Watercolor

Finding safety in the unknown.

Last year at the suggestion of a friend I got a piece of paper out of Isla’s watercolor pad and shared her toddler watercolor paints to write “you are safe now here” on the paper. I set it out to dry and then hung it on the inside of my closet door right at eye level where I can open the door and look at it whenever I need to. I’ve caught sight of it again and again this past year as my nervous system not just relaxed but healed itself to well.

We arrived here in Portland a year and a few days ago, Isla and me, and in a few days it’ll be a year since we moved into our house, Evergreen House, as I call it. My little light-filled sanctuary.

I am safe now here.

I’ve struggled with anxiety nearly my entire adult life. I was twenty-three when my then-boyfriend, my first serious adult boyfriend, broke up with me and very quickly proposed to someone else. This triggered a long season of daily panic attacks, a thyroid out of whack, a job change, and a new relationship with fear that has taken me decades to work though.

I decided that not only did life need to be predictable to be safe, because predictability hadn’t worked with him, but also that I needed to have much greater control over the circumstances around me in order for this to not happen again.