Myths are powerful because they provide potential answers to timeless questions (PBS). Questions like, what is vengeance? What responsibility do I have toward other people?

This isn’t easy for me! I’m usually dreaming, scheming, and working towards the future. I look for challenges to meet and mountains to climb! If I look to the past, it’s usually for hints about how to navigate the future or for memories to connect better with people in my life.

“I just want to talk to her. We broke up a couple months ago, and everyday, I just have the urge to reach out. She wasn’t just my girlfriend, she was my best friend. Shouldn’t I just reach out? If it’s been this bad, it’s not ever going to get better.”

Fast forward several years. I didn’t want her around, but she kept appearing. Online, in memory, in person, in random connection with people I knew. It felt like our lives were linked, and it annoyed me. She bothered me, like an ant crawling up my leg.

If you’re anything like me, if you plan to spend time journeying into the past, you better pack an ample supply of forgiveness. We will face pain as we travel through memories. We’ve all been wronged. We’ve all been hurt, and it affects us, often deeply, and often over a long period of time.

Ah, there it was. That made sense. I was wanted, but the timing was difficult. That added up. Scientific studies confirm that babies pick up on emotions their mothers are feeling, even before they are born.

Sometimes, as we get older, we may feel the need to shrug off traditions as silly and maybe even stifling. They may seem like something that we do “just because” and we have no connection as to why our family may do it in the first place.

Have you ever come across an inconsequential event, but yet it evokes a strong emotion in you like anger, irritation, or sadness? That particular event isn’t necessarily sad or irritating, but for some reason, that’s what it caused you to feel?

“I can’t sleep. When I close my eyes, it’s like I’m back in that house. I can’t go back.”

“I can’t breathe. I just had a flashback. He was there, I saw him.”

“The holidays are hard. It just brings me back to those same feelings and hurt I went through 10 years ago.”

One of the greatest tools for battling anxiety and depression that can be brought on by quarantine turns out to be curiosity and engaging in what the researchers referred to as “flow.” These are activities that are completely absorbing such as running, painting, writing, or gardening.

And you know what? That’s okay. It’s no fault to have simply not lived long enough. I wish we talked about this more. I wish we acknowledged that there is no 5-step manual that can ever match or make up for actual living.

She listened, and she helped. I want to share some of the tools she gave me to help with my anxiety in hopes that someone else may benefit from some of the techniques she suggested.

Have you ever found yourself daydreaming not about something that might happen in the future but about something that already did in the past?

All of those above characteristics can be used to describe me. Some of them are good, some of them not so much. As I grew up, I had several friends and family friends tell me who they thought I was.

Sometimes things happen to us that we don’t even realize had such a big impact until we go to therapy years later and the counselor picks up on it.

Think about it though. The things that have been the biggest blessing, reaped the most benefits, or taught you the most have also been things that took a long time. That friend you’ve had for 3 years now?

So why am I talking about this? And what is a rift? A rift is a crack, break, etc. in something. I call this time in our relationship a rift because that’s exactly what it was. Something fell from the sky, made a crack, and wedged itself in.

Self forgiveness: “I shouldn’t have lied to Mrs. Starinsky about that assignment. Everyone makes wrong choices sometimes, and I’ve been so afraid that I’ll fail this class but that doesn’t make what I did okay. I’m not going to do it again.” 

I didn’t have good managers in a few of these jobs. This instilled a hesitancy or fear to go to my supervisors in future jobs when I needed something. I am fearful of having another bad manager now. One of my jobs was so stressful that I dreaded going to work every day.

it appear like gold although it isn’t. Hence the name. I didn’t know it at the time, but there was a valuable lesson waiting to be learned while we scanned that gravel path during recess and it had nothing to do with minerals. Unfortunately, friends can come in the fool's gold variety too.