And Then I Fell

People I love are suffering.

For the past several weeks they’ve been lining up like its lunchtime at the DMV. Loss, illness, addiction… a veritable smorgasbord of pain. My former MO was to try to ‘fix it’; do whatever I could to take their pain away. I’d make their pain, my pain. Seemed like the generous thing to do. If I could take on the suffering alongside of them, this surely would comfort them in some way.

I don’t do that anymore. I’ve learned that my job isn’t to take responsibility for someone else’s suffering. My job is to love them through it and not to make it about me. I hold the space for them to have whatever feelings they need to have, provide a laugh or two when I can. Instead of saying, “What can I do to fix this (aka. you)?” I say, “I’m sorry this is so hard.”

The last two weeks have been a marathon of hurt. When one person seemed to have found footing, another fell off a cliff. Over and over again I grounded myself, held them in my arms and my heart.

On the way back from a recent trip across the country for a friend’s funeral, my husband so sweetly told me that he was ready for the fallout of my emotions, whatever that looked like. I informed him that while this was all hard, and I hurt for my friends and family, their suffering was not my suffering. Their pain was not my pain. 

“That seems emotionally detached,” he said.

“Nope, this is what good emotional boundaries look like,” I told him.

Come to find out, we were both right.

Despite constant grounding, making space for my own emotions and digging into my energy skills to clear what wasn’t mine, there was still a sadness I could feel but couldn’t reach… like an ingrown hair beneath the surface. So I called in the big energy healing guns… Mother Nature.

After dropping the kids at school, the dog and I went in search of a trail. There is nothing more rejuvenating than the shimmering tangerine light of Ojai and following a happy dog through fields and up hills. While he stopped to sniff whoknowswhat, I snapped pics of cactus and sweeping scapes of vineyards. Thirty minutes into the hike we came upon a trailhead. I felt better than I had in months. My plan to let Mother Nature heal me was working. While I could have gone another two hours, I’d left our water in the car and knew better than to continue. We turned back.

We weren’t 5 minutes down when a statue in someone’s backyard caught my attention. Thinking someone was standing there watching us, I turned to investigate and stepped awkwardly on the slightest mound of a rock, twisted my right ankle and fell. I landed with my shin smacking square on top of a loose rock the size of a lime. My breath caught, pain shocked me and fear overtook every rational thought as I instantly recalled shattering the knee of the same leg almost 15 years ago. I sat in the dirt trying to breathe and feel my way around the edges of the pain. I was fine. Bruised but fine. Darwin ran to my side, sniffed me, ran off and immediately returned with a stick to make me feel better. Because sticks make everything better.

I dusted myself off and gingerly returned to the trail. How long had it been since I’d fallen like that? I was more sore than in pain, more shaken than broken. I chuckled. Not very grounded of me. I realized that if I’d given it more thought as I set out on the hike, considered my state of mind as I walked, I’d have seen this fall coming. A feeling of release washed through my waist and legs into the ground, like I’d let go of unseen tension I’d been carrying. “There it is,” I thought. “There’s the sadness leaking out.” I felt lighter knowing that what I’d come to do had been accomplished.

But twenty minutes later, I fell again. This time when my right ankle gave out, I crashed heavily down onto several boulders, ripped my pants and smashed my surgically repaired knee onto a rock. 

“GODDAMNED IT!” 

And then, like the last storm of summer, so many tears found their way out. The words, ‘the pain always finds a way out’ rolled over and over in my head like a prescribed mantra. Fear radiated through my body as I pulled myself to the side of the trail, silently prayed that I hadn’t shattered my knee once again. Tears turned to sobs and I let them. Lower on the trail I could see a man approaching, but made the conscious choice to keep right on crying. He was kind and concerned and offered to help, but sobbing into the arms of a stranger wasn’t something I thought he’d be willing to take on, so I ushered him away. I wanted to sit on that trail and cry for the rest of the morning, but my dog brought me another stick and a woman was approaching so I found it best to pull myself together and keep going. She was also kind and concerned. She also offered to help, but I didn’t think anyone wearing a down jacket to hike in had enough stamina to hold the shit I was handing out. 

I slowed my steps to a walking meditation speed and cried as I made my way down the rest of the trail. My leg burned with needles of pain, reminded me over and over that I was going to feel this one way or another. Meanwhile my heart walked me through every true sadness I’d encountered and carried around with me this month. 

We are afraid for our children. 

We are lost without our parents. 

We are broken when someone we love dies. 

We feel helpless when the people we love are suffering.

My husband had been right. I had done a stellar job of not taking on the emotions of the people suffering around me, but I still had my own sadness to contend with. And because of the work that I’d been doing—the good boundaries, the constant grounding and clearing—it gave me a clear pathway to my own sadness and the realization that I needed to find a bigger way to release it.

He called me while I was still making my way back to the car. 

“This is what I needed,” I sniffled to him.

“What? Letting Mother Nature kick your ass or a good cry?”

“Both.”