How We Rewrite Fear for the Next Generation
The first time I noticed it, Marcia was a toddler.
Thunder rumbled, low and steady, and there was a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes—reading somewhere between curiosity and fear.
I crouched down next to her to reassure and said:
“That sound? That’s thunder. They’re bowling in heaven and someone just rolled a strike. And the flashes? That’s lightning. Think people taking pictures.”
Maybe, without even realizing it, I was tying the noise to something more tender—that their grandpa, the only grandparent they never met, was up there having fun too.
Her little shoulders softened, and the tension gave way to a little smile.
When Cindy was old enough, I told her the same story. And soon enough, both of them learned to love, not fear, thunderstorms.
Growing up in Iowa, I never had that luxury. Tornado season meant hiding in the basement, listening to sirens squeal through the air and wondering if the house would still be standing when we came back up. Even an ordinary thunderstorm felt like a warning shot. The sky turned pea soup green, the air went still, and my stomach clenched. Fear was a language I learned young.
And fear wasn’t just in the weather. It existed in my home.
One time, I visited my mom with my girls. We were in her small Midwestern city, grabbing lunch downtown. I had run to a store nearby, and by the time I got back, the kids were restless—hungry, wiggly, waiting for their food.
Just then, a siren wailed in the distance. Police, fire, ambulance, I couldn’t tell. But I clocked the sharp gasp of my mom’s breath, her eyes almost wild. She leaned in close to my daughters and, whispered intently:
“They’re coming… the police are coming. You better behave.”
That gasp—dramatic, exaggerated, meant to reign in my hungry, wiggly kids—still gets me even as an adult. I froze. That old, familiar chill of fear.
But this time, it wasn’t landing on me. It was aimed at my children.
I stopped, stunned, and said:
“What did you just say?”
She blinked, startled. My daughters looked at me, not her. And in that moment, the spell broke. That old trick—control through fear—stopped with me.
Looking back, I can also see that for my mom, fear of sirens may have been real. Rooted in growing up Indigenous, police weren’t always protectors. But the way she passed that fear along—tying the sound of authority to her granddaughters’ restlessness—was something I refused to carry forward. My girls weren’t going to learn fear in that way.
Instead, my girls got thunder as bowling. Lightning as paparazzi. Storms as play.
They didn’t inherit the basement panic or the green-sky terror. They inherited joy, laughter, imagination.
That’s the work of breaking cycles—not with grand gestures, but with tiny rewrites.
Storm by storm, story by story, choice by choice.
Now, when thunder cracks, my daughters don’t flinch.
They listen for the strike, waiting to see if someone in heaven is about to roll another perfect game. Maybe grandpa is playing too.
Why I’m Sharing This Here
Fear doesn’t only show up in storms and sirens. It shows up in sex, intimacy, and relationships too.
So many of us inherit stories of fear, shame, and control—about our bodies, about pleasure, about desire. Sometimes those stories are whispered into us as children. Sometimes they come from partners, culture, or silence itself.
And yes, reframing works. Not just in a feel-good, “cute story” kind of way—research backs it up. Playful reframing, whether through humor or deliberate cognitive reappraisal, has been shown to reduce cortisol and anxiety in children¹ and to decrease activity in the brain’s fear center, the amygdala.²
So just like I rewrote thunderstorms for my daughters, you can rewrite those internal scripts too. Fear doesn’t have to be your language. It can be play, imagination, and joy.
And that is where intimacy begins—not with control, but with the courage to tell a new story.
xxoo
Lanae
p.s., If this resonated, I’d love to hear: what’s a fear you’ve turned into play, or a script you’ve rewritten for yourself or your family?
Footnote
¹ Saliba, F., et al. (2024). Humor intervention with clowns reduces cortisol levels, pain, and anxiety in children undergoing venipuncture. Pediatric Research. PubMed
² Buhle, J. T., et al. (2014). Cognitive reappraisal of emotion: A meta-analysis of human neuroimaging studies. Cerebral Cortex, 24(11), 2981–2990.