their movements. We expect every call to be answered, every changed plan reported. We fantasize unprecedented new dangers in their every unsupervised encounter. We mention terrorism, we share anxious admonitions: “It’s different now.” “It’s not the way it was.” “You can’t let them do what we did.” Yet there were always dangers to children. Ask anyone who was a child during the supposedly idyllic decade advertised to us at the time as the reward for World War Two. New cars. New appliances. Women in high-heeled pumps and ruffled aprons removing cookie sheets from ovens enameled in postwar “harvest” colors: avocado, gold, mustard, brown, burnt orange. This was as safe as it got, except it wasn’t: ask any child who was exposed during this postwar harvest fantasy to the photographs from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ask any child who saw the photographs from the death camps.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  This is where movement comes in. Changing your physical state helps change your mental state, too. According to Dr. Wendy Suzuki, Professor of Neural Science and Psychology at New York University, even just 10 minutes of movement per day (walking, aerobics, dance—anything you love that gets your heart pumping) significantly reduces stress and anxiety. Moving your muscles also releases what she refers to as a “bubble bath” of feel-good neurochemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and noradrenaline. EMOTIONAL BRAVERYIt takes a lot of emotional bravery to walk this path, my friend. And though it may not feel like it now, this work will pay off in ways you can’t imagine. With that in mind, try to become more aware of the moments when you feel scared and anxious (if you’re like me, that might be once or twice an hour). Instead of allowing those feelings to fester and spread, give yourself the care you deserve. And when the going gets tough and ornery, just keep tapping into your emotional bravery—your willingness to look at what’s going on with courage, curiosity, and compassion. Remember, the more we’re willing to know about ourselves, the less weird (wrong or bad) we feel. Over time we come to understand the wisdom of counterculture icon and peace activist Wavy Gravy: “We’re all bozos on the bus, so might as well sit back and enjoy the ride.” CHAPTER 4BECOMING UNBECOMING [image file=image_rsrc1VT.jpg] Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath. — ECKHART TOLLE When I was growing up, my grandma taught me that certain behaviors were “unbecoming” for women. “Be nice. Sit like a lady. Don’t cry. Stop being so vulgar.” Fearing her reprimand, I didn’t fart until my mid-40s, which was when I realized I had free will. Ever the survivor, Grandma wanted me to fit into a world that wasn’t built for me. In her well-meaning eyes, unbecoming behavior would hinder my chance of eventually attracting a respectable husband—her ultimate goal for me. Like many women of her time, she was taught to contain herself in order to fit in. To quiet down, be polite, and not ruffle feathers. That didn’t mean that she didn’t feel the full range of human emotions; she just learned to hide or express them in different ways. For all her best efforts, she failed to instill these antiquated ideas of femininity in me. I stink at hiding things. I’m not a quiet person. I don’t want to be polite when it’s not warranted. I like ruffling feathers when I see or experience injustice or when I’m walking down the street and a male stranger tells me, “Smile, you’re so much prettier that way.” And lying? I’m terrible at it. Do not commit a crime with me. We will get caught.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  Still in the mode for maintaining momentum, and still oblivious to the extent to which maintaining momentum was precisely what had led me to the doctor’s office, I did not ask in what ways zoster could be a pretty nasty virus. Instead I went home, smoothed some translucent foundation over what had now been established as not a staph infection, took one of the antiviral tablets the doctor had given me, and left for West Forty-fifth Street. I left for West Forty-fifth Street not because I felt any better (in fact I felt worse) but because going to the theater had been my plan for the day, going to the theater was that day’s momentum: get to the Booth in time for the 3:30 understudy rehearsal, walk across West Forty-fifth Street during the break and pick up fried chicken and greens to eat backstage, stay for the performance and have a drink afterwards with Vanessa and whoever else was around. “Direct, engaging, well-tempered,” the stage manager’s performance notes for the evening read. “Ms. Redgrave nervous pre-show. Vortex very clear. Rapt audience. Cell phone at very top of show. In attendance: Joan Didion (piece o’ chicken at the café, show, and ladies’ cocktail hour). Hot humid day; stage temp: comfortable.” I have no memory of Ms. Redgrave nervous preshow. I have no memory of the ladies’ cocktail hour. I am told that it featured daiquiris, blended backstage by Vanessa’s dresser, and that I had one. I remember only that the hot humid day with the comfortable stage temperature was followed, for me, by a week of 103-degree fever, three weeks of acute pain in the nerves on the left side of my head and face (including, inconveniently, those nerves that trigger headaches, earaches, and toothaches), and after that by a condition the neurologist described as “postviral ataxia” but I could describe only as “not knowing where my body starts and stops.” I can only think that this may have been what Ntozake Shange meant by “corporeal ineptness.” I no longer had any balance .

