Category: anxiety

From the Blog

anxiety

How to Help your Anxious Child When you Yourself are Anxious

Had you walked past our house earlier last week, say sometime between the hours of around seven and eight a.m., you would have been forgiven for wondering if you were witnessing some sort of suburban crime scene. Beyond the gently tossing heads of flowers that the kids planted with their father, Dr M, only weeks earlier, through the friendly painted blue door, and down the stretch of newly carpeted stairs, came a sound so harrowing it was enough to startle the heavy fronds of the palm trees. Perhaps it was a reenactment of some sort, a rehearsal for a Shakespearean tragedy?

Read More
Amazing Grace

Words for the Overwhelmed

A giant clock fell off our wall the other day. That’s right. You heard me correctly. I was very nearly squashed beneath the weight of time.

There I was, walking down our narrow hallway, the one always scattered with an obstacle course worth of toys, the hallway we continuously play domestic bumper cars in, the one with the school word-lists hanging precariously from the white rental walls with perspiring balls of blu tack (our kids call it ‘glue tack’) when boom! The shabby-chic aqua clock, bought for an irresistible bargain on Gumtree, fell with a thunderous bang from its single nail, narrowly missing my recently broken little toe.

Read More
anxiety

And he saw me

Late one Friday afternoon a couple of weeks ago, we went walking by the Brisbane river. Such a simple sentence, right? I have loved walking since I trailed alongside my dad as a kid on his morning suburban stretches, air infused with birdsong, drenched in fresh, untarnished light. But, in my younger years declaring ‘walking’ as my chosen sport seemed weak and non-declarative. In these later ‘mumming’  years, I’m an aspirational walker. Just leaving the house can require athletic commitment. Due to an interstate move, a new job for Dr M, a new school year, new virus’, new discoveries, not to mention the transplanting of old fragilities in new settings, and a pounding sun, well, I haven’t walked much at all so far in our time here.

Read More
anxiety

In Tears and Tangles: Remember your Anchor Points

It was the final question I put to the Wise Man before he retired. What do I do if/when anxiety comes back? How do I know I can cope? What if? That same question I always walked in holding in my tight fist, was the same question that sat perched with me on the edge of the couch in that last conversation.

Read More
anxiety

Declutter Me: Ambitioning a Quiet Life

‘That’s what we do. We make mess. We’re a messy family.’ Five year old E sums it up with characteristic bare-to-the bone directness as we stand side by side and watch our freshly washed floor endure a new littering of crumbs, toys, unknown sticky substances, and yes… yet more spilled-milk.

Read More
Amazing Grace

Returning to Basics

Autumn has come late to Sydney. An almost-winter purity sidles quietly in amongst the bustle and grit of the inner-city suburbs. And even as the air crispens to cold nights, the days continue to be lit by a wealth of golden sunlight I’m sure we rarely appreciate as we should.  We read about leaves —my newly minted homeschooling daughter and I —and how the reds and yellows that come out to dance at this time in the Southern hemisphere are the tree’s real heart colour hidden the rest of the year.

Read More
anxiety

Choices

We made a decision this week. Parents have to do that. Make decisions. From the moment your child breaks forth into the world, with wails and flails and celebration, you are looking up information, filling out forms, viewing everything through over-alert, keen-to-do-right,  protective parent eyes. Even before your little person or people arrive you begin the process. I know I read whole slabs of literature on birth options, and I’m not even that zealous on this point. I have friends who probably could be awarded honorary doctorates for their commitment to making the ‘right choice’ in this area.

Read More
Amazing Grace

My Fear and I, Up in the Sky

If weeks had theme songs, and those theme songs had catchy choruses, this week’s song might be called something like ‘Looking Up’, the chorus, ‘Are we going on the plane today?! Today, today, up up away.’

Read More
anxiety

Courage in her pocket

It began as a secret. A small, quiet act of defiance to carry her through the day. As she walked (tarried, resisted) out the door to go to school she would feel for the little zip in the side of her school dress. She’d pull, frustrated, as it stuck, and then, just as it seemed we were all in for a hard morning, the zip would release, and our eldest daughter would calm as she set about her self-made act of survival: stowing away chosen items in her pocket that reminded her of home.

