My mind is spinning. It is keeping me up at night, whirling its way into my meditations, forcing me out of the present moment. I am about to step off the edge of a cliff – again.  Similar leaps have been either punishing drops or massive belly flops. They have knocked the wind out of me. I’m terrified. I can hardly contain my excitement.

Fear and judgment rear their heads incessantly. I am thrown backward in my fear around Ada’s health. The terror that both my children will be taken from me has tightened its hold once again. Fear about the fragility of my life peeks out from behind the fog of fatigue. It’s as though I’ve recently realized I could have died last summer. I could die at any moment, like my friend Jamie, just as I’m about to leap into the unknown. I feel gawky, awkward in my communications with people I don’t know well. As though I can’t quite find the words. As though I’m back in high school, shy, uncertain, unknown.

Yet as I stand here, feeling the sun on my face, arms outstretched and heart open wide, as I look down at the empty space between me and the ocean I am leaping into, I somehow trust that in this free fall, I will soar.