“Funny how falling feels like flyin’…for a little while”*

A few weeks ago, while attempting to fly at midnight, I fell. Five weeks ago, to be exact. Like a witch riding her broom across the starry sky, I jumped onto a rope swing in the dark, after a few drinks, thinking I too could ride the night winds.

Unfortunately, I missed getting my ass on the seat and rather than fly into the night, I fell, hard. I fractured my hip, a few ribs and even my C2, for good measure. And I’ve been homebound ever since. Unable to dance, write, or even keep house. Everything that I am, I can’t.

This has been the theme of my life this summer: Everything that I am, I can’t be anymore. Everything I’ve been, is fading away. The Universe has been trying to get it through my head—that the person I once was is no longer necessary—but it took the stripping of my very mobility to get me to listen.

It started two-years ago, with my eldest going to college. At that point the clock of mother-writer-teacher began to tick toward it’s end. I had two years until the youngest went to college to figure out the next phase of my life. I’d spent the first four years of my mothering trying to figure out how to live WITH these two amazing creatures, I certainly didn’t want to waste another four years figuring out how to live WITHOUT them. So I began to look into full-time work, a career to fill my time, to bring in money and moreover, prestige. Because if there’s one thing the mother-writer-teacher lacks, it’s prestige. I’d been a software engineer prior to having my children, so the obvious thing was to return to tech. To show the world I can have it all, just not at the same time.

Thus I dove into school, taking computer science as well as project management classes. I spent 18 months studying, working two part-time jobs and editing a trilogy with my publisher—while still parenting the youngest through his college admissions horror show.

This past May, I began the full-time job search and all of June was filled with interviews, job fairs, networking, etc. From the power going out during a scheduled, online code interview, to a local startup getting bought out by Google and putting all their hiring on hold, the doors kept shutting. As July came around, I began to wonder whether or not I was meant to just jump into what I once was. Perhaps I hadn’t given it enough thought? I have another twenty years of work life ahead of me, why did I assume that what I did when I was 28 is what I’d like to do now? Perhaps I should take some time to see who I am without the kids, and how I might best serve my community. Yet it’s hard for me to be still, to take the time to just be. I’m not certain I’ve ever done that, until I fell while trying to fly.

I’ve had more than enough time to think these past five weeks, and the healing time has barely begun. It may take four more before I’m walking, even longer before I can dance, clean the Airbnb, or function as I once did. My full-time job search is on hold for quite some time. Healing time isn’t like calendar time. Healing time is slower, governed not by the clock, but by your body. There is a vast, empty space when you’re this vulnerable. My community has stepped forward and helped in so many ways. I’m humbled by these busy men and women taking the time to bring us meals, visit and check up on me. As one of them said, “I know you’re quite an independent woman, so letting us help you this way is a big deal. But it gives us a chance to serve, so thank you.”

Her words struck me—through my vulnerability, I have allowed others the space to serve. In many ways, this is what the disabled, as well as young children and the elderly, do for us. They can’t live without our attention, our commitment. In giving them what they need to thrive, we nourish our own souls. This is what my children did to me, they forced me to leave calendar time to create a space where they could thrive governed by child time. In doing so, I’m not a martyr, rather I’m a caregiver, and forever changed by the experience of helping them out when they needed me.

I realize now that I was too ready to leave that all behind, claiming that it was my turn to conquer the real world. But the moment I tried to fly, I fell back into a place of quiet, and now I’m not so sure that picking up where I left off is what’s best for me.

The evening of my fall, I was attending a fabulous party of mixed ages, young adults as well as those of us in our middle age. We danced together to live music under the stars and played beer pong. In many ways, I felt like I was 25 again. Free of kids, the whole world in front of me, and endless possibilities. This is probably why I thought it was a good idea to ride that swing one last time, in the dark and tipsy, because when I was their age that was the sort of thing I did. I was wild and daring. That Nicole, the one who coded during the day, would push the limits at night.

But you can’t be twenty-something forever. You can’t even return to it after a twenty-year hiatus to raise kids. Who we were is written in the book of life, but who we’re becoming is ever changing. Anything IS possible—I am free of the burdens of raising children and the whole world is in front of me. But 47 year-old Nicole is someone new, someone I haven’t even begun to know, because I’ve been too busy to meet her.

Healing time has been a blessing. I may not know who I am now without my kids, but that’s okay. The only thing I do know is that I can’t be someone whose time has come and gone. The world needs something different from me now, and I’m grateful to have the time to be open to whatever that next assignment may be.

*Lyrics from “Fallin and Flyin” by written by Stephen Bruton and Gary Nicholson.