Back to Peaceful Sleep

I woke up last night worried about grades. So worried that I couldn't fall back asleep. I wondered how I would find the ability to cope with the new stresses placed on me.
It occurred to me that I should look back at my life and see where exactly I found strength in the past. So, I started with my early childhood to the present and came to a few surprising conclusions:

1. My life, since early childhood, has always been quite difficult. But I got through it, lived every day of it.
2. My teen years were equally kind of horrible. Really horrific. And yet, I dug in, clung to my vision of myself, and held on.
3. Times in my life when I thought I was going through the blackest of days, in retrospect, weren't so bad. I now realize the awful consequences that would most likely have arisen had I been given that thing I most wanted at the time.
4. I don't really plan very much or research very much and that's hurt me in life.
5. These past five years with my husband have been the best and easiest of my life, which has made me forget how I strong I am.

After taking two hours to do this mental review in the middle of the night, my acedemic career suddenly seemed like something I could do. Perhaps not easily, perhaps not without casualties. But I knew then that I have made it through much worse and I would be ok.

And then I fell back asleep.