Learning to trust that life is not something we have to carry. It is something we can allow to carry us.
For the last 24 hours, I have had a song playing over and over again in my head.
Not the whole song.
Just one thought.
Let me be your parachute.
I kept wondering why.
What was I supposed to understand?
Why was this particular phrase following me around?
And then it hit me.
So clearly that it brought tears to my eyes.
Life wants to be my parachute.
Life.
Not a person.
Not a job.
Not a relationship.
Not a plan.
Not something I have to control, manage, protect, earn, or hold together.
Life itself.
And suddenly, everything we have been talking about in this series made sense in a completely different way.
Maybe this has been the lesson all along.
What If We Have Been Living Life Backwards?
We have spent so much of our lives learning how to survive.
How to work.
How to achieve.
How to provide.
How to protect.
How to anticipate.
How to prepare for what could go wrong.
How to make sure everyone else is okay.
How to become useful.
How to become strong.
How to make ourselves indispensable.
How to keep the hive alive.
And somewhere along the way, we started believing that we were responsible for making life happen.
So we pushed.
We chased.
We overgave.
We held on.
We controlled.
We sacrificed.
We became the parachute for everyone else.
But what if we had it backwards?
What if life was never asking us to carry it?
What if life has been trying to carry us?
That is a very different way of living.
And for someone who has spent a lifetime being strong, independent, responsible, capable, and giving, it can feel almost uncomfortable.
Because how do you trust something you can’t see?
How do you receive support from something that doesn’t have hands?
How do you know life is actually supporting you?
Maybe that’s exactly what we’re here to learn.
The Life Chakra
As I sat with this realization, I felt something else.
Something I can only describe as an old energetic center waking back up.
A place above the heart chakra and at the center of my being.
I began thinking of it as the Life Chakra.
I don’t mean this as a claim that there is a scientifically recognized chakra by that name.
I mean it as something I am intuitively remembering.
A center connected to life itself.
The part of us that doesn’t simply love.
It lives.
The part that doesn’t simply survive.
It participates.
The part that doesn’t ask,
“What do I need to do to make life work?”
but instead begins asking,
“What if I let life work with me?”
And suddenly, the phrase life chakra made sense to me.
Maybe there is a place within us that remembers how to be in relationship with life rather than constantly trying to manage it.
Maybe this is the part of us that knows how to receive the breath before we ever consciously ask for it.
Think about that.
We don’t create every breath.
We receive it.
We don’t tell our hearts,
“Okay, beat now.”
They beat.
We don’t command every cell to know what to do.
Life is already happening inside us.
Before we ever learned how to control anything, life was already supporting us.
We Forgot How to Be Carried
There is an old idea that life is something we should live fully.
And there are songs and sayings that remind us not to let life simply pass us by.
But maybe there is another layer to this.
Maybe the invitation isn’t only:
Live your life.
Maybe it is:
Let life live through you.
Let life move you.
Let life surprise you.
Let life meet you.
Let life support you.
Let life open doors you didn’t know existed.
Let life close doors you have been afraid to close yourself.
Let life bring people who know how to meet you where you are.
Let life remove what you have been exhausting yourself trying to hold together.
Let life give you something without requiring you to prove you deserve it first.
Because this is where everything we have been writing about comes together.
We learned how to give.
Then we learned how we were conditioned to give.
Then we saw what constant giving can do to the nervous system.
Then we began questioning the systems that taught us that our value comes from what we produce.
Then we learned to receive.
And now perhaps we are arriving at the deepest part of receiving:
Receiving life itself.
What If Life Is Not Something to Survive?
For so long, I think I unconsciously treated life like something I had to figure out.
If I worked hard enough, I could create security.
If I gave enough, I could create love.
If I protected enough, I could prevent loss.
If I stayed strong enough, I could keep everything together.
If I anticipated enough, I could stay safe.
But life doesn’t work that way.
Life is not a machine that responds perfectly to our effort.
It is movement.
Change.
Birth.
Death.
Growth.
Loss.
Love.
Expansion.
Contraction.
Beginning.
Ending.
Beginning again.
And maybe our job isn’t to control the movement.
Maybe our job is to participate in it.
There is a huge difference between controlling life and partnering with it.
One requires constant effort.