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Anne Lamott basically summed up my experience when she wrote, “My mind is a bad neighborhood that I try not to go into alone.” One minute I was centered, calm, and present. Feeling my butt on the chair. Paying attention to my breathing. Noticing my peaceful surroundings—a cardinal at my birdfeeder. The next minute I’d be planning the guest list for my funeral. What kind of food would be served? Should there be a DJ? No. Not classy enough. Who should get my good jewelry? My mom and goddaughter. Will Brian remember to feed our dogs? Brian is so lonely now. I love Brian. Maybe he should start dating again? But not someone younger and prettier than me. Oh my God, Brian is dating a hot 20-year-old! I hate Brian. If I had enough awareness to recognize what my brain was actually doing and why, I’d meet my fear and anxiety with compassion (and a hearty chuckle). But more often than not, my negative fantasies would hold my brain hostage, and the next time Brian asked me if I knew where his glasses were, I’d tell him to consult his child bride. We humans are extremely creative creatures. Our imaginations have allowed us to invent microscopes to peer into the smallest cells of our bodies and rocket ships that hurtle us into the realm of the stars. But our imaginations can also freak us the fuck out. Think about it, is there anything scarier than all the awful stories we tell ourselves? We’re so damn good at devising the most frightening tales. Yet most of us have no desire to be Stephen King, channeling our darkest thoughts into best-selling horror novels. Instead, we do our best to bury our paranoid thoughts in the boneyard of our psyche and desperately try to become “fearless,” an impossible task that goes against our very DNA. THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROADAs the years ticked by and my disease remained stable (not advancing enough to warrant experimental treatment that might extend my life but not fully cure me), my time between scans increased and my fear decreased. At first my tests moved to every three months, then six months, then finally a year—which felt like a lifetime. With each graduation, I was better able to settle into my new life as a long-haul patient. When my scans got pushed to every two years, it was as if I’d won the lottery and might actually be able to go the distance with my incurable disease.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Wow, OK, just do whatever she says, you’re in great hands!” This was the last thing either of my parents wanted to hear. It reminded me of my first Thanksgiving after going vegan as part of my cancer-fighting regimen. I couldn’t stop yammering about the benefits of a plant-based diet. As always, my parents were troupers. They even made a bunch of vegan dishes to share. All was well until an actual cooked turkey came out. Suddenly, the newbie vegan activist in me decided it was the perfect time to preach a sermon on the intersection of health, ethics, and the environment. Why my lecture fell flat was a mystery to me. “Love,” Dad said, “I know you’re passionate about this stuff, and we’re on board and even willing to try it ourselves—I mean, not all the way, but a lot. But if you want your message to resonate with people, you can’t pound them over the head. Ease up. You have to meet them where they are.” Translation: don’t be a dick and ruin Thanksgiving. He was right. Nobody wants to be told how to live—and they definitely don’t want to be forced to change. In fact, the only time you can change someone is when they’re in diapers. Yet there I was, wagging my finger about how superior my compassionate choices were, while failing to extend that same compassion to my family. And now here I was, years later, trying to fix Dad’s food and control his lifestyle in an effort to calm my anxiety and make cancer leave him alone. I wasn’t interested in what he wanted or what his body could tolerate, because my fear of losing him was superseding my ability to put his needs first. While his rupture caused another rupture in my life, it didn’t give me carte blanche to override his preferences. Cleary, my worries needed a similar heart-to-heart. Don’t be a dick and ruin the time you have left with your dad. To meet him where he was, I’d have to accept his needs while learning how to manage my own fear and anxiety. CARING FOR YOURSELF IN TIMES OF RUPTURE There’s no “good” or “bad” or “right” or “wrong” way to handle ruptures. What matters is that you pay attention to the pleas of your heart. Here are a few more ideas to help ground and nourish you as you navigate this storm. Create a sacred physical space: Taking inspiration from my mom’s altar, I invite you to create a sacred space or area to help you connect with yourself. My mom makes the most beautiful altars with photos of family members, orchids and amaryllis plants, precious mementos, and prayer cards.