I’ve been writing quotes in my bullet journal this year to ground myself in not panicking about everything and stay focused on my word for the year, which is ‘discipline.’ The fact that I had to remind myself what my word was is a sign of how well I’ve been managing lately.

But, the words of others are sometimes giving me life.

“One painful duty fulfilled makes the next plainer and easier.” – Helen Keller
“I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on til I am.” – Jane Austen
“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.” – Corrie Ten Boom
“i am water
soft enough
to offer life
tough enough
to drown it away.” – Rupi Kaur

I love and hate my brain, really. It tells wild and wonderful stories on paper but it also tells stories when I’m trying to just take care of my children, take care of my house, take care of myself. I imagine dark things. I worry myself into inaction. My husband keeps trying to record me repeatedly sighing because I’m never not turning something over in my head.

When I was seeing someone for anxiety, she told me to let my troubling thoughts surface and then let them float away, that my mind was meant to think and that I couldn’t, shouldn’t, stop it. I remember asking her what to do when it was the same thought over and over; I remember that her advice was the same.

I am still learning how to let go. Sometimes I need a little help. I’d like to start visualizing something – like a many-petaled flower or a bunch of balloons – that lets me imagine that mean thought and release it again and again, to pluck it where its rooted and let it fall away. Writing and walking and loading the dishwasher every day, that’s discipline. But this is discipline, too.