Talking About Fear

I intended to write a review today of my friend Farnoosh Brock’s Fear-Crushing Travel Guide, but as I started reading it, I was brought me back to a time, three years ago, when I was tied up in knots over whether or not to quit my job and the relative wisdom of starting a career over again, in my early 30s, as a writer and photographer. At the time, I was writing here, at Almostfearless.com but I wasn’t quite brave enough to really go there.

You see, I was sick of my job, but I was also sick of my life. That’s one of the things you never hear people talk about — it’s safer to admit that the 9-5 is a grind or that you wish you had more free time, but admitting, publicly to the world, that you hate your life and just want to get away from it — um, not so much.

The same problems that had gotten me to that point were also making me too scared to do anything about it.

Farnoosh’s guide talks about fear beautifully, something that I can appreciate as a person who’s gone through the icy panic of hitting send on the ‘I quit’ email, buying a plane ticket to a place I’d never been before, giving away or selling all of my belongings, and leaving everyone and everything I ever knew behind (well, except my husband). She talks about the codified language we use to hide our fears behind other concerns, why we fixate on the details, like “how to pay your bills from overseas” instead of the real reasons of why we’re not out there doing the things we want.

The thing about conquering your fears is that it can become a habit. At least it did for me, because a year later, I finally did it. I broke up with my mom.

I know that doesn’t sound like a good kind of achievement, but in my case, it’s something that any rational person would have done years ago. But I wasn’t rational, I was living my fear. It wasn’t until I started taking back control of my life — in other areas — that it became so crystal clear how unhealthy and destructive that relationship was.

You see, we had a very abusive household — my father beat my mother, left her for a prostitute (so I’m told) a year after I was born and never returned. In some ways, I’ve always felt like the child of rape — she hated him so venomously and deeply, that it was impossible for her to be close to me. She examined me for flaws, for hints that I was like him, and found them everywhere. On some level, I think she tried to mold me into him so she could finally have power over him, as I was just a child. Ultimately, she let her boyfriend beat me and when I was 12 she kicked me out. In high school, I bounced around family member’s homes and eventually went into foster care. I was really angry, but mostly, I was this cliche hurt little girl who wanted my mother’s love. Ugh. It’s hard to admit that, but there it is.

During high school, I moved eight times in four years, but I still went to college. I was studying for my AP exams in the basement of a foster home. I did every extracurricular I could find. I played sports all three seasons. I was desperate to prove her wrong. I wasn’t like him at all. I was going to succeed, have a great life and then she’d know how very wrong she was. Ah, youth.

After college, I tried to patch things up. I thought (hoped, wished) that we had, but it didn’t last. It all backfired. We broke up over email, two years ago, and at the time, I was six weeks pregnant (she didn’t know that) and hormonal, and I had just found out that she had compared me to my father, who I had heard was sent to jail for killing a vagrant while on drugs.

My mother had written to my sister about me, “She’s just like her father.”

I was crushed, not because it’s true, or because she said it, but because it was the verbalization of a lifetime of abuse. It was the thing she was never supposed to say. And there it was, clear as day. She’s just like her father.

If it had been a few years prior, I probably would have forgiven her.

This time, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Travel had changed me, and it made me solidly confident about myself. I had been to dozens of countries and you know what no one has ever said to me, “Christine, you are just like a psychopathic alcoholic drug-addicted wife-beating tyrant.”

The question that became clear to me immediately was not, “Why doesn’t she love me?” but “Who the hell is this asshole and why is she in my life?”

I was angry! I had an appropriate emotional response! I told her off, cut her out of my life and never looked back.

You know what? It felt really good.

Afterward, I did mourn her. I was pregnant and spent many nights sobbing over the loss of the mother I kept wishing I had. Pregnancy hormones are intense and my husband didn’t know what to do with me as I regularly stayed up until 3 am shaking with tears, overwrought at the idea that my fantasy mother never existed, and that my real mother would never be able to get past her own pain.

Now, everything is different. Lately, I’ve been watching my son closely, and every month that goes by, I feel further and further away from that place. The more sweetly I raise Cole, the more I heal myself. I remember all the stories my mother told me about how I was a terrible baby and I scoop up Cole whenever he cries and never scold him. I remember how she said I wouldn’t sleep and I snuggle him closer at night and sing him songs. I remember every example she gave of how I was like the man I never knew and I take Cole’s hand and help him walk through the park, pointing out flowers or birds and helping him stuff rocks in his pockets. I’m now older than my mother was when I first remember her, and it puts everything into perspective. She was a mean, wounded and cruel woman. And I am nothing like her.

When people tell me they want to travel, but they are afraid for whatever reason, I know exactly what they mean. Life is complicated. What we want and what we are willing to give ourselves are not always the same things. We live under the weight of our history, of what other’s tell us we are, of our conflicting desires.

A lot of people write about what travel means to them, and I have too. Travel has shown me a world outside myself. The more people I meet, the more faith I have in humanity. People are essentially good. It makes it easier to appreciate those people and to recognize those who are not. The world is amazing and beautiful and really, really weird. All of the excuses I had about why I didn’t travel — or why I kept chasing my mother well beyond reason — were all about this unrelenting fear we let control our lives. But here’s the secret, doing something scary, and succeeding, it makes you braver. It makes it easier to do the next scary thing. It’s also made me brave enough to let strangers into my life, to love my husband with abandon, to be selfless as a mother, to give to others. Letting go of fear isn’t just a technique to get yourself out the door, it’s the toughest lesson in life.

Farnoosh, I’m sorry this probably isn’t what you expected I’d come up with when I said I’d review your very good, and quite lovely guide. If anyone is interested in more about her book which also includes interviews with many experts, and is well-worth a read, please visit her site Prolific Living.

Disclosure: Farnoosh interviewed me for her book and my audio interview about traveling with children is included in the guide. This post also includes affiliate links. The top photos was taken by my husband, Drew Gilbert, with an iPhone 4.