Falling Lessons: Three Years of Standing Back Up

My brother once told me I needed to learn to fall better. He had spent years doing extreme sports and knew how to fall and protect his body from impact. Every time I fall, I seem to break or injure something. I often think about his advice and realize I am just trash at landing gracefully. While I may not be any good at falling down, I am definitely experienced at getting up, dusting myself off, and getting back into the game.

The truth is, we all will fall sometime in life. As we mark the year anniversary of this pandemic, I have been thinking a lot about this time when so many of us have experienced falls both physically and metaphorically. A few years ago, an accident placed me on a path to discover what my own strength feels like.

The Physical Fall

A little over three years ago, I had my dream job. I had finally gathered the courage to leap from my long-time career as a fundraising professional to start consulting. My first gig was a 6-month retainer with excellent pay and lots of exciting travel for a dream client helping to advance women and girls around the world. The team was young, inspiring, and energetic. I felt so alive, popping back and forth to NYC where I relished nights to myself to wander the streets or take a dance class instead of long commutes home to end the day with the second shift of dinners, kids, and laundry. It should have been heaven.

It was only six months into a future I had planned so long for, but I began more and more to feel like I was losing my mind. I was working with amazing women and making a big difference. I loved it, yet I somehow always felt stressed and nervous. Professionally, I had to squelch doubts about whether I was doing it right, or if it would all come crashing down. Personally, I felt like a bad mom for leaving home so often, even though I loved it and had an amazing husband who was keeping the home fires burning. I often had issues transitioning back into domestic life after a long trip. My solution was to just keep moving, hopping into planes, trains, and automobiles, anything that kept me at my edge. I realized that I had been packing a suitcase almost weekly for over two years.

Days before a big event we had worked for months to plan with the client, I was on the road visiting board members of the organization. It felt like a vacation. We made our way up to visit a colleague at her house on the beach and talked about feminism and the future until the sunset. The next day we were off to Boston to meet another volunteer. I remember being frantic trying to find parking in Cambridge. I was carrying a huge bag, and wearing cute flats, walking way too fast because I feared being late. And just like that, I fell. I tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and went down hard.

As the ambulance rolled up I was trying to tell them that I could drive the two hours home, even though I was blind with pain and had severe swelling already. My wrist was so badly shattered that the emergency room staff later said it was like looking at a bag of pebbles. I had emergency surgery the next day and ended up with a new wrist made of a metal plate bolted to cadaver bone donated by an amazing soul who shared their body to keep me going.

I had no idea what I was in for in terms of recovery. I had two C-sections before this, but never understood what it was to heal such a complex body part, and this was not a simple break. Recovery was a big deal. My arm was immobilized at a specific angle for a while to ensure that a loose bone did not wander into a bad position. Without my hand, I could do very little for myself. I relied on help from my family, started hand therapy, worked for months through the pain, and then eventually, I was able to get out and about.

Something inside me had shifted even after my wrist was OK. I knew it the first time I went back to NYC when I had panic reactions every time someone jostled me in the subway or in tight, crowded places. I had been an avid runner, but that became a nightmare for me as each step plagued me with visions of tripping and falling. In the end, my contract was not renewed because I told them I simply could not travel yet.

It all sort of fell apart. I had no income, no plan, and bruised mental health. I sat in bed a lot in those early days and felt like suddenly, without my work or running around the house taking care of things, I had little purpose. I began to feel invisible because doing and delivering results was the only way I could identify myself each day. What and who was I if I remained still?

Getting Back Up and Falling Again

Eventually, I planned to get up get going again. I started volunteering and getting involved in raising money to help get my groove back. I met an old friend at a house party who could see I was on the struggle bus. She suggested I come to work with her where she ran a nonprofit that helped entrepreneurs succeed. I took the job and for the first time in years, I was home all the time. I had a place to be where I was challenged again as I had to learn an entirely new language and culture about startups and innovation. I did what I had done before and started to fill my days and nights with work. When I wasn't working or learning new things, I was planning little trips with the family or organizing some DIY project to keep me on my toes at home. I was all hustle and bustle.