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  In the light of those facts, and from all the reading I’ve been doing these past weeks (thank the goddess for Barnes & Noble’s medical section), I’ve made up my mind not to have a liver biopsy. It feels like the only reasonable decision for me. I’m asymptomatic now except for a vicious gallbladder. And I can placate her. There are too many things I’m determined to do that I haven’t done yet. Finish the poem “Outlines.” See what europe’s all about. Make Deotha Chambers’ story live. If I have this biopsy and it is malignant, then a whole course of action will be established simply by their intrusion into the suspect site. Yet if this tumor is malignant, I want as much good time as possible, and their treatments aren’t going to make a hell of a lot of difference in terms of extended time. But they’ll make a hell of a lot of difference in terms of my general condition and how I live my life. On the other hand, if this is benign, I believe surgical intervention into fatty tissue of any kind can start the malignant process in what otherwise might remain benign for a long time. I’ve been down that road before. I’ve decided this is a chance I have to take. If this were another breast tumor, I’d go for surgery again, because the organ comes off. But with the tie-in between estrogens, fat cells, and malignancies I’ve been reading about, cutting into my liver seems to me to be too much of a risk for too little return in terms of time. And it might be benign, some little aberrant joke between my liver and the universe. Twenty-two hours of most days I don’t believe I have liver cancer. Most days. Those other two hours of the day are pure hell, and there’s so much work I have to do in my head in those two hours, too, through all the terror and uncertainties. I wish I knew a doctor I could really trust to talk it all over with. Am I making the right decision? I know I have to listen to my body. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all the work I’ve done since my mastectomy, it’s that I must listen keenly to the messages my body sends. But sometimes they are contradictory. Dear goddess! Face-up again against the renewal of vows.Do not let me die a coward, mother. Nor forget how to sing. Nor forget song is a part of mourning as light is a part of sun. March 22, 1984 En route to New York City This was a good trip. Good connections with the Sojourner Sisters and other women in St. Croix. And I finally taught myself to relax in water, swimming about under the sun in Gloria’s pool to the sound of Donna Summers blowing across the bright water, “State of Independence,” and the coconut tree singing along in the gentle trade winds.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  One of the first evenings when Vernon was complaining that Raleigh hadn’t come in or sent, my father said: “Why not try, Joe?” (my nickname!) In a jiffy I had the gloves on and got my first lesson from Vernon who taught me at least how to hit straight and then how to guard and side-step. I was very quick and strong for my size; but for some time Vernon hit me very lightly. Soon, however, it became difficult for him to hit me at all and then I sometimes got a heavy blow that floored me. But with constant practice I improved rapidly and after a fortnight or so put on the gloves once with Raleigh. His blows were very much heavier and staggered me even to guard them, so I got accustomed to duck or side-step or slip every blow aimed at me while hitting back with all my strength. One evening when Vernon and Raleigh both had been praising me, I told them of Jones and how he bullied me; he had really made my life a misery to me: he never met me outside the school without striking or kicking me and his favorite name for me was “bog-trotter!” His attitude, too, affected the whole school: I had grown to hate him as much as I feared him. They both thought I could beat him; but I described him as very strong and finally Raleigh decided to send for two pairs of four ounce gloves or fighting gloves and use these with me to give me confidence. In the first half hour with the new gloves Vernon did not hit me once and I had to acknowledge that he was stronger and quicker even than Jones. At the end of the holidays they both made me promise to slap Jones’s face the very first time I saw him in the school. On returning to school we always met in the big schoolroom. When I entered the room there was silence. I was dreadfully excited and frightened, I don’t know why; but fully resolved: “he can’t kill me”, I said to myself a thousand times; still I was in a trembling funk inwardly though composed enough in outward seeming. Jones and two others of the Sixth stood in front of the empty fire-place: I went up to them: Jones nodded, “How d’ye do, Pat!”

