She got back up

Young and unruly,

grazed palms and scraped knees.

When she tripped as a child

or fell out of trees,

she got back up.

When judgement sneered

through a contemptuous grin,

striking her down

for her child born from sin,

she got back up.

When her marital home

formed a bed of deceit,

with shattered hopes,

down-trodden and beat,

she got back up.

When she watched as her mother

went into to the light,

she broke, and although

it took all of her might,

She got back up.

Every scrape, every set-back,

every battle, every hit,

She dragged herself up

with tenacious grit.

And now, when I feel

forlorn without hope,

brought to my knees

and back to the ropes,

I look to the woman

who’s always been there,

relentlessly conquering

times of despair.

Her eyes, wise and weary,

offer comfort and stare

as she watches me get back up.

One crucial life lesson my mother taught me was that the fall from adversity isn’t important, it’s the recovery that truly shapes who you are. Life will always present it’s challenges, that’s simply a part of living. But after the initial sting, the ‘fall’ is easy. The real challenge is getting back to your feet and staying there.

In our family, we’ve seen what happens when you can’t get back up. My grandmother never recovered from her divorce. As forty years of marriage evaporated right before her eyes, she only found comfort in an empty bottle of booze. From that very first stumble, her fall began to spiral, swallowing her like a vapid black hole and and spitting her back out into an early grave.

This shattered our family. And it broke my mother. But sure enough, silently and slowly, I watched my mother reassemble herself. Piece after piece. The same way she did after every bad hand she’d been dealt. To me, this seemed miraculous. She always knew the value in the rise after the fall. It didn’t have to be graceful or dignified. It didn’t have to happen overnight. It didn’t matter how she got there, it just had to happen - and remarkably, she always found a way.

After a lifetime of watching and learning from her tenacity, I’ve started to discover my own power to ascend. Her resilience is a precious gift that I was lucky enough to inherit. Raising a daughter in a flawed world, she couldn’t control what life threw at me, but she knew she could give me the fire to overcome. The same flame that has been burning inside her for a lifetime.

I watch so many people cautiously navigating through life, so concerned in preserving and protecting their peace but forgetting how to truly live. Now, I don’t fear the fall, I welcome it. I don’t stumble though life anticipating the next hit, treading the impossible tightrope. I stride through each day, unapologetic and unbound from the dreaded decline. That’s the true essence of what it means to live. The idea of risk and the will to conquer. Any life worth living is littered with risk.

To love bears the risk of a broken heart. To indulge bears the risk of judgment. Any chance you take bears the risk of rejection, failure, shame, the list goes on. But if the risk isn’t worth losing your footing for, why take another step? Why continue at all? There’s no joy in trailing along, crippled by the concept of consequence.

That is the most profound life lesson my mother has taught me. In my short existence I’ve had some heavy knocks and I have no doubt there’ll be many more to come. But when the inevitable dark times emerge, I can take comfort in the knowledge that my flame will keep burning. And when I find myself falling, just as she did, I’ll get back up.