When I drove down the parkway to climb my first frozen waterfall, I was a young woman with an uninterrupted story since childhood. My inner narrative consisted of thoughts about myself (I am unloved, life is painful, I no longer want to live) as well as the emotions that accompanied these (hurt, anger, unhappiness.)
I was this same person as I belayed my partner up the ice, and even as I picked up my tools and prepared to climb on the rope he had just put up.
But as I started moving up the climb, I became someone else: an intensely alive woman who felt happiness for the first time in her life.
How was it possible to be a suicidally depressed person in the morning, and a vitally alive woman by sunset? How could I be plotting how to exit the planet as the sun came up, and be connected to the sheer joy of existence by nightfall? Was I Alice in Wonderland; had I fallen into some rabbit hole?
I had no idea which one I was, but I knew for certain which one I wanted to be. I set out on a journey to find out if I had the power to transform myself from someone who no longer wanted to be alive into someone who was in love with life.
I am decades into this new story, or what I refer to as a practice. It is not a destination, but rather, layer upon layer of disentangling myself from the egoic mind structures that have been programmed into me since birth. One by one, I ferret out stories I am identified with, and each time I release one, I find myself more and more connected to what was always waiting patiently beneath: the life that I am.