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Investigate the facts: Remember, both fear and anxiety are very imaginative. The stories they tell can be over-the-top. Be a detective and look for the evidence. For example, if Neighbor Nan didn’t invite you to her party, could there be a valid reason that has nothing to do with her suddenly hating you? More often than not, you won’t find any shred of evidence to back up your anxiety- and fear-driven stories. And if you do find that there was some truth, it’s probably nowhere close to as dire as what your imagination would have you believe. Here’s an example of how this has played out in my life: Perhaps my tumors grew a little between scans, but did they multiply like horny bunnies? No. Have they ever? No. So what’s the chance they will this time? The facts after 20 years of living with cancer are pretty consistent. But in times of high stress, my imagination still needs to be reminded. Questions for you to ponder as you investigate the facts: Do you know for certain that the scary movie you’re playing in your mind will happen? Is there evidence to the contrary? Or is there someone you can call to verify facts? Could variables such as timing be in play? Or perhaps there is a more benign reason for what you’ve observed (for example, the tumor in my arm that turned out to not be cancerous)? And if the worst-case scenario did happen, could you handle it? How have you been able to handle difficult situations successfully in the past? Bonus tip: Give the scary movie you’re playing in your mind a funny or absurd title. Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown Winds Up Fine—and Accidentally Loving Life Oops, I Farted in Yoga in Front of My New Partner and Now My Life Is Over I’m Gonna Fall Flat on My Face and Become a Social Outcast: A Musical Humor disarms us. It breaks the tension, creating some distance between us and the unhelpful thoughts that threaten to consume us. It can even make us smile, God forbid. Get out of your head and into your body: Research shows that it’s hard to solve the problems of the mind with the mind. When we’re flooded with fear and anxiety, it’s really challenging to mentally strong-arm ourselves back to calm. We need help changing our mental channel so we can choose a better path. No shame in that game. Have you watched a dog go into brain rot—incessantly barking or licking a hot spot? Changing that behavior requires changing their physical state, perhaps getting the dog to play ball, go for a walk, or otherwise redirect their energy. Sure, you can shout “No, Todd!” but that doesn’t always work. And even if it does, yelling only makes dogs feel more anxious. Similarly, when we’re anxious, shouting “No!” at ourselves often makes things worse.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  There’s just something about writing this stuff out that gives me perspective. The goal here is to give your inner critic kinder thoughts to ponder so you can take care of your feelings. Investigate the facts: Remember, both fear and anxiety are very imaginative. The stories they tell can be over-the-top. Be a detective and look for the evidence. For example, if Neighbor Nan didn’t invite you to her party, could there be a valid reason that has nothing to do with her suddenly hating you? More often than not, you won’t find any shred of evidence to back up your anxiety- and fear-driven stories. And if you do find that there was some truth, it’s probably nowhere close to as dire as what your imagination would have you believe. Here’s an example of how this has played out in my life: Perhaps my tumors grew a little between scans, but did they multiply like horny bunnies? No. Have they ever? No. So what’s the chance they will this time? The facts after 20 years of living with cancer are pretty consistent. But in times of high stress, my imagination still needs to be reminded. Questions for you to ponder as you investigate the facts: Do you know for certain that the scary movie you’re playing in your mind will happen? Is there evidence to the contrary? Or is there someone you can call to verify facts? Could variables such as timing be in play? Or perhaps there is a more benign reason for what you’ve observed (for example, the tumor in my arm that turned out to not be cancerous)? And if the worst-case scenario did happen, could you handle it? How have you been able to handle difficult situations successfully in the past? Bonus tip: Give the scary movie you’re playing in your mind a funny or absurd title. Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown Winds Up Fine—and Accidentally Loving Life Oops, I Farted in Yoga in Front of My New Partner and Now My Life Is Over I’m Gonna Fall Flat on My Face and Become a Social Outcast: A Musical Humor disarms us. It breaks the tension, creating some distance between us and the unhelpful thoughts that threaten to consume us. It can even make us smile, God forbid. Get out of your head and into your body: Research shows that it’s hard to solve the problems of the mind with the mind. When we’re flooded with fear and anxiety, it’s really challenging to mentally strong-arm ourselves back to calm. We need help changing our mental channel so we can choose a better path. No shame in that game. Have you watched a dog go into brain rot—incessantly barking or licking a hot spot? Changing that behavior requires changing their physical state, perhaps getting the dog to play ball, go for a walk, or otherwise redirect their energy.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  YOUR BRAIN ON FEAR AND ANXIETYRemember those antidrug commercials from the ’80s? Maybe I’m dating myself here, but those PSAs made me scared (and hungry) at the same time. “This is your brain,” an ominous voice announces as an egg dropped into a buttery, sizzling frying pan. “This is your brain on drugs,” the voice reveals as we watch as the egg bubbles, fries, and shrinks. The crispy brown edges, an emblem of destruction. “Any questions?” the voice demands. Yeah. Can I get a roll and coffee with that? I know that commercial was supposed to keep me from doing ecstasy in English class with the girl who came from an exotic place called Chicago, but it didn’t. All kidding aside, some researchers believe that chronic anxiety can not only harm your brain—it can become addictive, like a drug. Like many women I know, my mind is built to solve problems and seek solutions. But two things can be true at once. A strength can also be a weakness when taken to the extreme. One of my favorite experts on anxiety is Dr. Judson Brewer. Dr. Jud, as he likes to be called, is an Associate Professor in Psychiatry and the Director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center at Brown University. His studies suggest that anxiety is more habitual than we realize. To understand his research, we first have to remember how our habits work. All habits (positive and negative) have three distinct parts: trigger, behavior, and reward. The trigger kicks off the behavior, and the behavior creates a reward or result. (FYI, I use the terms “reward” and “result” interchangeably because not all rewards are so rewarding.) For example, let’s say you’re feeling stressed at work (trigger). You want this feeling to go away, so you drink a few glasses of wine each night to relax (behavior). The distraction helps you temporarily feel better (reward). According to Dr. Jud, over time negative behaviors create addictive habits that gloss over the cause of our suffering and create more problems in our lives. Enter the usual suspects: overeating, drinking, drugs, endless social media scrolling, procrastination, stress-shopping, sex with randos, and anything else you can think of to make the discomfort stop. In these patterns, it’s easy to see how anxiety can be similar to an addictive habit. The more we fuel it, the more anxious we get, and the more we turn to unhealthy behaviors to reduce our anxiety. It’s a never-ending cycle that wears us down, shrinks our resilience, and makes our lives way smaller than they need to be. Now for the good news: habits aren’t fixed; they’re fluid—just like our brains. In fact, our beautiful brains have the ability to change and form new patterns and connections throughout our lives—no matter how old we are. (That means you can teach old dogs new tricks. Lucky us!)

