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see adrienne fall.

yesterday i fell down.

i used to fall down all the time, but it’s been a while since i actually fell and injured myself.

this time i was walking in the woods, in the snow. i was so excited by the experience, the sound of my steps in the snow, the pristine crisp sharpness of the trees against the wintery white-gray. me being me, i wanted to share it. me being me, instead of stopping to film, i whipped out my phone and started to film the walk, including showing myself walking.

then i fell into a hole.

i’m not sure i would have missed the hole if i hadn’t been focused on the video. but i’m pretty sure that making the video, or the lack of being fully present that the making of the video represents, contributed to my fall.

and now i have a video that feels so essentially me, in this beautiful world, wanting to make myself a part of it, wanting to have people see what i see, and then being humbled.

my life these days is a consistent ebb and flow of beauty, humility, joy, grief, and always laughter. it’s happening, my life, all the time.

i’m sure i could wring a million lessons out of the experience. mostly i feel really grateful that i didn’t fall because my body is weak, that i didn’t do more damage, and that even tho i am hurting, i still love and trust my body, as opposed to how i used to feel when i fell.

i walk the same line that many artists and writers walk, being in the world and simultaneously wanting to capture it, capture a moment, a feeling. there is always a little viewfinder, a director, a narrator and an analyst at work. i hope to never feel embarrassed about that desire, to always lean into my creative way of seeing things.

but it can take away from my ability to just be present.

i’ve come a long way in being present – this was a lovely and dramatic little nudge to keep going. with instagram, facebook, flickr, tumblr, twitter…it’s so tempting to live with so many people. but more present is possible.

that said, being able to truly laugh at myself, alone and with others, also feels like a gift. and the gift works perfectly in moments where i am taking myself too seriously.

after i fell, while my foot was still down in the hole and the rest of my limbs akimbo on the snow, i was already laughing. and i was very present then, to the feeling of snow all over me, to the unseen land under my body, to the quiet absence of others, to the desire to just lay there in the cold soft til the pain passed.

luckily my sister was jogging on a road not too far off, and she could hear me calling and come rescue me, and my other sister could come get me in the car once it was clear i couldn’t walk anywhere. and once i arrived at christmas dinner there were all sorts of experts on how to care for an ankle, and a faller.

and there were people, my family through blood and marriage, to appreciate my whimsical, beautiful, scary, hilarious video.

how how how – how we live our lives and respond to our lives, that is what interests me most. the means create the ends. being out here in the woods with babies who throw themselves completely into every adventure and thus experience life as an adventure, with two families falling in love with each other over those babies and thus experience life as a series of opportunities for love…i keep noticing how i do life, how others do life.

the people i appreciate most are those that laugh with their whole bodies, and love with all their hours. so even if i fall, even while i’m laid out on the ground with my foot lost in the earth, even if i don’t know anything else including how to stand up again…i know love is where i’m going when i get up, and being more and more present to the wonder and laughter of it all is how i’m getting there.