When I was in the fourth grade, I rushed home off the bus every afternoon and headed straight to my room. While others my age were doing the same, with the intent to catch the 4:00 cartoons or eat a snack, I was in a rush for a different reason. I needed to write down, for my mother to see, everything I had done wrong that day. From not standing in the line at the water fountain to cutting up in class, it was as though my conscience was bubbling over with anxious thoughts over what went wrong and unless I put pen to paper and confessed, I'd be miserable and in my head for the rest of the day. My parents, in their infinite understanding and wisdom, accepted the daily notes with a hug, a reassurance that I was doing just fine, and never once made me feel silly for this odd routine.

Doing such things when you're 10 is one thing. Nagging anxieties, worrisome thoughts and crushing fear when you're an adult is another. For years, I had my anxiety under control. In college, I was able to coast along without many concerns, save for exams and midterms that found me up in the book stacks of the library with a coffee until 4:00 a.m., when I'd go back to my dorm and crash for a few hours before I had to get up and do it all over again. During that time of relative peace, I came to discover that my anxiety was triggered and exacerbated by stress. Days, months and even years when things are going smoothly and nothing is really weighing on my shoulders means I can grab a much-needed escape from my mind. I can just live and enjoy each day as it comes.

However, that downtime quickly changed when I had my children. Suddenly, I went from being a career woman who would go into work at 8:00 a.m. and leave at 5:00 p.m. without much activity, drama or stress in the interim, to being a full-time stay-at-home mother. While I feel in every fiber of my being that it's my life's work and where I'm meant to be, the idea of raising children in an increasingly frightening world is enough to keep me up at all hours of the night, sometimes. Being responsible for such goodness, such pure sweetness is a challenge that I often feel ill-prepared for, though utterly honored to take on.

Still, it brought back years of feelings of inadequacy, doubt and yes, the dreaded anxiety. I found solace in a local mother's group that addressed these common feelings head on. During that special time, I was given many resources through which I learned to cope with and manage my anxiety. It was there that I learned there are medications, medical professionals, and even holistic treatments designed to help curb and control feelings of anxiety. We would share our feelings, discuss our options and on a few occasions, even had one-on-one consultations with a local mental health technician who could assess our personal situation and help us work through our underlying issues.

I learned I'm not alone and that many people, from mothers to construction workers and everyone in between, experiences these emotions at one time or another, brought on by one trigger or another, and that learning how to recognize and realize that these feelings are coming is the first step toward mitigating them.

Now, though I am no longer an active member of that group, I still apply many of the practices I learned there on a daily basis. I've learned to give myself grace, and time to lean into my anxiety when it comes, rather than fight like crazy to keep it at bay. That doesn't mean giving my thoughts full power to reign over my day. Rather, it means understanding what's going on and taking steps to perform self-care when I need to. It means getting enough sleep at night so I'm fully rested the next morning. It means easing back off the caffeine, which I've discovered is a major anxiety trigger for me. It means going outside, getting into nature and going for a walk when I need to shake the day off.

I don't think I'll ever fully quell my anxiety, but knowing how to manage it better has made a world of difference. Part of being a parent is a constant concern for your brood, and that's something I'll always carry with me. Yet, I've become a better mother, wife, daughter and friend since I've learned how to live in the present, rather than fretting about the past or looking with fear into the future. Today is beautiful and I am enough, and I'm resting on that truth from here on out.