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  All my life I have been a poor go-to-sleeper. People in trains, who lay their newspaper aside, fold their silly arms, and immediately, with an offensive familiarity of demeanor, start snoring, amaze me as much as the uninhibited chap who cozily defecates in the presence of a chatty tubber, or participates in huge demonstrations, or joins some union in order to dissolve in it. Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing. The strain and drain of composition often force me, alas, to swallow a strong pill that gives me an hour or two of frightful nightmares or even to accept the comic relief of a midday snooze, the way a senile rake might totter to the nearest euthanasium; but I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me. I loathe Somnus, that black-masked headsman binding me to the block; and if in the course of years, with the approach of a far more thorough and still more risible disintegration, which nowanights, I confess, detracts much from the routine terrors of sleep, I have grown so accustomed to my bedtime ordeal as almost to swagger while the familiar ax is coming out of its great velvet-lined double-bass case, initially I had no such comfort or defense: I had nothing—except one token light in the potentially refulgent chandelier of Mademoiselle’s bedroom, whose door, by our family doctor’s decree (I salute you, Dr. Sokolov!), remained slightly ajar. Its vertical line of lambency (which a child’s tears could transform into dazzling rays of compassion) was something I could cling to, since in absolute darkness my head would swim and my mind melt in a travesty of the death struggle. Saturday night used to be or ought to have been a pleasurable prospect, because that was the night Mademoiselle, who belonged to the classical school of hygiene and regarded our toquades anglaises as merely a source of colds, indulged in the perilous luxury of a weekly bath, thus granting a longer lease to my tenuous gleam. But then a subtler torment set in.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  I cannot bear the picture of June’s face on the mantelpiece. Even in the photograph, it is uncanny, she possesses us both. I write crazy notes to Henry. We cannot meet today. The day is empty. I am caught. And he? What does he feel? I am invaded, I lose everything, my mind vacillates, I am only aware of sensations. There are moments in the day when I do not believe in Henry’s love, when I feel June dominating both of us, when I say to myself, “This morning he will awake and realize he loves no one but June.” Moments when I believe, madly, that we are going to live something new, Henry and I, outside of June’s world. How has he imposed truth on me? I was about to take flight from the prison of my imaginings, but he takes me to his room and there we live a dream, not a reality. He places me where he wants to place me. Incense. Worship. Illusion. And all the rest of his life is effaced. He comes with a new soul to this hour. It is the sleeping potion of fairy tales. I lie with a burning womb and he scarcely notices it. Our gestures are human, but there is a curse on the room. It is June’s face. I remember, with great pain, one of his notes: “life’s wildest moment—June, kneeling on the street.” Is it June or Henry I am jealous of? He asks to see me again. When I wait in the armchair in his room, and he kneels to kiss me, he is stranger than all my thoughts. With his experience he dominates me. He dominates with his mind, too, and I am silenced. He whispers to me what my body must do. I obey, and new instincts rise in me. He has seized me. A man so human; and I, suddenly brazenly natural. I am amazed at my lying there in his iron bed, with my black underwear vanquished and trampled. And the tight secrecy of me broken for a moment, by a man who calls himself “the last man on earth.” Writing is not, for us, an art, but breathing. After our first encounter I breathed some notes, accents of recognition, human admissions. Henry was still stunned, and I was breathing off the unbearable, willing joy. But the second time, there were no words. My joy was impalpable and terrifying. It swelled within me as I walked the streets. It transpires, it blazes. I cannot conceal it. I am woman. A man has made me submit. Oh, the joy when a woman finds a man she can submit to, the joy of her femaleness expanding in strong arms. Hugo looks at me as we sit by the fire. I am talking drunkenly, brilliantly.