I grew up an avid reader in a family of book lovers. From an early age, I treasured reading the Christian Science Bible Lessons, chapters of the Bible, and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. However, I also loved stories of a more secular nature, and nothing was as thrilling to me as adventure stories of survival, in which the protagonist is usually left in an apocalyptic situation with little more than their bare hands, their creativity, and their knowledge of how to stay alive.
But while I happily devoured these books for the grit and resourcefulness they taught me, an unpleasant side effect of perpetual anxiety grew over the years. I found myself dealing with extreme apprehension regarding political and international situations. It was hard to fight a frequent tendency to stockpile or hoard things, and I had increasingly terrifying nightmares. I seemed unable to escape the rumination: Am I prepared? Do I have the supplies, let alone the skills, to deal with a true catastrophe?
Two years ago I faced this anxiety more directly during a hurricane that swept up the East Coast. My husband and I had taken all of the human footsteps we could to prepare. And yet I was still unsettled. My well-stocked, vivid imagination threw one dire situation after another through my head, the last being the possibility of evacuating. What would I grab?
