Overcoming Fear With Human Connection. What's Your Trick?

In the acclaimed Broadway musical, The King and I, British teacher Anna Leonowens travels to Siam (now Thailand) where she serves as tutor to the Siamese King’s many children.  Anna’s young son bemoans his trepidation over his new home and his mother’s stern supervisor. Anna  gives him some advice that I love to sing along with whenever I hear the song playing on Sirius Broadway. She tells him~

“Whenever I feel afraid,

I hold my head erect

And whistle a happy tune

So no one will suspect

I’m afraid…

Make believe you’re brave,

And the truth will take you far.

You may be as brave

As you make believe you are.”

I’m sure Anna was just as nervous as her son was about leaving England alone, a newly widowed mother. It was probably scary for her to travel halfway across the world to work in a far-off land for a stern King whose cultural expectations were quite different from anything she knew.  Her trick for dealing with her fear was simple – Whistle.

We’re all afraid of something, and we all have tricks to deal with our anxieties.

As a child, my brother and I experienced what we and our parents believed was a near abduction. The creepy man who chased after us down a cloaked path to a quiet park one summer afternoon denied any unkind intentions when he was questioned later. Our suspicions remained nevertheless. The paralyzing fear that shot cold through my veins that hot summer day, chilling my cheeks and my limbs as they pumped for dear life, has also remained. It’s dormant most of the time, but at the right moment, it can rear its creepy head into any experience and freeze me.

You see, at the end of the path, I turned one way and raced through the woods toward home.

Alone.

Without discussing his planned escape route, my brother had run in the other direction, toward the playground and the backs of neighbor’s houses. When I made it back to my home, breathless and hysterical, I thought my brother had been kidnapped. Words spilled from my mouth, probably unintelligibly, as my mother stood gaping at me from behind her shower curtain, trying to figure out what had scared me into such a state before throwing a towel around herself and hurrying to call the cops.

Even though everything worked out that day, the fear of strangers stuck with me. Most of the time, I’m totally functional, outgoing, and independent. But, when I’m caught in a bout of paranoia, my overly imaginative brain can conjure some doozies about who’s going to break into my house when I’m alone and what their sinister plans might be.

Like Anna’s son, fear attacks me when I travel alone, especially to new places.

It’s kind of a conundrum, because I love to travel alone to new places! I’ve been halfway across the world by myself, flown to France and Italy alone to visit family. Being by myself allows me to take in people and places in a way that’s not possible when I’m accompanied by my kids or husband or even friends. I enjoy traveling with others as well but being alone is satisfying in a different way, undistracted. So, the anxiety I experience before and during a trip is really annoying.

I nearly always almost cancel.

But then I don’t.

I stand in line at security at the airport and imagine all kinds of stories. Someone’s following me. Someone’s a terrorist. Someone’s a serial killer. And, of course, I’m the target.

Every situation has the potential to be a risk.

Hotel elevators- perfect place to subdue and abduct a person.

Taxi- the driver is definitely part of a sex traffic ring (so he’d choose a 40 year old woman to abduct, right? Now, that’s some logic.)

A semi-deserted street in mid-afteroon in Anycity, Anystate – crazy people prowling for victims.

It’s really maddening.

Only recently did I finally discover my own trick to conquer fear. When on a trip to New York City with my girls, my oldest was battling her own anxieties, and she was fearful of getting into a taxi with a driver who was a stranger to her. I told her – just talk to the guy. When you realize a person’s humanity, you find likeness in him. You see him not as a taxi-driving stranger but as a person. Someone’s husband or father. Someone who’s traveled far from home to make a better life for his family. Someone who likes to eat pizza with mushrooms on it, just like you.

By teaching my daughter this, I realized it was actually my trick. When I’m afraid, I talk to people. I find human connections, and my fear evaporates.

I believe that we are here on this Earth for the sole purpose to connect with other people, to learn from them and to teach them. I believe that fear blocks opportunities for connection, but when we push through the blockades and reach out to strangers, we break barriers and build meaningful and purposeful experiences that stay with us.

In other words, my taxi-driver has something to teach me, and if I’m too afraid to talk to him, I’m missing out.

This past weekend I traveled alone to Chicago for C2E2, a comic and entertainment conference. As usual, I performed the same song and dance of “should I go?” and “what if?” but eventually made it on the plane. The first leg of the trip, I was jittery. The airline lost my luggage, and I was exhausted and I didn’t know Midway airport at all. I had to get a taxi to my hotel, and the taxis in Chicago looked altogether different from the yellow ones I was used to in NYC. Suspicious! (Insert eye-roll emoji here.)