I was thankful to be so busy because once again, I did not have to think about what was going on inside me. I had never really grappled with what I lost when I fell earlier that year. My vulnerability was ever-present in my mind. I replayed the moment of my fall and surgery often, thinking of it as the moment that the "universe" tore me from what I had considered my dream of launching an independent business. I still harbored that vision in my heart, but quietly felt like I was hiding from the world in a new field, letting slip the connections I had to the professional life I had led before for many years.

Predictably, work began to get stressful. My boss left the organization just as we faced funding challenges and a big project to move into a new building and launch a coworking space. I ended up taking on the CEO role on contract, promising the board and myself just one year to stabilize the programs and take on the move. There were no spare moments as I tried to wrap my arms around a tough task with the odds stacked against me. I knew we had a hard road ahead, but I felt myself pinning my hopes and ambitions to the new building and programs. I was on my feet again.

There were moments that year when I felt on top of the world. To the public, our building opened as a huge success, and we had a bright future ahead. At the same time, my gut told me that a fall might be on its way. Our budget was dwindling as there were signs on the horizon that our major sponsor would be changing their funding strategy. We now had the burden of high rent and staffing challenges. I kept hope alive within, but I knew the day of reckoning was coming. By the end of that year, it was clear our funding was not going to be renewed and the other available sources could never make up the gap. I worked with the board to move into a transitional role, winding down my contract to accommodate a trimmed-back vision and budget for the organization to survive. I was falling again. It did not matter how many people told me that the situation at our little nonprofit was not my fault, that big funders change course, that it was just business. I knew I had done heroic work to rescue it, but all I could feel was a sense that I had failed my community.

That Christmas break, I was at the bottom of my well. I knew I had only a few months left in my job and could not even imagine what would come next. I confided in a friend I met through my professional networking association. She ran a similar nonprofit organization and we were so alike in many ways, sharing an understanding of how hard it can be to run a small nonprofit, fight for change, and still be a Mom. Through all the challenges I faced that year, I was able to take solace in knowing her and the other amazing members of this small community of people supporting entrepreneurs. Together we shared learning and real stories of what it is like to build more equitable economies for entrepreneurs. We hosted transformative Summit events and were building a strong network. When the network announced in late December of 2019 that they were seeking their first permanent full-time Executive Director, I put my hat in the ring and got the job just before the holiday.

I was at home cocooning with my family and visiting the wind-swept winter beaches of New England to gain perspective. I texted pictures from the beach to my friend who also had sought out the power of the ocean on her vacation to heal when our work lives could be so punishing. Then, I got a call late at night just before New Year's Eve. My body went into shock when I learned that my friend who had just sent me smiling vacation photos had died in a tragic accident with her daughter. This was the kind of fall that never ends. Her family and community were not going to be the same. She was gone. This was the first thing on my mind as 2020 entered quietly and ominously.

Holding Onto the Ledge

My first weeks of the year were filled with heartbreak from the loss of my friend and hope that in my new job I could try to rewrite the story for others who ran nonprofits like the one I had just had to leave. I knew that a group of us nationally could help shape policy and catalyze new funding sources for our work building entrepreneurial ecosystems. I had fallen yet again, but I was ready to rise. While our budget was incredibly lean as a startup moving from a volunteer-led to a professional nonprofit, we had good revenue from our in-person events. We planned a great Summit and booked our flights to see our beloved network members.

It was late February, just a few weeks before our event when we started learning of the nature of the COVID-19 virus. Some board members and volunteers had already made the decision to stay home. I began calling every person registered and asking what their comfort was with traveling. In the end, we decided to host the event, with less than half our original audience attending in person. We spent a few days together at that event, maskless but nervous as word spread of the Biogen conference that was a notorious super spreader. We quickly scanned the stores for hard-to-locate hand sanitizer and moved our chairs a bit farther apart. Word came from the home ecosystems that we would be returning to the unthinkable - cities where all the businesses would be shuttered, where schools would close, and we would be locked down for an unknowable amount of time.

