The Amygdala

I wanted to turn to something more elemental this week. Which is that we are biologically programmed to feel fear. Isn’t that wild? And it’s not a bad thing.

The amygdala is a small, almond-shaped structure located in the temporal lobes of the brain. It plays a key role in processing and regulating emotions, especially fear.

The amygdala is made up of several nuclei, each with its own unique functions and connections to other parts of the brain. One of the primary functions of the amygdala is to process and interpret sensory information, such as what we hear, see, and smell, and determine whether they are threatening or not.

When the amygdala detects a potential threat, it activates the body’s “fight or flight” response, which triggers a rollout of physiological changes designed to help us respond to danger. This response is biologically engrained and it’s essential for our survival, to protect ourselves from danger.

However, it doesn’t always get triggered by actual danger. Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night because of a strange sound? Your heart rate and breathing increase, your pupils dilate, and your muscles tense up, all in preparation to defend yourself if needed. That’s your amygdala at work – getting you ready. Only you find out it was just the heat turning on and you soothe yourself back to sleep.

When the amygdala is triggered by non-threatening stimuli, such as social cues or past traumatic experiences, it leads to excessive or inappropriate fear and anxiety. This can majorly influence how we experience conversations or circumstances and plays a key role in social behavior and interpersonal relationships.

I believe learning to regulate and manage the activity of the amygdala is an essential life skill. It’s said that one of the most effective methods is cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), which helps individuals identify and challenge negative thoughts and beliefs that may be triggering the amygdala and to develop new coping strategies.

I’ve personally worked with CBT for years to help me manage my diagnosed OCD, and it’s had a tremendous impact on me. In case you don’t know, OCD is connected to fear because it is often characterized by persistent, intrusive thoughts or images that lead to anxiety (fear) and trigger compulsive behaviors aimed at reducing that anxiety. With CBT you can start to get a handle on that and interrupt the intrusive thought-anxiety-compulsion pattern.

Somatic therapy is also incredibly powerful to help us recognize when we’re triggered and then explore and heal that connection as much as we can.

Mindfulness meditation, which involves focusing on the present moment without judgment, has also been shown to reduce amygdala activation and improve emotional regulation. I’ve been a more intermittent meditator than a regular practitioner but I’m keen to catch that train too.

It seems clear that the more we understand our amygdala the more we can understand fear as natural and just a part of experience. And the more able we’ll be, in most circumstances, to allow that fear to rip through our body and not take direct action on it because it’s not warranted at the moment.

On a Film Tour for The Year of the Dog Movie

When we checked into the hotel in Spokane WA, the lady at the front desk said, “this was our last room” almost apologetically. However, our room, it turns out, had a quote on the wall from A River Runs Through It – which was filmed in Montana and features a church that Rob’s great grandfather helped build and that is also in Rob’s movie The Year of the Dog. What?!

Magical moments like this keep happening on this journey we’ve been on for his beautiful film. He wrote, produced, acted in, and co-directed the movie and it’s in the midst of a theatrical release. We’ve been hopping from state to state and time zone to time zone to join audiences from Canada to Montana to Sedona Arizona and then South Carolina and now Washington State.

The film is a beautifully acted and skillfully written story about a recovering alcoholic finding connection with a stray dog. And I’ve witnessed some incredibly moving moments where drug and alcohol counselors and courageous people in recovery have come up to Rob after the movie and been so moved to see the realistic portrayal of the struggle on screen.

It’s inspiring to see the alchemy of empathy at work. And an excellent reminder to me about why we create in the first place.

Yesterday our car had a mild mechanical situation and we drove off the Interstate into Snoqualmie for a repair. The mechanical shop looked closed but I called out “hello?” And someone was there. He came and helped us and turns out he’s also a screenwriter and has written 5 screenplays and is not sure how to get his writing connected with people who will produce it. He shared a script plot he had with us that was interesting. He seems like a kind soul with a creative mind. Rob and he exchanged info and it felt like another one of these magical moments.

I’m thinking about how connected we all are. How brave it is to write and produce our own work. Wherever we are and whatever we do with our time. To dare to create even when Hollywood isn’t knocking down your door. To witness the other doors that exist around us and to declare what we want for our art and then make it happen.

I’m prepping for a staged reading of my new feature-length documentary play Primordial happening next week. I cannot tell you how excited I am to share it with a limited audience for the first time.

