Lately the knot is there, lodged in my solar plexus, the physical sensation that tells me fear has taken hold.

I wake at night. Stay awake for an hour or more. This thought, that thought, this fear, that fear, this worry, that worry. I send myself Reiki. I try and talk myself through it. I curl closer to my partner, hoping in her warmth I will drift off to sleep.

The pit remains.

I’ve learned running from it does no good. It’s faster than me. So I ask, “What are you about? What do you want?”

I’m reminded that I’m at the precipice. I’m reluctant to move forward, wanting instead to retreat to what is comfortable. I’m asked to not slide backward. To focus on what I want, not on what I don’t want. In the morning, I talk with my son, who is living and teaching in a city near Seoul, South Korea. It’s nearly midnight for him and he has to get up early so we keep our call short. He shares what’s happening in his life. I bask in his enthusiasm, his zest for life.

“I’m definitely in the flow,” he says.

I love that my son, just 24, knows about being in the flow of life. That he can recognize it. That he can name it. When, through tears, I tell him, “I’ll get back in the flow,” he wisely reminds me I’m already in it.

“You just have to chill out,” he says.

He searches for a quote, something along the lines that worrying is wasted energy because what we worry about seldom comes to pass.

I cling to his words. I write them down on a yellow Post-it note. After our call I stick the note to my computer monitor so it’s right where I can see it. It hangs next to another reminder, this one from a fortune cookie:

“You stand in your own light. Make it shine.”