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Once and once only I tried to hint to her that her sweetness to Smith might do him harm physically; but the suspicion of reproof made her angry and she evidently couldn’t or wouldn’t understand what I meant without a physical explanation, which she would certainly have resented. I had to leave her to what she would have called her daimon; for she was as prettily pedantic as Tennyson’s Princess, or any other mid-Victorian heroine. Her brother Ned, too, I came to know pretty well. He was a tall, handsome youth with fine grey eyes: a good athlete, but of commonplace mind. The father was the most interesting of the whole family, were it only for his prodigious conceit. He was of noble appearance: a large, handsome head with silver grey hairs setting off a portly figure well above middle height. In spite of his assumption of superiority, I felt him hide-bound in thought; for he accepted all the familiar American conventions, believing or rather knowing that the American people, “the good old New England stock in particular, were the salt of the earth, the best breed to be seen anywhere....” It showed his brains that he tried to find a reason for this belief. “English oak is good”, he remarked one day sententiously, “but American hickory is tougher still. Reasonable, too, this belief of mine”, he added, “for the last glacial period skinned all the good soil off of New England and made it bitterly hard to get a living and the English who came out for conscience sake were the pick of the Old Country and they were forced for generations to scratch a living out of the poorest kind of soil with the worst climate in the world, and hostile Indians all round to sharpen their combativeness and weed out the weaklings and wastrels.” There was a certain amount of truth in his contention; but this was the nearest to an original thought I ever heard him express and his intense patriotic fervor moved me to doubt his intelligence. I was delighted to find that Smith rated him just as I did: “a first-rate lawyer, I believe”, was his judgment, “a sensible, kindly man.” “A little above middle height”, I interpreted and Smith added smiling, “and considerably above average weight: he would never have done anything notable in literature or thought.” As the year wore on, Smith’s letters called for me more and more insistently and at length I went to join him in Philadelphia. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ NEW EXPERIENCES. Emerson, Walt Whitman, Bret Harte. Chapter XIII. Smith met me at the station: he was thinner than ever and the wretched little cough shook him very often in spite of some lozenges that the doctor had given him to suck: I began to be alarmed about him and I soon came to the belief that the damp climate of the Quaker City was worse for him than the thin, dry Kansas air. But he believed in his doctors!

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  According to author and psychologist Megan Devine, “Rather than helping you feel safe, perpetual fear creates a small, hard, painful life that isn’t safer than any other life. Your mind becomes an exquisite torture chamber. You can’t sleep because of your anxiety, and your anxiety only gets worse because you aren’t sleeping. It’s an incessant hamster wheel of fears, attempts at logic, and memories of things gone wrong.” You still have life to live. Do your messiest best to move forward with your grief and other big emotions, with your awareness, with the knowledge you’ve gained in the trenches, and with grace for yourself and others. None of this is easy and it certainly won’t erase your pain, but it can help you open the doors of the prison cell you may have put yourself in. CARING FOR FEAR & ANXIETYIf you’re anything like me, you may simply want to weed whack the crap out of these strong emotions and just be done with them. In reality, tending to them lovingly, with gentle pruning and better habits, is a far more productive and sustainable path, helping you rewire your brain, set yourself free from your unconscious (or semiconscious) addiction to fear and worry, and enjoy a bigger, fuller life. According to psychiatrist Kristy Lamb, if we don’t allow emotions like anger or grief to be felt, it’s easy for them to morph into anxiety, fear, and even depression. The energy needs to go somewhere. It needs to be discharged somehow. (And if you’ve ever had a full-blown meltdown over something ridiculous, like a ketchup stain on your favorite sweatshirt, you know what I’m talking about.) Here are some healthy ways to channel it. Breathe: Just the way you have a stress response (sympathetic nervous system), you also have a relaxation response (parasympathetic nervous system). When your breathing becomes rapid, shallow, or restricted, your stress response kicks in and your anxiety increases. One of the fastest ways to activate your relaxation response is through breathwork. Conscious breathing is like having a built-in stress-release valve. The easiest way to pull this valve is to make your exhalations longer than your inhalations. Let’s try it now. Inhale for four counts. Exhale for six to eight counts. Repeat this three times (or as much as needed). Our breath is central to every aspect of our well-being, yet we often overlook its power. In times of fear, grief, pain, trauma, depression, and so on, let your breath serve as the lifeline it’s designed to be.