“I’m so scared all the time. Before kids, I was never scared. Ever.”

In fact, this mom tells me she was a real risk-taker “back in the day,” a true daredevil. She climbed mountains. She bungee-jumped. She rode a motorcycle. She ran “extreme” races.

She loved this about herself. Made her feel alive. She smiles as she tells the stories of all her nearly near-death experiences. She loses herself in the daydream.

And you can watch as the fears of the present day suddenly overwhelm her. It shows most in her eyes.

“What if she runs into trouble with a boy?” she asks about her fifteen-year-old daughter.

“Do you think she might become depressed?”

“What if her grades drop?”

What if somebody offers her pot?”

And with the fear, this lively, fearless maverick of a woman disappears. She becomes her fear. I go on to make my pat argument that fear begets nothing – it only serves to generate more fear. Honestly, this gets us nowhere.

She finally fesses up to the basis of all of her anxieties:

“I just don’t want her to be like me!”

“Well, what would be so wrong with that?”

As if the thought had never before occurred to her, she responds thoughtfully, “I’m not sure.”

We talk about her life now. She’s a professional. She’s happily married. She has wonderful children. She realizes things are better than she fears they are, far better.

She also recognizes all she’s missing through the haze of fear that surrounds her. She knows she’s got to loosen her grip. She’s keenly aware that the tighter she holds on, the less she really has of her daughter, the more she’s missing.

We are not available when we’re afraid. Instead, we expend our energies ameliorating our fears. Fundamentally, our kids get this. The daughter in this instance is a great kid. She does well in school, participates, has a great group of friends. By and large, she makes really good choices.

And yes, she enjoys the occasional thrill now and again. Instead of fearing it, I hope this mom can find a way to celebrate this part of herself in her daughter, this wonderful sign of life.

Perhaps Mom can learn from her daughter to recapture this part of herself, maybe hop back on that Harley.

And ride on.