Why do we fear falling? Why do we clench our fists and run? Sometimes, we have to run or hide or do whatever we can to survive. Other times, by grace or humility (most often, necessity), we fall.
As children, falling down was part of learning how to stand. We had to first orient ourselves to the earth and its gravitational tug, and to ourselves and our own weight. However, we forget these initial teachings after we’re up and about in the world for a while. We develop tactics to counter the force of gravity and control mechanisms to speed our way against the natural flow of life.
We hold onto relationships that no longer nourish us. We hold ourselves up in jobs that have sipped up every drop of who we once were and what we once dreamed of. We keep going, forcing ourselves up and out and beyond what we are capable of. There are seasons to our lives, yet we have forgotten them. Drilled into our psyches is the drive to create a perpetual summer; even though, we are sustained by the seasons. In my experience, descending was the only way to return to myself, to the earth, and to my true place in the web of life.
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The fields are now seas of bowing goldenrod, ebbing and flowing with the tidal surge and graze of autumn wind. I watch as they dip and dive, offering to the earth the last rays of summer sun. I listen to the leaves as they sing in percussive praise of their homecoming. They twirl, float and dance their way down to the sidewalk in yellow petals, crimson stars and honey fronds. They remember the sweet hug of the earth. My feet remember them.
I lay my aching and quaking and healing body onto those same fields as I have many others. I look up to where I once stood. I relax into where I now am. I curl up; I am held. The Earth hushes me and drums me full of steady life as I release into her soft fur. I wrap my arms around myself in the same way a mother embraces her child. My bones drop and I sink down. My mind files and sorts and digests the doings of the world and the day until it becomes like sky—vast, open, light. I become the bird song around me, the threads of white woven into the sky above me.
To fall might be to break, but it is also to crack open. “Hold me. Love me.” Over the years, I’ve fallen onto my knees in private places and public spaces. I’ve collapsed onto hospital beds, into the arms of another, and, most often, into my own hollowed body. There have been times I truly did not know if a future existed for me or if there would ever be freedom from the pain (or from my own confines).
My descent was slow and gradual. I’ve had to fall many times before I could find the ladders up and out and through the places I’ve been stuck. There are still obstacles in my way. However, I now know and have practiced how to fall. I see that falling has its rightful place in life; I make space for it. I welcome the letting go.
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To you, my dear. You will rise again with an open heart and roots below. You will rise with purpose, place and dignity. In the times to come, you will do what you must to do the work you are here to do, because it fills you and all our hearts. And, you will attend to your roots, to your body, to the Earth from which you came. You belong here.
From Darkness, I Rise 