and the unexpected return of an old feeling
I’ve always thought of myself as calm in a crisis.
Collected. Quick to pivot. Someone who makes a plan.
But earlier this week, something small and strange undid me —
and it’s still lingering in my chest like a whisper that wants to be heard.
A slow unraveling
My son was heading off on a cricket tour, and we had a 50-minute drive to the next town from our farm to meet the bus. All the usual prep had been done — bags packed, snacks ready, indemnity form completed and emailed to the teacher a week prior. I even had the original form printed and placed carefully on my desk.
And still, that morning, I forgot it.
We were sitting at the fuel station, waiting in the car, when my son casually mentioned that the teacher had just reminded all the parents to bring the original form. My stomach dropped. I went cold. I looked at the time: five minutes until the bus arrived.
Panic rose like wildfire.
I ran into the little shop and asked for the manager. A young woman strolled out slowly. I explained the situation — could she possibly help me print something if I emailed it to her? Her disinterested expression only added to the rising dread. But eventually, she helped. The bus was late. I printed the form. Signed it. Delivered it just in time.
“Oh, I brought extra copies,” the teacher chuckled.
“I figured some parents might forget.”
What lies beneath
The next morning, I couldn’t stop thinking about my reaction.
Why had I spiraled so hard? It wasn’t public. No one but the petrol station manager knew how panicked I was. But still, it shook me.
So I sat with it.
And what came to me was this:
sometimes it isn’t the current moment that we’re reacting to.
It’s a memory — something lodged deep in the nervous system —
rising up through the cracks.
Somewhere in my past, I must have felt the same kind of fear.
The kind that says: You’ve failed. You’ve forgotten something important. You’re not enough.
Maybe it was from childhood. Maybe early adulthood.
I haven’t quite found it yet.
But I’m looking.
Unpacking the trigger
This is the work now — not just the external rebuilding of strength and purpose, but the inner sorting too. Learning what triggers me. Tracing it back. Giving it space. Then letting it go.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” — Carl Jung
Because I don’t want to be governed by old ghosts.
I don’t want my nervous system to keep dragging me back into stories I’ve already outgrown.
Fear and anxiety are sneaky companions. We bury them.
And then one day, you forget a form…
and they rise like a flame to remind you: you still haven’t faced this.
But when we do —
when we name it, sit with it, and finally choose to release it —
we reclaim power.
Coming home
And slowly, breath by breath,
we come home to ourselves.
Wild Soul Notes 