The Shadow in the Passenger Seat

I started the day with morning pages and a meditation, trying to settle my nervous system before the high-stakes vulnerability of the afternoon. I bought clinical-strength deodorant. I chose an outfit specifically designed to hide sweat. I was prepared to read. I was prepared for the nerve.

When I arrived at Wolverine Farm, the fear was simple: don’t be awkward. But the room was soft around the edges, a supportive little bubble. It was full of creative women using their voices, bookended by collective meditation. I read my piece. I felt the buzz of being seen. Some friends were there. The during, as it turned out, was a success.

I knew, even then, that the event was about far more than me. I was one woman sharing my voice for a few minutes because it mattered to me to do so. The afternoon belonged to something larger: to the woman who ran it, to the vendors who brought their work, to the women who spoke, listened, meditated, encouraged, and showed up. My part in it was small, but it was real.

Then came the after.

I said my goodbyes, loaded my prints into the car, and noticed a bunny sitting near my driver-side tire. I was headed home to my dogs, still riding the high of a productive, vulnerable afternoon.

But as I pulled away, the social anxiety I’d kept at bay all day finally found its opening. It didn’t show up in the room. It waited until I was alone.

The replay started immediately.

Was it weird that I told a grown woman I wanted to be her friend? Should I have stayed longer and made actual plans? What if they were just being polite? Did I read the wrong passage?

I was miles away by then, but suddenly I was back in the room, about to sand down the edges of a beautiful afternoon.

Midway through the drive, I caught my reflection in the rearview mirror and realized: oh. This is all in my head.

The nerves were real. So was the fact that the afternoon had gone well. The event itself had been generous, communal, and much bigger than my private panic. My body was reacting to something old, not something present.

I used to think healing meant becoming a person who no longer felt that drop in her stomach, who no longer needed clinical-strength deodorant, who moved through every room with ease. I thought wholeness meant outgrowing these responses entirely.

For me, healing has been quieter than that. It has looked more like recognizing the shadow when it slides into the passenger seat and starts narrating the day in the harshest possible voice.

Social anxiety is usually framed as fear of other people and their judgment. For me, it often feels more intimate than that. More like an inward tremor. A vulnerable part of me bracing after the fact, still struggling to believe that being seen can end well.

That part of me probably deserves more tenderness than contempt.

In the aftermath, I took to my journal and greeted the shadow directly. It felt familiar. Less like proof that the afternoon had gone badly, more like an old wound reacting to the act of showing up at all.

Vulnerability is still uncharted territory for me. Of course it stirs up old static. Of course it brings shadows with it. But the shadow did not tell the truth about the day. My part in it was small. The day was still real. So was the courage it took to show up for it.