My nervous system has been acting up. I’ve been giving it too much to do. Yesterday on the way home from Orange Theory I was in an accident. We’ve all been driving and wondered what we would do if someone just pulled out in front of us. What I noticed when this actually did happen to me at a stoplight just outside of town is that a moment of your response time gets wasted in incredulity or confusion. Is someone’s car in front of me? Slam.

God bless the woman. She was on the phone when it happened, but she was cool and collected. At first, she was acting like it was my fault, so I was confused for a few minutes until a witness emerged who had seen the whole accident and confirmed what I had seen – I had a green light, she had a red light. She turned left on red directly into my lane as I was trying to go straight. I think we have all had to stop ourselves before from going on a red light, not on purpose, but because somehow one forgets for one instant that fundamental lesson – red means stop, green means go.

I was pretty calm during the accident and while waiting for the sheriff. It definitely helped that the witness pulled over and waited with me. It also helped that she had a guardian angel vibe. “Misty,” what a perfect name for an angel. She pulled her car up to mine and chatted with me while we waited for the Sheriff. I was so grateful that she stayed even though it was an inconvenience for her. It probably saved me thousands of dollars. In that sense I felt very protected. I could feel how having just worked out and having recently been with Marc gave me a different ability to be in the situation than I would have had under other circumstances.

But as the day wore on, and I cleaned the garage, and Jack came home, and I got good news from the body shop and bad news from the mechanic, I felt my nerves fraying. I was having to hold on to good behavior, as if part of me wanted to throw a temper tantrum, wanted to kick the dog, wanted to scream. There was a very active effort to say to that part, “We are not going to throw a tantrum,” “We are not going to kick the dog,” “We are not going to scream.” Jack’s questions seemed to come one after the other, constant questions about his video game and about dinner and about every conceivable subject. I was grateful for his sake that I was under control, and my heart surged with compassion for the children whose parents lose control in that moment, and I felt compassion also for the parents themselves, not supported by their communities, partners or their own mental health, for them to find the end of their ropes.

There are a series of herbs that we have been studying in my class called “adaptogens.” Plants like burdock and nettles that lower your stress response. When we studied them, I had a distanced reaction to them. Interested in them for other people’s benefit, noting all the people who I would like to prescribe adaptogens in my life. But yesterday I found myself rummaging the cabinets on my own behalf, don’t I have any nettles?

That’s the crux of all of this, isn’t it? We envision ourselves as helping others, but we can barely help ourselves. We have to trick ourselves into learning things that we really need for our own benefit. I want to believe that my toolkit is full, and in fairness it is a pretty impressive set of coping mechanisms, but some days remind me that I remain the person most in need of my own wisdom, my own tenderness, my own attention. Healer, heal thyself.