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  And yet research shows that we’re actually the most anxious country in the entire world. Embedded in this collective “pursuit of happiness” is the notion that we can have whatever we want, whenever we want. In today’s world, that often translates to something like If I only put the right thoughts, efforts, and energy out there, I can attract whatever I desire and sidestep any of the bad stuff. “Hey, universe, I’ll take the rainbow, but hold the rain.” Unfortunately, these magical-thinking fantasies can sometimes do more harm than good. Especially when life falls apart in one fell swoop. You didn’t choose that. You didn’t fail. You didn’t get sick, lose your spouse, or wind up in any other number of shit pickles because you put the wrong “vibes” out there. If that were the case, I’d be writing this from a women’s correctional facility! Speaking of harmful societal ideas, there’s also a belief that we should just run out and replace what’s lost in order to be whole again, as if it were a missing Tupperware lid. While well-intentioned (no one wants to see us in pain), these practices often make grieving and healing harder to achieve—for ourselves and for our loved ones. Someone or something unique and special to us can never be substituted. Instead, a full range of pain and challenges will occur in life, no matter how healthy, conscious, resourceful, or spiritual we happen to be. In that way, acceptance grounds us and prepares us for the good times and the storms. It teaches us the bone-deep wisdom found in the Serenity Prayer: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” The opposite of acceptance is resistance. Fighting against the truth: Maybe he’ll come back. Fighting with our egos: I’m not the kind of person who falls apart. Fighting against what we know we need to do, say, or feel: Maintain a stiff upper lip. And fighting with each other, instead of coming together: It’s all their fault. While I can’t change what happened (I got sick, my dad got sick and eventually passed, life changed in ways I didn’t want it to, and old traumas emerged as a result of these ruptures), I can change what I do now—how I proceed moving forward, how I grow and make the most of the precious, never- guaranteed time I have with my loved ones, with my dreams, and most importantly, with myself. For many of us, resistance is our go-to mode. We’d rather deny, avoid, or brawl than face the truth of how our lives are changing or even what we’ve been through. But as the saying goes, “What we resist persists,” keeping us stuck in pain and frozen in time.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  I am referred to a dietitian on this matter of gaining weight. The dietitian makes (the inevitable) protein shakes, brings me freshly laid eggs (better) from a farm in New Jersey and perfect vanilla ice cream (better still) from Maison du Chocolat on Madison Avenue. I drink the protein shakes. I eat the freshly laid eggs from the farm in New Jersey and the perfect vanilla ice cream from Maison du Chocolat on Madison Avenue. Nonetheless. I do not gain weight. I have an uneasy sense that the consensus solution has already failed. I find, on the other hand, somewhat to my surprise, that I actively like physical therapy. I keep regular appointments at a Columbia Presbyterian sports medicine facility at Sixtieth and Madison. I am impressed by the strength and general tone of the other patients who turn up during the same hour. I study their balance, their proficiency with the various devices recommended by the therapist. The more I watch, the more encouraged I am: this stuff really works, I tell myself. The thought makes me cheerful, optimistic. I wonder how many appointments it will take to reach the apparently effortless control already achieved by my fellow patients. Only during my third week of physical therapy do I learn that these particular fellow patients are in fact the New York Yankees, loosening up between game days. T 21 oday as I walk home from the Columbia Presbyterian sports medicine facility at Sixtieth and Madison I find the optimism engendered by proximity to the New York Yankees fading. In fact my physical confidence seems to be reaching a new ebb. My cognitive confidence seems to have vanished altogether. Even the correct stance for telling you this, the ways to describe what is happening to me, the attitude, the tone, the very words, now elude my grasp. The tone needs to be direct. I need to talk to you directly, I need to address the subject as it were, but something stops me. Is this another kind of neuropathy, a new frailty, am I no longer able to talk directly? Was I ever? Did I lose it? Or is the subject in this case a matter I wish not to address? When I tell you that I am afraid to get up from a folding chair in a rehearsal room on West Forty-second Street, of what am I really afraid? W 22 hat if you hadn’t been home when Dr. Watson called— What if you couldn’t meet him at the hospital— What if there’d been an accident on the freeway— What would happen to me then?

