It’s been a while since my last blog post — mostly because life lately has felt like trying to juggle flaming swords while riding a unicycle… on a trampoline… during a tornado. Between chauffeuring the kids to more sports than the Olympics, keeping the house from collapsing into a laundry-filled abyss, and holding down a full-time job, writing has been somewhere between “next on the list” and “maybe in another lifetime.” When I finally do manage to whittle myself a sliver of free time, do I use it wisely? Of course not. I procrastinate like it’s my full-time job and immediately board some weird train of thought with no destination, conductor, or seatbelt.

This week’s detour? Fear vs. anxiety.

• Fear is that primal, “RUN!” response when you see a bear charging at you — or, more realistically, when your toddler goes silent in the next room. It’s sharp, specific, and immediate.
• Anxiety, on the other hand, is what keeps you awake at 2 a.m. wondering if you accidentally offended someone in a text you sent 4 days ago. It’s vague, lingering, and less “RUN!” and more “spiral quietly while folding laundry.”

When I turned 40, I was pretty sure I was having some sort of cardiac event. Palpitations, tightness in my chest — the whole dramatic WebMD rabbit hole. Naturally, I assumed the worst. ER-worthy stuff.

Turns out… it was just anxiety.

Oh! Cool! Totally fine. Love that for me.

Except it wasn’t the kind of fleeting anxiety I’d experienced before. This one lingered… I found myself in a state of anxiety for a good portion of my day. Day after day.  It crept in like a raccoon in the middle of the night — uninvited, mildly terrifying, and impossible to shoo away. Thank you,Perimenopause, for unlocking bonus levels of emotional chaos I didn’t even know were on the menu.

So here I am, now 40ish, discovering that what I thought was a heart attack was actually just my hormones staging a surprise party for my nervous system. A fun new chapter I like to call “Perimenopause: Now With Bonus Panic!”

Now, I’m a huge advocate of meditating to get this under wrap but I occasionally indulge this doom spiraling with one of my patented Thought Journeys™.

Last week, it started when some neighbors recently hosted a German exchange student. I’ve always found the German language fascinating — especially their talent for mashing entire emotional landscapes into one gloriously long word. Germans don’t just describe a feeling; they engineer it linguistically. So, instead of writing a blog post (*cough* that is three weeks overdue), I “did my own research” and asked Google some of life’s deeper questions, such as:

• Is there a German word for the fear of AI taking all our jobs and then turning on us like they always do in sci-fi movies?
• Is there a German word for that anxious limbo between getting a biopsy and waiting for results?
• Is there a German word for the fear of political polarization causing a civil war and societal collapse?

Spoiler: While the German language has given us beer, sausage, and the deeply satisfying concept of schadenfreude… it hasn’t (yet) given us official terms for these very modern, very specific anxieties.

However, I did stumble upon a beautifully accurate idiom they do use:
Auf glühenden Kohlen sitzen — to sit on glowing coals.

Which, honestly, perfectly sums up what modern adulthood feels like half the time. Just me, sitting on metaphorical hot coals (while experiencing a hot flash), Googling my way through existential dread.

What Thich Nhat Hanh Taught Me About Fear

After my deep (and admittedly unhelpful) dive into German compound words for modern existential panic, it hit me: maybe all this frantic Googling, doom-scrolling, and data-hoarding is just my brain’s way of trying to outrun fear. If I can name it, explain it, or give it a 17-letter German word, maybe I don’t have to feel it.

Which brings me to something a little more helpful I actually did do: I read a book.
(Pause for applause.)

It was Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm by Thich Nhat Hanh, and it completely reframed how I think about fear (or anxiety, or dread, or whatever name it’s going by today). In the book, Thich Nhat Hanh talks about fear not as something to conquer or suppress, but as something to care for — like you would a scared child. He suggests that most of our fear isn’t even about what’s happeningright now, but about what might happen. Sound familiar? (Looking at you, 2 a.m.brain.)

His approach is radically simple:
Fear isn’t the enemy. It’s a messenger.

Instead of slamming the door on it or distracting ourselves into oblivion, he encourages us to turn toward it with curiosity and compassion. Not to becomethe fear, but to gently say, “Hey, I see you. What are you trying to tell me?”

He writes about the practice of mindfulness — especially breath awareness — as a way to stay anchored in the present. Breathing in, I know I’m breathing in. Breathing out, I know I’m breathing out. That’s it. No dramatic rituals. No incense required. Just breathing and being with whatever is showing up.

It sounds almost laughably simple — especially for someone like me who treats anxiety like a puzzle to solve or a threat to prepare for — but that’s what made it feel revolutionary. The goal isn’t to banish fear. It’s to hold it gently, like a younger version of ourselves who’s just overwhelmed and doing their best.

The Little Rituals We Use

Of course, that’s easier said than done.

Everyone has their own avoidance rituals. Mine usually involves calling my best friend, pouring a glass of wine, and exchanging our latest anxious confessions like trading cards. There’s comfort in the mutual unraveling — a strange validation in realizing, “Okay, I’m spiraling… but at least I’m not alone in the spiral.”

And while there’s definitely something healing about being seen and heard, Thich Nhat Hanh gently nudges us in a different direction. He warns against watering the seeds of fear — meaning, the more we talk about, obsess over, or dwell in fear, the more it grows.

Guilty.

Instead, he suggests we can choose to water something else — joy, compassion, mindfulness, humor, or even just the quiet awareness that, in this exact moment, we’re okay.

Not tomorrow. Not next week.
Right now.

And honestly? That’s been a powerful shift. Instead of feeding the fire (or sitting on those metaphorical glowing coals, as the Germans would say), I’m learning to just… sit. Breathe. Notice. Let the fear pass through without letting it set up camp and start redecorating.

Nine Times Out of Ten

Lately, instead of spiraling with my bestie, I’ve been trying something new. Over that same glass of wine, I’ll ask:

“Right now, in this moment—are those fears actually happening?”

Nine times out of ten, the answer is no.

The present moment, as Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us, is free from fear. It’s the only moment that actually exists. And when I let myself land there—even for just a few breaths—fear’s voice gets a lot quieter.

Closing Thought

Anxiety is an attention-hungry little liar. It wants to convince us that its stories are more real than the life we’re living right now. But when we stop feeding it, we begin to see something else:

The quiet truth that in this moment, we are okay.

And for now, that’s enough.