Finding Your Center When Life’s Storms Rage Around You
Waves of anxiety and unexpected grounding
My mind raced—seemingly attempting to play professional chess (minimum ten moves ahead) with every challenge in our life in that moment, from the yellowing shower curtain beside me to the school our kids would go to when we moved.
Cue the anxiety.
I stepped out of the shower. This was the time of day my mind usually raced.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
I flinched at the heavy footsteps pounding above me on the main floor. The kids ran upstairs and I heard screaming and laughing. Water dripped on the tile floor beside me and steam fogged the room.
This was one of the only times in my day where I felt breathing room and had the energy to think.
It felt like permission to turn off all the thousands of strands of thread that connected my mind to all the to-dos. Larger coils connected to my children, my husband, our dog—the project I was currently working on, the state of the kitchen…
As if I had antenna that sensed every part of the house they were in, what their state was and all other kinds of data about them. This antenna streamed down from my senses to my heart, my stomach, my shoulders. And it became too heavy to carry sometimes. Most of the time.
A radar of perpetual noticing. A weight to be carried in my mind and my body to anticipate all things. To prevent. Protect. Manage. Carry.
I put down the heavy load and all the heavy strings—the equipment and slipped into the shower. But then I would take on more doing, usually the kind I enjoyed, like writing. Lately it has just been a space where I step into the scalding water and like an elevator, my mind takes me out of the fire of my life to the top of a skyscraper so I can look down on my life and analyze the burning further: listing which parts of the fire to focus on next and in what order.
But when I stepped out of the shower, I was back on the ground and into the fire. The thoughts and to-dos enclosed. Pounded at my mind. The weight on my shoulders became heavy again. My stomach clenched. I know this routine. And I had begun to dread it.
But that morning something different happened.
So different, it shocked me and stays with me even as I write this. It might be a moment I never forget. Or at least—I hope to remember it always.
I stepped out of the shower and the racing thoughts pounced like normal. I felt them with every fiber of my being. Like playing a hundred chess games, switching attention to different boards, thinking of each piece and each route they could take, weighing the pros and cons of all the different variations.
The weight was back on: the backpack of equipment to take on—to notice, to manage, to carry…
The thoughts raced and raced. I was no longer in my bathroom but in a million different places, eyes glazed over like a human computer. A million strands connected back to me and to all the things I needed to be and do.
And then it happened.
Something that, in the moment, I could not even believe was real. It shocked me.
My mind went blank.
The surprise filled my whole body. It was as if all those anxious thoughts were water pouring from the tap of my mind and suddenly the tap had been turned off. All those anxious thoughts were gone. Completely gone.
How?
I tried to think about what I had been thinking about before. Tried to get all the thoughts back. But there was nothing. Instead—a feeling of peace?
Quiet.
My pack was gone. The strings were gone. Everything was gone.
A small wave of anxiety crept into me. I tried again to turn the tap back on. Unsure of what was happening to me.
And then something even stranger happened.
In that void. In this quiet and peace. This emptiness. Only one thing emerged: the feeling of the cold tile floor beneath my feet.
Slowly, I felt each one of my toes on the cold tile floor. All ten—one by one. Then the bottom of my heel, noticing how the curve of my arch did not quite meet the floor and finally my attention moved to the front of my foot. Like a small spotlight of my attention slowly moving over every square inch of my feet and how they met the floor.
Calm. Not anticipating. Not anxious about any part of this. Not needing anything.
Just…noticing. Rest.
What was. What is. The reality of that exact present moment and my feet on the ground beneath me.
When I realized what was happening to me, I almost cried. It couldn’t be, could it?
What my mind was doing was a routine—the exact routine of the meditations I had started not eight days prior. In that span of time, I had been exchanging some of my morning Substack scrolling time for six minute trauma healing meditations.
That day I had almost quit. That day, I had decided they weren’t really working for me—hours prior.
The realization was shocking.
What’s been tethering me in place
Inspired by
’s journey and finding herself through looking inward and meditations, eight days ago I had scoured the internet for a place to start. As a perfectionist and someone who feels like I don’t want to waste my time, I wanted the “best” practice I could to begin.I ended up buying Meditations for Healing Trauma by Louanne Davis, PsyD.
The six-minute mediation I had been doing was sitting in a chair, quieting your mind and focusing only on feeling my feet. As someone who likes to excel, this practice has felt incredibly difficult—even with a few chapters to prepare me for this six minute starter meditation.
I had felt like I was failing.
I didn’t look forward to sitting still. Didn’t look forward to making myself sit on the couch and listen to Dr. Davis’s voice as she guided me through the mediation. I had felt like a teenager who was told to do laundry, moaning: do I haaave tooo? Shoulders slouched, eyes rolling.
