When I Tried to Hold On

A few weeks ago, while camping with my daughter, something shifted in me.

At first, I struggled to describe it.

It wasn't excitement or happiness exactly.

It was something quieter.

A sense of trust.

A sense that life was enough.

That I was enough.

For a while, I carried that feeling home with me. I noticed myself approaching life differently. I felt less compelled to constantly calculate, prepare, anticipate and manage.

I spent more time noticing things.

The changing colours in the garden.

The shape of branches against the sky.

The simple pleasure of being with my daughter.

Then life continued, as it always does.

The bills remained.

School slowly appeared on the horizon.

September approached with its familiar routines and structures.

And I noticed something else returning.

Anxiety.

Not dramatic anxiety.

More a tightening.

A subtle movement towards checking, calculating, forecasting and preparing.

At first, I thought the anxiety itself was the problem.

Then I realised something.

What frightened me most wasn't the anxiety.

It was the distance I felt from that sense of trust I had experienced while camping.

I became afraid that I was losing it.

The more I tried to hold on to it, the more anxious I became.

There was something strangely relieving about recognising this.

Because if I was afraid of losing the feeling, then I was treating the feeling itself as the thing I needed to preserve.

Perhaps the feeling was never the point.

Perhaps the connection was.

Looking back, I realise there was another reason camping felt so different.

I was living much closer to nature.

The days were shaped by light, weather, movement, hunger, rest and simple practical needs.

The nights were perhaps the most powerful of all.

There is something about lying beneath a summer sky that quietly rearranges perspective.

The stillness.

The darkness.

The vastness.

The stars scattered above like distant reminders of something much larger than our plans and worries.

Of course, I could see satellites moving across the sky as well. Tiny signs of the modern world quietly passing overhead.

Yet somehow that didn't diminish the experience.

If anything, it deepened it.

The contrast between the ancient sky and our modern lives felt strangely beautiful.

For a few moments each night, I wasn't managing life.

I was simply part of it.

And perhaps that is what I have been missing.

Not a feeling.

A connection.

Since returning home, I have noticed how easily that connection can become obscured.

Bills approach.

School routines return.

Responsibilities accumulate.

I reconnect with people whose relationship with life is often shaped by worry, scarcity or fear.

Sometimes I notice myself becoming protective of the goodness in my own life, almost afraid that acknowledging it too openly might somehow invite its loss.

I can see how irrational that sounds.

And yet I also suspect many people know that feeling.

The reluctance to fully relax into joy.

The instinct to brace ourselves even when things are going well.

The quiet fear that life may somehow punish us for being content.

Over the last few weeks, life has actually been full.

There have been health visitor appointments and social care visits.

Trips to the allotment.

Sharing vegetables we had grown.

Pizza at the playground.

Hours spent assembling a chicken coop with my daughter.

An hour-long journey to a small farm.

Four new chickens arriving home and immediately receiving names: Orio, Fluffy, Sparkel and Hope.

There have been conversations, laughter, anticipation and a surprising number of moments that already feel like memories.

Yet even in the middle of all this goodness, anxiety has occasionally returned.

Not because life is going badly.

But perhaps because part of me still expects that it will.

A few days ago I found myself standing in the garden looking at the trees.

Some branches were weathered.

Some leaves were already changing colour.

Parts of the plants looked vibrant whilst other parts looked tired and worn.

Nothing was perfect.

Yet nothing appeared wrong.

Nature never seems interested in preserving a particular moment.

Spring does not cling to itself.

Summer does not insist on remaining summer.

The leaves change.

The branches age.

The seasons move on.

And still there is beauty.

Perhaps that is what I am learning too.

Not how to remain in a certain state.

Not how to hold onto a feeling.

But how to stay connected.

Connected to myself.

Connected to nature.

Connected to the people I love.

Connected to life itself.

Because maybe the trust I found while camping was never something that could be stored away and kept forever.

Maybe trust is simply the willingness to return.

Again and again.

To the garden.

To the stars.

To the chickens.

To the present moment.

To myself.

And perhaps that is enough.

Recently I realised that my greatest fear was not anxiety itself. It was the belief that I might lose the sense of trust I had discovered. What I am slowly learning is that trust is not something to hold onto. It is something I return to whenever I reconnect with myself, with nature, and with life as it is unfolding right now.
🌿
Dr Maliheh Taheri
M.A.L.I. Neuro-Somatic Practice