Climbing the rope ladder

and living to tell about it.

Me on the rope ladder, Rock and Chalk Climbing Gym, Newmarket, ON (December 2024)

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver, American Poet

---

It was a rough go from start to finish.

From the moment I put my hands on the first rope ladder rung I felt my biceps seizing, the quivering strength of my shoulder girdle and the weight of my body dangling. Gravity’s un-helpfulness. My daughter was on the floor, cheering me on. “You got this, momma!” I had just climbed a bunch of walls and I felt good about myself. My spotter, the wiry, long-bearded man with rippling forearm muscles said, “Just keep breathing.” as he held my auto-belay rope, the one that would stop me from falling to my literal death. I was safe. It was too easy to stop breathing, too easy to just quit. But I kept going. I made it to the top eventually, after about 9 breaks to shake out my arms, flush out some lactic acid. When I could, I pumped my legs to push myself up, while the rope ladder kept swinging back and forth as I climbed. Couldn’t he have held it in one place the way he did for my 8-year-old, who scaled it like it was a miniature challenge for a little human monkey. Her mother, my friend, was videoing me, while I climbed. I’d push through 2 or 3 rungs at a time and then my spotter let me hang. But there was no way to relax. I had to hold myself upright, using all my core body muscles to stop me from swinging backwards and ending upside down. How did the kids made it look so easy? Maybe I won’t make it. I’m okay with that, I thought. Was I, though?

It makes me think of the rough go of climbing the metaphorical rope ladder, which was also rough from start to finish. I worked for female boss for 3 years, one who had a personality disorder (diagnosed professionally), who escorted me out of her office with a police offer - while I gathered my things - after she found out I was starting my own practice in an adjacent town. It ended up being a quick start-up without a business plan, but I was used to going all-out, even if I was unprepared for what was coming, and so with the encouragement of my new fiancee’, I faced the uncertainty and resistance of beginning my own thing, long before I had planned to.

I roughed it in, signed a 5-year-lease and began what would be a 10-year learning curve filled with emotional and physical and mental rollercoasters that I could never have imagined. We got married a couple months after I opened the doors. It couldn’t have been a more hectic, uncertain time for us. Or so I thought, then. I just kept going.

I worked non-stop for months and months. Every day, all day. I forgot to take breaks, detached myself from exercising, neglected to eat lunch on too many days and then I’d arrive at our 1-bedroom apartment with low blood sugar, red eyed from studying a “how-to” document or screen - learning something like how to get the right permit for a sign, or training my staff, or planning an open-house, or marketing my new business when the rooms were silent and taunting me with my overhead and employee costs. I treated my patients with a smile. They didn’t need to know how burdened I was. I was there to help them even if I wasn’t helping myself.

I did have some great help, which grew over the years. And yet, I didn’t have the know-how of Human Resources Management. I micro-managed every detail as if I could ensure that my doing it, with my careful attention, would prevent disaster and keep everything together. The truth is, I hired an under-qualified front desk at first, because I couldn’t imagine someone who was qualified wanting to work for minimum wage. I did not, nor could not, admit how broke we were, not to anymore. My husband and I each had a spending allowance of twenty Canadian dollars per week, for clothes and coffee, drinks and socializing with friends. I remember admitting how much I was struggling to an old friend, way back then, with my $200,000 student loan, and she dismissed it, not unlike the same way I dismissed my own feelings. I reflect on how I chose and continued friendships with people like that, ones who ignored my emotions and stress, not unlike the way I ignored my own. I often felt like I was climbing that rope ladder where the only way to feel relief was to hang suspended using every core muscle to keep myself upright. Even though I knew something or someone (God?) was keeping me upright, it was still so much effort to keep going, day after day. I would rest with resting, as if that was what mattered and then I’d climb another rung or two before I’d collapse again. The problem was, I couldn’t see an end to it, unlike the literal climb last Fall, unlike the one where I reached the top and rang the bell. And heard the cheers of my daughter and friends.