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Pre-pandemic the United Nations estimated that nearly 1 billion people worldwide were struggling with a mental health condition. Since then, the pandemic has caused a 25 to 27 percent increase in anxiety and depression. According to a recent Gallup poll, worry, stress, fear, anger, and sadness have been on the rise globally for the past decade and reached record highs in 2021. Something’s got to give, or our bodies will. Living in this state of heightened alert, stress, and general emotional upheaval, we feel as if our alarms won’t turn off. This damages our bodies by perpetuating a prolonged stress response that weakens our immune systems, messes with our hormones, blows out our adrenals, and impacts our resilience. None of us want that, and yet, here we are. YOUR BRAIN ON FEAR AND ANXIETY Remember those antidrug commercials from the ’80s? Maybe I’m dating myself here, but those PSAs made me scared (and hungry) at the same time. “This is your brain,” an ominous voice announces as an egg dropped into a buttery, sizzling frying pan. “This is your brain on drugs,” the voice reveals as we watch as the egg bubbles, fries, and shrinks. The crispy brown edges, an emblem of destruction. “Any questions?” the voice demands. Yeah. Can I get a roll and coffee with that? I know that commercial was supposed to keep me from doing ecstasy in English class with the girl who came from an exotic place called Chicago, but it didn’t. All kidding aside, some researchers believe that chronic anxiety can not only harm your brain—it can become addictive, like a drug. Like many women I know, my mind is built to solve problems and seek solutions. But two things can be true at once. A strength can also be a weakness when taken to the extreme. One of my favorite experts on anxiety is Dr. Judson Brewer. Dr. Jud, as he likes to be called, is an Associate Professor in Psychiatry and the Director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center at Brown University. His studies suggest that anxiety is more habitual than we realize. To understand his research, we first have to remember how our habits work. All habits (positive and negative) have three distinct parts: trigger, behavior, and reward. The trigger kicks off the behavior, and the behavior creates a reward or result. (FYI, I use the terms “reward” and “result” interchangeably because not all rewards are so rewarding.) For example, let’s say you’re feeling stressed at work (trigger). You want this feeling to go away, so you drink a few glasses of wine each night to relax (behavior). The distraction helps you temporarily feel better (reward).

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Now the King of Tunis, who had long been at war with the Spaniards, learning that Spain and France were waging mutual hostilities about Perpignan and Nar- bonne, thought it a good opportunity to harass the King of Spain, and sent a great number of ships to pillage and destroy every ill-guarded point they found on the coasts of Spain. The people of Barcelona, seeing so many strange sail pass by, sent word to the viceroy, who was then at Salces, and who immediately despatched the Duke of Nagyeres to Palamos. The Barbarians, finding the place so well defended, made a feint of sheering off ; but they returned in the night, and landed so many men that the Duke of Nagyeres, who had let himself be sur- prised, was taken prisoner. Amadour, who was very vigilant, hearing the noise, assembled instantly as many of his men as he could, and made so stout a resistance that the enemy, however superior in numbers, were for a long time held at bay. But at last, learning that the Duke of Nagyeres was a prisoner, and that the Turks were resolved to burn Palamos and the house in which he withstood them, he thought it better to surrender than to cause the loss of those who had followed him. Besides, by paying for his ransom, he expected to see Florida again. He surrendered then to a Turk named Dorlin, Viceroy of Tunis, who presented him to his master, in whose service he remained nearly two years, honoured and well treated, but still better guarded ; for, having him in their hands, the Turks thought they had the Achilles of all the Spains. The news of this event having reached Spain, the relations of the Duke of Nagyeres were greatly affected at his disaster ; but those who had the glory of the First day.\ QUEEN OF NA VARRE. 85

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AUGUSTINE. (Tr. lii. 3) He teaches thee Whom thou shouldest call on, whose will prefer to thine own. Let Him not seem to fall from His greatness, because He wishes thee to rise from thy meanness. He took upon Him man’s infirmity, that He might teach the afflicted to say, Not what I will, but what Thou wilt. Wherefore He adds, But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name: i. e. in My passion and resurrection. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxvii. 2) As if He said, I cannot say why I should ask to be saved from it; For for this cause came I unto this hour. However ye may be troubled and dejected at the thought of dying, do not run away from death. I am troubled, yet I ask not to be spared. I do not say, Save Me from this hour, but the contrary, Glorify Thy name. To die for the truth was to glorify God, as the event shewed; for after His crucifixion the whole world was to be converted to the knowledge and worship of God, both the Father and the Son. But this He is silent about. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again. GREGORY. (Moral. xxviii.) When God speaks audibly, as He does here, but no visible appearance is seen, He speaks through the medium of a rational creature: i. e. by the voice of an Angel. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. lii. 4) I have glorified it, i. e. before I made the world; and will glorify it again, i. e. when Thou shalt rise from the dead. Or, I have glorified it, when Thou wast born of a Virgin, didst work miracles, wast made manifest by the Holy Ghost descending in the shape of a dove; and will glorify it again, when Thou shalt rise from the dead, and, as God, be exalted above the heavens, and Thy glory above all the earth. The people therefore that stood by and heard it, said that it thundered. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxvii. 2) The voice though loud and distinct, soon passed off from their gross, carnal, and sluggish minds; only the sound remaining. Others perceived an articulate voice, but did not catch what it said: Others said, An Angel spake to Him. Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of Me, but for your sakes. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. lii. 5) i. e. It did not come to tell Him what He knew already, but them what they ought to know. And as that voice did not come for His sake, but for theirs, so His soul was not troubled for His sake, but for theirs.