Who's Annette?

So much to say about this. So many different ways to say it. So many different experiences of leaping. ​The one that comes to mind a lot is one that until recently haunted me. 

A few years ago I took an awkward leap of faith and did not land on the other side, or wherever people wind up when they tell the happy ending stories about taking that leap of faith and the net appearing. The idea behind that saying is relatively down to earth. When we take (measured) risks, we often find that things work out much better than we feared - people/opportunities come into our lives at the right time creating a smoother landing than we expected or even hoped for. I know that has happened to me, but usually with things that didn't feel like a big leap (i.e. by the time I made the "big" change, it was really just the next natural step.) And I believe that big leaps that end beautifully must happen to others - but we usually only hear about it from the people that make it because they lived to tell the tale and their success brought them into the spotlight where they could share it, where we would wind up hearing about it.

But what about the others who didn’t survive, or who are still falling?

It doesn’t always have a neat little ending - people can die in pursuit of their dreams (well, we all will die eventually on the way somewhere). Or things can get worse before they get better, which is what happened to me when I left my day job and created my first children’s book only to spend all my money producing it and winding up virtually homeless and reliving childhood nightmares for several years after.

My initial understanding of the experience was two fold. One, that I took the leap a bit prematurely, not well calculated and with a lot of anxiety. It was more than the healthy excited anxiety when one stretches outside ones comfort zone; and more like the panic and stress from being way too far out without the proper resources and support in place. 

And two, that net didn’t appear because I didn’t have enough faith. While  I whole heartedly believed that with faith it would appear, there was a part of me that didn’t believe it would appear for me, and/or that I didn’t deserve it - possibly in part due to the lack of preparation and strategy. (The strategy and planning piece ties into the faith piece so much that it's hard to untie them in way to really know what is causing what).

The frustrating part of it, was that when I wandered back to the 9-5 job world with my tail between my legs, I still felt like I was falling. Sure, I evaded homelessness and brought myself back up to being able to support myself, but still worse off in many ways than I was before I took the leap. Meanwhile, day by day, my dream of having a successful career in children’s media continued to grow and evolve while every step I took was too slow and ineffective to make a dent or get a foothold anywhere, so the gap between where I was and my dreams just kept growing. It was a literal nightmare.  

And up until a few months ago, I was still falling. A spiritual retreat to Peru in 2019 to treat trauma didn't stop the fall - it may have changed the course of my fall, but I still can't tell if it was for the better yet - as I was also re-traumatized and had things come up without the proper support to heal it.

A spiritual entrepreneurship program in 2020 was the first thing that started to slow the decent with some basic online business skills and exposure to a group of wonderful supportive women. At the end of the program I finally got it. I finally received the unequivocal message that I needed not just to get trauma therapy, but from the RIGHT people. 

When I started to get the trauma therapy I needed, I started to learn how to fly, in bits and pieces: how to navigate stress and the unknown without crumbling and falling, and how to show up outside my comfort zone consistently in baby steps. 

While I still feel like I'm falling, I'm starting to wonder whether we every really find solid ground. I'm starting to realize that wha ti need to do is learn an entirely different skill set - how to hold myself above the abyss of helplessness without a corporate job, and to learn how to fly in the creative entrepreneurship world. Let's see!

This quote really resonates:

“The bad news is, we are falling through the air without a parachute. The good news is, there is no ground."

~Chogyam Trungpa