Rain against the glass hushes the whole house. Use that hush to hear which worry is actually yours.

A lot of what you worry about was handed to you by somebody else: a parent’s worry about money, a friend’s panic about her future, whatever the feed decided was urgent. In a noisy day they all sound the same volume. Quiet separates them, because the ones that are actually yours keep talking when nothing else is.

When the house goes still, list the three things sitting on you and put a name next to each. Yours, your mother’s, nobody’s in particular. You can only act on the first kind, and knowing that is a relief.