Coming Home (the old writing for keepsake)

Below you will find my written journey of my accident in June 2017. I wanted to finally write about it so that others may benefit from hearing my story, in any way. I truly feel that the accident has been the most valuable blessing in my life and it has really opened me to being alive. My quest to overcome fear and combat it by embracing love has become my purpose. Helping myself heal is an awakening experience and this awareness carries a rippling effect with it. The more I go on this journey, the more I learn that everything we need is already inside of us in this very moment. I have written my story with an honest voice so that others can see all parts of the journey, one that I am still on.

Peace, kindness, and love,

Kerry

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My eyes have been dilating all day. Someone told me that’s what happens when you are looking at people and experiencing harmonies you love. The mountain sits still upon the earth with a wise manner just as an owl sits on top of a branch. The trees rooted in the mountain are growing toward the sky with thick, green branches. My breath feels deeper, filling my entire body with power. It’s the same power that enables someone to hike a mountain, it’s the intelligence coordinating all my senses to experience a cup of tea, and it invigorates people to connect their mind, body and spirit to awaken. It’s prana. I am so relaxed and I cannot decipher if this is real or if I am in a perfect dream. I sit in the backseat of Maya’s Honda with the windows down, laughing and embracing the feelings of being young. There are seven of us mushed into her car as we play “Good Grief” and scream singing. Our hair is blowing in our faces, our eyes are closed, I can only make out the smiles of everyone in the car as we curve around Vermont’s windy roads. We don’t know how beautiful these moments are.

We free scale up a mountain that Alex leads us up. Alex does not show an ounce of fear, in fact, he laughs as we are walking on his forearms to heist us up. I love this rush of adrenaline, it feels all too perfect. This is unity. My physical body feels light and in equilibrium, my mind is so alert and cultivating thoughts in a beautiful manner and I am impulsive, acting out of a place that is only love. I am in nature. My presence is right here in this very breath, in the back of my throat with the tingling sense of crisp oxygen.

We reach the summit and as we sit, I can feel my exhale come to a halt, before my next breath, silence. The complex duality of the feelings of accomplishment and sadness enter me. The rush of utter presence I had while walking on Alex’s forearms and the risky rush disappear into thin air. I want it back. What does risky even mean? I understand that yes our bodies may “mess up” and we may lose this life, but is that not the only definite part when we enter this life? Why are we conditioned to feel scared of risks? What does dying really mean, am I limited to just this one body? We ultimately cannot control when death decides to take our physical vessels and pass through this time space reality.

We walk down the backside of the mountain. I am at peace. Or am I? I walk along a log like it is a high beam, maybe I am pondering my purpose. Am I distracting myself from the internal riptides that have been begging for attention inside of me for nineteen years? Or am I a zombie, half-asleep, unaware of the conditioning placed on me? Externally, I am laughing, driven and vibrant. According to my family and society’s standards I am successful. I am a college athlete, I have lots of friends, I am going to business school and am doing “good”. But who am I? Where am I going?

Water is running, warm bodies colliding, you can feel the excitement in the air, someone’s peeing, smells of freshly brushed teeth, all cracked by laughter. We are in the girl’s room! This is my favorite kind of day. Barefoot, fresh air, Vermont sky, my best friends and never ending laughs that leave me rolling in the grass. Our eyes drift through the speckled window in the bathroom and a new wave of excited energy comes over us as our eyes meet more harmonies we appreciate, our guy friends. They carry a sense of effortless fun with them and it’s so contagious, we now are all rushing to get outside. The thoughts in this bathroom of excitement and gratitude are reflected through the bathroom window into the sun casting shadows onto our best friends laughing.

I don’t recall leaving the girls room, there is too much adrenaline that is drawing me to be outside. My eyes meet Youcef on his new dirt bike and suddenly every cell in my body feels like it is gravitating toward the bike. The pupils in my eyes dilate and the rest of the world diminishes, I only have one desire that needs to be fulfilled. I want to ride the bike myself. My smile cracks from cheek to cheek as Youcef hands me the bike. It’s my turn!

