By Yaisha Vargas-Pérez
I close my bedroom door and she shows up. It’s inevitable.
I sit on the edge of the bed, notebook and pen in hand, so we can talk.
I feel her squeezing my chest, stretching my diaphragm to use it like a rubber corset that chokes my esophagus.
“Can we connect?” I ask her in the notebook.
She answers by clenching my jaw. She feels the space of my room contracting like an hourglass until everything collapses on top of us.
I wait for her without judgment, because thinking she shouldn’t be there only worsens her pain… and mine. Then, I manage to see her clearly.
I move closer, carefully, like a curious adult approaching a child she loves and asks for permission to see what the child is guarding. She realizes I only want to accompany and listen to her. She relaxes and shows me what she’s hiding:
An image of myself in my twenties, performing a ritual on a beach with others. We are told to go into the water with our eyes closed and in a fetal position, so we can remember what happened when we were in the womb, floating in amniotic fluid. I hug my knees and let go. The warm sea embraces me and through my eyelids I see sunbeams dancing underwater. Then, a flicker of electricity wakes in my head. A nervous impulse tightens my chest. Out there, there is a threat. My mother is trembling with fear, and I understand the fear even though I don’t know what’s happening. I burst out of the water and gasp for air. It was the first emotion I felt in my mother’s womb. And it was the color of dark green seaweed, like the bottom of the sea.
Anxiety.
Then I look at her, while she tells me through images that since then, she has tried to protect me from everything that is much bigger than her: from the machismo that beat my mother, from the post-war trauma my mother witnessed, from school bullying, from the scoldings for not always getting a perfect A, from overwork, from always being tired, from the difficulty of making friends, from ecological slaughter, human violence, the abusive patriarchy, judging religion, and insatiable capitalism.
Anxiety was like a crumpled, exhausted scrap of paper that kept trying to cover my heart to protect it.
And I had demonized her. I had fought for her not to be there; I had contributed to the misdiagnoses of “maladaptive behavior,” “generalized disorder”—a “parasite” that had to be excised through medication, through alleged “psychotherapy” that pointed out everything that was “wrong” with me, through teas, yoga, Ayurveda, meditation, and alternative religions that ended up being abusive. Everyone, with “good intentions,” had tried to “fix”, “heal”, or “extirpate” her.
But she remained there, immovable, protecting a seven- or eight-month-old baby floating in her mother’s womb.
I had demonized her. But she had never stopped loving me.
My paradigm continued to melt away. Anxiety wasn’t an obstacle; she was my protector. The problem wasn’t her, but the sick system in which I had grown and survived. She had protected me from all that violence, and she was still trying.
As I began to understand her, I saw her change color—from the gray and dark green of the seabed to white, and then transparent. Behind that transparency, I saw all the parts she was protecting: the lonely girl in elementary school, the overwhelmed teenager in high school, the 17-year-old who lost her mother; the one who had to protect herself from beating, from judgments, from impossible demands, from the feeling that she would never be enough. They all looked at Anxiety with gratitude. They didn’t demonize her; they understood her.
The one demonizing her was me.
A surge of tears began to rise, and I asked for her forgiveness—understanding her, trying to be her friend.
I saw anxiety exhaling with relief. No longer being demonized, she relaxed, calmed down; she could finally go rest for a while, free from the judgments that tried to pierce her protective shield.
I was the one who had judged her.
She just wanted to survive and do it well. Even in my previous chronicle, I judged her as a screaming Medusa, an erratic floating head.
Today I discovered she is a misunderstood protective force. She would grow more tense whenever I thought or felt she shouldn’t be there because they had labeled her a “disorder,” but there was none of that beneath her surface of pain.
She wasn’t my enemy. She wasn’t trying to hurt me. Quite the opposite! She had been a faithful protector—even though the very system of violence that activated her had ended up condemning her.
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Yaisha Vargas Pérez is a certified mindfulness meditation teacher graduated from the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley (2017-2019); she received professional certification from the International Mindfulness Teachers Association (IMTA, 2022); she is a certified mindfulness mentor through the Cloud Sangha/Banyon platform, trained by Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach (2022); and she is certified in Eco-chaplaincy by the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies in California (2022-2024). She completed the “Anukampa” or Compassionate Care program at the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies (2025) and the Somatic Therapy for Anxiety certification from The Embody Lab (2025). Since 2015, she has worked as a translator and editor for publications that aim to educate and alleviate human suffering, including Unity World Headquarters, Inc., in Missouri; Al-Anon Family Groups, in Virginia; Newsela, Inc.; and has worked with independent authors. She has been a reforestation volunteer since January 2017 and is an advocate for the rights of nature. Previously, she was a hard news journalist and wrote the “90 Days” chronicles published in the newspaper El Nuevo Día between 2010 and 2020, which chronicled the daring spiritual journey of a woman who traveled to various destinations seeking total healing and a profound sense of life. She worked for WKAQ Radio Reloj, Agencia EFE, and The Associated Press. Her beats included environmental issues and government corruption. She received awards from the Puerto Rico Journalists Association (ASPPRO), the Overseas Press Club, and the Laura Rivera Meléndez Foundation. She graduated with honors from the School of Communication at the University of the Sacred Heart, where she received the FEE Scholarship and the Pórtico Medal as an exceptional student.
A Mystic Writer 