I never knew I liked sequins.

Have you ever been shopping and out of the corner of your eye see something that you are immediately and compulsively desperate to have? This happened to me once with an Isabella Fiore purse. I was shopping for make up at Nordstrom and, as I short-cutted through accessories to the MAC counter, the purse caught my eye. It was marked down from $600 to $168 (which is my style). I never knew that I wanted a navy gingham purse with red and pink sequins flowers. Never knew. It was a fashion epiphany. I had to have that purse! Had to have it, so I bought it. That purse sits in my closet. I use it maybe once every three years.

Recently I had an emotional epiphany that hit me in much the same way as the perfectly ridiculous purse. I have high anxiety, particularly high anxiety among big crowds, and super-amplified anxiety when I'm having a party with lots of people in my own house. So, we had a party. I thought I would be fine. I thought I was good. I thought I was "over" this particular issue in my life. And then, there it was, the issue, from out of nowhere, like that Isabella Fiore purse. It niggled me. This issue. I've tried to overcompensate for it, being more social instead of less. I've tried to intellectualize myself out of having the anxiety--- "everything is under control," I repeat like a mantra during parties. It hasn't worked. The issue, the emotions attached to the issue are drawing me in, compelling me to look at it, deal with it.

An old friend once told me that if I didn't deal with my feelings directly, as they came, that they would eventually just come out sideways. Like when the coffee filter gets jammed with grounds and the coffee-ish water finds its way out anyway. It's messy and it's a pain in the ass, takes a good half hour to clean up the watery grounds and another ten minutes to remake the coffee.

Sometimes with feelings, we don't always know when they will come, or how they will present. I always tell my students to be open to emotions presenting themselves in class, during different postures. Yoga is one of the few places where, when we've trained our minds enough to really let go, feelings and thoughts can surface without the filter of judgement or control. It's great when that happens. There's no overflowing coffee grounds from this kind of expression. It comes up, it comes out. And we're ready for a second cup.

What a disappointment it was when this old stuff showed up. Initially, when I first recognized that damn, I gotta deal with this, it felt like a disaster. Coffee EVERYWHERE! Who knows why this happens. Maybe we are presented with emotions when we have enough room in our lives to listen. Maybe it happens when we practice enough yoga and our heads are sufficiently clear to notice the noise. Maybe it's a momentary interaction that, like a shock, jars our psyche to attention. It's likely a myriad combination, different for each of us.

My anxiety still shows up, but less frequently. It is still here, and like the purse, it might come out of the closet every three years. It will make a brief showing and go back into the closet. The disaster of it is over. I'm in clean up mode. Rinsing out the filter, adding new grounds. Starting from scratch.

But I know a change is gonna come.....

The other day in the car I told Lucia that I thought it was time for her to have a desk in her room. Of course, kindergarten over-achiever that she is, Lucia giggled with excitement at the prospect. We talked about a trip to Ikea, desk accessories, colors, knobs. Then I suggested we move her bed to the other wall. I ruminated about maybe even getting a bigger bed, maybe a loft so her desk could fit in her tiny room better. As I rambled on, I noticed that my partner in excitement was stone silent. "What's up Lu?", I asked through the rear-view mirror. "Mommy." Lucia said authoritatively, "If we move my bed we're going to have to move my bookshelf. Then we'll have to move my dresser and my hamper and my bead box. And, Mommy, you know I'm not a fan of big changes." And that was that.

Two days later, my partner Nancy gifted me a new coffee maker, a nice one, not like the schlock I have from Target. This Dutch beauty brews hot and fast and strong. Plus, the thermal pot keeps coffee hot for HOURS! For a coffee junkie like me, this is the perfect gift. Perfect.

From my living room couch, I could see the exquisite machine sitting on my kitchen counter. Semi-catatonic, I stared at the coffee maker, quietly entering a not-so-mild state of panic. The pot on the new machine is smaller. What if I need to serve coffee to drop-by visitors and there isn't enough? The part that holds the water is glass and maybe it will get dirty. What if my coffee doesn't taste the same? What if it tastes BETTER?

Turns out Lucia isn't the only one who balks at change.....

Change is hard. But why? My life could only be improved by the presence of this fabulous coffee maker. Lucia's room would be fantastically more fantastic with more space and a cool-kid loft bed. But we still opt for the familiar. The known, finding comfort in the well-worn items we've each shaped over time. I'm not proud of this. I fancy myself an outlier, a risk taker. How could such a thing as a coffee maker throw me off guard? I just jumped into a 46 degree lake!

Seeing the response that Lucia had to her theoretical room shuffle and then my reaction to my divine new coffee machine two days later gave me pause. Am I hard wired like this? Is she? (Poor thing). And, if we are, how do we deal with this aversion to change? Here's what I think. We wait. Once we get the information that change is afoot, we sit with that knowledge and wait to make a move. It's a little bit like Savasana. We want to be immediately calm and okay in our corpse pose, but that doesn't usually happen. We have to experience the friction, the struggle, the confusion that almost always comes before any clarity or calm.

I'm happy to report that I'm out of my panic mode about the new coffee maker. Today I'm in the excitement zone. I want to bake cakes so I can serve my new Dutch coffee to everyone I know in my Nana's perfect white German-made china cups. As for Lucia, she's still stewing. I'm not talking to her about the new desk or room re-arrangement. I'm following her lead, letting her soak up the idea in her own time. Who knows where she'll end up, but I predict that within a week, she'll be asking for that loft-bed from Ikea.