The old inn in Vermont has always been one of our safest places from the beginning. We went there on our honeymoon 14 years ago.

We have returned at least once a year (except during the pandemic), and it was the perfect place to go after last week’s storm, which left both of us drained and exhausted.

My fear dribbled away even before we got there.

Fear is a sentient creature with instincts, if not conventional intelligence. Born in our earliest days, we are either soothed or ignored. I have come to understand that humans have always faced fear, pressure, and dangers, and I believe some fear is passed down to all of us.

I am the grandchildren of Jewish refugees from Europe. Fear was always a part of my growing up. The world never seems to tire of persecuting Jews and demonizing them.

It seems to be something broken humans need.

All of us know fear. Some of us are known and soothed; many are not.

Fear is alive, present in us, and urgent need of nourishment. Sometimes I see it as a sentient being.

For me, fear has always jumped opportunistically from one thing to another – money, work, anger, failure, humiliation, isolation, and emotional bleeding. For anxiety, one is as good as another.

It just doesn’t like to go without.

The best thing I have learned to do with fear is to accept it and try to understand where it comes from. Eventually, it goes away or recedes because fear is one thing and panic is another.

I have to live with fear; I won’t live for long with terror. Fear is an emotion.

The old inn was a tonic. it was just what we needed, an old friend with a safe space to offer us.

Maria lay down with a book and fell asleep before I could unpack.

My psychological guide and hero when it comes to anxiety is British Psychoanalyst John Bowlby whose much embraced theory of attachment (it applies to people and dogs also) suggests that children come into the world biologically pre-programmed to form attachments with others because this is necessary for them to survive.

Some attachments – like the one to a mother – are much more important than others.

Bowlby also wrote about the maternal deprivation hypothesis, which suggests that continuing disruption between the infant and primary caregivers can result in long-term cognitive, social, and emotional difficulties for that infant.

Nothing is more vulnerable in our world than a newborn child, who is not only often terrified but unable to speak or understand the fear.

If the mother doesn’t hear the child or sense its fear and comfort it, anxiety grows and depeens Bowlby, and is integrated into the psychic formation of the child.

You can bet that Donald Trump was emotionally disconnected from his mother.

This is a terror without words, or comprehension, which leaves adults like me bewildered about what happened to make me so frightened.

All it takes is a mother who doesn’t grasp the child’s anxiety and can’t or won comfort the baby. I embrace this theory and believe this happened to Maria and me.

When we met, Maria and I were both struck by the fact that we seemed to know one another and sense the love and fear in the other.

We have both been waiting for someone to know us our whole lives. This opened the gate to our falling in love, getting married, and loving each other more often.

We were what the other needed and could never find.

When I get frightened, Maria senses it and tells me she knows, is present, and will be there for me. I do the same for her. It works. It is a powerful medicine, as powerful as a decade of talking therapy, which I also believe in.

Fear is always inside of me, looking for a place to land. If I sense it in one place, it just moves to another. I go beneath it to the source.

To the frightened infant who was alone and scared and very heard or known. The fear grew up alongside me and will die inside of me.

But I have come to know it just as it has come to know me. And the better I see and understand it, the less power and sting it has. I don’t expect to be entirely rid of it; it is part of the human experience.

But when we got to our inn, the fear was gone inside me, it didn’t return until I was almost home, and the wheels started turning – bills, obligations, chores, responsibilities.

I hear you, said Maria, you are safe here, and I will be right with you. And it went away again.

At the inn, Maria read me from an ancient copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass; she found it in a reading room in the inn.

We had a wonderful dinner. We stayed up for hours reading, laughing, and watching stupid TV, something we never do at home.

She fell in love with the new bathtub in our favorite room, soaked in it for hours, and came out as mellow as I have ever seen. And I have not seen her mellow often.

We slipped all tangled up in one another, laughed and told stories, and regained our strength, will, and energy, much of which the angry storm sucked out of us.

It is our safe place, we return to it repeatedly, and it empowers and refreshes us.

The sun was shining when we got back home; we had to get bandages for Lulu; I ran to the bookstore to get a copy of The Magic Kingdom by Russell Banks, a favorite author. I’ll be up reading it until the very wee hours tonight.

I love getting back to my blog; it is where I feel most heard. It is a safe place for me and a healing one. Two days ago, I was almost paralyzed by fear.

I am most at ease and powerful when I join the community of practitioners, infused with the energy of awareness and empathy, and compassion.

When I feel part of a spiritual community of seekers, I can feel joy and push back the old temptation to succumb to fear and despair.

I have something better in mind to feel than that.

Today, I was back to myself and my good and blessed life. The wheel turns and turns.

I supposed this is the story of life.