Somehow you can always make me laugh in your non-fiction writing. Must be my own Slavic blood, or growing up in the shadow of national tragedies, makes you find moments to laugh at, harder, the more irreverent and dire the description.

But I did get serious too.

My loss of fearlessness came much earlier than yours. I still remember in the pre-elementary, I'd jump from the top of slide, along its length. Or jump down from 2 meters. And place my hand in the mouth of dogs. A couple of years later, and I wouldn't. 5 years later, still wouldn't.
And more than giving in to fright, I was bothered by this loss of a part of my self, that I changed, not of my choosing, and in so doing became lesser.

We can wax poetic about how how you are fearful now because you have things to lose, and because you love life, but that doesn't answer fear. And that doesn't matter. What matters is what you do with it now. Is it your fear that is making you vow to not let the fatalism overtake you, to be there in your family's life in these hard times? Or is it in spite of fear that this is so?
Doesn't matter.
Because what matters is what you've decided, and how you'll follow on it.

Good luck Inna. Health. Health in health, and in sickness too.
It is hard to go against the conditioning of generations. Even harder than accepting the loss of half a lifetime of fearlessness.
But we live, and we can.