Awakening to the Truth: I Am Not My Fear

Questioning my worst fear revealed a deeper truth—and set me free.

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When my son was undergoing medical interventions a decade ago due to a genetic disease, I found myself confronting the most profound fear I’d ever known:

“My son will die.”

I turned to The Work by Byron Katie—a process of inquiry that has helped me uncover what is true beneath the stories my mind tells. Sitting with this terrifying thought, I questioned it gently, honestly, and bravely with two different facilitators in the Institute of The Work.

At the time, I was training to become a certified facilitator of The Work and had completed 700 of the 800 hours of certification. This was the third time I’d asked for help, because, although each time I inquired about my greatest fear, I felt better, I could tell it was still alive within me.

Then something extraordinary happened.

I had a vision — not a fantasy, but an inner seeing that felt more real than reality itself. I saw myself sitting with my fear. Next to me was the part of me I now recognize as my mother identity — the part screaming, “I can’t live if he dies.” She was in agony. Desperate. Completely identified with the belief that her child’s death would be the end of her life.

But here’s what changed everything:

I was detached from myself and watching her.

There was a deeper “I” — calm, still, and filled with peace — witnessing this suffering with total compassion. I realized:

This panicked mother was not all of me.

She was a role I had played with love and intensity, but I was not bound to her. In that moment, I knew something even more stunning:

I could live if he died.

Not because I didn’t love him, but because I had touched the part of me that is not governed by fear.

From that place, I saw a new truth emerge that was on the other side of my fear:
I could mother myself.
I could mother other young people.
I could mother the Earth.

That moment changed me forever.

It wasn’t just intellectual understanding — it was a soul-level shift. I met my true Self, and she was not fragile. She was vast, grounded, and loving. She didn’t panic. She was filled with peace and accepted what was happening.

And though my son lived — miraculously — I lived too, in a new way.

So, how do I explain that to you? How do I put words to a moment that transcended this fear?

I can only say this:

I faced my greatest fear.
I questioned it, met it, and let it speak for itself.
And in doing so, I discovered that I am not my fear.
I am the one who holds the fear with love.
And in that space, there is peace.

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