In the great genetic and environmental casserole of stardust called being alive, do you ever wonder where certain ingredients came from? Where, in that huge pot of randomness that swirled together the day you were conceived, the slight fleck of brown in your otherwise green irises came from? How your propensity for the absurd took hold? Why the bizarre evolutionary code determined that you love brussels sprouts but hate parsnips? Or how, in my case, despite many reasons to be cheerful, I am nearly always worried? Sometimes it’s obvious. The recipe notes are in the margin. We knew that my daughter’s nose would be a variant of my partner’s the minute we saw the abrupt little peak on the ultrasound picture. It was nothing like mine. My nose is a wide fleshy plasticine affair that protrudes in a way I never realised. Until the day that my class did silhouette pictures by tracing round the shadow of each others’ profile using an overhead projector (this was 1982). The results were strung up in a frieze around the top of the classroom walls. It became obvious that my nose was the largest nose there. Kids can be cruel. None so cruel as the kid in your own head telling you that you should save up for a nose job (closely followed by a boob job) all through your 20s. But I digress. I wanted to say something of the unbroken daisy chain that is my great grandma - grandma - mum - me - my daughter. The way in which we each grow out of what has come before, and yet emerge as unique as individual flowers. The force that through the green fuse drives the flower. Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees. Is my destroyer. Dylan Thomas So I’d like to say I come from a long line of warrior women. But actually, that’s a typo, and I come from a long line of worriers. Worry is the green fuse that runs through us all like a fault line. Worry is what keeps us alive into old age, fretting. A long line of worriers My great grandma had reason to be worried. Scraping enough money to get by. Feeding and clothing 6 children by taking in washing. Her husband, my great grandfather, a feckless, but at least not violent, drunk. A woman struck mute after she was dug out from under the kitchen table when the house was bombed in World War II. My mum remembers her as a sweet old lady. But silent, anxious. My grandma also had reason to be worried. The eldest child, rapped on the knuckles for being left handed. Leaving school at 14 to go into service to support the family. A life of hard work. So hard that she always wore a button up polyester overall on her days off. Converting to Catholicism for her fiancé. A string of rosary beads was all that was left when he ran off with all the money they had saved for the wedding. When I started going out with boys, gran already had senile dementia, but in a moment of absolute clarity, she said “you be careful” because there was clearly reason to be cautious. My mum had less reason to be worried, but she still was. A bright grammar school girl. She had the grades, but no funds or ambition for further study. Nonetheless shifting from working class to middle class. Meeting my dad in London right at the height of 1960s. Yet the freedom of that decade somehow passed them by. Money coming in, but a lingering sense that this didn’t come easy. That the glass that was filling could become half empty at any moment. Me, with even less reason to be worried, but I still am. I even worry about my worry. I sat in weekly therapy for 2 years talking about the indestructible force of worry that drives down like a tap root into my maternal line. And now I am a mother myself, I am worried that I am passing it on. And what of my daughter? Well, no matter how much of a ‘secure base’ I aim to be, she worries. 10 years on from that ultrasound picture with its cute promise of a profile and a personality, the button nose is there on her face, and the worries are there in her head. They showed up from the start in a myriad tiny ways. A fussy baby who would not settle in the baby massage class. Who wriggled and writhed away from my oily hands in seeming discomfort. When all around little puddings of babies, plump and flush with soothing touch slept peacefully on blankets where they had been placed. A careful toddler who didn’t need reins because she clung to my legs in the supermarket. A shy 3 year old who recoiled from the other children turning to look at her when she walked into preschool at lunch times. A cautious 5 year old who found playground rough and tumble completely overwhelming and chose instead to go to book club. A sensitive tween who thinks about all the different possible motives another girl might have for sending an ambiguous message on the group chat. So I worry. I worry that the worry truly is a fault line that cannot be repaired. Worry as an ugly thing I refuse to walk carefully through life only to arrive safely at death. Paulo Coelho I felt very stirred by this quote when I