Morning sunshine spills through the windows, and the air is filled with the smells of coffee brewing and cornbread cooking. On the radio tucked into a corner on the counter, the DJ gives the local temperature and then a favorite 80s tune comes on.
Standing in the kitchen on this chilly February morning, I have a rare moment of feeling peaceful, cozy, calm. A rare moment of feeling optimistic about the day ahead and life in general.
I listen to the music as I tend to the task in front of me. For the past few years, the way I make cornbread is by cooking it in a skillet on the stovetop, and I flip the rounds the way I do pancakes.
When they’re done, I choose one, top it with melted butter, and enjoy my piece of cornbread with a hot cup of coffee.
I don’t know what challenges the day will bring or what is ahead. I don’t know if my husband will feel good, if I’ll handle things well, if anxiety and fear will take over.
For now, though, I’m not focused on any of that. I’m able to be in the present moment, this moment of calm.
I started writing this post the first week in January. I got only three paragraphs into it and then paused, intending to come back and finish in a few days – but then more “life stuff” happened, and I put this post and my blog aside, even though everything going on exactly fit what I had started to say. So I’ve decided to simply pick back up and continue…
I must admit to having mixed feelings about the new year.
On one hand, I’m glad to see 2025 come to a close. It held a lot of anxiety for me, I wasn’t nearly as productive as I wanted to be, and the last month a half brought unwanted and scary changes to life because of my husband’s recent health challenges.
On the other hand, I’m not exactly looking forward to 2026 because I don’t have much optimism that it will be a better year. Actually, I’m afraid it will be even worse.
And this is where I stopped back in January, and now I’m here in February to finish the post. When I wrote the opening paragraphs, we had been dealing since mid-November with my husband’s heart tests and his stroke and the changes to our lives. The past few weeks have brought more challenges, including a pacemaker for my husband and seemingly ever-increasing anxiety for me.
Since mid-November, it’s been an intense time. Overwhelm, fear, anxiety, stress, grief, changes in routine, doctor visits, tests, procedures, adaptations, the busy-ness of countless phone calls and forms for doctor/health/medical/insurance stuff.
I’ve been doing the stress-reducing things that usually help. Prayer and spending time with Jesus, breathing techniques, brain retraining and neural rewiring exercises, meditation, music, talks with friends, reading cozy fiction, tapping, painting, watching comfort TV, and more.
I haven’t done all of these as consistently as I could have (even my usual-daily painting got skipped at times) because, to be honest, sometimes simply existing and getting through the day took all my energy when the fear and anxiety consumed all my energy. And even though I have taken a few walks and had some porch-sittin’ time, the weather definitely limited how often I ventured out in the cold.
And as for writing? I’ve barely done any. I worked on fiction exactly twice this past month, and today is the first day I’ve tried to write here on the blog. I simply haven’t been able to get beyond the anxiety and fear and overwhelm enough to focus my mind to put words on paper or screen. Writing means being in my head in a way painting does not – and I think that’s at least one reason I can paint (usually) even when I’m highly anxious, but it’s so hard for me to write when in that state.
When I first started writing this post in early January, I had intended to set a new writing goal for myself. A simple goal, one that felt easy and doable even with all of the difficult and scary life-stuff happening in our home since mid-November.
Just write for one minute every day.
That’s it. That was the goal I planned to set for my writing as the new year started. One minute, but daily. I thought it would help me get back into some sort of consistent groove without feeling overwhelming.
But I wasn’t able to do even one minute a day these past weeks.
So I’m not going to give myself that goal after all. I’m not going to give myself any writing goal right now except for this one:
I’m going to stay connected to my identity as a writer.
What that looks like will be different on different days. Some days I’ll write, even if it’s only for one minute or one sentence. Some days I’ll read something from a writing-related book to get some inspiration and remind me of my writing life. Some days I might simply look at this caricature of myself from ChatGPT.
It’s important to me to stay connected with my writing. But I’m not sure how much I can actually write during this time, and I’m not going to force myself. When I can get over the hump of getting started even when I’m feeling scared and anxious, writing is wonderfully nourishing for me. Writing helps me. Writing connects me to my core self.
So I’m going to do my best to deal with the stress and anxiety and overwhelm enough to write at least somewhat regularly, even for brief bits. But if I can’t, I’m not going to beat myself up about it.
There are more tests, more doctor visits, more of who-knows-what ahead in my husband’s health journey. Our life is different now than it was before mid-November, and more changes will come. All of this is hugely triggering for my severe anxiety. And all of this is hard for both of us.
I’m doing the best I can to handle all the things I need to handle, even though it feels like I fall short so much of the time. I’m doing the best I can to help my husband. I’m doing the best I can to deal with the stress and anxiety and overwhelm.
And I’m also trying to do my best at giving myself grace.
High anxiety has been part of my life for a very long time, and some days are worse than others. And sometimes, those high-anxiety days turn into high-anxiety weeks (or longer). That’s the way it’s felt recently.
There are tools I keep in my metaphorical toolkit for calming and de-stressing. These are things that have proven to be helpful for me over the years, things I turn to time and time again. Things like breathing exercises, prayer, painting, taking walks, tapping, aromatherapy, brain retraining, porch sittin’, watching comfort tv, meditating, and other tools and techniques for quieting an anxious nervous system.
But I’m going to be honest. When my fear is stuck in high gear, the tools don’t always seem to work.
When that happens, I’ve found that it’s best to layer tools. I need to do a combination of different things, and sometimes I have to experiment to find which combination will work on a particular day. And sometimes I have to do this in an off-and-on sort of way because the effects might not last long.
And I’m going to be honest again. If the anxiety is super high, the effects might not only be temporary for me, the effects also might be quite limited when it comes to how calm and less anxious I feel.
But I consider any reduction in the high anxiety to be a positive step.
Do you have a metaphorical anxiety toolkit of techniques you can turn to when feeling stressed, anxious, or overwhelmed? It’s worth it to have one and use it…and if it seems like the tools aren’t working, try layering them.
Ginger Simpson White 