Our microwave died last night. I need to go get a new one. Among all the other things I had planned to get done today, adding that one things has thrown me for a loop. Time for me to take a deep breath. And then another one. Until I have the strange, yet familiar, panic somewhat under control. Again.

Adulthood and parenting are daunting at times. And not once or twice a year times. Weekly and daily times. Hourly times. Feeling like you have been controlling your breathing all afternoon times.

It’s all normal. Annoying, exhausting, sometimes hiding away so you can cry, journalling, texting your sister, threatening to sell the kids, swearing you can’t handle another piece of bad news this month, normal. For the rest of our lives.

And before you just give up and go back to bed, here’s the good news. It has always been this way. My maternal grandmother divorced the same man twice, raised 4 kids, and helped to raise 4 grandkids. Her mother survived three difficult pregnancies, tragically losing her first daughter, survived a car accident that killed her passenger, and her husband having to be put into a nursing home with Alzheimer’s.

That’s just 2 examples! They both died of old age while being lovingly cared for by other female relatives who had their own lives to take care of. To put it simply, we have been doing this for ever.

What am I getting at? We are resillient. We are capable. We are wonders of creation who have amazing abilities to make changes in our lives and the lives of those we care about.

So take a deep breath, and let’s discuss a few ways to calm down our inner worlds.

I have already mentioned the first step: Taking a deep breath. Take a few more while you’re at it. A few good belly breaths will help tell your body that running for you life while screaming at the top of your lungs is not necessary. We often want to do it, but it’s not necessary.

If that is all it takes to recenter yourself while the toddler is having a meltdown, or before you clean up the cup of milk you dropped, great. If not try the next step.

The next step is to look your panic, worry, or overwhelm straight in the face and find out what it even is. Avoiding big emotions is OK for getting through the moment. It is not a good long term strategy. When you have a bit of time pull out your journal, or just a few pieces of paper, and start writing about what has you so worked up. Sometimes it’s something big that is on your to do list, and other times it’s just the amount of items on your to do list. Write it out. All of it. Then read over what you have written. Are there things you can put off until tomorrow or next week? Are there ways to break that big, scary thing into smaller bites that you can handle over the next few days or weeks?

Give yourself grace. Things often do not have to happen as fast as we want them to get done. In reality, a lot of what we are stressing over can’t even be addressed until several other steps have been taken, or are not even anything to be done in that season. I once had to do a whole journaling session to calm my mind down only to find out that for some reason I had woken up with part of my mind stressing about tax season. Ladies. It was July. Why my mind was telling me that our taxes had to be done ASAP in July is beyond me. I had a good laugh at myself, told that part of my mind it was allowed to calm down, double checked that we did indeed have an appointment with our tax accountant for next February, and went on about my day feeling a lot lighter.

Now, I have been in places where what was on my to do list did indeed have to be handled that day, week, and month. Having a baby in NICU, experiencing a car wreck, and having a relative pass away will put a lot of things on your to do list that must be handled as they appear without delay. Those are their own journeys. Those are a season. A lot of your other to dos can and will wait while you handle larger moments of life. There are a lot of deep breaths, tears, journaling, texting your loved ones (and sometimes only those people you know will be of actual use), just holding on through this meeting, taking entire days in bed, and a lot of just staring at a blank wall while you watch your mind swirl as though you aren’t even a part of the turmoil. Believe me, I have experienced all of these. But you know what? We get through it.

We women get through a lot of things. (That’s not to say that men can’t or don’t handle a lot. They do. My husband was knee deep in these large life happenings with me, and I have helped him handle his own.) We call each other. We hug. We get the emotions out of the way enough so that we can deal with the immediate. And good grief can we get a lot done when the time calls for it. Mountains of paperwork are somehow waded through. Living rooms are put to right within days of them having been a palliative care room. We nurse toddlers mere hours after having a leg bone set. We do our taxes two days after becoming a widow. It has happened to friends of mine. They have gotten through it. There is still laughter. There is still joy. Children still play. Babies still steal our hearts with a grin. Life goes on.

We need to remember that: Life goes on. My NICU baby is eight and learning coding for the fun of messing with her cousins in MineCraft. The toddler who nursed hours after my leg was set is now 4 and helped me chop the celery for dinner last night. And my microwave? Well, it just needed to be unplugged and plugged back in.