A blessed bouquet

The female struggle with anxiety and what can pull us out of it

We spend a lot of time bracing ourselves for events that never occur.

That’s what anxiety is, underneath the word. Waking at the smallest sound thinking something’s wrong. Losing access to a friend’s location on iOS and deciding she hates you. Catastrophizing, getting an unexpected calendar invite from your boss thinking you’ll get fired, never find a job again and become homeless.

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This isn’t evenly distributed

About 1 in 3 women will meet criteria for an anxiety disorder in her lifetime, compared to roughly 1 in 5 men.

Part of that is social and psychological, and part is hormonal. Estrogen and progesterone shape the brain’s fear response, and anxiety in women reliably clusters around the moments those hormones move: puberty, the week before your period, pregnancy and postpartum, perimenopause. Sharp drops in estrogen appear to be the vulnerable window.

Not every woman lives this way, but many of us do.

Sometimes it takes small random experiences to catapult us out of our heads and straight back into reality. To remind us that we have a lot to be grateful for and that everything is actually ok.

Below are a couple of examples from this past month that are top of mind.

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1. A bird shit on me at the farmer’s market

I walked to the Ferry Building in a bad mood. It was grey out, I felt mopey, stuck deep in my own head.

I went to see Paul, my flower guy, and got a bouquet of dahlias. Then some stone fruit (plums and nectarines). They were perfect that day, a little tart and not too sweet. I started on my regular track back out of the market.

I walked into a vendor with beautiful fig samples.

He hands me one and says “oh, you get a nice big one.” I look down at it, admiring it, about to lift it to my mouth. And then a wet, heavy thud lands across my chest, my arm, and the newspaper wrapped around the dahlias.

A bird had taken a shit on me. A diarrhea, actually. It completely missed the fig.

There was a beat of pure “what just happened.” Everyone else at the sample table looked at me, then up at the sky, then back at me. A guy kindly offered me a wet wipe. I couldn’t help but laugh gutturally.

If a bird pooping on you is good luck, what is diarrhea?

Once I got most of it off me I walked back to Paul and told him what happened. The newspaper around the dahlias had taken a direct hit, so I asked him to rewrap them.

We laughed about it together. He told me I was lucky. Then he handed me a second bouquet, free, and wrapped them both.

As I started walking I noticed a baby snail on the second bouquet.

I walked along the water with him riding the flowers, then set him on the railing and said goodbye before turning to go home. He’s a pest at the end of the day.

I walked into the market carrying something heavy and vague. I walked out with bird diarrhea on my sweatshirt, a bouquet blessed by a bird, and a baby snail. It knocked me into laughter and out of my trance.

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2. A walk to the gym

As part of my regular weekday routine I was walking to the gym after work. I noticed a group of people on the sidewalk, gathered around a cyclist who seemed to have fallen. As I got closer I saw there was a little boy on the ground with him who was maybe four years old. I assumed it was his son.

The boy was in a helmet, sitting up, calm, watching the adults hold their phones and call 911. He seemed fine.

The man had no helmet. He was sitting up, shaking, completely unaware of where he was. He stared straight ahead in a kind of trance. His eyes were turning a lighter color. He was not checking on the boy. The bike lay on its side and the two of them were propped against it.

Then the man collapsed sideways onto the pavement.

People were already on with 911, but now it was obvious something was very wrong. I thought I was about to watch a man die on the sidewalk in front of his son.

A few seconds later he pulled a huge gasping breath and flung himself back up to sitting, confused again. There were a lot of people around by then and two women were with the boy. The paramedics were pulling up, so I kept walking.

Walking by this on what felt like a normal weekday afternoon was a shock to the system and a reminder to be grateful for our lives, for the health of our loved ones, because our time here on this earth is limited. I came home and hugged my husband extra tight that evening.

I still think about that man and the little boy in his helmet. I hope they’re both okay.

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The takeaways

Paul, the flower guy, was right. I was lucky. Not because of the bird, but because that was the worst thing that happened to me that day.

We are our own worst enemies inside our own heads.

The anxiety and the stress women carry are real and valid, but the narrative we tell ourselves is the reality we end up living.

When enough time is spent in fight or flight, there’s little room left for anything else. Gratitude doesn’t get a slot so we have to actively make one. It’s tough to notice how lucky we are while constantly braced for impact.

Both of these events had the power to interrupt the chatter in my head and force me to be present with what was in front of me. Flowers, kind and helpful people around me, a healthy body that carried me to the gym.

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Quick tips for actively getting yourself out of your head:

• Morning and evening gratitude journaling:

  • Listing at least 3 things you’re grateful for in the morning

  • At night listing 3 good things that happened that day

• Repeating a positive mantra or affirmation. E.g. “I trust the universe is working in my favor”

• Breathwork, meditation, and yoga (much more on this in a previous post)

• Talking to someone you trust. Sharing how you feel out loud, in a safe space

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Sometimes we need sense knocked into us and sometimes it arrives as diarrhea from the sky.

What’s your “blessed bouquet” story? Share in the comments.

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