FEAR

(my girl with a Ruru (native owl) on her shoulder

My daughter has crappy teeth - she has had surgery and numerous fillings but works bloody hard to keep them healthy nonetheless





Yesterday she went to the dentist.





She was so scared during the examination that she cried.





Those big silent tears that you rub away angrily.





But she held it together and let the dentist work away.





And it was all ok.





She was thrilled.





She came home with a trick dental floss gadget, which she happily used for the first time...





and pulled out a filling.





She was almost hysterical.





The fear of going back, the fear of injections, the fear of pain, the fear of having to let someone do something you really don't want them to just flattened her.





But while i was trying to soothe her, and not negate that fact that she was scared, but not let it overwhelm her as well, I remembered.





I remembered that the last time she had work done, on the way home she said "Worrying about it was worse than the actual thing".





And i reminded her about that and she felt calmer.





How often in my life do i wish that i had had that wisdom. That all the fear and worry and difficulty i invented, before something had actually happened was so much worse than the actual event.





Or that staying stuck in a difficult situation was worse than anything i could have imagined happened if i had stepped out of my fear and into a new possibility.





She is so wise.