A Healthy Outlook on Fear

Talking to my mom this morning about our upcoming move, she asked, “Do you think you’ll feel safe living in Costa Rica?”

This is a funny question, because of course, we wouldn’t voluntarily move somewhere that we don’t feel safe!  However, it made me think about my relationship with fear and how it has evolved throughout my life, particularly since becoming a parent.

Generally a trusting person, I was shaken up in my early 20s after being assaulted while walking home from a bar.  This now feels like another lifetime, but this experience altered me, and I spent the next 9 months fearful of being home alone or walking places by myself, and developing anxiety to a level I had not previously experienced.  All of that culminated in a big fat bout of depression.  

With the help of medication and a decent therapist, I was able to make some big life changes to intentionally create a life that felt safe to me.  After this experience, I have consciously chosen not to make decisions out of fear, but instead to listen to my intuition to assess if something feels right to me.  

I lived most of my 20s from this place: trusting that I am safe, following my heart and gut, and feeling mostly at ease in the world.  When I had kids in my 30s, all of the fear talk came back louder than ever.  

Now, I suddenly had fear around everything- big and small.  My childrens’ safety, well-being, and emotional needs-as well as my own, were at the forefront of most of my thoughts. The early years were mentally and emotionally challenging, and I used many different tools to keep myself in a calm and trusting place, especially when leaving them with caregivers.  My favorite way of controlling what I feared was to micromanage everyone, and I had to do a lot of work to reverse this!

I’ve slowly learned to trust that the kids are cared for, that other people are competent to care for them, and that they themselves are capable of more than I could imagine.  I believe that they each have their path, and that they will experience lessons, challenges, and pain that I cannot prevent.  Shand and I are here to teach them resilience, grace, and grit, not to prevent anything bad from happening to them. 

As my kids are getting older, my relationship with fear has again transformed into a deeper level of trust as I watch them learn to navigate the world more independently.  With our move to Costa Rica, I hope that we are giving them an opportunity to adventure, explore, and also overcome challenges that we will all face.  New school, new house, new friends, and new routines will all take some time and gentleness to feel like “ours.”  

I am excited to experience this together and to be able to guide them through a big life change at a young age, so that they learn to trust themselves and their ability to adapt.   I hope to shape a healthy relationship with fear in them, so that they can explore the world with confidence, safety, and trust. 

I choose not to focus my thoughts on what could go wrong, because I know that our lives will evolve no matter where we are, and we might as well enjoy the journey together as a family!