Motherhood Made Me Confront My Deepest Fear: Myself

As a child, I lived next door to a playground that I was never allowed to play in. I watched other kids run around in it after school through the window while I played librarian and scullery maid inside, alone. I tried a few times to make friends with the children in the house opposite, but I was never allowed to cross the fence to play with them either. In fairness to my parents, it was the notorious 1980s in New York City, and at night the playground hosted parties, leaving broken bottles and drug paraphernalia behind to be found in the morning. The house next door, where several women lived with many children but only one man who came and went, was, to put it diplomatically, not an ideal playdate spot. My parents and extended family were also World War II refugees who viewed the world as a dangerous place by default. The legacy of their war trauma compounded the genetic hardwiring for anxiety they had passed on to me.

So it’s not surprising that I became an anxious, panicky, phobic adult. Throw in running through the streets to escape the collapsing Twin Towers and two terrifying, traumatic childbirths, and by age 37, my fight-or-flight meter was permanently stuck on danger. And that is an exhausting way to live. But of all the fears I had as a mother of young children—for their safety, their future, their health, their education, their happiness—my biggest fear was that they would be like me: afraid of everything. Always unsafe, forever insecure, waking up anticipating a perpetual worst-case scenario.

Then one afternoon, I hosted a Halloween party for my then-three-year-old son’s nursery class. The craft table was organised, and the cupcake decorating station was under control when my younger son, then 18 months old, climbed the sofa to the ledge of an open window and went for it. Luckily, I ran, and I caught him. Sure, my two boys were active, fast, physical, joyful chaos whirlwinds, but as I clutched the seat of my toddler’s trousers, I realised they were also curious, see-what’s-out-there, fearless, let-me-escape-through-this-window kids. They were not like me at all. They had no internal alarm bells, no built-in disaster preparedness instinct. And to maintain their joy and energy and sense of adventure, I would have to listen to my anxiety, which wanted to stop them from doing anything, and then do the opposite of everything it told me to do. If I wanted free and fearless children, I’d have to free my inner librarian/scullery maid and learn to let them really play.

When they were small and wanted to jump off a piece of furniture/diving board/climbing frame/precarious rock formation, I said, “Okay,” knowing I had the first aid kit I took everywhere. When their eyes lit up at the sight of a muddy obstacle course made of rusty farm equipment in some dodgy park in the countryside, I said, “Okay,” secure in the knowledge that their tetanus shots were up to date, at least. They ski fast, they run fast, they play rugby, and they love it, though watching them do any of this kills me inside. A recent video shows me on the sidelines of a pitch with my back turned to the action as my son’s team plays an epic match, which I can only describe as “terror-inducing.” My younger son plays the drums, and when most parents learn that, I can see the “why would you allow that?” rolling across their foreheads. The answer is that I’ve learned that his freedom to be who he is is more important than my fear. I’ve learned that my children’s freedom has also given me some of my own.

Now that they are 13 and 15, I look for the signs of anxiety that I had at that age—perfectionism, headaches, worry—and I don’t see them. They’re bigger and stronger every day, their broadening shoulders building the outline of the men they will become. Every match gets harder for me to watch as they push themselves to their physical limits.

My older son recently took a day trip to London with a friend, and of course, I tracked him on his phone every minute. The sun was shining, and the streets were filled with shoppers. Crowds are, as you might expect, a nightmare for me, something to be avoided always. Although he’s seen Big Ben hundreds of times, London was very beautiful that day, and unbothered by the crowds, he called just to hold up his phone and show me and say, “Look, this is amazing.” Despite the minutes I spend tracking and worrying about him on the Tube, and nervously waiting for him to come home, it’s worth it. Although I’ll only ever see danger through old, anxious eyes, he sees an amazing world, and he is not afraid.

Five by Ilona Bannister is published by Juniper, 5^th May 2026. You can pre-order it today.