We said our goodbyes at our women's network breakfast that morning knowing it was all about to change. We planned a new social media group to stay in touch about economic recovery strategies. The airport was noisy and packed with panicked travelers who thought they might ground flights that day. I got the earliest flight I could and everyone was incredibly dismayed by a man coughing violently at the back of the plane. The guy sitting next to me had purchased oven mitts to wear on his hands and had a torn T-shirt to cover his face. The man sitting in front of me chattered incessantly to his seatmate about how he thought his island home on Nantucket should just shut down the ferries so they would stay safe. He was more worried about his stock portfolio, he said. We were all holding on to the ledge, gripping hard to the lives we knew were about the change.

A Season of Falls

Of course, here I was again. Climbing back from a fall and just a few months into running a small, lean nonprofit with just one full-time staff person, it was clear that our major revenue source was in peril. In-person events were not coming back anytime soon. I started once again to try and pivot with few resources, hopeful that a full-time role would still be there for me at the end of the pandemic.

The personal trials of the year were yet to sink in. Thankfully, my immediate friends and family are all safe and alive. One year later, we have all lost and fallen so much. Our hearts as social impact workers break as we collectively fight for equity and learn to become more anti-racist ourselves. My two teens have not been inside a school since the day I flew home from my Summit. My friends and family see each other very little, only outdoors. My kids have navigated anxiety, friendship changes, the loss of one's first and the other's last year of high school. My senior son is facing a wild west admissions ride to college. My husband is a public school teacher who had to learn an entirely new way to do his job, knowing that despite his incredible efforts, it still doesn't work that well for all his students. And now the public is frustrated with teachers and legislators as we parents face the endless pressures of having kids at home with remote learning. The rollout of shots is slow. Our little college town's Main St. has been decimated as the local state university campus struggled with figuring out in-person learning. I work in my bedroom and barely remember my life on the road.

On January 6th this year, like many of us, I sat switching between Zoom windows and the unfolding scene of violence at the Capitol. I had that familiar feeling that we were heading once again for a fall that could change everything. Luckily, our democracy was not fragile enough to break on that day. But my bones felt the sensation of change and the urgency of finding the power to stand strong in the face of fear. I looked honestly at my professional situation and decided that I was hanging on and trying to survive rather than leaping into my fears. On that day, I made the choice to re-open the door I had to close three years ago when I fell and broke my wrist. Life is short and it was time for me to take my courage back to launch my own business helping social impact organizations thrive and face their own moments on the cliff.

I could not have predicted the chasms that I would face this past year. I also could never have guessed that all of the losses and setbacks would carry me to a new place. I have learned to hold tighter to my friends in both personal and professional life. We all care about making a difference and we've got to help each other stand after every single fall. I have seen how my mind and body have responded to working and traveling a bit less, and I have the best health I've had in a long time. I know more about my kids' lives than I did a few years ago, and I am so very lucky to have a new bond that only could have been forged through a season of struggle. My home town means more to me now than ever, as I know that our forests, farms, streams, schools, neighborhoods, and small businesses make up the fabric of our lives and must be treasured like never before. With so many vulnerabilities, it is also clear that we have the resiliency to keep going and rise again.

Falling is never fun. Getting up is never easy. The twisting path I was on after that particular fall three years ago led me to where I am today. I had to fall a few more times before I did not feel scared all the time. I filled my head with doubts and placed myself at the center of events that actually were out of my control. Then I beat myself up when I could not change their course.

I was only able to stop this pattern after I saw a random tragedy take down a friend, followed by COVID-19. It used to scare me to admit how very little we can control in life. My falling lessons have helped me embrace this truth and have liberated me. I feel bulletproof because I have learned what it is to be strong and alive. Just being here each morning, even if I feel awful, is a signal of my power. Knowing that I can pick myself and others up after a stumble is enough for me to keep stepping out on that ledge. I will not give up, and I will not let my dreams be derailed. This is what our pandemic year has given to me. Exactly one year later, I am standing up once more and launching my business. I am thrilled to have found clients already who help me feel joy for my work. May we all walk with confidence and keep our eyes on the cracks in the sidewalk ahead. Even if we fall, we will pick each other up.