So I booked myself another roundtrip flight for this past January, a little over a year since the panic attack. A literary agent I know wrote about how improv helped her anxiety, so I signed up for a six-week course leading up to the trip. If I could survive six improv classes with a bunch of strangers, certainly, I could get myself back on a plane.

For my first class, to distract from my nervous tingles, I put on a brooch. A small Macon et Lesquoy hedgehog that I bought in Paris. I had been collecting brooches on my travels and at estate sales, but was never quite sure when to wear them. Affixing that cute little hedgehog to my sweater made me smile.

When I got to class, my heart was thumping into my temples. But as soon as I sat down, the woman next to me leaned over, her shoulder touching mine, and whispered a compliment about my brooch. I thanked her. I took a breath. My feelings of fight-or-flight began to lessen, like our little conversation sparked some peace.

Every week for the following five weeks I wore a brooch—and someone always commented or complimented. I started calling them my “Confidence Brooches” because they always broke the ice. By the time the classes finished, everyone agreed brooches were “my thing.”

And I didn’t just wear the Confidence Brooches to improv. I wore them out to dinner, to social gatherings—any time that concrete wall started to appear. The confidence continued to build on itself. Whether or not someone commented, wearing a Confidence Brooch got me out of my own head and into the present moment.

This is why, when I got to the airport to fly to Austin two weeks ago, I wore a Confidence Brooch: A circular silver pin with a red stone handed down from my husband’s grandmother. While no one commented on it at the airport, it truly did give me courage as my group was called, as I walked onto the jetway, got into my seat, and buckled my seatbelt. I heard the clunk of the door and we took off. I made it. And I made it home, too.

To be honest, this isn’t a story of anxiety cured, but of hope. Hope that with exposure, connection, and perhaps a Confidence Brooch, anxiety can be reduced to a faint hum as you live the life you want to lead—whether you’re flying somewhere special, about to give a presentation at work, going in for a big interview, or having a tough conversation with your kids. Because life is hard and we all have tough moments.