Read More
anxiety

How to Help your Anxious Child When you Yourself are Anxious

Had you walked past our house earlier last week, say sometime between the hours of around seven and eight a.m., you would have been forgiven for wondering if you were witnessing some sort of suburban crime scene. Beyond the gently tossing heads of flowers that the kids planted with their father, Dr M, only weeks earlier, through the friendly painted blue door, and down the stretch of newly carpeted stairs, came a sound so harrowing it was enough to startle the heavy fronds of the palm trees. Perhaps it was a reenactment of some sort, a rehearsal for a Shakespearean tragedy?

Read More
anxiety

Dear Anxious World

Dear Anxious World, Firstly, I want to ask you how you are doing? And to let you know I’m not expecting an easy answer.  Clearly,

Read More
Amazing Grace

Words for the Overwhelmed

A giant clock fell off our wall the other day. That’s right. You heard me correctly. I was very nearly squashed beneath the weight of time.

There I was, walking down our narrow hallway, the one always scattered with an obstacle course worth of toys, the hallway we continuously play domestic bumper cars in, the one with the school word-lists hanging precariously from the white rental walls with perspiring balls of blu tack (our kids call it ‘glue tack’) when boom! The shabby-chic aqua clock, bought for an irresistible bargain on Gumtree, fell with a thunderous bang from its single nail, narrowly missing my recently broken little toe.

Read More
anxiety

And he saw me

Late one Friday afternoon a couple of weeks ago, we went walking by the Brisbane river. Such a simple sentence, right? I have loved walking since I trailed alongside my dad as a kid on his morning suburban stretches, air infused with birdsong, drenched in fresh, untarnished light. But, in my younger years declaring ‘walking’ as my chosen sport seemed weak and non-declarative. In these later ‘mumming’  years, I’m an aspirational walker. Just leaving the house can require athletic commitment. Due to an interstate move, a new job for Dr M, a new school year, new virus’, new discoveries, not to mention the transplanting of old fragilities in new settings, and a pounding sun, well, I haven’t walked much at all so far in our time here.

Read More
anxiety

In Tears and Tangles: Remember your Anchor Points

It was the final question I put to the Wise Man before he retired. What do I do if/when anxiety comes back? How do I know I can cope? What if? That same question I always walked in holding in my tight fist, was the same question that sat perched with me on the edge of the couch in that last conversation.

Read More
anxiety

Declutter Me: Ambitioning a Quiet Life

‘That’s what we do. We make mess. We’re a messy family.’ Five year old E sums it up with characteristic bare-to-the bone directness as we stand side by side and watch our freshly washed floor endure a new littering of crumbs, toys, unknown sticky substances, and yes… yet more spilled-milk.

Read More
Amazing Grace

Returning to Basics

Autumn has come late to Sydney. An almost-winter purity sidles quietly in amongst the bustle and grit of the inner-city suburbs. And even as the air crispens to cold nights, the days continue to be lit by a wealth of golden sunlight I’m sure we rarely appreciate as we should.  We read about leaves —my newly minted homeschooling daughter and I —and how the reds and yellows that come out to dance at this time in the Southern hemisphere are the tree’s real heart colour hidden the rest of the year.

Read More
anxiety

Choices

We made a decision this week. Parents have to do that. Make decisions. From the moment your child breaks forth into the world, with wails and flails and celebration, you are looking up information, filling out forms, viewing everything through over-alert, keen-to-do-right,  protective parent eyes. Even before your little person or people arrive you begin the process. I know I read whole slabs of literature on birth options, and I’m not even that zealous on this point. I have friends who probably could be awarded honorary doctorates for their commitment to making the ‘right choice’ in this area.

Read More
Amazing Grace

My Fear and I, Up in the Sky

If weeks had theme songs, and those theme songs had catchy choruses, this week’s song might be called something like ‘Looking Up’, the chorus, ‘Are we going on the plane today?! Today, today, up up away.’

Read More
anxiety

Courage in her pocket

It began as a secret. A small, quiet act of defiance to carry her through the day. As she walked (tarried, resisted) out the door to go to school she would feel for the little zip in the side of her school dress. She’d pull, frustrated, as it stuck, and then, just as it seemed we were all in for a hard morning, the zip would release, and our eldest daughter would calm as she set about her self-made act of survival: stowing away chosen items in her pocket that reminded her of home.

Read More