This Too Shall Pass

I do stress and anxiety fairly well. For me it is a full body feeling, head first, then lungs and limbs. I’ve had lots of practice. One thing I know for sure, just like Abraham Lincoln, is "This too shall pass". If stressed, I may play loud music and dance around or go to bed with a good book or drink a cup of peppermint tea. Most often I grab a leash and walk it off with a little dog named Hope, walking where she wants to go at what I like to call the speed of Hope. Hope knows all the good places: the woods, the watershed and the foot paths middle school children use on the edges of the housing developments surrounding us in this dispersed Pacific Northwest neighborhood.

Getting out and moving around frees my body and lifts my spirit. Music does too, especially movement to music and to John Prine in particular. Our song, my husband’s and mine, is In Spite Of Ourselves. Gardening helps, seasonally: weeding, cutting back blackberries, preparing a new spot of earth.

I have 79 years of practice behind me. I it takes practice to carry the stresses and anxieties of life in these times and so I walk, enjoy nature, play with our dog, pray, and dance around the house to music that tickles me. Oh and I have learned not to take myself so seriously.

— Julian