A Work In Progress

So you are going about your day, quite happily, and then you get triggered into a series of anxious thoughts. Annoyingly the trigger is seldom of the magnitude to warrant a panic attack, but your body is so hard wired to go down a certain thought pattern that you fall into one. The tricky think is to bring your self back to facts. To focus on what you actually know and not what you think you know or what might happen. I suspect anxiety is worse for people like myself who are planners and problem solvers. One of my strengths is to identify issues that might happen and solve them, the problem is this can get out of control when you start scenario planning. I wish I didn't have to go through this. I wish I could be more resilient and not have these days where I want to crawl into bed and hide. I have so many people that I care deeply for and as a result have so many people that I worry about - worry how they are, what they are feeling, if I am making them proud or upsetting them. I fi...

When I lived in Melbourne we worked together and became friends. I remember her journey with IVF and following that the joyful news that she was pregnant. I attended Thomas's christening and his first birthday. I hung out with Elaine and her husband Zoran. They were warm and welcoming. They had been together since high school. They seemed so happy. When I moved back to New Zealand, Elaine and I stayed in touch. Distance meant the friendship softened, but we shared each others milestones and enjoyed seeing our families grow. Yesterday, I found out she had been murdered.  On Tuesday, her husband took her life in a senseless act of violence. He hid her body in the house and drove across Melbourne. He then rammed a car, hurting two strangers, in an attempt to kill himself. Elaine's family looked for her on Tuesday. They called the police her found her body late Tuesday night. On Wednesday I was enjoying a day off with Grace. I checked into Facebook and read the news. Ab...