Anxiety Life: Mom of only child

No one prepared me for this life. The one where anxiety is the beast that I have to try and not let conquer me daily.

The one where I will probably only have one child and now all the concerns of making sure I do everything right for her is there.

I have had anxiety for a while, I would say most of my life but never really knew how to recognize it.

When I brought a child into this world, it grew in the natural sense of parenthood and all the new things.

But now 11 years later realizing she may be my only ever child, my anxiety has now taken a different turn.

When she entered kindergarten I broke down. My fight and flight was gone. I was broken beyond words and couldn’t fight.

Had lost my two remaining grandmothers within a year of each other. I was beaten down and done.

My husband, God bless him, saw me at my worst and knew I needed more help than he could try to give alone.

It took years of therapy and hard work to recognize what was happening in my life.

All the newness has overwhelmed me. All the fears I had as she entered school felt real and scary.

Now that she is 11. ELEVEN. She is more than likely my only child especially as I move up in years and deal with PCOS. She has entered middle school in the middle of a pandemic *sigh*

There is a new found fear. The fear of losing my one and only to anything and everything.

May sound crazy. It’s not. It’s a real legitimate fear that I have and others have too.

Now I weigh even more of my choices about her upbringing. I only have one shot at this parenting thing.

All the what if’s flood my brain not on a daily basis but it feels close to it.

But all the questions loom over me…Did I make the right decision for her? Will she be ok doing this or that? Will she BE OK?

Right! Tons of questions flooding my brain.

If only I could say “shhhh” for a second. Just so that I could think. Or like Winnie the Pooh, “Think, Think, Think!”

Natural fears are one thing. But I like many other people I know who have anxiety, our brains wander and give us more fears than what we even started with.

So now the anxiety has become about making sure I am parenting right and that she grows up to be who she is.

I need to take a breath. *sigh*