Lessons of the Fall by Donna Henes

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.

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 11^th 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.

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.

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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