Do I know what’s happening? Every part of my self screams yes. Maybe my subconscious knows this needs to happen. Well, no thought and just pure joyous energy commences the start of this shattering yet cleansing ride. My grassy and bare toes grip the pedals, I feel grounded on this bike. My mind is nowhere to be found. The world is vibrant and green but I can only see the black handles under my hands and woods ahead of me. The bike jumps and my hair flies into the wind, am I free? I instinctively feel scared and react by quenching my fingers on the gas. Yes, the gas! Maybe my body recognizes it is not the brake but still feels compelled to stay for the stormy ride so I grab the gas as hard as I can, I can’t turn back now. The bike is flying toward the woods. My eyes freeze over like glass when I stare at the woods ahead, is this love or fear guiding me? Silence.

Eyes closed. I’m no longer grounded. I am flying through the air now, but I am not opening my eyes, it’s too hard. I broke through into the uncertain but it is reckless and unknown. I did it. I drove the bike off the ledge at the woods edge and stayed for the ride. I feel trees smacking my vessel, they are comforting somehow. My connection to the trees cuts the air time down and my head is perfectly intact. The silence cracks as my spine crashes down onto the leafs on the Earth. My eyes open, I look up at the edge of the woods where I broke through the uncertain, I know something bigger than myself kept me on this bike. It’s time to come home.

I laugh thinking of all my friends above who just witnessed me fly into the abyss. Then every part of my body tenses. My stomach is in my mouth, my heart palpitates forward and back, my mouth belts a shocked scream. It was as if someone was trapped in my body trying to communicate to me it is time to survive. If I can survive this time, who will I be? I exhale. The clutch pedal and some remnants are through my bent leg. Whose body is this?

I am at peace. I surrender to what is happening. My body is laying down the hill with my head pulling me deeper into the uncertain woods. Was my mind made up before I got on the bike to stay for the stormy ride instead of letting go? When I looked at the woods my subconscious knew it was going to fly recklessly into an abyss, but there was no other option that would fulfill my journey. Was it reckless, how is my head not scratched, how am I breathing? That bright light in me that I rarely accessed without bound in the first nineteen years could not withstand more time before its whispers faded into the dark woods. It was me that guided myself onto this bike and into this awakening. Gratitude. The real me understands that this body is only a physical vessel for its soul to reside in and so if that means bringing the vessel the closest it's been to the unknown, then maybe the soul will wake up. Shattering time with the necessity of presence in these woods.

For nineteen years, all experiences were controlled and filtered by my mechanical mind, driven by fear. The fear of being truly alive. Once said by Marianne Williamson, “ our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us,” it’s true!! Here laying in the woods, I feel as though I am given a choice. I am ready to go back home into my body, into me, into my light. I let go into my own love.

As my head lays in the hands of my best friends, Lic and Maya, I am so at peace. I tell them I love them all the time, yet until this moment, I never truly opened myself to receiving their love and rejoicing in it. When you feel so close to the unknown, what matters organically comes into light. For the first time, I may be in the flow. This cultivation of a mental state in which my actions are effortlessly aligned with life. As this bike is through me, I am finally strong enough to live vulnerably and accept what my life has been. Lic and Maya walk me through meditations as they hold me and quench my sweaty fingers and Chris cuts my pants to tourniquet my leg. I occasionally open my eyes to see their brown eyes gazing at me. I know they are fearful, maybe they are taking on some of the pain for me, but they only show me their smiles. We are laughing as I am farting and drinking a juice box amidst this storm. I picture how my dog Chuck feels on a sunny day running into the ocean and observe the same feelings in me in this moment.

I return to my breath. The breath gives me life. It is everything. It is the prana. Each inhale, I am taking in more strength, connection and love. Each exhale I release the pain and emotions that could either boil or disintegrate into the light within me. I exhale the fears and doubts that I think I have always held, as I see that there is no other way to become alive, besides letting go. Ironic. I guess this is the best time to come alive, when I am so close to losing my shot at being alive. I feel so much oneness and love and acceptance of everything that is, never have I felt this feeling in my whole life. I feel a lightness that takes me so far out of my body. It’s as if I am dancing barefoot on the green tile floor in the kitchen when I am three years old with my joyous dad teaching me the lasso. That moment was just as sacred as this one with my head being baptized in Lic and Maya’s dirt filled palms.