Finally, sans luggage, I slipped into the seat of my cab, where my driver was chatting on speaker with his son. This made me feel comfortable, because the guy was a dad. Still, crazy thoughts jumped around in my mind about what could happen if this stranger took me somewhere other than my hotel. What if he was only posing as a taxi-driver and was actually a creep?  I pushed the inane thoughts away and started chatting with my driver once he was off the phone.

Wow.

When I face my fear of strangers and being alone I am rewarded with beautiful people and experiences that seem driven into my life by God and fate. This guy was inspiration, personified.

Ammikhi.

He was unusually chatty for a taxi-driver. Usually, I have to ask all of the questions, but Ammikhi was generous with his conversation, telling me about his kids who live in Israel, his talented dancer daughter, his headstrong son who plays basketball, and his youngest son who has a big gregarious heart like his dad. We shared the headaches and triumphs of raising tweens, and he gave me some good advice.

He asked me about my career in writing and I told him a little. He seemed especially interested in my Whisper Trilogy, which is fiction - spiritual warfare for teens. We discovered that we both have a strong belief in a higher power and that we both believe in the idea of unseen forces that lead us in certain directions while we’re here on Earth. Some good forces, some evil. It was a deep and spiritual conversation to be having with someone I’d just met. He then shared that he is a rap artist who writes “positive rap music.”  I came to understand, through our conversations, that everything Ammikhi does is done to spread positive energy, righteousness, and love in the world. He’s just a really awesome soul with a talent for writing and performing awesome rhymes.

“I’ve got kids,” he said about his rap, which contains no curse words or violence.  A huge smile stretched across his shiny face. “I can’t be doing that. You know what I’m saying?”

I totally did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XpUhW8ZdDw&list=PLnCK9nS5K35H0kCN_-G0aUvEgmtoCigBT&index=5

He played one of his songs for me – ‘Stay,’ and I loved it. The tune was catchy and soulful, and the rap was beautiful, a testament to what he believes about love relationships and how we should interact with our partners.  I immediately purchased it from itunes and have listened to it several  times since.

My 45 minute drive with Ammikhi was purposeful. I feel like he was meant to remind me that the unknown – people and experiences – don’t have to be foreboding. A stranger can become a friend or adviser in the space of a cab ride. Common threads twine through strangers’ lives, connecting us. Our unique life lessons can be imparted, paid forward with our hearts and our tongues. Sometimes our stories are the best gifts we give.

Ammikhi set the tone for my trip to Chicago. Once my head was reset and my anxiety had evaporated, I met each new experience and person (even the ones wearing detailed alien costumes and toting weapons) with a positive attitude. Some amazing people graced my life over the weekend. I was able to meet my fellow Pandamoon authors and Mindsoak colleagues in person, which was really cool because I’ve interacted closely with them online for almost two years.  “Comicon” would not typically be my thing, but after being reminded that all experiences, even the most unlikely ones, have purpose for my life, I walked into C2E2, a.k.a. Crazytown, with an open mind, ready to share with others about my books and writing and ready to learn whatever I could from a myriad of superheroes and villains – 162,000 on Saturday to be exact.

When I contacted Ammiki to ask him to drive me back to the airport on Sunday, he was glad to agree to do so. He has a super-strong work ethic and a positive outlook on working. He asked if he could purchase all four of my books, and when I offered to gift them to him, he refused, said he wanted to support good people who spread good messages. I proudly signed them and sold them to him, feeling like we each had a piece of each other as a memory of our short time together. He has my words, and I have his music!

Now, every time I listen to Stay or think of Ammikhi, I am reminded that there’s always opportunity for comfort and purpose and wonder, even in the sometimes scary shadow of the unknown.

Inspiration Italy

This post was originally shared on Mindsoak Me as answer to the question - When do you feel most alive?

When do I feel most alive?

The first thing that popped into my mind when Jon asked this question was  ~when I am in Italy. There’s a raw energy that captivates my spirit the moment my feet touch the dry, cracked earth in Valanidi – the town in which my father was born.

Every swallow of rich, syrupy espresso, every long breath of fresh mountain air – tinged with the aroma of baking bread and peeled garlic, every dip into the clear blue Ionian Sea.

The breathlessness of crowded streets, the heady stench of overripe fruit, the contradictions that lurk behind broken portico walls then reveal themselves unapologetically, breaking every rule of logic and reason.

