She told me the story of her grandson’s death. He was five and the favorite of her four grandchildren. It was a tragic accident – too horrifying to recount the details here. She shared those details in my Beginning Again grief group a year after his death. Even though it was many years ago, I’ll never forget her story. And I will never forget her response to his death.

I remember being excited about getting our first car GPS system. I was both amused and frustrated when, upon taking a different route than the one outlined in the system, the voice would say, “Recalculating! Recalculating!” Amused… that it responded that way; frustrated… when it kept repeating the phrase over and over.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines “back to basics” as returning to the simple and most important things. Another definition suggests it’s paying attention to the simplest and most important matters after ignoring them for a while.

Samia Hasan is a career development coach for millennials and has outlined tips related to simplifying life and getting back to basics. I think they’re relevant to all of us, especially after being confronted with a life-threatening diagnosis or other traumatic life event. Here are her suggestions and my thoughts about each.

Looking back, I suspect I lived a good portion of my life in chronic fear… fear of not being good enough, fear of failure, fear of disappointing someone, fear of others’ opinions, fear of financial dependency or ruin, fear of being homeless, fear of deep water, and those are the fears that immediately come to mind.

We’re so good at taking care of the family…the children, an ill spouse, elderly parents, the house, the yard, pets, the job, co-workers or friends. Most of the time it feels good to be taking care of things and others, but it can be draining and often exhausting. Yet we continue to take care out of love, and if we’re honest, sometimes, out of obligation or duty because there’s no one else.

He was walking down the street, oblivious to his surroundings, absorbed in the video on his iPhone. There was no awareness of the uncovered manhole ahead, until he found himself tumbling into semi-darkness, 10-feet underground. Stunned, but coming to his senses, he yelled for someone to come to his aid, to help him out of the deep hole. He heard a voice above him – the voice of a priest. Thank God, he thought. The priest offered a prayer on his behalf, and walked on.

Do you remember the hard times – the ones you lived through and wondered how you ever got through them?

Maybe the hard time was financial scarcity…to the point of deciding whether to buy toothpaste or toilet paper with your paycheck because you couldn’t afford both. Maybe it was the breakup of a relationship…being so scared of the future and making it on your own, yet fearful of remaining in a relationship that would surely take your soul.

Water has always frightened me, probably because I grew up in land-locked Oklahoma with few opportunities to become comfortable swimming or water skiing. In the water, I felt out of my element and scared. It was okay to be “around water” …playing in the lawn sprinkler or splashing in a shallow pool, but being “in the water,” in the deep end of a pool or in a lake or ocean, well, that was a panic attack waiting to happen.

Do you ever have trouble managing distressing thoughts? While you don’t have control over the thoughts that enter your mind, you do have control over how much time they spend there.