Connect

I’ve written before about how my mental health tanked after I gave birth to my babies. The constant fear and worry about them—the bone-deep terror of something happening to them—combined with extreme sleep deprivation was not a glowing cocktail for me. But what it's taken me years (eight and a half, to be precise) to realize is that anxiety can also be reframed as a gift.

My neighborhood shuts down on Halloween. We’re lucky in that it only has one way in and one way out and isn’t huge—just 50 houses. We have dear friends we’ve trick-or-treated with for the last few years, and what feels like the whole neighborhood meets at the entrance for pizza and to kick off at the same time. The streets are flooded with kids—I never remember a car trying to get through during peak trick-or-treating hours, though I suppose it has happened—some walking, some in strollers being pushed by parents, some in wagons being pulled. Our own wagon last year rotated among our littlest child and others that aren’t ours, plus a cooler of beverages that are decidedly not for the kids. It is, essentially, one massive street party.