You are the arrow and the archer

How tension, grief, and pressure are preparing you to fly

There’s a moment in archery when everything is still.

You’ve urged your horse forward. You’ve nocked your arrow and drawn the string. You’ve taken aim. You are ready.

Then, for a split second, everything stops, and time holds its breath with you.

It’s not peace. It’s potential.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about this moment. Not just because I’m practicing horse archery (yes, it’s as badass as it sounds), but because it mirrors something deeper.

From the moment you’re born, things happen to you. You are flung from one situation to the next. It’s a wild ride of emotion, occasionally joyful, often terrifying, and usually somewhere in between. All you can do is hold on tight.

At least that’s how it was for me.

For the first half of my life, I thought I was making choices, but it was just action and reaction. My brain did its thing based on patterns and conditioning in a desperate bid to keep me alive.

Alive, and compliant.

I had a boss once who told me the secret to life was to stay low and keep moving. And that’s what I did.

I survived bullying, neglect, and abuse. I survived sexual assault. Hell, I survived cancer while caring for a toddler. I shaved my head, knotted that scarf, and kept on going.

Only then, after all of that pain, was my arrow fully drawn. And then, the pause.

It happened when my mother died. Not the actual moment she died, and not during the years of anger and frustration and failing health that preceded it. But a week or so after, when it hit me that, as maddeningly deficient as she was, she was my mother. And she was gone. She was really gone.

In that moment, I saw myself for the first time. I drew my first breath. That was when my life began.

The first part of your life is the setup, and it’s rarely gentle.

It’s tension. It’s pressure. It’s the drawing of the arrow. You don’t choose it, you endure it.

But here’s the thing:

You are the arrow. And you are the archer.

You have been shaped by everything you’ve survived. In the pause, you see this, and you realize you are the one who decides what happens next.

If you’re in that stretched-out, silent place right now,
if you feel lost, or late, or not enough,
I want you to know:

You are not stuck.
You are not behind.
You are being drawn.

Hold steady.
You’ll know when it’s time to let go.
And what a beautiful flight it will be.