The morning dopamine hit of social media sounded like so much more fun. So much more exciting. And didn’t I need that in my life right now?
But the voice of reasoning within knew. She had noticed how my heart raced after I put the phone down. How my thoughts spun. How my body felt amped up and tired all at the same time. and then the kids would wake up and breakfast time was a chore—so much to do, digging from a well that had no water.
But I had to try something.
My life doesn’t have to look like this anymore
Lately, I keep finding myself coming back to Eat Pray Love. I’ve mentioned it in my posts and newsletters because I just re-read it, and it’s changing my life all over again. Not because I want to follow Elizabeth Gilbert’s path exactly, but because her story reminded me of something I’d forgotten: my life doesn’t have to look like this anymore.
That sentence has been echoing through me like a grounding bell. And right now, I am in the messy middle of answering it—of gripping the steering wheel of my life with both hands and pulling hard, even as the waves crash and the wind pushes back. Change always feels like that: you turn the ship, and the storm rises to test you.
I am so thankful she has inspired me to begin this meditation practice. Not in a spiritual, transcendent way—at least not for now—but in a purely somatic way. Grounding myself. Returning to my body. Healing from the inside out. Even amidst the trials that have come to keep going with this practice.
I am also thankful for this book. It’s not fancy and transcendent. It’s messy and hard. But it’s giving me something I didn’t even realize I’d been craving: an anchor every morning in the middle of the storm.
It had taken me over a week to complete one full meditation—six minutes long. But in that moment this week in the shower: I had irrefutable proof: this works.
This morning’s meditation was about loving and accepting our bodies. I almost skipped it. It felt like the universe having a laugh at me. The pain I’ve been in lately has been so sharp, so relentless, that the idea of “loving” my body felt absurd. But then I thought: maybe that’s exactly when we need it most—not when it’s easy, but when it’s nearly impossible.
It was hard. Very hard. Every word the guide spoke felt like it had to push through years of programming. All she asked was for me to offer parts of myself “a kind curiosity.” I could barely do it. It felt like an uphill battle.
And yet…something shifted. I realized this is going to be a long journey—one that asks me to unravel years of physical abuse, to gently unspool the tight knots I’ve carried in my body for decades. But I also realized that this work is not optional for me. It’s necessary. Just like the work I do here—supporting the voices of women, especially those who’ve been told to keep theirs quiet.
Because healing is never just about finding our center. It’s also about finding our voice.
Conclusion: A Different Kind of Healing
Healing is not always about grand transformations. Sometimes it’s about six quiet minutes. Sometimes it’s about noticing your toes. Sometimes it’s about choosing presence, even when panic feels easier.
That morning in the bathroom, I realized: the work is not optional for me anymore. It’s the path back to myself.
And maybe that’s what healing really is—not arriving at some perfect wholeness, but choosing, moment after moment, to come home.
Because our lives don’t have to look like this anymore.
Wildflowers Grow
A behind-the-scenes look at what’s next—and connection as we walk this healing journey together, through sunshine and storms.
💛 Behind-the-scenes:
Yesterday, I wrote this note:
Today, I spent the morning prepping symptom lists with trembling fingers. I was getting ready to advocate for myself medically. I realized this morning that medical gaslighting is such a light word for what so many people—so many woman have experienced. The dismissals. The scoffs. The male doctors who shamed us.
I trembled, remembering.
I have battled the pain for over a month now, at home—carefully monitoring my diet, supplements etc. I now need to seek medical attention. It’s just gone on too long. The endometriosis paired with other pains that render my body almost useless.
I wrote out eight pages of symptoms and I imagined the surprised face of the RN and the doctor when they asked me to explain why I was there and handing them all these pages instead of explaining with a shaking voice.
I pray that they will understand. That my tongue may not be able to defend the symptoms, but my writing can.
To all of you with chronic pain, inflammation, and medical conditions strictly afflicting women—I see you.
Pray for me. By the time this is published, it will be a few hours till my appointment.
We will be strong. We will do the best we can for the body that we were taught to abandon—to take on all the emotional stress of the world except our own. To do so—to pursue healing, not just for ourselves but for our daughters. Who will live not by our words but our actions.
Love,
Alice
Wildflowers Grow is a Mental Health publication, featuring memoir and fiction writing by Alice Wild for women and survivors. It is a safe space to rest and grow—flourish and connect. And also a publication to amplify the light within the voices of those who have been silenced.
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I hope you get answers and find a path forward for your endometriosis. ❤️