I welcome every fall because I land exactly where I am meant to be

on the gift of certainty, which awakens after you surrender

This year has taught me so much. I am in my final week of 28, stepping skipping over the threshold, half excited, half nervous and subconsciously more sure than I have ever been before. It took me almost 3 decades to get here, and I can say with confidence now— I am sure of myself.

I may not always be sure of anything else, but the one thing that has solidified over time, is my belief in my own capabilities. I know, that no matter what may come, I will be okay. Through the storms, the scorching heat, the losses, the gains, the shockwaves, the aftermath, through it all.

Yesterday, somebody asked me how I have been sitting with the grief in my own life. I told her that it has been showing up for me as illness. However, addressing my grief somatically through acupuncture, movement, and walking, has made a world of a difference. It’s not that I don’t feel it as deeply anymore, I just don’t feel uprooted by it. I haven’t really been able to ugly-cry yet. This grief has been more so of a slow, subconscious surrender to reality and allowing the discomfort of a shifting life hit me —over and over and over again. The bad days have had more overthinking and ruminating, the good ones have had me sharing, smiling, reading, listening to music, and most importantly, remembering.

When a loss occurs, it is easier for the mind to try to problem-solve, and the grief hits after the tiredness takes over. Because we cannot problem-solve our way through loss, so we just end up tiring ourselves and falling sick from denial. The most beautiful and heart-wrenching thing about this life is that everything is not in fact, within our control. We can not control when death comes. We can not control what somebody else wants. We can not save anybody from their own selves. We can only walk beside each other, and hope, that our love is felt.

I have been walking for a long time now. So many doors have been shut in my face, and so many others have opened. Every time I almost gave up on my own faith, almost miraculously, I was shown why I should not. Every time I felt misunderstood and hurt, I was gifted with people who listened, and put in real effort into understanding me. Every time I felt a lack of love, I was shown grace through small but meaningful gestures, from friends, colleagues, and even strangers. The people who I least expected to show up for me this year, (or ever) were the ones who showed up for me the most. The people who I had historically put all of my faith in and clung to, tore themselves away from me.

Somewhere in this journey, I began to stop assuming and stop expecting. Instead, I allowed myself to simply observe. The silence that followed was disorienting, and then there were loud proclamations. A text that would astound and touch me, “Hey.. I haven’t heard from you in a while.. I miss you” or a “Hey, I was thinking of you the other day..” or a “I know how hard work has been for you lately, how can I help?”

I was surprised that my silence and distance was not taken as an affront, and instead met with compassionate curiosity - I realized, that my true loved ones were the ones who asked the most important question that I had been yearning to be asked my whole life, “Why?”

Why.

Instead of assuming, instead of critiquing, instead of judging. They asked me why. They asked me how I was. They asked me how they could help. They tried their very best to meet me half-way. I wasn’t expected to abandon myself to show up for them. I was held. Eventually, I experienced the clarity that I had been seeking all along - I do not have to change myself, make myself smaller, abandon my own joy and my own needs to make anybody else happy.

I will be cared for even when I am down. I will be loved even when I don’t have the capacity to return it to its fullness. I will be considered even when I am sick and can not consider others. Most importantly, I do not have to show up as anything or anybody other than who I authentically am— and she is ever-changing, ever-growing, ever-transcending.

So here I am, skipping across this threshold, because I am not afraid of falling anymore. In fact, I welcome the fall- it shows me that I will always land somewhere that I am meant to be. Even if it isn’t where I want to be, at first. It will turn out exactly all right.

I can’t wait to be 29.

xo