The first responders come after a while and I open my eyes. They bring chaos after meditating. They are carrying intimidating energy and foreign objects to help me. I react and ask if they are going to amputate my leg, what’s going to happen, am I going to be okay? They meet me with silence and wide eyes. My friends are forced to step away, it is just me and this bike. Strength, I can do this, I can only breathe. Parts of me want to run and scream. But I made this choice. I am recalling that person deep down in me that wants me to be strong so it can finally flourish.

I do not want to watch the first responders start working on me as I have always been the girl that passes out with the mere thought of blood. They unscrew the bike and leave the pedal in my leg. My leg is straightened to be put into a splint. Sweat forms in between every crevice of my fingers, I feel like I have a demon in my body, this cannot be real. Rushing pain, I can feel the blood on my leg, I can feel the spot where the motor has been burning me, I feel my fists quench and it’s just me and the waves of pain. I close my eyes and return to my breath and affirmations as they put me on the stretcher.

I feel sad to be leaving the haven we created in the woods amidst the chaos. I felt like I attained a simple ease where I spontaneously knew how to act in harmony. But now, feeling the hot metal through my leg, we immerse toward sirens and fearful faces of friends and parents. The energy shifts, humans are not always adaptable at first with change. I see people’s faces in shock, panic shaking in the background of their voices, that energy isolates me again. Strength, I need to be it. Right when I need it, Alex’s dad gently walks up to the rolling stretcher and says “Kerry I’m gonna need that pedal back when you get a chance” and chuckles. Home again with this humor.

I find myself bonding with the EMT who is pumping a surplus of drugs into me. We are driving down Alex’s mile long dirt road driveway. I can feel every minuscule bump in my leg. I glance over and see Maya’s contagious smile, I can feel her love in my core. Isn’t life about having these connections? Happiness is only real when it is shared. I guess the only way I am ever going to make these connections is by living vulnerably and taking risks to dive deeper with other beings. I hope I make it through this to have more moments with this girl that feels like sunshine.

I hear my sister’s voice, she is on the phone with me, I hope she understands I love her. My parents are half way across the world, I am not sure what it is going to be like if and when I see them. I don’t think I have fully expressed everything that I so badly want them to know. What happens if they never get to know? Why do we fear saying words that mean the most?

I feel stiff sheets on me, I smell sterile hospital smells, I can hear my friends, my hands are being squeezed. My chest starts to fill with emotion, my eyes fill with salt. I cannot imagine leaving these people, my sense of belonging, it’s like I’ve never wanted my life more. In between full body sobbing I let out how much I love them, how amazing my life has been and my gratitude. I accept everything. I am coming into the flow of the universe as life is beginning to unfold for me, I am no longer trying to control this all.

At this point, I feel spacey, telling the nurse he’s cute and continuing on the farting spell.

Pushed into an unnatural vortex, induced by drugs and provoked by an accident, my healing process has begun. The healing process of my entire life.

From the moment I woke up in that hospital to this very moment that I find myself writing, I am healing. For so long, detaching was safe for me, I accepted being a victim to life. Not anymore though, on June 9th, when I was nineteen, I decided to come alive.

In the months to follow I had a couch to sit on, a playlist that invoked lots of healing made by Lic, and myself to go inward to. I went into that silent void that opens everything we are usually so fearful of. It is dark, it is unknown, yet I began to reconnect here to the source energy or what I like to think, the best part of being human.

On that couch there was a lot of tears and a lot of pain. And even a lot of days where I did not talk. I stared out the living room window, sobbed at the same song (“Follow the Sun”), couldn’t even pee by myself and couldn’t even crack a smile when I had my support crew push me in the wheelchair up and down Schofield Road for my daily dose of air. This may sound like a victim, but this was really the start of me taking my power back. It was as if these tears were mourning the loss of the zombie years, the unawareness and how far I had gotten by being on a straight edge path. Healing is not perfect, it’s not linear, it’s not with time. We are unintentionally disservicing people when we simplify years of pain or a tragedy by saying “healing takes time” or “it will be okay”. First, we seem to dismiss their hardship as if it will magically disappear in time and secondly, we are hazardously implying that if they just keep going and waiting, it will get better. The truth is that healing is messy, no one talks about how you have to get on your hands and knees and scrub the darkest depths of your self sometimes to finally see what’s there. But burying my pain and letting it manifest was not an option as it seamlessly was for the whole first nineteen years of my life, it was my time to face the hardship head on and feel empowered. I finally was standing in my power and it didn’t matter if I was smiling or crying or farting, I was choosing growth. For the first time, I was not dismissing adversity in my life. I am limitless and full of abundance that can be shared with this world and as is everyone in this world.

