Jump…

We had planned to prep the land while living in our RV in the park. Dig a well, install electricity, prep a site for a house. I grew up on a farm, so tending the land was in my bones and he didn’t have to do much to convince me to do it with him. Picking corn, feeding animals, living simply — it was my childhood. It was his dream.

When the pandemic hit and lockdowns arrived, RV parks began either shutting down, or dedicating themselves to traveling healthcare workers. Suddenly, we were losing our options in where to park the RV. We realized we would have to live on our land before we were ready. We scrambled to get water tanks, generators, and some semblance of a road to be able to park the RV and live off-grid. The stress began to take its toll. We began to argue more.

Suddenly, the world that had seemed stable my whole life felt like it was crumbling. Pitching into global uncertainty and personal turmoil was too much for me. I felt frozen and exposed. My always-reliable competence was failing me, and it felt scary. I couldn’t solve all the problems coming at me. De-stabilized, I became more vulnerable to his convictions.

He had never benefitted from the systems that were now beginning to strain — healthcare, economic, government — so he delighted in their crumble. He couldn’t wait until the whole thing — every last system and the people responsible — suffered the day of reckoning he felt they deserved. And he began planning for that day to come.

Fences, guns, and wars with our neighbors — all things that were part of his plan to keep us safe. I watched in horror and helplessness as we became an island — fear disguised as power — and I felt myself losing my connection to friends and family. I was alienating myself by allowing him to isolate me.

I watched and I also participated. I didn’t know it, but I was approaching a choice point.

Watching myself get further and further away from my own perspective on life was both paralyzing and galvanizing. Like a polar bear caught out on an ice floe, watching land disappear before her eyes, stuck in the in-between.

At the last possible moment, I jumped back to land.

I left him, the farm, the guns, and the war. I let that ice float off into the horizon.

Ultimately, I jumped because I realized that no matter what comes, I am a stand for love over fear. I am a stand for meeting life as fully as I can in each moment, by living the truest version of myself that I can access. And that wasn’t it.

We live in a world with fracturing ice floes, endless opportunities to island ourselves out of fear. To allow ourselves to become smaller, rather than truer versions of ourselves. And it can happen quietly, without our awareness, when we are not clear what we stand for. Who we BE.

We also live in a world that gives us a choice, a choice of whether we stay on the incorrect ice floe for us. Or whether we jump back to land.

There are consequences either way. Knowing what you stand for, who you BE, — and living it — isn’t an easy path. But in living out the truth of who you are, your spirit remains pure. Confusion and resistance disappear.

You are a unique cosmic event, with specific gifts and shadows and contribution to make. You are not meant to be like everyone else. You are not meant to be like anyone else. The totality wants to experience you…as you. And it gave you everything you need to do that.

So…if you need to, jump.