first saw it on the wall at a conference organised by my corporate employer. Oblivious to the fact that my time in financial services was exactly that - a kind of safe living death. Back then, I thought that ‘being careful’ was a self limiting belief and I wanted to expunge it from my existence. I tried lots of positive affirmations and cognitive behavioural techniques. I lapped up the classic self help book by Susan Jeffers called ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’. It all helped, up to a point, but the worry had a way of worming its way back in. The worry seemed to say ‘you can work through me, sidestep me, ride roughshod over me, numb yourself to me, replace me, but I’m not going anywhere - I will keep you safe’. It is true, at its worst, worry is a corrosive and unnecessary force that stops us from enjoying life. It stops us from being in the here and now. It takes us out of our bodies into the endless loop of rumination in our heads. Or it takes over our whole being with physical manifestations - stomach aches, migraines, furrowed brows, knotted shoulders. In the therapy room, my ancestor’s worry might now be labelled as Generalised Anxiety Disorder. My grandma would say it was her nerves. My mum would say it is her sense of realism. I have tried on various labels for size, from just plain anxious, to highly sensitive, to deeply feeling. At heart, most of these are worried states of being. It was at some point in my 30s that I realised all my attempts to stop worrying were futile. It wasn’t because of some kind of spiritual awakening or cataclysmic event. It was because of the painstakingly slow and steady work of being more aware of my own thoughts and receiving them kindly. It’s a thread that has persisted in my life and work ever since, and it forms a large part of what I aim to share with you here. I was able to turn towards my worry with tenderness, because I realised she was only there whispering in my ear because she cared. Worry as a beautiful thing Worry - or anxiety, or fear, or unease, or simply a niggling sense of things not being quite right - is usually something we want to get rid of. It’s seen as weak or shameful or silly. We are taught to ‘tackle fears’, ‘push on through’, ‘fake it until you make it’, ‘cheer up love’, and ‘stop being so pathetic’. But once you have an inkling that worry might actually be trying to tell you something, it stops being something you want to get rid of. These days, I know when the uneasy feelings show up in my body and the fretful thoughts start to loop in my mind, it’s wisest to slow down and listen. Because the irony is that when I listen to worried Ali, who I spent years trying to silence or ignore, she quietens down of her own accord. My daughter has been a huge part of this alchemy for me. In making space for her childhood worries, I have started to soften towards my own. And I’ve started to loosen the soil around that deep tap root of anxiety in my family. I have also started to appreciate my maternal lineage of deeply feeling women. The bright, beautiful, blossoming daisy chain of great grandma - grandma - mum - me - my daughter. It is not a fault line after all. The roots of our worry are also the roots of our empathy and care for others. Completing the chain When I’m feeling overwhelmed, these are my little mantras about worry: * Worry is the tinge of doubt that makes me sensitive to another person’s feelings. * Worry is my ability to read the underlying emotion of unease in an outwardly bright and cheery smile. * Worry is not always helpful, but it is always trying to be helpful. * Worry is what keeps me checking back against my values. * Worry is an internal voice trying to keep me safe in uncertain times. * Worry is what lingers in my body long before and after that internal voice arises. * Worry is not all good, but it is not all bad either. * Worry doesn’t want to be stuffed down or bottled up. * Worry just wants to be acknowledged and soothed. I hope that hearing some of my story might help you in the process of coming into a more friendly relationship with your worries. If you want to develop some foundational practices to help you to * become more aware of your thoughts * find a sense of grounding and safety in your body * soothe your nervous system then watch this space, because I’m launching a mini course soon. It is called Growing Present and it will be available for paid subscribers from the week beginning 18 March onwards. I will share more about it in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, I wanted to leave you with the ever wise words of Mary Oliver. The only twist I would weave into her otherwise perfect ending is that you might want to sing alongside your worries rather than leaving them behind… I Worried by Mary Oliver I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers flow in the right direction, will the earth turn as it was taught, and if not how shallI correct it
