Anchor to the Good

 Sky high and fearless---that is a real picture of me when I was a little girl. I used to climb to the top of our incredibly tall swing set and feel the wind on my face and just breathe. I'd sit on the top metal bar and watch the cars go down the streets and the people walking on the sidewalks.

That was my place.

Very few times did the fear of falling come to my mind but it never stopped me from climbing up to the top and feeling like I was on top of the world.

As a young girl, it was a fun place to climb. As a teenager, it was a place I would go to escape my pain.

My kids play on that swing set now. I watch them from my parents' kitchen window and imagine I am the young version of myself again, the little girl who needed someone to understand her a little bit better.
Sometimes I mourn the parts of my childhood that were sad. Other times, I smile because I love that little girl so much. I love 'young me'. Maybe that seems weird but whenever I see things in my children that remind me of myself as a child, it makes me happy.

Because I am her and I know what she needs. I know how she felt. I know all of the genuinely compassionate things she felt as a little girl. She is incredible to me.



Last week, I had a super rough night---or couple of nights. I wish the hard nights would stop but I guess that's never going to happen. But as I laid in my bed and wrote in my journal, I was thinking about everything that has happened and I was starting to blame myself all over again.

This is what anxiety does to me. 

I was worried that my divorce was too fast and that I had jumped into this new life without waiting for a fourth or fifth answered prayer that this was right---as if the first three answers were no longer valid. 

I started to second guess my friendships to some of the most amazing people I have ever met. I couldn't believe that they really love me. I started to think that I was probably just a girl with a sad story who everyone feels sorry for so they invite her to hang out.

I was crying while messaging a friend about my pity party and she stopped me right in my tracks and said, "Ok, I'm stepping in now! No No NO! Now you're making that up in YOUR head because you anchor to all of the self critic talk, instead of anchoring to what you know is true. You're amazing. You have awesome friends who are trying to protect you. You have been through hell and back and you don't give yourself enough credit for the amazing amount of crap you've been through and have to deal with. Let yourself feel those feelings of hurt but don't anchor to them. Anchor to the good."

Anchor to the good.

That phrase really spoke to me. Anchor to the good. I like simple messages that carry deep meanings. They are easier for me to remember and apply.

The next day, I went straight to my white board and wrote that beautiful message on it.

I pass by it multiple times a day.

When my friend first said those words to me, I thought they would be easy. I am a generally optimistic person and I've always felt like I can pick the good out of the situation and focus on it most of the time.

But it has been harder than I thought! Because I've been dealing with so much anxiety and shame that finding the good isn't always easy.

Often times it bothers me that I haven't yet figured out who I am now. I am a different person than I used to be and sometimes it's hard for me to understand myself. It's hard to understand the anxiety or the anger or the shame because even though I have felt all of those things in my life, I didn't recognize them as much as I do now. They weren't as debilitating as they are now.

And a huge part of me resents that. A huge part of me gets angry with this new person because I just want her to calm down and stop being so scared of life.

I want her to trust. 

But if I take a step back and look at her as if she isn't me, I can see why she is scared and why she doesn't like to trust. I can see why daily activities can give her anxiety. Because the day she was hurt the most was just a normal day with normal activities and it changed her life forever.


I hope that someday I will be able to overcome my fears. I hope that I will be able to live more freely and trust and love and commit.

But today all I feel like doing is climbing back into bed and never coming out of my room.
Because at least my bed is safe.