Soothing words for scary times

At Christmas, my son called me from an air raid shelter in Ukraine during a bombing raid - not a sentence I ever thought I’d find myself writing, but there you go - and here we are, in undoubtedly difficult and scary times.

‘I can hear explosions, Mum,’ he said to me and my blood ran cold. I can honestly say I’ve never felt a fear like I experienced that day, made all the worse by the helplessness of being so far away from him.

Thankfully, he and his girlfriend and her family were OK, but several people died in Lviv that day.

And when I say my son was OK, I only mean physically. 

I met up with him a couple of weeks later on a break together in Norway and it was clear that his nervous system was frazzled. Thankfully, the beauty and tranquility of the snowy Norwegian landscape, combined with cosy nights drinking hot chocolate around a wood burning stove helped him relax and unwind and he’s now back in Ukraine in his role for a relief organisation and doing OK.

I’ve been back in the UK this past week and I took the opportunity to meet up with some friends.

Three separate friends on three different nights, but the conversations all circled back to the same two questions…

What the hell is happening to the world and how the hell are we supposed to deal with it?

It occured to me that many of you might be feeling the same so I thought I’d share some things I’ve been doing to help keep my anxiety at bay since my son moved to Ukraine and other world events have spiralled into insanity…

Daily walks

Wherever I am in the world and whatever the weather, I always make sure to get a daily walk in, and as early as possible in the day. There’s something about the soothing pace of walking, the steady rhythm and the forward motion, that helps process our anxious thoughts and file them away in our brain. Taking a new or unexpected route (even in your home town) can also spark a sense of wonder and adventure, which is a great way to start any day.

Meditation

Another of my daily musts is meditation and I’ve made it a part of my morning routine. Straight after my morning shower I sit down and meditate, and sometimes I’ll meditate in the evening too. When I’m feeling really stressed I chant OM over and over instead of sitting in silence, which really helps take the focus away from any fearful thoughts and calms the mind and body. If you find it hard to meditate there are loads of guided meditations on YouTube that can really help get you in the zone.

Bringing the focus back to myself 

This has been a breakthrough realisation for me this past year and has changed everything for the better - as long as I remember to do it! It’s so easy to feel despair when we’re being bombarded by images of terrorism and war, especially when so many of the victims are innocent children. We desperately want to do something to make it all stop, but how can we? I remember having a distraught rant to my dad one day about the state of our so-called ‘leaders’ and the chaos and carnage they’re causing throughout the world and he told me to play a song called Peace Will Come by Tom Paxton. Here are some of the lyrics…

Peace,

Peace will,

Peace will come,

Let it begin with me …

Oh, my own life,

Is all I can hope to control

Oh, let me life

Be lived for the good,

Good of my soul

Let it bring peace,

Sweet peace,

Peace will come,

And let it begin with me.

Whenever I play this song it brings me back to the only thing in this world I really can control - myself - and it reminds me to choose to feel and bring peace.

Small acts of kindness

Because I’ve been holed up writing in the hotel I’ve been staying in this week I’ve got to know the housekeeping team, who knock every day to see if I need my room cleaned. It turns out that several of the women who work here are Ukrainian and came to the UK as refugees at the start of the war. I’ve made a point of speaking my  (limited) Ukrainian with them and told them about my son working out there. Seeing the way their faces light up when I greet them with a cheery ‘Dobryi den!’ (Ukrainian for good day) has been a moving reminder of just how far a little act of warmth and kindness can go. We might not individually have the power to stop governments from dropping bombs but we always have the ability to make someone’s day.

Seeing love and unity as an act of defiance

Another thing that’s come up a lot in conversations with friends this week is the amount of division there now is in the world. I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember a time when things have been more polarised. It’s so upside down that, in a world where hatred and division are being actively encouraged, love and unity have become acts of defiance and rebellion. One thing I’m trying to do whenever I witness hatred and anger, in another or in myself (and trust me, the day my son called me from that air raid shelter I felt so much red hot anger towards the Russians), is to be defiantly loving and to refuse to play the division game.

I hope these musings of mine have helped and I would LOVE to read any other suggestions you might have for soothing ourselves in scary times in the comments.

Let me leave you with another quote, this time from a poem: Lightly, My Darling by Aldous Huxley.

It’s dark because you are trying too hard.

Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do

Everything lightly.

Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.

Just lightly let things happen and

lightly cope with them.

Wishing you all a week of lightness, love and unity

Siobhan