Today I Choose to be Calm – How to be Calm

The dirt road outside Monument wasn’t supposed to break me. Curtis was driving, the Colorado mountains were gorgeous, and I was trying so hard to be calm. Hairpin turn after hairpin turn, my knuckles went white. Steep drop-offs appeared on my side, no guardrails, just air and terror.

“Turn around,” I finally said, my voice tight. “Please. Turn around now.”

Curtis did, but the confusion on his face said everything. He didn’t understand what was wrong. How could he? He wasn’t the one whose mind had started playing a horror movie of our car careening off the edge, tumbling down the mountain, everything ending on what was supposed to be a pleasant Sunday drive.

When Your Body Betrays Your Calm

It took thirty minutes. Thirty. That’s how long after we found flat, paved ground before my heart stopped racing. My blood pressure was up, breathing rapid and shallow, like I’d run a marathon instead of just sitting in a passenger seat.

At 61, I thought I’d mastered calm. I meditate (sometimes). I do breathing exercises (when I remember). I even have a calm app on my phone (that judges me for not using it). But that dirt road stripped away every technique, every practice, every pretense of control.

The truth about learning how to be calm? Sometimes you can’t. Sometimes your nervous system has other plans.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

What happened on that mountain road wasn’t really about the road. It was about the story my mind started telling. One sharp turn became certain death. A steep drop became inevitable disaster. My imagination, that same creativity that helps me write, turned against me with vivid, terrifying precision.

Research says visualization can help with calm. They’re right-except when your visualization decides to produce a documentary called “73 Ways This Drive Could Kill You.”

My chest got tight just remembering it. Even now, safe at my kitchen table, I can feel the ghost of that panic.

The Permission to Not Be Calm

Here’s what nobody tells you about choosing to be calm: sometimes the bravest thing is admitting you can’t be. That Sunday, asking Curtis to turn around wasn’t giving up. It was recognizing that my nervous system had hijacked the controls and I needed solid ground – literally – to reset.

We don’t talk enough about how physical calm is. It’s not just in your mind. It’s in your racing heart, your shallow breath, your shoulders creeping toward your ears. It’s in the thirty minutes it takes for your body to believe you’re safe again.

What Actually Works (And What Doesn’t)

The meditation apps don’t tell you that sometimes calm isn’t about sitting still. After Monument, what brought me back wasn’t deep breathing or mindfulness. It was:

• Flat road under our tires
• Curtis’s hand on mine (even though he didn’t understand)
• Time (those thirty minutes weren’t negotiable)
• Admitting I wasn’t okay
• A conversation admitting what happened

At 61, I’m learning that calm isn’t something you achieve. It’s something you return to, over and over, after life knocks you sideways.

The Calm That Comes After

Later that evening, I told Curtis about the mental movie I’d been watching. He said, “Why didn’t you tell me?” Because in the moment, terror doesn’t speak in complete sentences. It speaks in clenched jaws and white knuckles and “please turn around now.”

That’s the truth about how to be calm – sometimes you learn more from the moments you lose it completely. Those hairpin turns taught me that calm isn’t about never feeling fear. It’s about finding your way back to steady ground, even if it takes thirty minutes and a terrible gas station coffee.

Today’s Practice (With Exit Ramps)

Today I choose to be calm, but I also choose to:

• Recognize when calm isn’t possible
• Ask for what I need (even flat, paved roads)
• Give my body time to reset (thirty minutes, minimum)
• Accept that at 61, my nervous system has strong opinions
• Remember that losing calm doesn’t mean failing

Some days, calm looks like meditation and deep breaths. Other days, it looks like avoiding dirt roads near Monument and being okay with that. Both are valid. Both are real.

The next time someone tells you to “just stay calm,” remember that sometimes the calmest thing you can do is admit you can’t, ask for what you need, and give yourself those thirty minutes to come back to yourself.

Even if it means turning around on a perfectly good mountain road.