More about the reading soon…

For now, as I get ready to fly back to NYC, I’m feeling really really proud of Rob and very very inspired. Grateful to be experiencing this daring creative ride alongside him.

NOPE

I just finished watching NOPE a science fiction horror film by Jordan Peele. I don’t normally watch horror films but I loved Peele’s Get Out and so I was excited to watch NOPE. Woah, was it good!

It follows a brother and sister who discover something frightening living in the skies above their California horse ranch. It swoops down from the clouds at the same time every day.

They go through various stages of reckoning with the situation.

First, they’re scared cause it’s really weird. Then they get excited – especially Keke Palmer’s character who sees it as an opportunity to capture the phenomenon on camera and possibly make a lot of money. She calls up a famous filmmaker to gauge his interest, but he brushes them off. Daniel Kaluuya’s character is more resistant to the idea anyway and wants them to just stay safe – which makes complete sense cause in the first scene of the movie he witnesses their father being killed by the excrement of this sky beast.

Giving a spoiler alert warning here! There’s a subplot involving an entrepreneurial guy who seems to own an amusement-type park in this mid-west town. He witnessed an incredibly traumatic event as a child actor – an on-set monkey actor murdered a whole cast of people right in front of him. For some reason the monkey spared him and it’s given him a belief that he’s chosen or special.

He tries to make money off almost everything and so it’s no surprise that he tries to make this alien-in-the-sky’s daily appearances into a sideshow of sorts. He thinks he’s immune from harm, or he has a death wish of some kind, but (spoiler alert) he is not spared from this beast’s feast and neither are his 40 guests.

Then Palmer and Kaluuya’s characters get a call from that filmmaker who now wants to capture this phenomenon after hearing about the 40+ people’s disappearance. Game on!

They get a few different cameras ready and set up, and they seem to get some amazing footage of the beast consuming a TMZ reporter – hah. But as their film shoot goes on – and the beast gets closer and closer to eating each one of them, the life and death struggle they’re engaged in overshadows any attempts at cinema.

I kept having this dizzying experience watching the film. I was in awe of the special effects that created this alien monster, admiring it even as I was terrified of it. (They have a particularly disturbing scene of what it looks like when you get eaten by the thing.) I was in awe of the thing, and so I also wanted the characters in the movie I was watching to get a great shot of this incredible monster for their movie. Hoping they’d capture it to share with other people. While also simultaneously not wanting them to die. And also realizing that I was watching a movie and the beast wasn’t even real. It was a trip.

If I’m searching for a deeper meaning in all of this I would say, real life is pretty freaky and the grit and effort required to face our fears, survive and do something of consequence is so great, and all this capturing of it for social media and movies is not the point. As evidenced by the TMZ reporter losing his life in the film because he’s more concerned with getting a photo than being saved.

Yet we continue to write, make movies, and tell stories like Peele has done here because it’s entertaining and unifying and we crave that as a species. Something the aliens may not ever understand. 😉

Viola Davis & Jennifer Lawrence on Fear

“I’m always terrified, let me just say that.” – Viola Davis

I’ve been watching Variety’s ‘Actors on Actors’ interview with Viola Davis and Jennifer Lawrence from this past December, and I was excited by a few minutes of a very frank conversation they had about fear.

They’re both such powerhouses in the industry and often play strong women who literally kick ass in their acting roles. But in this interview, Viola models the power of vulnerability as she begins a frank conversation about fear with Jennifer. I’m including the interview below, beginning at the moment the fear conversation really kicks off.

It’s a revealing exchange about how fear impacts a creative career.

Fear & Art

In spite of all their experience and accolades, Viola and Jennifer feel fear during those days and moments before the first ‘action’ is called on set or when a director comes up to give them notes.

Viola also talks about how she feels ‘the scrutiny’ when she’s on set. She feels pressure and asks herself if she should try and live up to other people’s hype about her. When she actually feels like she doesn’t know what she’s doing and feels the same as everyone else on set.

Artists who are established feel pressure to perform to a certain level again and again, while artists who aren’t yet established often feel pressure to prove themselves.

That pressure isn’t an inherent part of the actual creative process though. It’s kind of a byproduct of pursuing creativity as a profession. But do we also have an innate human need to feel that the art we’re sharing is accepted and approved of by other people?

What happens if we don’t care about that? Is it even possible to genuinely not care? Let’s assume it isn’t possible, that we’ll always be a little afraid of how our art might be perceived.

