My Encounter with the Under Toad

These are anxious times. Anxiety takes many forms. For some, anxiety can appear as a vague, gnawing, clawing discomfort that rises up from deep in our guts. It can feel as though it is pulling us into a bottomless pit, that will swallow us whole, or that we are powerless to escape it. How many of you are experiencing such a feeling these days and wonder what to do?

In John Irving’s novel, The World According to Garp, Will, the main character’s child, mishears the word “undertow” when listening to his parents talk about an undertow or riptide lurking under the water near the ocean’s edge. Will’s vivid imagination conjured up the existence of a large and menacing “under toad” that lay in wait beneath the waves, ready to devour any hapless child who ventured too close. So, beware the under toad.

As a literary metaphor of the uncertainties, unknowns, and ever-present challenges of life, the idea of the under toad sure worked for me. I had my own encounter with the under toad nearly 30 years ago. It was a time of great transition in my life. Confused. Lost. Unsure of myself and my way forward in my life.

While walking along the ocean shore late one night while traveling out of the country, I was suddenly aware of a deep fear rising up from the pit of my stomach. My only thought was that I was in deep danger. I looked out to the blackness of the ocean and was unsettled with the thought that just off shore, a large and menacing creature was laying in wait, ready to pull me under forever if I so much as dipped a toe in the waves. In that moment, I had to move away from the ocean’s edge in order to begin to quiet the visceral fear that had me in its grip.

It was only later, following lots of self-reflection and conversations with dear people in my life, that I recognized the various transitions in my life were “calling me” to face them, inviting me to lean into my fears and worries and the uncertainties they represented, and to make decisions about how I would live my life going forward. I did. And, because I did, the under toad lost its grip on me. My fears dissipated.

Facing Our collective under toad

Today, all across the globe, each of us is probably experiencing the threat of being pulled under by the Under Toad that goes by the name Covid-19. Some of these fears are directly related to the disease threat and how we or our loved ones might be impacted. For others, the fear is the threat to the lifestyle we’ve worked so hard to construct. For still others, this fear is primarily a trigger of pre-existing fears that their hold on living a satisfying life was always iffy at best.

What does the Covid-19 Under Toad bring up for you? Lean into it. Sit with it. What is the nature of the fear that is gripping you? Where and with what do you feel powerless or overwhelmed? Peel back the onion-like layers of your fears and worries so you can see them more clearly.

Then, make certain that you also give equal time to reflecting on times you’ve been buffeted and upended in your life, but got past it. Most importantly, bring to mind how you regained your balance. In times like these, embracing your resilience, your ability to bounce back, to recover, to not just survive but to thrive, can connect you with important inner resources while we each in our own way learn to weather this particular storm.