we fall, we get up, we fall ~ that *is* life

We haven’t had hiking weather for a while now, but the cool morning was too tempting to resist. When I first returned to the Providence trail after my second knee replacement in 2020, I was really, really anxious about falling. I was actually terrified. I’d been undone by my wrecked, arthritic knees for years and the freedom and functionality of my new ones felt miraculous.

Back then, on that first hike, I started out on a flat portion of the red trail in this beautiful place. I was just asking my angels and guides for help when my friend Suzanne called. Almost at the exact moment I said hello, an immense blue heron ~ the primary sign of my spirit guide Ojo ~ flew up right in front of me. It was stunning.

WOW! I was obviously supported: the heavens were sending signs already. Yay! Suzanne agreed: the angels and guides were all around me, and all would be well. I marched happily into the forest, excited to know I wasn’t going to fall. How could I with such divine accompaniment? Fear not!

Near the end of the hike, on a long uphill stretch, I was feeling confident and joyful about my new, pain-free knees, mentally planning my next forest outing, and then ~ in an instant ~ I was face down on the trail. And I do mean sprawled. Flat out.

WAIT. What the hell?
My angels and guides had assured me all would be well. I literally heard: “And all will be well.” I had an unmistakable sign from Ojo, my protector since a New Mexico retreat in 2018. I could feel the angels. A world-class medium and spiritual teacher had confirmed that I was surrounded. How could I be face down in the dirt with support like that?

A lot of my experiences and work in this lifetime have been about releasing fear. I’m free now, but a deep and debilitating fear of death had plagued me for years. Variations on that Great Big All-Consuming Terror covered every possible path to the frightening, fiery end. I was haunted by highly detailed visions of murder, heart attacks, car wrecks, tumors, getting lost in the wilderness, drowning, deer-lunging-from-the-roadside-at-night, and on and on.

But on this day in the woods, I’d been entirely free of the death fear for years. I’d come to know (not just believe) that death is nothing at all, those wise words from long ago.

Over the past few years, I’ve tested this newfound freedom from the dying fear three times ~ three separate experiences of thinking I might be dying and finding it only…curious. “Well. So this is what drowning feels like. Didn’t think this would be my way out. Fascinating.” Same with what I was certain was a heart attack and a stroke. Just curiosity. Detached witnessing. “Isn’t that interesting?”

But that day on the trail, I was facing a different terror, an intense fear of falling because of what could result and affect my life ever after. Death would have been fine, but not again having to live with blown-up knees. I’d been on crutches for eight years and now I was free. I couldn’t go back. Falling was a Great Big Thing I took with me into the woods that day.

That is, of course, the antithesis of what the gurus recommend: I was fully immersed in a scary fantasy future because of an unpleasant experience of the past. It is also 100% human and 100% okay. I don’t have many goals these days, but one is radical acceptance of life, and myself, as is, no matter what.

Then it was done. The thing I dreaded. Like Job, “that which I had feared had come to pass.” I was stretched out flat, face down on a rocky, root-covered trail in north Georgia.

And I was uninjured.
Entirely unharmed.

Falling while terrified changed everything. I fell. Very hard. And I was okay.

I fell. And all was well. 

As promised.

The fear evaporated. Falling wasn’t the end of the world. Of course, it could be very, very bad, but that’s life and I’m too well aware that it’s unpredictable and random by design. At that point, my fear had been consuming me. It had kept me out of the woods for weeks beyond my being ready for a hike.

These days, the thought of an injury from a fall is just that ~ a thought. It comes and goes. It’s human.

And I’ve had plenty of falls since to confirm that the old anxiety is in its proper, ordinary place. I’ve gone down on more trails, on a dark street at night, on the stairs in my building, and on the escalator at the airport, breaking my foot, but not my knees. I’ve even had opportunities-for-fractures I’d never have imagined. One dark, cold night not long ago, my car dragged me across the parking lot by my purse strap, me tumbling along beside it before hitting a tree.

I was told at the start of the trail that all would be well ~ and it was, but not in the way I expected. I fell and survived. What better way to smash something terrifying?
Face it.
Experience it.
Emerge unscathed.

And sometimes emerge scathed, because this rodeo of life has no guarantees except that the end of breath takes us Home. Most fears are far more monumental when they’re tucked away in the back of the brain, haunting us while we’re too afraid to look at them. Even when the unwanted thing, the feared thing, does happen, it’s rarely as wretched as we make it out to be when we’re too afraid to look.

But bring those fears into conscious awareness, and they shrink down to size, like a bloody-fanged vampire thrown into the sunlight.

I misunderstood the message from my angels and guides. I thought “all will be well” meant I wouldn’t encounter the thing I feared. The bad thing wouldn’t happen. What it really meant was: You’ll be okay, no matter what.

I could fall and get up again.

It’s a lesson I’ve learned over and over, in big ways and small. Life is never without challenges. But I am (WE are!) always guided and supported. That doesn’t mean I’ll be spared the hard things, the painful things. It just means I’ll be okay, one way or another, even if one day another tumble on another trail does crack free my titanium knee. It’s okay.

I’ve quoted my favorite line from Billy Fingers so many times I’ve lost count, but I’ll do it again because it’s true: “It’s okay, honey. It’s ALL okay.”

Life is going to happen, regardless of what we do. I can chant and mantra and vision-board my hopes and dreams and expectations, and it’s great. Those efforts do make me more comfortable in this moment. But life will still unfold as it does, for reasons that will remain mostly unknown until we finally clear out of here.

Meanwhile, all is well. Truly. Even when it doesn’t feel like it. I know I sound like a one-note parrot, saying the same thing again and again and again. But it is the most powerful, life-changing truth, the thing that can make life a joy.

We can find a respite and a promise in the silence, cultivating the awareness of our own solid centers. It is there that everything is already and eternally peaceful and certain. In finding that place, we can live in two states at once when the most vicious storms are upon us. Some old buddhist guy I’ve quoted before said, “My father has died. I am weeping. And yet my heart rejoices.”

That is a duality that helps. It is the essence of that ancient yin/yang symbol, which summarizes human life: good and bad, light and dark, joy and sorrow, and in each state, the presence of its opposite.

In this moment, this breath, all is well. I hope so with you too.

*(and vice versa, and isn’t that interesting? and isn’t that a good one to add to the list of what-the-heck-was-that-about to be presented at the pearly gates? I hope you’re keeping a list. I am.)

A little more prettiness from the woods today:

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More things I never knew existed: a neck fan! Because even when it’s cool in Georgia, the humidity is murder. The ever-present yin/yang of life. ❤️