Is Fear Playing Out in Your Life During the Coronavirus?
Dear Readers,
Before I get into my theory of fear versus trust, I want you to know that I’m writing this article from a place of total transparency. I’ve got nothing to lose by telling the truth, so here goes.
Between 2010 and 2017, I had one of the most trying periods of time in my life. I’d like to share a snapshot of what transpired: I divorced my son’s father in a very contentious court case, my mother developed lung cancer and I watched her struggle emotionally, physically and financially until I got her into an end-of-life nursing home where she died. My son almost died in a car accident and broke both pelvic bones and his clavicle when he was eight years old. I moved from Europe to my hometown of NYC, and then after the separation with my son’s father, I moved again with my son to Austin, Texas. I downsized three times and had to reboot my career from scratch in a town where I knew no one and where the culture was more foreign than any other Asian or European country I had ever lived in. I did just about anything (except spread my legs) to pay the bills including healthcare for my son and me.
Through these hardships I became extremely resourceful and creative — out of the chaos and confusion, I found out how to live on practically nothing. One of my greatest fears was to live and die in poverty. I watched that happen to my mother and vowed that would never allow that to happen to me. But somewhere along the way, I changed what I formerly believed.
While building my public relations and editorial services business (it wasn’t my first rodeo, I’ve launched and sold three companies throughout my career), I drove Lyft and Uber, worked as a pre-school teacher at minimum wage, organized parties for small businesses, babysat, and walked dogs. I also joined networking groups and volunteered at organizations whose cause I believed in. Eventually, I was accepted on to the boards of several non-profit organizations where I devoted myself tirelessly, being of service.
The psychological underpinning for my continuing sadness over those years was my fear of living in poverty. Fear made me ill. I contracted diverticulitis. Two of my molars fell out and I twice needed a root canal. Underneath or rather, inside my body, my cells were screaming out trying to communicate with me about my emotional and mental worry. Worry, concerns, and anxiety created illnesses. To add insult to my delicate state of mind, in 2016, a certain person was falsely elected to the highest office in the land. I freaked out. Suddenly hope was replaced with anger!
It was during that time that I began a deep dive into who I wanted to be, not who I was for anyone else up until that point. Not the creative, nor the mother, wife, daughter or friend — none of the roles I inhabited captured the total package, the essence of me that needed to shine. They were slivers of a person and in some cases, a person I no longer related to. So I chose to change my thinking about my world and who I was in that world. I shifted big time.
It was a conscious and brutal process of unlearning everything I knew, or thought I knew. The disgorging of layers was hurtful, as I faced demons I knew existed, even those I coaxed out during therapy sessions decades earlier, yet didn’t let go of. Until one day early in 2019, I awoke to find myself grateful for everything in my life, no matter how insignificant it appeared. I practiced saying thank you before going to sleep for what mattered: my life, health, the loving relationship with my son, and friends, having a roof over my head, food to eat, a vehicle and gas to get around, clients and future opportunities.
Once my priorities shifted from worrying about what I didn’t have, I gave in to what I believed in. And that is when fear vanished from my life entirely. Fear no longer played a role in my cellular structure and in the exterior world. I had proven to myself that a) I was a survivor, b) I had enormous strength within, and c) my confidence in a life filled with better days to come would bring me to that world of betterment. And it did!
Wayne Dyer said, “you don’t get what you want in life you get what you are” I am fully equipped to deal with coronavirus because I learned what matters in life is so precious, so tenuous and such a gift: the relationship you sow to yourself. How you plant those seeds, and what you plant them with (the thoughts you think) will determine the outcome. What you focus your energy on is what grows larger in your experience.
For the past month and a half, a dear friend of mine who had Lyme’s disease, Epstein Barr and breast cancer lived with me. I gave her love and attention, space and delicious home-cooked dinners. My purpose was simply to be there for her in her time of need. It gave me such pleasure to help her in the way that I could because time was not on her side. She had to move out once her radiation therapy began as she became a health risk to me. Though heartbroken to leave her in that condition, we both relished the time spent in our bubble together. People might have talked about how dangerous it was for her to live with me. But we never once caved to the bobbleheads or people’s polarity of what is good, evil, right or wrong. We listened to our hearts and followed that north star.
Despite the fear-mongering media, and social media connections who are in a state of urgent panic or rage over all the injustices being laid out before our very eyes, joy is what separates me from them. I carry joy within my heart for a tomorrow I envision. This entire coronavirus experience has influenced me in a glorious and most positive way. I know what is essential to my life and what constitutes happiness. I am not wowed by the outer world as my inner world is rich and percolating with ideas and adventures.
I know that this time, is historically momentous and that we will thrive again. Yet the way in which we do shall shatter the old norms. The inner will become the outer and polarity (including the struggles you may be going through now of mental vs emotional) will diminish. Until you wake up one day in the center of yourself, wholesome, alive and assured of a beautiful tomorrow.
