This post is also available as a podcast here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/s-p01/episodes/Fear-e2imhqv

Fear ruled a lot of my life. I used to be afraid of strangers, carnival rides, witches, ant hills, the list goes on. Fear holds us back. It may be a protective instinct, but sometimes fear is an oppressor to growth. I stayed in bad relationships out of fear. Fear of loneliness, fear of being unlovable. I stayed close to home for undergrad because I was afraid of moving away. But, when I faced my fear, I moved a thousand miles away from everyone I knew to start my job after grad school.

I don’t think we always realize our fears. Fears can drive so much of our behavior, but fear lives under the surface. There’s an intangible sense of knowing in fear. Something that tells us to stop, or back up. Without internal reflection, we don’t know why we want to stop or back up. I always come back to this question of why… Why do I want to stop? Why is this uncomfortable? What is it that is driving my fear?

I’ve known many people in my life that run without finding the underlying fear. I’ve been the person running. When we find the “underneath,” that’s when we can grow. I will start with my underneath to articulate this. I stayed close to home for undergrad. As someone who didn’t have a stable home life throughout my childhood, why would I choose to stay close to home? Because home in my high school years was different. Because an unstable home life taught me that the world is scary and unknown. I was 17, so – it was also because of a boy.

I moved in with my grandparents in high school. I still spent regular time with my parents, but it became less when I started high school. I loved my grandma more than anyone else in my family, so living with my grandparents gave me a new sense of “home.” It was the first time in my memory that having friends over didn’t cause stress in my home life. I got to “grow up” in those years, and I felt welcome and safe in their home. It changed the course of my life, for the better. So, as much as staying close to “home” was about a boy, it was also the only place I felt at “home” since my early childhood days – before my parents’ divorce. Who would want to leave that?

We had plenty of “stranger danger” in my childhood, but we had freedoms that kids today don’t. I got to run around in a backyard forest. I got to mount dirt hills and run through fields. I got to play with my neighbors until dark without checking in at home. All without cell phones or the internet. Life was different. When my parents divorced, it shattered a sense of safety within me. I questioned what that meant about me and for me. The kid that ran around without fear – was suddenly consumed by it.

From a child perspective, our parents are a huge part of how we learn who we are. When my parents split, it split me. I felt like two versions of myself that couldn’t be whole anymore. The time is split, the rules are different, the parents are different. It’s like living two lives in parallel. I don’t think most parents “get” that. The transition is hard on kids because they don’t really know who they are, but now you’re building two completely different lives for them simultaneously. The safety and sense of self that was being formed as one – is now two.

I’ve mentioned before that I felt responsible for my parents’ divorce. As an adult, I know I’m not, but let’s just focus on what that did in my child state. I thought I was bad. I thought I was broken. I spent the majority of my life people pleasing to prove I wasn’t bad anymore. I spent the majority of my life being another version of myself because I thought I was broken. Those intrusive thoughts were born in a time that was not of my own making. They were a foundation of my insecurities from that point in my life. Those insecurities made the world feel unsafe. I chose to stay close to the known over the unknown because I had no perspective to determine the safety beyond what I knew. All I knew was that I didn’t feel safe.

Yet, after 12 years in college (doctoral degree!), I moved away from everyone I knew. I was about an hour from “home” in undergrad. I was about 2.5 hours from my nearest relative in grad school. I’m now about 18 hours from any relatives and friends from before I moved. I miss them. I miss them all. When my grandmother passed, my only regret was moving away. I saw her no more than once a year in the last 7 years of her life. I will never get that time back. I still want to move closer to “home.”

Yet, facing the fear of moving to a place where I knew no one will always be one of the greatest points of growth in my life. The greatest is having my child, no comparison. It’s funny (no, it’s not) that the greatest points of growth in my life happened to culminate in divorces. How did I decide to face that fear? Objective assessment. I had three choices. 1) take the job, move to the cold place, and my husband would join me eventually. 2) let the job go, pursue one in a warm place that wanted to interview me, and if that fell through – my advisor had a few ideas. Worst-case scenario: nothing works out, move in with husband. That was it.

I’m pretty risk-averse. I took the job offer. I chose a known outcome over the unknown. The risk of living somewhere cold, where I knew no one, seemed more rational than refusing a job that seemed like a near-perfect fit because I was scared. I’m still often in the position of choosing a known outcome. They always feel safer than unknowns. There were a lot of unknowns in my move, but it felt right because my fear of living with my husband again was stronger than my fear of unknowns. That’s why my move culminated in a divorce. When I came to the realization that my worst-case scenario was one that I couldn’t allow to happen, I realized I had to get out of that relationship. I had to take a leap of faith on my job and location to live a better life.

I wrote a lot of my story this week, so this week I will share a story of my child’s fear. This story is for my fellow parents. Also: this one isn’t funny, if anything, it’s horrifying.

Dating is hard, in general. Dating when you have a kid – is almost impossible. My child will not meet anyone I date for a long while. If I wasn’t already in this camp, this story was enough to put me there for the foreseeable future. My child met my second husband’s girlfriend and it tore their world apart.

I picked my child up from school one day and they were extra clingy. Like, it concerned me how clingy they were. They started crying in their car seat “I don’t want a mommy, I just want my daddy… Mommy, I love you.” Later on, they said “Mommy, don’t leave me.” We spent weeks with them glued to me, begging me to sleep in their room, begging me not to leave them. They would wake up in the middle of the night crying “Mommy, I need you!” They wouldn’t go to sleep without 50 hugs and my promise that I would stay. We did this for weeks. Weeks that I spent rebuilding their security and safety.

My child is 3. They understand enough to terrify them, but not enough to understand that I’m not being replaced. I can’t be replaced. Step parents are not replacement parents, in the best circumstances they are additional parents. I share this story to make a point: I don’t care how much you like someone, don’t introduce them to your kid less than a year out of a divorce. Yes, even if they have kids. Especially if they have kids. FFS. If that relationship is right for you, they’ll wait. If it isn’t, good riddance.

Fear of being alone is never going to be a good reason to do something. Don’t impact the people in your life by following fear blindly. Find the underlying reasons for your fear so you can make an informed choice instead of letting fear run your life. For the parents: please consider the kid’s perspective and feelings. Prepare them for meeting your significant other, and make sure they want to meet them first. Both my parents dropped bombs when they introduced their partners. It was just a sudden stranger in my home and life. I was shy and awkward af. I shut down, and I was 9-10, not 3. These choices affect them for the rest of their life, make them carefully.

Okay, maybe I’ll give you a funnier story: My mom tells a story of my fearless attitude, around age 4. At a carnival, I apparently insisted on going on the Zipper ride with sincerely no fear. When the ride started, I screamed continuously until they let me off. I’m not sure how that’s the same me that screamed us out of the movie theater when we went to see Beetlejuice, but both are me. I thought I was fearless. None of us are. We all have fears inside us. For me, my parents divorce cracked a few wide open. Tread introspectively.

Fear is a warning, not a guide. I hope you take the warning and investigate the reasoning to guide you.

May your week pass by without fear, but if you find fear, I hope you can turn it into growth. Love, -S.