Just some things I’m frightened of right now: starting this blog, opening the letter in the hallway from my health insurer, driving on small country roads, that leaving my job was a Bad Idea and not a Good Idea, that one of my children has some kind of weird unidentifiable tummy bug that every doctor will miss and I’ll have to get a poo sample to send off in the post, that my bouts of forgetfulness are not caused by three babies in four years and multiple night feeds but early onset Alzheimer’s, and that I’ll never crack the ant problem that has suddenly invaded my kitchen.

Not to mention the general fear of everything that I feel in my stomach, present now as I write this. And it’s ok. I know what it is, so I’ll just keep going, go pick up the kids from school, take them to the park, make a roast chicken – do normal things.

I re-read Susan Jeffer’s classic Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway recently. Of course, its title says it all. But I think it’s important to remember that The Fear doesn’t have to be about the giant, life-changing things – it’s about the minutiae of life too.

Fear is an absolute stinker. But we can watch it, we can step back from it and we can even be rude to it – we can unfriend it. It’s got nothing to do with us. We are behind all that fear. We are not afraid.