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Lessons of the Fall
by Donna Henes
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just when the power of positive
thinking
had me thinking i had some control
i got knocked to my knees by a hot dog wagon.
not flattened not thrown not knowing what hit me
just knocked to my knees and forced to bow down.
DH
A week before the Summer Solstice,
I fell down a flight of 13 stone stairs and sustained a
concussion. Several people who had had their own
concussion experiences told me that it had taken them
anywhere from three to six months before they felt fully
themselves. Despite the warnings, I was shocked at how
long it has taken for me to recover.
While I was fortunate not to have had
a more serious injury, having your brains all shook up
really sends your entire system into shock, a sort of
shaky time out of time of disconnect. Not to mention the
surface impairment. Even now, my right eye is not
completely open, my face and thigh display remnants of
bruising and my forehead and eyebrow do not wiggle very
well.
The Summer was a long and slow one
during which I concentrated on healing myself and
working to understand and integrate the many-layered
lessons of the fall. I had just written about my
Birthday Book and how I record what I have learned each
year as well as "what I just can’t seem to get
through my thick skull." Clearly these lessons were
urgent enough and I was so resistant a student, that it
became necessary for me to be knocked over the head in
order to learn them.
Gratitude, first and foremost, was
Lesson Number One. While normally I am quite conscious
of my appreciation for my life and living, everyone’s
attitude of gratitude could stand a periodic upgrading.
I was aware instantaneously of just
how miraculously and gloriously lucky I had been. I had
thankfully escaped major damage or death. I had been
spared from remembering the actual terrible tumble,
saving me from countless frightening flashbacks and
dreams. I had been found and attended to almost
immediately by good neighbors. I was nursed and massaged
and reikied and shiatsued and reflexed and blessed and
materially supported in every generous manner.
Miracles seem to rest, not so much
upon
faces or voices or healing power coming
suddenly near to us from far off, but upon
our perceptions being made finer so that
for a moment our eyes can see and our ears
can hear that which is about us always.
Willa Cather
Beyond the parameters of this
particular incident, I was reminded of how much I love
the world, life, nature, creatures, comforts, beauty.
Just how precious and tenuous it all is. In light of
September 11th last, we are all struggling to
keep this crucial 911 emergency lesson foremost in our
minds at all times. A fierce reminder of the importance
of raising, praising the universal spirit at every turn.
Be Here Now. Live Life. Be Great and Full.
When I first landed on the granite
floor, I thought that I would just sit a minute, catch
my breath and then go about my agenda. I would shoulder
through, like always. But within hours of the fall it
became painfully obvious that there was no way that I
could possibly facilitate a large public event in seven
days time, as I had planned to do, as I had been doing
for more than a quarter of a century.
In 27 consecutive years, I had never
missed a solstice or equinox ritual, come rain or snow
or flu or exhaustion or broken ankle. But this time, I
had no choice. I had fallen down on the job, as it were
and my only option was to sit still. Letting Go, Lesson
Number Two, was an insistent, obstinate, merciless task
mistress who would accept nothing less than total
vulnerability, absolute humility, and hopefully at the
end of the day, some measure of grace.
I do not understand the mystery of
grace —
only that it meets us where we are, but
does not leave us where it found us.
—Anne LaMott
Although I did miss attending the
solstice celebration, the sun did not miss me in the
slightest. It somehow managed to rise, set and deliver
Summer without any help from me, thank you very much.
All those years, it was I — my desire and my mission
— who needed to participate with the solar and lunar
changes so that I might learn to live in sync with the
seasons and cycles of which I am a part. At the exact
moment of the solstice, a small band of celebrants who
had shone up to keep our Chants for Peace * Chance for
Peace alive, called me from the park. And so, the cosmic
connections continued after all.
Asking for Help, Lesson Number Three,
always a hard one for me, became much easier after I
allowed myself to let go of all those macha martyr
assumptions that I perpetrate upon myself. Such as
thinking I can be a bottomless source of never-ending
energy without ever having to replenish my own reserves.
Such as feeling — like so many caregivers, healers,
and light workers do — that everyone else’s needs
must be dealt with before mine, me being in the line of
service, after all. Such as resisting well meant offers
of assistance.
Remember, if you ever need a helping
hand,
you’ll find one at the end of your arm…as you
grow older you will discover that you have two hands.
One for helping yourself, the other for helping others.
—Audrey Hepburn
Before the fall, if someone
volunteered to give me a massage, I would invariably
demure. "Thanks so much. I really appreciate it,
but that’s O.K." Meaning what? That I didn’t
need anything? That I didn’t deserve anything? Now,
during my summer of healing, I was becoming able to
over-ride my ego and say, "Yes, please, I do need
help. I am in trouble here. Thank you so much."
Learning how to attend to my own
requirements and boundaries and take as loving good care
of myself as I do of others is Lesson Number Four. I
have been struggling to learn this lesson for decades
and have managed quite well over the years to sustain
myself spiritually, mentally and emotionally. It is on
the material and physical plane that I tend to fall
down, as it were. As the I Ching, the Chinese Book of
Changes, has reminded me time and time again over the
past thirty years, "Feed the cow." How else
can the poor dear give milk, after all?
So, the lessons contemplated and
understood, if not completely yet integrated, I am now
determined to heal myself for once and for all. It is
time. I cannot continue to push myself beyond the max. I
acknowledge that I am not omnipotent. That I do need
help. That I do have needs and that I need to honor and
enforce them. I promise myself to learn how to recognize
and respect my limitations of strength, energy, time and
resources. And most important of all, I pledge to allow
myself to sit down occasionally, to lie down, even, so
that I don’t have to fall down to get some rest.
Don't compromise yourself. You are
all you've got.
—Janis Joplin
© Copyright 2004
Donna Henes. All Rights
Reserved.
Donna Henes, Urban Shaman, is the editor and publisher of the highly
acclaimed quarterly, Always In Season: Living In Sync with the Cycles. She is
also the author of Moon Watcher's Companion, Celestially Auspicious
Occasions: Seasons, Cycles and Celebrations and Dressing Our Wounds In Warm
Clothes, as well as the CD, Reverence To Her: Mythology, The Matriarchy & Me.
In 1982, she composed the first (and to this date, the only) satellite peace
message in space: "chants for peace * chance for peace."
Mama Donna, as she is affectionately known, has offered lectures, workshops,
circles, and celebrations worldwide for 30 years. She is the director of Mama
Donna's Tea Garden & Healing Haven, a ceremonial center, ritual consultancy
and spirit shop in Exotic Brooklyn, New York.
For further information, a list of services and publications, a calendar of
upcoming events and a complimentary issue of Always in Season: Living in Sync
with the Cycles. contact:
MAMA DONNA'S TEA GARDEN AND HEALING HAVEN
PO Box 380403
Exotic Brooklyn, NY 11238-0403
Phone/Fax 718-857-2247
Email: CityShaman@aol.com
www.DonnaHenes.net
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