It really doesn’t need to practically influence anything other than our lived experience in a moment. We feel the emotion of fear, and then we still create.

I recently heard the famous writer Elizabeth Gilbert say in an interview that it’s not her responsibility to make sure the books she writes are ‘good’. She’s just going to write them. What a cool way to relate to our art.

Fear & Age

In the interview, Jennifer also talks about how she was less afraid when she was younger, and how it changes as she gets older.

She used to train wild horses in Kentucky. Jump up and go for it. Then a few years ago she jumped on a horse, thinking nothing of it, and moments later froze in fear and fell off. She was suddenly so aware of how dangerous it was, and how hurt she could get, and that wasn’t something she’d considered when she was younger.

When we get older, but also as we experience more, no matter what age we are, we realize how much pain and potential for hurt there is.

We learn so much from our environment, from what has happened to us, and from what we’ve seen. It can change the way we orient to the world, and increase our sense of fear or caution. We begin to manage fear with whatever coping mechanism we have adapted, fight/freeze/flight/fawn. This is why therapy is so powerful, so we can bring greater emotional intelligence to our choices in moments of fear.

I believe that the more awareness you have of fear, the greater your capacity to be brave. Cause fearlessness is not the same thing as bravery, it might mean you don’t know there’s anything to be afraid of, to begin with.

I don’t want to be fearless – I want to feel the grit of fear and then take action anyway.

Bravery & Art

Viola asks Jennifer, when they have producers on set with opinions, etc… the pressures of being ‘the cog in the machine’ as Jennifer says, how can they stay true to the bold acting choice they made in preparation. Especially when that important creative choice is made to share the truth of the character they’re playing. Knowing that compromise on that may affect the impact of the performance…

“How do you, as an actor, have the bravery of your choices so that when people come into the theater, they feel less alone.”

I love that thought, that the bravery of our choices isn’t even for us alone. There’s something bigger than that individual fear we feel, and that’s the people we seek to connect with, communicate with, and affect with our art.

It’s about being brave enough to create and commit to genuine artistic choices no matter our fear, no matter the pressure, so that someone who is feeling isolated in their life, can feel seen through art, and maybe even heal just a little bit.

Do You Know Who Is Living Inside You?

Taking care of our inner emotional landscape is our responsibility and ain’t no one going to save us otherwise. That realization and the decision to commit to turning inward with care is intimidating.

I’m discovering it’s also SO FREEING and EXCITING. 

I’ve been in somatic therapy for a year now and it’s a game-changer. Basically, it’s a form of therapy that focuses on what our body is telling us. Listening and moving through stored emotion so that we can release ourselves from the fight, freeze, fight cycle. Then we can think more clearly in all situations, even stressful ones, and more fully engage with our lives. 

I’ve also been learning about my inner child: the angry child, the vulnerable child, then there’s the punitive adult – there’s a whole family of versions of our emotional lives, living inside of us. 

Not literally, of course. But everything we as children have experienced, all the insecurities and hurts and joys still impact how we relate to the world today. And it’s now the responsibility of our fully capable healthy adult self to parent those younger versions of ourselves. Paving the way for us to relate to our lives in a more clear-headed way. 

Why is something so clearly beneficial also kind of scary? Why is the prospect of caring for our emotional, physical, psychological, and mental health intimidating sometimes? 

So many reasons…

  • It’s ‘easier’ to just react from where we are at the moment
  • Therapy can be expensive – This factor is a systemic crisis in my opinion. Some therapists have a sliding scale rate for people with lower incomes, and it’s worth asking to see if they do. 
  • It’s ‘easier’ to just have someone else take care of our emotional needs (friends, partners, family)
  • We have so many available avenues to numb out instead (tv, drugs, alcohol) 
  • Mental health is still stigmatized in many communities and choosing to focus on it can make you feel judged

In spite of these many valid demotivators, if you haven’t already, I urge you to find the bravery and resourcefulness to embark on your mental health journey. It just might be the single greatest gift you could ever give yourself and those around you. 

My relationship with the world and how I relate to other people has been shifting since starting this work. Because my relationship with myself is shifting. 

I’m listening to Lillian, asking her what she wants to say, how she feels, and what’s going on inside. She is my most important, longest-lasting, and dedicated relationship – and I owe her all the love in the world. 

I hope you’re loving YOU.

Happy New Year!!

