I am raw, swirling inside, ungrounded. As I watched my 10-year-old daughter holding back tears as she walks out of the car and heading into school this morning, my insides are crumbling. She feels trapped, unable to find an exit from the overwhelming fear that has taken over her normally bright and fierce self these past few weeks. She can’t find her way through this heaviness, she feels not in control of herself, and it splits my heart open.

Is it pre-puberty, a new teacher and new classmates, the car accident she was in last winter, a sudden and new awareness of mortality, her older brother going through his own changes, me travelling, the recent encounter with a verbally violent neighbour, or is it a combination of all these things coming together in a perfect storm… whatever it is, it is bringing her to the edge of her own awareness of safety in her body, and of her sense of power in this world.

In this intensity, I feel my own shakiness, which dissimulates an anger...