It wasn’t until after I became a mother at age 34 that I began to understand where terms like “Mommy’s little helper” and “Mommy juice” came from. With alcoholism and addiction strong in my family line, I grew up with a deep anxiety that someday this condition might wake up inside me, too. Never able […]
Like many people who deal with anxiety, I’ve learned to live with it. And I’ve hidden it well from my daughter. Or so I thought. My own fear is traceable enough, its origins obvious, but my daughter’s fear is a mystery. She’s only 8, for one. She has suffered not at all, not more than the unconscious […]
I’ve spent my life waiting for things to change, expecting the worst, counting on crises, and planning for disasters. I watch the cigarette ash beginning to bend, threatening to break apart and scatter on the Persian rug. My body tenses, waiting for it, wanting to stop it. But I force myself to think about the […]