I Admit It, Fear is Still Scary…

On February 7th, 2022 an email arrived in my inbox from the NY Times titled, “I Admit It, I’m In Love with Fear” – it excited me and freaked me out. The NY Times was writing about FEAR! Ahhh! I wanted to read it and somehow I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Now I’m here writing, 1.5 months later, and I still haven’t read it. Not only did I not read it, but I also avoided writing a blog entry on my Facing Fear blog for exactly the same amount of time. What the fuck happened?

Allow me to explore, and as you are my witness I will have also read that NY Times article by the end of writing this. I believe the trajectory of my thoughts went something like this…

  • Oh shit! I LOVE that the NY Times is writing about fear.
  • I’ve gotta read this!
  • Did I miss the boat on becoming part of a larger conversation?
  • Why am I not writing about fear for the NY Times?
  • Who did write about fear for the NY Times?
  • Am I a failure for not being published in the NY Times?

Yeah, something like that. I had a lot of FEAR come up around not being exactly where I thought I should be and then I froze and avoided tapping into the conversation from exactly where I am. Thing is, I’m still wildly curious about what the article had to say… gimme a metaphorical five minutes while I go check out that article real quick. Thoughts to follow…

Well, what do you know? It was actually a series of articles based on three dozen interviews the NY Times did with Olympians competing in the Beijing Olympics this winter. I read a few of them and watched some of the excerpted interviews – and I HIGHLY recommend checking them out when you get a moment if you haven’t already. It was incredibly interesting to learn how these extreme athletes engage with fear. Freeskier Eileen Gu for example says,

 “Fear” is really an umbrella term for three distinct sensations: excitement, uncertainty, and pressure… Instead of ignoring fear, we build unique relationships with it by developing a profound sense of self-awareness and making deliberate risk assessments.”

Then there’s Millie Knight a Paralympic skier who has lost 95% of her sight – read: she’s skiing at 70 miles per hour with only 5% of her sight! Holy shit. It was incredible to read her story. Funny thing is, last weekend I went skiing for the very first time in my life. And only reading about Millie’s experience today, I was able to more fully appreciate how scary it is that she skis with only 5% of her sight, knowing how terrified I was doing it with most of my sight fully intact! The NY Times article has an interactive visual to show you what it’s like for Millie visually when she’s skiing for reference – and GULP she is VERY VERY BRAVE.

Swipe to check out the video below for footage of me on the slopes for the first time ever.

I’m going to break down my fear experience in relation to this NY Times article using freeskier Eileen Gu’s description of fear in the article…

  • First I got excited reading the article headline in my inbox, “I Admit It, I’m In Love With Fear”.
  • Then I felt uncertain how I’d feel after reading the article and whether or not I was in the place I should be in life.
  • Finally, I felt pressure to be someplace I’m not – creating an invisible external competitor when I was actually probably just visualizing where I want to go in the future.
  • As a result of avoiding reading the article and writing in my blog, then reflecting on it, I’ve developed a greater sense of self-awareness that I can apply to future such situations.
  • Next time, I can do a risk assessment and remember that by the end of this fear cycle I felt inspired and motivated to continue on my journey with facing fear.

In conclusion, it’s cool that I experienced fear, how I reacted to it is completely fine, and now that I’ve moved through the experience I feel more confident in myself. Let’s gooooo!

It’s March 2022 – and officially Spring now – have you pushed through fear recently this year? Pop a comment down below and let me know.

Thoughts on Fear

These past couple of weeks I’ve been musing about fear in a different way. It’s a singular word but there’s so much meaning in it. You can be afraid of so many different things and to varying degrees.

A quick google search of ‘what is the true meaning of fear?’ defines fear as…
1a) an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger. 1b) an instance of this emotion.
2a) a state marked by this emotion. 2b) anxious concern: solicitude.
3) profound reverence and awe especially toward God.

Isn’t that interesting? Playing with those words, to understand fear more deeply, I’ll shape a poem.

On Fear
Often strong
unpleasant
anticipating and aware
all in an instance
solicitude manifest – a caring
something of profound reverence
moving toward
an awe of God

So, fear, huh? Pretty damn special and powerful. Let’s go, 2022. Let’s see what FEAR brings and reveals, how it directs and strengthens.

I have a feeling that leaning into fear – directly experiencing it and not numbing out – making choices and moving forward through it, is what LIVING is all about.

