Cat Mom

December 16th, 2025

I may have mentioned this once or twice before but I am a very anxious person.

I am a tragically empathetic sponge (which my drinking used to magically squeeze) and a standard-issue artist; I feel too much and when the world feels like too much my brain crosses streets like a squirrel.

To combat this anxiety, I read and watch a lot of content from those who are content; I’ve been really into Zen Buddhism because I love the ideas but I also want to find something in the practices.

I read a lot about breathing (like a nerd) because I am a terrible breather and how stupid is that? But I came across an article that explained a technique called bee breaths and it’s kind of changing my life.

Do it with me: take a long breath in through your nose. As you exhale, deeply hum the letter M, noting that you do sound like a bee.

The first time I did this, I got really emotional and I couldn’t pinpoint why. It made me sad but then comforted me at the same time. I continued the pattern for a minute before I figured it out.

If you don’t know, my mom was deaf. And something she did my entire life was hum. She did it all the time, she made noise constantly. Though calling it a hum doesn’t accurately describe it; her vocal cords would vibrate in waves, like a purr. It seems like odd behavior, especially from someone who couldn’t hear it.

But she could feel it. Now I figure, like me, she probably needed it.

And as I made that connection and exhaled another bee breath, I realized that this was the closest I had felt to her since she left and let my body do what it needed to.

When things are a mess, you reach for certain people like the handle above your head in a car. This is easily the most trying my life has been in her absence and this simple act of breathing was like grasping firmly onto a phantom hand.

Parents worry about their children and they’re right to; everything that my mom was scared could happen to me has happened to me (save death, but rumor has it that one’s promised). If things work out right, though, then they give us enough to not only survive them, but to make something good out of them.

Sometimes it’s just a hum.

And if that’s what you need too, please feel free to take it, share it, use it as many times as it takes. It hasn’t cured my anxiety; likely nothing ever will. But it does take that fearful breath and turns it into something good.