Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence

magazine, located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Mewalk people of present-day

Marin County. Each week, we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story, exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Halea Alion is a clinical psychologist, poet, and the author of the novels The Arsonist's City and Salt Houses.

In this essay, Hala's experiences of tragedy and deep uncertainty

prompt her to reluctantly step into the realm of fear,

exploring its manifestations, the whole they can have over us, and practices

for courage.

If you slip or have a minor spill, take note of the circumstances of your fall, but don't allow your body to brood on the memory.

Rene Domal, Mount Analog.

I regret pitching this essay. It feels important to start here. I don't want to write about fear.

When I first came up with this topic, it felt important and appealing, something that might be edifying in the process of writing it.

But then something odd happened. I started to procrastinate.

Yes, that's part of the writing process, but this was different. The summer came and peaked without me writing a single word. Every time I sat down to work, I'd get a headache or remember a

household task. The year had taken a lot out of me, most of us, and it was nowhere near over.

I was exhausted from fretting. I was bored with talking about fear. I didn't want to think about it

anymore. By August, with the deadline rapidly approaching, I had started organizing my notes.

Then the month collapsed on itself.

First, the port explosion in Beirut, where I'd lived for many years, which awoke in me even from my distant, lucky perch in the United States, a roar of dread and nightmares. Three weeks later, I got a positive pregnancy

test, promptly followed by concerning blood work which left me scared, eight hours away from home

on a secluded island in Maine, and unsure whether I was miscarrying or having another ectopic.

It was mercifully the former. By the time I got home to Brooklyn,

...