The voice I finally heard that day was my own — the girl I'd locked away at ten years old, the girl I was before the world told me who to be — and sh… - Glennon Doyle

while rock bottom feels like the end — it's always the beginning of something. I knew that this was the moment I'd either relapse with a couple shots of self-pity and resignation, or I'd double down on my racial sobriety and carry on. I told myself: Breathe. Don't panic and flee. Sink. Feel it all. Be Still. Imagine. Let it burn.

What I thought would kill me, didn't. Every time I said to myself: I can't take this anymore — I was wrong. The truth was that I could and did take it all — and I kept surviving. Surviving again and again made me less afraid of myself, of other people, of life.

It's just that living with anxiety - living alarmed - makes it impossible to enter the moment, to land inside my body and be there. I cannot be in the moment because I am too afraid of what the next moment will bring. I have to be ready.