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Music m g yes.com slash moth.

This is The Moth Radio Hour, and I'm Catherine Burns.

I'm usually a problem solver, someone who isn't afraid to jump in and talk something through until I figure it out.

But occasionally, I find myself overcome by a vague angst that permeates everything.

And I'm afraid to look at things too closely out of fear of what I'll uncover.

Moth storyteller and beloved meditation instructor Sharon Salzberg says that fear and worry make it impossible to see our situations clearly. Without clarity, answers are hard to come by.

If we want to fix things, we have to deal with our fears because they keep us from seeing the solutions.

So this week, we're going to hear from storytellers who were afraid to look, but somehow

managed to muster the courage to peek through their fingers and try to find their way through.

First, we're going to hear from the writer Amanda Stern.

Amanda's story was recorded live at St. Anne's Church in Brooklyn Heights.

This was during the pandemic, so we had a very tiny audience made up mostly of our masked and socially distant staff and crew.

I just want to mention that in this story, there is some discussion of thoughts of suicide.

Here's Amanda Stern live at the mom.

Since I was a child, I've been held captive by this nameless, invisible dread.

The feeling was so all-encompassing. It made routine things like

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