we discover that falling in the canyon is our initiation
—Mark Nepo, “The Life After Tears”
I didn’t land. I fell and I fell and I fell.
At first as I plummeted, I feared the landing,
imagining an imminent crash. Then,
I fell through nights and middays. Fell through
kitchen floors and highways. Fell through
birthdays and Saturdays. Fell until the sense
of groundlessness was so familiar it no longer
felt like peril. I don’t know when I stopped falling.
There was no splat. No splash. No crushing of bones.
No sense of arrival. In fact, I am not certain
I am done with my falling. But I do know now
the falling is not something to be feared.
Not that we grow wings. This is not about flying.
It’s about falling. About meeting the gravity
and feeling its force and letting it carry me
in ways I have never before let myself be carried.
Now I know that the canyon of grief is
just another name for living the fullest life.
The reward for the falling is to no longer
expect a reward. The reward of falling is to
learn to not resist the falling. The reward of falling
is to feel how grace falls with us as if holding
our hand, like a teacher, like a friend.
Posts Tagged ‘acceptance’
After I Fell in the Canyon of Grief
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, canyon, falling, grace, grief, surrender on January 7, 2026| 5 Comments »
One When I Feel Shoreless
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, conversation, friendship on October 28, 2025| Leave a Comment »
your voice on the phone
each word a stepping stone
toward acceptance
After Four Hours of Driving, We Arrive at What Google Maps Said Would Be a Park
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, driving, laughter, map, surrender on October 2, 2025| 3 Comments »
There is no park.
Still, we park at the edge
of the road and look out
over the Hudson
beyond the thick trees,
inhale the yellowing
scent of autumn,
reach our arms up to the sky,
play chase around the car,
and laugh the whole time,
at first in disbelief,
and at last in surrender.
One more chance to meet
the world that is here
instead of the world
we expect. One more chance
find ourselves grateful
to be exactly where we are.
Sitting in a Quiet Room
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, silence, worry on September 8, 2025| 4 Comments »
with thanks to Karly Pitman
There is this stark moment
when I see I am not my worry.
When I do not chastise
myself for worrying, nor
do I demonize the worry.
I do not imagine the worry
as a snake or a tick or a nail.
I welcome it into my lap,
uncomfortable teacher,
and pause here
on the hard chair of curiosity.
Softness arrives with conscious breath.
In and around me blooms
spaciousness.
Silence is the tenderest lullaby.
It holds both the worry and me.
It has no tongue, yet the lyric is clear,
There is nothing here you cannot meet.
One After a Long Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, broken heart, rain, yes to the world as it is on June 27, 2025| 3 Comments »
somehow, the broken heart
finally stops trying
to fix its cracks—
how cool, how brisk
the rain it once tried to keep out
One Ever-Changing Pressure
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, heart, singing on April 4, 2025| Leave a Comment »
bless the accordion heart—
whether it opens or closes
it’s all a chance to sing
Trust
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, openness, rain, trust on August 11, 2024| 6 Comments »
Let the rain fall as it will
and fill the ditches and
flood the paths. Let it
pour from the gutters
and spill from the eaves.
Let the gulleys be gushing
and roiling with rain.
Let it rain. Let it rain as if
it will never stop raining.
Let it rain until everything
glistens and shines.
Even the sunflowers,
gold petals now limp.
Even my longing
for sunnier days.
Even my longing
to push it away.
Remember when
I prayed for rain?
Let it rain as long as it rains.
Let it rain and let me
laugh in the rain,
let me dance in the rain,
let me cry until
my tears rhyme with rain.
And let me be soft
in the rain. Let wonder
be present as rain—
driving rain, gentle rain,
long and relentless rain—
the rain I know by another name.
This poem is not
about the rain.
But because it is about to rain,
let the heart exclaim,
Let it rain.
Practice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, bindweed, garden, hands, practice, touch, weeding on June 20, 2024| 2 Comments »
I plunge my hands into the soil
and tug on the long white bindweed roots
that cling to the cool damp dark.
Never once have I pulled the whole plant.
Always, the bindweed comes back.
Once I might have longed for a weed-free
world. How did I not see the bindweed
for what it is—a chance to touch
again and again what humbles me, and
to learn with my hands the art of acceptance
so my hands might teach my heart.
Grief Is Not Like the Squirrel in My Garden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, grief, mouse, squirrel on June 6, 2024| 10 Comments »
that’s been eating all my pansies,
eating them to the roots
so that nothing of beauty remains.
We were able to lure the squirrel
with sunflower seeds and peanut butter
and trap it in a cage and take it far away.
Grief is more like the mice that eat the lure,
then slip through the cage, though the holes
are tiny, the door shut tight.
Grief stays. It takes what I offer and escapes.
But it hasn’t devoured all that is beautiful.
See how the pansies are blooming.
Like the mice, grief makes a nest
in my garden. We live here together.
I’ve put away the cage.
Afraid My Actions Would Hurt Someone Else,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, belonging, burr, resistance on April 28, 2024| 7 Comments »
my chest filled with anxiety,
as if burrs grew in my bloodstream,
sharp barbs catching on my skin from inside.
I wanted the feeling to go away.
Wanted to know I could make everything okay.
And the burdock dug deeper in,
clinging to my heart as it would
to a sock or a sleeve or a dog.
Inside the burr was a seed of fear:
I can’t protect others from harm.
And my teacher said, her voice warm,
Let the fear of repercussions be here.
But the longing to control kept
digging into me with spines sharp and long.
Include it as part of the whole, she said.
And I thought of wild burdock
with its big soft leaves,
how naturally it grows in a field.
How it’s evolved, a product of life itself.
How the root is used to heal.
And I was stunned by the fact
that burdock belongs to the field
as much as wheatgrass,
dandelion, wild iris, wild rose—
the burr one part of the whole.
And I knew myself as field.
I imagined inside me
the grass, the sunflower, the vetch, the trees,
and the uncomfortable burr of anxiety,
which, though painful, belongs.
I focused on whatever it is
that holds it all. Inside me,
acceptance opened like a song.
*with thanks to Joi Sharp for her words (in italics)