Upon first glance, a white blonde girl from an affluent suburb with a nuclear family and a golden retriever, could not possibly know adversity. Yes, this is true for many facets of my life and I have the utmost gratitude for the privileges in my life. Yet, in those prior nineteen years, I had entered a world where I did not know how to express myself freely, where I had countless setbacks physically, traumatic relationships, and years of family trauma that all went undercover. Never once did I stop to recognize the juggernaut attitude I instilled in myself or voice the pain. But hey, I’m healing now.

For all my life, I thought we had to internalize pain because of what I was told and what I had witnessed. I was a machine, literally. My mind had propaganda that pain is never public and that everyone buries problems. I laugh at this now. But unfortunately, the conditioning that every human being endures creates false misconceptions of how they must behave in order to survive, but we are never truly alive unless we shed these layers of armor that are so tightly strung around our hearts. I rejoice now in knowing that every human being is born with a light within them that is only love. Our true nature of pure light becomes distorted as we grow up due to lower desires, experiences and influences. These misinterpretations that we hold in our hearts, dulling our pure light, establishes how we see the world. In my healing process, I have begun to become aware of the different barriers that have been built because of my conditioning to keep myself from pure love. So spirituality for me, has been coming home to this light which holds true compassion, peace, goodness and love. I am learning that I am divinely guided by my intuition and listening to it and refining it has lead me to some very powerful places and people. I feel like when I was a child I could never put words to it but I understood that no humans are ever truly alone and a lot of this healing has been coming back to that inner child in me.

I will never be done healing. The more I heal, the more layers I find and accepting this is part of my self love. The pain I encounter does not need to become immense suffering, it is simply part of this human experience and I can let it flow through me, however that looks. Whether healing is sobbing in the airplane bathroom, skinny dipping in the middle of Costa Rica, entering twelve hour meditations with my best friend or anything in between, it is all love. And since my surgeon’s name during the accident was Doctor Lightheart, I feel like I know how healing laughter is. We literally have the power and capability as humans to heal ancestral trauma, as science is proving we actually can alter our genes. And we may see the world as we are and I strongly feel that we are in this paradigm to break the cycle and empower those around us.

Everyone's path of healing looks different and that's the beautiful part. For myself, healing has lead to some decisions that felt heart wrenching, changing habitual patterns that I never knew was possible and letting go of toxicity in my life. There are countless early morning meditations, hundreds of journal entries written, Dalai Lama books read that I would have laughed at two years ago, therapy sessions, diet changes, and so many more small changes that reflected my new self love journey. I stared at the wall for a few days and made what felt like an extremely challenging decision to live in Costa Rica for a summer and then study abroad in three different continents for the year. This decision I can tell you did not have much thought, it just felt right, sounds crazy, but as I live this journey out I know that the real me definitely chose this. I don’t always want to wake up early and step onto my mat and sometimes I would rather eat Ben & Jerry’s on the couch and pretend I’m not aware of my potential. However, I woke up and chose to be alive and that cannot ever be changed, and every waking moment is one to be filled with gratitude. This has meant choosing myself and accepting myself, the good, the ugly, the stinky- all of it, and honoring and appreciating that I am a whole person.

Reintegrating my mind, body and spirit has been a sacred experience that I am ever so grateful for. From the foods that I eat, to the thoughts that I think to the energies I surround myself with, I find myself more and the better I show up for others around me. We all have mountains to move and I am hoping that my sharing of my experience may help others climb to see the sunshine. Cuz life is too short and too beautiful to not stop and smell those flowers (and the Ben & Jerry’s).

Thank you for joining me in this journey and with much love,

Kerry