The crooked smiles and musical dialects that change with every quarter mile of country road.

The old women in head-to-toe black who pinch my cheeks and the young women in tight jeans and tube tops who shoot me the evil eye.

My family.

All of it is holy to me. Every aspect of the culture, its people and places, transforms me from living to alive in the space of one breath.

I’ve often thought that perhaps there’s something about being in the birthplace of my extended family, my tribe, that stirs and amplifies me. Maybe there are geographic coordinates in my genetic code, somewhere. The first time I stepped foot into Calabria, I felt that this was where I could be my best self. The first time I looked into the eyes of the strangers who were my cousins, I sensed that I was at home. My skin fit like never before. I felt free, unleashed, unhindered by expectations of culture and society. Energy seemed to infuse into my core from the very ground. Because it was the ground of my ancestors?

Maybe.

I didn’t understand it, but I felt a palpable connection to this place. The sensation first undid me, then laced me up again - the way I was meant to be. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t need to understand why. Usually, I pick everything apart, especially the why’s behind every situation. There, I didn’t. The feeling of wholeness was enough.

In my home environment in Pittsburgh, where I raise daughters and manage a household with pets and laundry and schedules, where I write using a process, I am a creature of habit. I wake up early. I must have coffee before speaking to anyone. I exercise. I stick to the plan, and I don’t sit down for a rest. I tire in the evening and go to bed early. It’s the daily grind, and I’m no different from most American moms.

I have learned through multiple trips to visit my family in Italy that I am a different creature there. I somehow shed the skin of the American impostor who inhabits my body in the meantime, and I fully submit to the donna inside.

She smiles immediately, even if she wakes up drenched in August sweat at four o’clock in the morning, because she can no longer sleep in the sticky stillness. She needs conversation more than sleep and perhaps even more than coffee. She doesn’t require much but does thrill at the idea of a daily gelato and a nap on the pebbles of her favorite beach. She has no plan and doesn’t bristle when she realizes nobody around her has one either.

She breathes deeply and often.

She stays up all night with her cousins. To talk about nothing and everything. To sit quietly together. To be what they cannot be in the mundane of their daily lives.

She is fully alive.

I have tried and tried to bring this donna back to Pittsburgh with me. After my first tearful goodbye to my cousins in Europe, I returned to Kent State University as a senior with a one-cup Bialetti and a penchant for homemade red wine. I wanted to take Italy back home with me. These pieces I could shove in my suitcase, but the memories and the transformation in my heart stayed alive as well. I insisted on experiencing life as vividly as people do in Italy, that I would live filter free and straight-up, not just rolling with the tide of ups and downs but celebrating all of it.

It was easier when I was single and in college. Harder now with a family of five, being a part of the super-sized, super-scheduled American society in which we live. We try to balance. I try to summon the donna every day. In my kitchen, she is always with me, insisting on flavors of fresh basil and earthy Extra virgin olive oil in my dishes. I squeeze time from no time for dinners with my aunts, uncles and cousins here, ensuring that the value I place on family ties is evident in the way I live my life.

One of my favorite lines in my book, Beautiful Secret is – “For Italians, blood is more important than breathing.” Family first is a way of life for us. And, close friends become family, so they are woven into our fold of loudness, boldness, honesty, and loyalty.

I’ve taken my kids to Calabria so that they can understand our family values more deeply, so that they perhaps will feel the pull at a young age and never have to ask why we do things differently or wonder exactly where they fit or who they are. As young children, they experienced the energy too. They express it every time their eyes shine with longing to go back to Calabria. Every time, they describe their first gelato, I can taste the heady awe of their first time in Italy.

So, to answer the question – when do I feel most alive?

I’m most alive when I am sitting on my favorite Italian beach, Saline, where the pebbles dig gently into my skin, leaving a trail of pink marks and the rocks rise up from the sea just daring me to use them as a springboard into freedom.  I saunter easily into the clear blue water, my cousins at my sides, playful as first friends. I never feel the chill of the water or the sun’s late summer singe or the scary sting of what may happen tomorrow. I’m alive in the moment.

I’m most alive in all of the moments I spend at that beach and on that mountain and in the company of strangers who became family after just two kisses.

And even though this intensity can’t translate to every moment of my life, it’s okay. The memory residue of these exponentially concentrated moments splices into my day-to-day. In fragments, in shadows, in full-blown gut-punches of nostalgia.

They shake me to life again. The donna whispers an Italian love song and laughs as the words take shape on my lips.

And I remember, for the moment, who I am.