New Years 2022 = First Time Stitches

I spent the first two hours of 2022 in an emergency room getting stitches on my toe. It was my first time ever needing stitches and my first time ever being treated for something in a hospital. Warning – some mildly graphic toe imagery follows.

Basically, here’s what went down. It was 2 minutes till midnight on New Years Eve in Montana, and I was walking through a dark hallway. There was a broken frame and a huge glass cover sitting in the hallway and as I rounded the corner I accidentally carved my index toe on the glass!

I initially thought I had just stubbed it bad, but after turning the light on I realized nope I have in fact sliced my toe a bit. It was more bloody than painful, and there was a bit of skin flap situation going on. It was unclear how deep and close to the bone it got. My boyfriend came over and immediately was in damage control mode – helping me stop the bleeding. I’m incredibly grateful that he was so supportive cause I was pretty rapidly going into a mild state of shock.

The way my body systemically reacted to the situation surprised me. I got extremely anxious and started to feel the beginnings of a panic attack. Then I threw up and felt better although was now pretty embarrassed. I would have thought cause I’m a woman and see blood monthly I would be less squeamish… but there we go.

Meanwhile, my boyfriend was on it (again) and made the call that a hospital would be best cause no Urgent Care was open and my toe had a deep enough cut that it was better to be safe and get it cared for professionally. Surprisingly, my toe really didn’t hurt that much. We wrapped my toe up in a bandaid and a clean sock and I wore a pair of his shoes since my toe couldn’t fit into my own without further damaging it. He drove me to the nearest hospital and since there was literally no other patient in the waiting area I got seen immediately. I’m super grateful for that and it occurred to me that if this had happened in NYC I would have likely needed to wait quite a bit longer.

They irrigated my toe – basically flushing it out with water. Then the doc came in checked it out and recommended stitches. The anesthetic was more painful than the actual stitches – which means it did its job well. I avoided looking at the procedure while it happened for the most part cause I was worried I was gonna be sick again.

After leaving the hospital I kept the toe clean and regularly applied a topical antibiotic ointment. 10 days later it was time to remove the stitches. You can opt to have a doctor or Urgent Care help you take it out – but the ER doc had assured me you can do it yourself too. I opted to do it myself cause it would be less expensive… But it was a freaky experience involving a tweezer, scissors, a lot of patience, and a little bit of nausea. I freaking did it though. And it’s healing up really well.

Learned quite a few lessons from this one but most importantly that THE BODY IS AMAZING. Seriously the way it can heal is nothing short of miraculous. We just need to give it a fighting chance.

Check out my IG for some footage of me removing the stitches from my toe… if you’re curious. But totally understand if you’d rather pass ;-).

Facing a Fear of Flying

I used to be scared of flying on an airplane. For both reasonable and entirely illogical grounds.

It started after September 11, 2001 – after the horrific terrorist attack on 9/11. I grew up in the Bronx in NYC and we could see the Twin Towers burning from our middle school’s hallway window. I remember our class had just come back up from the gym and we took turns peering out the tiny window at the smoke billowing out of our city’s skyline.

We filed into the classroom and our teacher had us pull our chairs semi-circle around a radio. It was a surreal break in our middle school routine as we sat huddled listening to the horrific news – planes had crashed into the Twin Towers. The school PA system kept coming on every 5 minutes calling students to come down to the office as parents came to rescue their kids from a horrifying new reality in droves.

For obvious reasons, what happened on 9/11 terrified me and I fundamentally didn’t trust air travel from that point on. While that early collective trauma we all went through was the start of that fear for me, here are some of other (somewhat illogical) reasons flying makes me nervous:

  1. We need to trust a complete stranger to get us through the sky to our destination safely. THANK YOU PILOTS, YOU ROCK. I find it hard to acknowledge that I’m in fact not in control – and I’m truly truly not in control on a plane – nor would I want to be in control of flying a plane, EVER.
  2. An accident in a plane while WAY less likely than in a car is 100% going to be a more deadly affair. I realize that the stats are against me on this one happening. THANK GOD. Still freaks me out.

Up until quite recently I just dealt with that fear and took flights when I needed to.

Here’s the thing, I used to maybe fly once or twice a year MAX, but I’ve recently started traveling a lot more than I used to. In the last 3 months, I’ve flown 7 round-trip flights! The increased travel is for a combination of reasons – both personal and professional and it’s been a whirlwind. Initially, this increased travel also caused me increased stress. It’s historically been one of the scarier things for me to do, and gradually gradually I can feel this shifting.

