Normalizing The Fall (Blog)

Normalizing The Fall

Five weeks ago I was on a bike ride With a friend.

I hit a big patch of ice....

I saw it coming.....

I thought I could make it across

Well......

I bit it hard......I went over......

Like a ton of bricks

BLAM!!!!!

I hurt myself

And my ego

And my butt

And my elbow

Everything stung pretty bad.......

As I assessed the damage

And caught myself looking to see if anyone saw....

Having people watch you fall

Is even worse than the actual fall sometimes.....

I got up as fast as I could

Trying to be cool......

Saving face......

I meant to do that....right??

Easing the air back into my lungs

Picking my bike up

Trying not to feel sorry for myself

I figured out the lesson.

Falls happen........

We all know this

Stick with me for a sec

Case in point.....

Last week I fell again

But not in the regular

Falling off your bike sort of way

I fell off the creative bike

I launched my creative writing circles.

And

They fell.....over......like

All the way.....over.....

Like

Trees

Or dominoes

Here’s what I learned

Falling is a natural part of existence

If we are trying not to fall.....

We shield ourselves from learning

We protect ourselves from trying

We stop the pain from happening

We don’t create new things

Because

What if it fails????

What if people see me fail????

It’s freakin Scary!!

Right????

I can attest

I got the t-shirt to prove it.

But

If we run away to escape the fear of failure

We end up missing out on some really fundamental opportunities for growth.

Trying and falling is a big part of living

And the guarantee is that

No matter how hard you try

At something

There

Is

No

Guarantee

That

It

Will

Work....

Ever!

We can strive towards putting all of the pieces in perfect placement.

Plan it out

Aim for the bleachers

And miss

And swing and miss....

And swing and miss.....you get it.

And god damn

I’ve swung hard

And missed a LOT

At the end of the day

I’m glad I tried......

I’m glad I put something together

That was lovely and sweet

But ultimately

Didn’t work out

If we normalize falling publicly

We allow bigger spaces to be open for people to work that muscle too.

Even if the neighbourhood is watching after you bite it on the ice

As you try to untangle your pant leg from the chain,

Your elbow is bleeding

Your shoe flew off

And

You want to cry a little

Most of us know this feeling well

But we don’t talk about it often

Cause

It’s a tricky space to learn from

And it can be

Hard, vulnerable, and

Gosh dang embarrassing

The world we live in doesn’t show us a lot of the behind the scenes stuff.

We are usually getting everybody’s best version.....

It’s a hard environment to show up and say “I made this thing and it fell over!!! And crap!! that hurt!!”

The more we share

The more we understand....

And the more we understand

The more we feel less alone

And you wanna know what??

If you

Ever try something new

And you fall

And try to get back up

I’ll be cheering you on

From the front row

Wearing this old t-shirt I got

From a box called

“I’m right there with ya!!”

I will be offering the writing circles

Sometime in the future again

In the meantime

I have some new messy learning to do and some big creative spaces to re-jig

And I’m ready

Big Love