Today I fell.

A lot. I laughed every time, because I was back-country skiing in beautiful, mountainous nature with one of my favorite people, but it reminded me of how much I fell this week.

Definition of falling: “to drop or descend under the force of gravity, as to a lower place through loss or lack of support.”

All that rises will fall at some point, but if I’m going to fall, I want to fall into the wholeness of all that I’ve got, embracing and embodying both strength and weakness, beautiful and ugly until I’m fully integrated.

We have a choice of whether our fall will be graceful or not and if we don’t fear the fall, the descent may be so soft that we may not notice it at all.

Life wouldn’t let us down if we couldn’t get back up again. It is always there, holding you, even when you don’t see the lesson it’s gifting you with. When we bring trust and experience into the picture, we bounce back faster and stronger. We implement new skills, increase stamina, faith and resilience, because we trust our own strength and know that, ultimately, there was a plan.

If we never fell, if things were always easy and we never risked injury, we’d never feel the need to look at our weaknesses and transform them, or to discover the strengths we’ve developed after the last plummet.

So I fell, and I realized that my former weaknesses were now wisdom that protected me and that my weakest links were things I could look right in the face and feel completely without any shame.

The key is to not contract, but to surrender to the descent. It was placed there to teach you, and as you surrender, expand, and let go, you grow. This week, I collected my lessons so I don’t re-create the same fall, and I walk away with a “Thank you, I needed to see that. I needed to see that part of myself I wasn’t willing to love until now. I won because I gave it my best shot and I learned.”

So knock yourself over. All you have to do is get back up.

The world will bend to carry you if your intention is to learn not what you want to learn, but what it placed there to teach you all along.

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Assistant Editor: Zenna James/Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: elephant journal archives