Tonight I’m flying back from visiting my boyfriend in Montana and I’m literally writing this blog entry in an airport as I wait for a connecting flight to NYC. And later this month I’m flying out to Oregon to attend a film festival where my film is screening and won an award! So much plane travel.

Here’s the REAL KICKER – I’m starting to actually ENJOY it – WHAT?!?!?!?!

The sheer frequency of travel has lowered my fear of flying. To the point where I’m writing about my plane fear rather than just sitting in it. In the past, I would have probably just been praying right about now as I waited to board my plane. Meh who am I kidding, I’m probably gonna pray soon as I finish writing this but my fear has truly lessened. Mostly because I’m realizing it doesn’t do anything. When something becomes more routine it feels like you don’t have the patience to indulge fear… feel it sure, but not indulge it.

On the way out here to my connecting airport layover – my initial flight had a freaky moment. The plane was rocking – no other way to describe it – back and forth. And we even had a moment where the plane kind of tilted a bit. Freaky shit! And then the pilot didn’t even hop on the intercom to give us a little ‘well, that was a little bit of turbulence, folks and we’re cruising’ note nada. Which was even more freaky. I was spooked but happy to report that the rest of the flight went super smooth.

. . .

Okay – I just boarded my second flight, and I’m typing in my seat as I wait for takeoff. There’s a kind of excitement that comes along with this part of the journey. The bustle of the plane getting ready. It’s amusing to observe people finding their seats and settling in. As we get closer to it tonight, I’m realizing I even sometimes get a bit of a thrill when we take off. Which used to be the most terrifying part of the whole journey for me.

Now it feels more like an epic start to an adventure. We are literally launching into a higher altitude – elevating our existence with our heads amongst the clouds for a while. I’m realizing it can provide an epic reset on overall life perspective too.

And as our pilot just announced on this flight I’m on right now, it’s a clear night and the view as we land in NYC should be beautiful. And that doesn’t hurt.
. . .

Time for take-off.

A Roadmap for the New Year

I’m sitting in a warm cafe in a wintry Montana, sipping coffee and writing my first personal blog entry in two years. I was gonna sit down and work on my new play Primordial and I just got hit with an urge to do this first. January’s got a special kind of encouraging magic to it, right? I love how the start of the year offers up a moment for us to reset mentally and clean-slate it.

My New Year reset always includes taking a moment, just before midnight on the 31st, to write out resolutions. They’re geared towards things I actually want to do and are not about restricting current habitual behavior. I think of my resolutions as a roadmap to remind me of what’s internally important.

One of my biggest goals for 2022 is to get a production agreement signed and a production scheduled for my new theatre play Primordial. It’s my second full-length documentary (interview-based) theatre play, all about pregnancy and childbirth. I interviewed 44 different people about their experiences and then I turned about 1000 pages of interview transcripts into a 50-page play.

It’s been a powerfully illuminating experience for me and I’m incredibly excited to share the play with the world. I’m finishing up my fourth draft of the play this month (or this week?!), weaving in a couple more perspectives and feeling through the ending and where it wants to go.

Creating this play has very much felt like standing on the precipice of a great mountain absorbing a breathtaking view and then trying to capture it. I have a sense of anticipatory frustration almost. The topic is so grand and historical and there are so many vantage points you can approach it from. Can I do this justice? Can I get what it wants to be down on the page? The truth is, I can’t not do it. My heart and my soul demand I finish it and get it out into the world.

I LOVE IT when I feel that inner sense of urgency and drive. When I don’t feel like I have a choice. It’s in motion and I’m committed to it no matter how scary it gets.

I started this blog in 2016 – which is bonkers. I haven’t regularly written in here over the years but I want to really go for that this year. All these years later I’m still facing fear, and I will until the day I die. It’s a choice I’m making to do that. Again, I can’t fucking help it.

While this blog is still about my journey facing fear, I’m hit with the realization, this January of 2022, that it’s also about commitment. Speaking of, I’m gonna commit to a weekly entry on here this year and see where that takes me.

The Universe says: you want it? Great. Just commit to it and you can have it. No matter how scared ya are.

Happy New Year, friends.

Cheers,
Lillian

ps: I’m realizing I accidentally just drank a caffeinated coffee instead of my regular decaf. Whoops. Time to go drink some water. Helloooo 2022.