"Unsteady/Steady Inner Courage: Raven Totem Tofino"

"Unsteady:

I knew something was off the day I set my coffee on the counter, stared at the mug, and could not remember why I had walked into the kitchen. My brain felt wrapped in gauze, and the simplest chore: answering an email, switching the laundry, watering the plants felt like pushing a stalled car up a hill. My body was holding the brake and the accelerator at the same time. On paper I looked stationary, yet inside a silent alarm kept hammering, flooding my blood with cortisol so often that my cells treated the hormone like tap water instead of an emergency signal.

Original photo by B. Littleton

"Raven Totem at Tofino" 2023

When chronic stress locks me in a freeze response, everything slows except the stories in my head. I open my phone to check the news, promising myself five minutes. Two hours later I am still scrolling, shoulders tight, breath shallow. Images of chaos and unrest feel like physical blows. The more I watch, the less I move. Lunch comes and goes, appetite a fickle friend. Sometimes I snack all afternoon, searching for satisfaction I cannot taste. Other days I forget to eat, the knot in my stomach hogging all the space.

My midsection tells the tale: weight gathers there as if to shield my organs. Inflammation sparks under my skin, especially in my hips and knees, and a dull ache settles into the joints like bad weather that refuses to pass. My eyes blur after a page or two, so books pile high on the nightstand untouched. Sleep drifts out of reach, leaving me awake at midnight, scrolling again, chasing numbness, wondering if now is the time to wash the floor or deal with the thick calluses on my feet.

Cortisol is meant to save me from sprinting lions, not from a ceaseless parade of headlines and a bevy of unknown what-ifs. When cortisol dumps day after day, it hijacks digestion, thins the skin, and muddles memory. My body hoards belly fat for a famine that never comes, steals protein from muscles, and turns glucose into a roller-coaster ride that leaves me shaky and ravenous. Food loses flavor. Sugar feels urgent. Coffee tastes like courage until the jitters tip into panic.

The freeze response confuses stillness with safety. I postpone the business plan, the half-written poem, the walk around the block. Desire shrinks to a single aim: avoid overwhelm. Friends text and I draft replies I never send. The front door may as well be a drawbridge. Small talk feels risky when the nervous system is pleading for camouflage.

My body is not trying to sabotage me. It is trying to finish a survival story I never got to complete. The signal flare of cortisol says, "Notice me, something hurts." When I listen, hand on heart, feet on the floor, breath slow and low, the volume drops a notch. I name the sensations instead of muscling past them: prickly skin, foggy mind, heavy eyes, buzzing thoughts. Awareness is the first thread in the rope that pulls me forward.

Some days progress is a glass of water before coffee, a four-count inhale with a six-count exhale, a stretch that uncurls the hips. Movement reminds my biology that danger has passed. Protein and bright-colored vegetables give my blood the building blocks to repair. Gentle connection, one sincere text, a short call, a smile at the neighbor, tells the amygdala I am part of a tribe. Minute by minute, these small choices invite the nervous system to lower the drawbridge.

I keep a sticky note on my desk that reads, "Safety Is Here." When the freeze tightens its grip, I read the words out loud, feel the vibration in my chest, and notice my shoulders soften a fraction. Healing is not linear. Some mornings the old fog rolls in thick. I meet it with curiosity instead of judgment. I ask, What do you need right now? A sip of water, a deeper breath, a moment of sunlight, a lull in the newsfeed? Little by little, the body that once rang like a fire alarm learns a quieter song. In that softer rhythm, desire stirs again, first a whisper, then a pulse, reminding me that life still waits on the other side of freeze.

Steady:

I have learned that the single most radical act I can take is to come back to “steady” as often as possible, even if steady lasts only a few breaths. When I make choices from the shaky perch of fear those choices carry the tremor forward. Each time I notice the old surge: heart racing, thoughts spinning, I pause. One hand rests on my belly, the other on my chest, and I feel for the slowest rhythm I can find. Sometimes it is only the faint pulse in my fingertip, but that is enough to remind me there is still a safe baseline inside this body, and I can visit it any time.

Self-regulation is not a once-a-day ritual reserved for sunrise. It is a practice stitched into the mundane pauses of life: waiting for the kettle, sitting at a stoplight, noticing the moment before I click another headline. I let the inhale rise like a tide, then stretch the exhale just a little longer. That extra beat tells my nervous system we are not being chased. When fear still crackles, I name it out loud—“There is fear here”—the way I would greet an old friend at the door. Naming shifts me from the storm to the observer of the storm.

I try to remember that every ache, twitch, and fatigue spike is a messenger, not a malfunction. The tight hip, the blurry eye, the sudden craving for sugar all wave their flags to say, Stop, look, listen. When I treat those signals as orphans who have wandered home rather than intruders to be banished, something lifts inside me. I ask, What do you need right now? Water, movement, a lull in stimuli, a gentle hum to vibrate the vagus nerve? The body answers quickly once it trusts I am listening.

Mornings begin with a small water fast, just room-temperature water with a squeeze of lemon, before coffee or food. It is my daily agreement to tune in first, to meet thirst and gut sensation before the rush of flavors and tasks. While I drink, I track the cool path down my throat, letting hydration anchor me in the present. If anxiety surfaces, I stay with the feeling, allowing it to crest and settle rather than scrambling to outrun it. This simple ritual teaches my biology that space exists between stimulus and response. The body responds in ways for me to pay attention, to attune in real time being present with my Self.

Throughout the day I practice micro-returns to baseline: feeling both feet on the floor, stretching my arms overhead, letting my vision soften away from the screen to the farthest point in the room, humming a low note until my chest vibrates. Each small reset lays another brick in the path home, so when larger storms roll in I already know the way back.

The intellect loves plans and spreadsheets, yet my deepest sense of safety rises from the conversation between breath, heartbeat, fascia, and gut. When I forget to invite the body, it reminds me by turning up the volume on pain, inflammation, or fatigue. Rather than taking those signals as proof that I am broken, I choose to hear them as proof that I am exquisitely designed to survive. They are my built-in compass pointing me toward rest, nourishment, and honest connection. Every time I honor the message by pausing, hydrating, moving, or simply feeling without judgment, I rewrite the pattern. Moment by moment the frazzle becomes less of a default and more of a doorway back to myself."

Essay written by Brenda Littleton

Tin Flea Press copyright June 13, 2025

Original photo by B. Littleton,

"Raven Totem at Tofino" 2023.