Guest Blogger: Danielle Younge-Ullman

A few weeks ago, I posted a review for a wonderful book called FALLING UNDER. As I mentioned before, I thought this book was very, very good. It's an extremely well written novel, and the prose is just so intense. I highly recommend it!

I am very excited to have Danielle Younge-Ullman, the author of FALLING UNDER, join Booking Mama today. I absolutely love her essay, and I think you will too! Not only does it give a little background into how she created her novel, but I think it's something that we can all relate to... ANXIETY!

Normalcy, Mountain Lions, Internal Catastrophe

I appear pretty normal.

In fact, people who meet me and then read my book are a little shocked that someone rather bubbly and seemingly well-adjusted could write such a raw, intense book.

People who have known me most of my life are also surprised—many of them didn’t know I had another side.

But many of us have hidden depths.

And many of us also have worries, memories that make us ache, things that keep us awake in the night, no matter how “normal” we seem.

When I wrote Falling Under one of the things I wanted to explore was anxiety. Many of us live with more of it than we realize and for some, worry is as natural as breathing. In fact, until my mid-twenties I thought everyone was like me, and had their life flashing before their eyes at the first screech of tires even if they were safe in their houses.

I was amazed to discover there are those who do not worry about a million things all the time. People who just…live. They are smart, deep, good people who know the risks involved in simply getting out of bed in the morning, but they don’t think about those risks all the time.

I started to imagine the sense of freedom and the extra energy I would have without my constant internal catastrophizing. And then I imagined the opposite—people whose fears were like mine but multiplied by a thousand. I started to envision a brilliant young artist; smart, brave and full of possibility, but so afraid of life that she could barely manage to leave her house. How would a person get into such a state? How would she fight her way out of it and learn to take a chance on herself and her life?

Suddenly I had a book—or a starting point at least.

I also had a new perspective on my inner life, on the thoughts that take my energy and direct my actions. (There was some therapy involved in gaining this perspective, in case you’re wondering.)

I still worry a lot—it’s part of me. Recently I was taking a nature walk with my two-year-old. She tends to lag behind, change directions without warning, etc. Now, I wasn’t worried about her getting lost since I would never let her out of my site. No, I was worried about mountain lions, known for grabbing the smallest members of families and running off with them. Of course, THERE ARE NO MOUNTIAN LIONS IN TORONTO, hardly any in the province at all, but you never know…

Nowadays, I have a sense of humor about my anxieties, and I try, as soon as I’m aware of them sneaking up on me, to divert my thought and energy into something else.

And when all else fails, I remind myself that at least it means I have a lively, if somewhat overly dramatic, imagination.