I got so good at pretending. Pretending I was doing well, when really I was shrivelling inwardly. The only person who knew how bad I felt was my husband. I think I thought unconsciously, he was the only safe place and therefore, the perfect person to allow all my pain to surface with. Pain I didn’t even know was there. I would gripe and complain about his smallest indiscretion. If dinner wasn’t on the table, right after I arrived home, I’d get upset and want to burst into tears. I was starving, didn’t he know I hadn’t eaten all day? Couldn’t he read my mind? I’d find a way to let my frustrations out, while he continued to bottle his, exactly the way he had been taught. Exactly the way I couldn’t continue to bottle mine.

I climbed and climbed each incomprehensible rung like the swinging one I’d conquered at the rock-climbing gym. I just kept going. On some weekend days, when I couldn’t get out of bed, I would lay there feeling like a failure, wait until it passed and then I’d get up and go back towards the grind, again and again. While on the literal rope ladder, I’d rest when my arms gave way, when I couldn’t hold myself together. I felt the lactic acid build up in my shoulders, neck and my shaking biceps and triceps. I quickly became aware of my human limitations in stamina and strength. I crashed and burn, over and over. I fell onto the couch each night, binge watching ‘Friday Night Lights’ on Netflix for 5.99 a month. The only time I sensed a connection with my husband was when him and I were drinking Merlot, or Shiraz. The cheap kind, one that made my head feel woozy from the start. It was if holding our glass bowls of wine allowed us to let our guards down, long enough to make it possible to see each other, for just those few minutes. In those hours, I felt myself open, only to close up again after sleeping and wake up and do it all over again.

Acceptable drinking. Unabashedly. Drinking enough to silence my rage and feel a bit of joy for that one day. My hopelessness at the constant striving. Drowning in debt and bills. The poorly paying teaching job at his private school in Markham. The way he was learning how to teach, while learning how to be a husband, while I was learning how to be a boss, run a business and try to keep myself together so I wouldn’t fall to the ground. I just kept going, hoping something or anything would change and I would feel relief.

Catastrophe after catastrophe, I kept climbing. The main difference between the rock wall gym and that old situation was that there was no end to this climb.

And then the metaphorical rope ladder broke. I came crashing down, hit the floor and my innards were everywhere. Stars around my head, earthquake level-eight, seismic waves shifting ground for hundreds of kilometres. The fact that I’d get up each day and continue to survive felt like a small miracle. I heard a small voice in my head that wasn’t mine. It said, “Someday there will be something beautiful.” I couldn’t accept it, but I felt something like love so I kept going. Except this time I was carrying invisible bruises, darkened shadowy eyes and heart lacerations surrounded by broken bones Things that threatened to slow my unholy pace. I couldn’t stop myself. I had to get back on that rope ladder. Repair the break, somehow, with hard work and determination.

Until the day I knew I couldn’t keep going.

Until that day, I said to my beautiful golden boy husband. I know you fell in love with a striving, over-achiever of a woman but if I keep going like this I will die.

His eyes widened, his face turned white while his fingers gripped the steering wheel tightly, in a way I’d never seen. His face became a mirror to my own. I could not ever un-see what was staring back at me. An endless life of pursuing and striving and seeking and all for what? This upward climb with no end in sight?

No real or deep connection.

No room to seek clarity, about who I had been, or who I was becoming.

Little to no time for creativity, the birthright of each and every one of our souls.

No knowledge of self-compassion, no time for self-care.

No room in my schedule for restoration. No calm, anywhere in sight.

A dear friend gave me a plaque around that time. Somehow she knew I wasn’t doing well.

She saw something I didn’t. Nowhere in my future could I envision something different that the reality I was living. That’s the ultimate sign of being stuck.

I had so many great people in my life and somehow I couldn’t establish meaningful connections because I didn’t know how to establish a healthy connection with myself.

So I changed something.

I decided to stop filling every moment with “everything,” decided to stop killing myself with overworking and exhaustion. I decided it was time to start living but before then I had to decide to start loving myself.

Peace and love to you my friends,

Jaclyn xo

I’d be honoured to hear from you.