From the Cliff to the Sea The Gratitude for Momentum: I am grateful for my momentum on the long, winding path that keeps revealing me to myself. Just last week, I found myself clinging to a rocky cliff — high above the ocean, alone in the dark, the old childhood shadows of fear and hiding rising up to swallow me whole. The pull downward into oblivion was real. The temptation to simply let go, to disappear into it, whispered beneath the waves. But the momentum in me held on. And then morning came — I slowly relived my previous experience, and with it, came a strange and quiet power. I understood that the fall I feared was never the danger. The danger was staying frozen. The breakdown was a doorway. A dramatic necessary reincarnation. Slowly, deliberately, I found my way down the cliff face — not falling, but descending with intention and a develping sense of willingness. — Finally my feet touched the bottom of the cliff. I then walked stoically toward the beach, Landing on the beach I could breathe again. I could meet my transforming life. I could connect with other humans in it, from a place of wholeness rather than need. I am grateful for the momentum creating practices and the other humans who made this possible — for coaching that transformed me into a life I could not see before and alone, For my embodied spiritual traditions that held me when I had no grounding, for Authentic Relating that taught me to stop performing and start belonging, and for the momentum in aging — of being in my mid-seventies with enough accumulated grace to keep choosing a health filled life, and my commitment to keep choosing truth, keep choosing me. The cliff is still there. It always will be. But now I have the momentum and courge to create my own path on the beach and and though the cliffs and steadely into my human future..