The Silence of the Mice

Amanda Cartwright
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

I have been feeling a little stressed out lately.

I have planned to homeschool my oldest, who starts Kindergarten this year. I also signed up to teach a class at my church’s AWANA program, AND I am teaching an art class twice a week at a VPK program in the school my husband works at.

I have to create all the material for the art class, and I’m pretty much completely in charge of my son’s education for the year, so , naturally, I’m spazzing out a bit.

It’s what I do.

Well, I decided that I need to explore some stress-relief options and to work on my anxiety. I recently read about a self-hypnosis exercise (from Bird by Bird, by writer and fellow neurotic, Anne Lamott, who has become more and more of a sort guru for me). It goes like this:

Imagine that all the tasks and demands currently on you are a bunch of squeaking, scratching mice. In the center of your imagination is a glass jar. One by one, you lift the imaginary squeaking mice by the tail and drop them into the imaginary jar until they are all inside. Finally, you seal it shut and silence them. This is meant to relax me and help me distance myself from the source[es] of my stress.

I decided to try it out yesterday afternoon.

It started out well enough. I gently lifted the mouse that represented my two-year-old saying, “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,” outside my bedroom door and dropped him gently into the jar. I gently lifted the mice that represented the class I’m teaching, the movie blaring in the other room, the weekend plans that are becoming increasingly complicated, the bills I still need to pay, the library books that are due.

Plop, plop, plop go the imaginary mice, ever so gently into the imaginary jar.

This was good, it was working. That is, until I realized that I had run out of room in the imaginary jar. The mice were climbing all over each other near the lip, and I still had a lot of noisy mice to go.

So, I did what any thinking woman would do. I rummaged through my imagination, grabbed a larger imaginary jar, and dumped the mice that I had collected in the first jar into the larger jar. This jar was MUCH larger, so I had plenty of room to finish collecting the mice. I sealed the lid, and enjoyed the silence.

I am not sure what this says about me.

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