Courage

Walking the Edge Between Fear and Truth

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This is an interesting time of year for me. The texture of the air turns. The hum of the insects turns up. The color of the sun shifts to golden. And something in my body begins to buzz. There’s a memory deep within my cells that my mind doesn’t always consciously consider, but that courses through as real as anything. 

Strange how memory lives on in us, through us, even when we feel like we’re over it, past it, healed from it. Or like we should be.

Six years ago today I was in a major accident. I survived a high level spinal cord injury and mild head injury that left me paralyzed, without sensation or motor function in my body from my neck down. In a matter of seconds on an ordinary, leisurely, enjoyable Labor Day, my life completely changed. Flipped upside down, or inside out. I have been in life threatening situations before—nearly drowning while kayaking water that was too big for my britches, being stalked by a big black bear for several miles into a canyon with no clear exit, having rolled my car over into a ditch during a spring blizzard. It’s incredible really. I most definitely have nine lives and almost certainly inherited that from my mom. It’s gotta be genetic. 

However this time, this life threatening situation, this one changed everything. Something tremendous moves in me even as I attempt to give voice to it. My heart trembles and shakes inside my chest, tears well up in some sort of liminal space between amazement, extreme gratitude, grief and pain, and memories that elicit my awe and wonder. My body begins to shake and emotions run almost uncontrollably. These are some of the blessings from this trauma for me. 

We go through our lives attempting to hold ourselves together. To appear put together, happy, pleasant, on top of everything. We believe certain beliefs about emotions—some are good, some are bad. Some you should try to avoid or at the very least cover up if you happen to feel them. We hold in our truth and our actual experience of ourselves and of each other in attempts to fit in, to be accepted, and to feel that we are okay. And in truth, we are all doing this—hiding from each other and even from ourselves in some ways. And deep down truly wanting to be accepted, seen and loved for what is in our hearts but terrified of the risk of expressing it. 

Laying there in that body, that beautiful body that could not move—that showed me something. We are so much bigger than the house we are in. We are Spirit expressed in the most creative, authentic, strange and beautiful ways through these bodies. We are GIFTED these hands, these tears, these bellies, and these voices in order to make beauty with. Beauty that protects, sustains and perpetuates this life. And the other world as well.


We are not so different. We are all here in this together, just coming into our expressions in unique ways like wildflowers in the high alpine, but together none the less. We have but moments. Just moments. And within each one is the potential for us to share love, connection and create beauty with each other if we recognize it.


This is what I crave so badly to share with the world. Knowing this, not thinking it or believing it, but truly knowing this in my bones is why this accident is the greatest blessing I could have received. This, and that it showed me who and what I am.

If you would have asked me before the accident happened what one of my biggest fears was, I would have said becoming quadriplegic. Having been a dancer, a climber, a mountaineer, and a farmer, it's something I have thought about and feared forever—almost even more than death. Though that fear was known, I was not fully aware of just how terrified I was of being vulnerable. In this situation, I was the most vulnerable I could ever have been. Physically I had to be moved by others, fed by others. I needed machines to help me with bodily functions we all take for granted. I had to have loved ones massage my hands to keep circulation and fluids moving since they were not able to on their own. My head was injured and I could not fully make sense of things mentally.


The only thing that was left was my choice of attitude, determination, listening to spirit and to myself, befriending my fears, and believing in the divine nature of my story as it was being written. 

“If one has courage,

nothing can dim

the light which shines

from within.” -Maya Angelou

I was given the gift of making relatives with my greatest fears. Laying there motionless in that bed, the only thing that was left was heart. The only thing that mattered and the only thing I had to give or share was the truth of what I held within, and that which flows through me. 

I remember this on this day, six years later and I’m grateful for this anniversary. To me, this is not something I should ever get over or move past. Heal from, but never forget. Spirit and my own life brought me a gift on this day. A wake up call in many ways, and a call now to use my voice to share my story with you. It’s important to remember—our gifts, our gratitude, our sweet and brief time together. 

I celebrate today, not only for the incredible recovery that I’ve had, but for the ways this event has changed my life and shaped me. This journey has given me the gifts of meeting my fears to see that I am not annihilated by them. If I was not annihilated by going through an injury that took away my body, then perhaps I can also face the risk of sharing my grief, my fears, my gratitude and my love with you. And I do love you. 

May we have the courage to walk that beautiful wild jagged edge of befriending our fears to find out that pain is just another color on the wheel. May we trust in the ever unfolding mystery of our own stories, and let the truths we carry within our hearts be known to those we walk with.

photo credit: Casey Ruth