I lifted the lid of the diaper genie with my foot and there it was again: a whiff of fear so strong it cut right through me. I got angry. “How the fuck am I supposed to deal with this?” I asked out loud.

What I was referring to were the tsunami-like waves of worry that I experience with regard to my new daughter. She is a plump, healthy little thing. I have no logical reason for this overwhelming fear response but sometimes gruesome images suddenly snap into my brain without warning. I call them panic-visions. I asked my husband if he had them, in general, and he said yes. I’d had them before too: of the truck plowing into me, of the subway blowing up, but now, with my baby bird, these visions have spun out of control. A couple of times every day, I am reduced to tears that I will lose my hold on her while falling down the stairs and she will be sent tumbling, or I will get into some other kind of accident, or worse yet, that someone else will be holding her at the time of said accident, for which I will feel guilt as well as grief.

I wonder if I am experiencing postpartum depression. A friend of mine once brilliantly described depression as the result of refusing to change when it’s time to change. Then, what is depression if not a form of fear? Images of depression on tv are of listless, un-showered people, staring off into space, refusing to play with their dog. I don’t feel like I fit that description exactly. I’m still wearing lip-gloss and have moments of downright perkiness. What I’m feeling is a little more violent. More passionate. But maybe it is a form of depression after all.

I know with postpartum, there are hormones involved. Women are often told that our experiences are due to hormones, as though that makes it less real. But maybe the added impact of hormones upon depression makes things more real and adds to the urgency of needing to change. I’m not saying this is my fault. I’m saying, hormones or not, it’s my responsibility.

Makarta, a spiritual teacher, channeled by Ken Ludden and a few others, once said that one of the purposes of incarnating as a female is that it forces you to deal with your emotions. I thought of this now, in the wake of one of my panic-visions. Either I learn to put my fear in a box or it will eat me from the inside. I can already literally feel it draining my life-force.

I take a deep breath. I think of the multitudes of mothers who have come before me and have suffered The Worry. This gives me strength, knowing that others have endured this aspect of motherhood. I check in on my little one, sleeping soundly. I try very hard to receive this moment with gratitude. On some remote level, I know it is helping me to grow. Helping me to appreciate life. Also, it’s one thing to meditate when everything’s hunky dory. It’s quite another to find stillness in the heat of the blaze.

I am stripped and raw. I had no idea what this would cost me. Yet, I have no regrets. I am in love. I have wanted love more than anything. And love this big brings about a restructuring of sorts. Maybe part of what I’m feeling is the fear of the snake the first time it sheds its skin, the fear of the tree in its first autumn, mistaking the loss of leaves as a sign of death. And it is a little death. If I can manage it with a measure of grace, who knows, maybe I’ll manage the big death with some of that same grace. That is my hope.

But I don’t want to get ahead of myself.  At this point, motherhood is teaching me, through its sheer impact, to live one day at a time. Today, I took us all out for a walk, baby, dog and me. We watched the leaves falling in the breeze and the light peeking through the trees, teasingly. We stood beneath the noble evergreen and for a moment, embraced in that green, I felt safe.

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