The other requires trust.
Let Life Be Your Parachute
A parachute doesn’t stop you from falling.
It changes your relationship with the fall.
That distinction feels enormous to me.
Maybe trusting life doesn’t mean nothing difficult will happen.
It doesn’t mean we won’t lose people.
It doesn’t mean relationships won’t end.
It doesn’t mean businesses won’t change.
It doesn’t mean we will never experience uncertainty.
It means that somewhere inside all of it, we begin to believe:
I will be supported through this.
Not necessarily in the way I expected.
Not necessarily by the person I expected.
Not necessarily on the timeline I wanted.
But somehow, someway, life will meet me.
And perhaps that is the piece I have been missing.
I have been so focused on being everyone’s parachute that I forgot I was allowed to have one.
I have been so busy making sure everyone else could land safely that I forgot to ask:
Who is holding me?
Maybe the answer is:
Life.
I Don’t Have to Carry What Is Carrying Me
This may be the hardest lesson of all.
Because when you have lived through survival, receiving can feel unsafe.
When you have learned that love comes from giving, receiving can feel selfish.
When you have learned that your value comes from usefulness, resting can feel like failure.
When you have learned to protect everyone around you, allowing yourself to be supported can feel vulnerable.
But perhaps receiving isn’t weakness.
Perhaps it is remembering how life actually works.
The trees receive sunlight.
The earth receives rain.
The body receives breath.
The heart receives love.
The nervous system receives safety.
The soul receives meaning.
And we receive life.
We don’t have to manufacture every good thing that comes to us.
Some things are simply given.
Maybe This Is the Real Karmic Reset
Maybe the reset isn’t becoming a better version of ourselves.
Maybe it is releasing the version of ourselves who believed she had to carry everything.
Maybe the next chapter isn’t about doing more.
Maybe it is about allowing more.
Allowing support.
Allowing love.
Allowing abundance.
Allowing rest.
Allowing opportunity.
Allowing people to show up.
Allowing doors to open.
Allowing ourselves to be surprised.
Allowing life to participate in our lives.
Because what if the life we have been trying so hard to create is already trying to meet us?
What if some of the things we have been chasing are actually trying to find us?
What if receiving isn’t passive at all?
What if receiving is an active declaration of trust:
I don’t have to make everything happen.
I can meet life halfway.
I can let life meet me, too.
Come Back to Life
Maybe this is what remembering me really means.
Not remembering who I was before everything happened.
But remembering the part of me that existed before I believed I had to carry everything.
The part that knew how to play.
How to wonder.
How to laugh.
How to dream.
How to trust.
How to receive.
How to simply be alive.
Maybe that part never left.
Maybe she has just been waiting for me to stop working so hard to survive long enough to hear her.
And perhaps that is why this phrase wouldn’t leave me alone.
Because maybe life has been saying:
You don’t have to carry me.
Let me carry you.
So I am practicing.
Not perfectly.
But intentionally.
I am learning to let life support me.
I am learning to notice what restores me.
I am learning to stop sacrificing myself to keep things alive that no longer nourish me.
I am learning that I can give without disappearing.
I can love without abandoning myself.
I can work without making productivity my identity.
I can receive without earning it first.
And I can live without knowing exactly what comes next.
Because maybe I don’t need to know.
Maybe I just need to trust the parachute.
Life, Be My Parachute
For so long, I thought strength meant being the one who could hold everything.
Now I wonder if strength might actually be knowing when to let yourself be held.
So this is my new invitation to myself:
Life, be my parachute.
Catch me when I fall.
Support me when I am tired.
Guide me when I don’t know which way to go.
Open me when I close down.
Move me when I become afraid.
Bring me what I cannot yet imagine.
Take what I am ready to release.
And remind me that I am not here to spend my entire life managing the conditions of my survival.
I am here to live.
To experience.
To receive.
To love.
To grow.
To become.
To be surprised.
To be supported.
To be carried sometimes.
Maybe the greatest lesson of all isn’t learning how to hold life together.
Maybe it is finally trusting that life has been holding us all along.
And maybe the Life Chakra isn’t something new we have to awaken.
Maybe it is something ancient within us that simply needed permission to breathe again.
So I am giving it permission.
I am opening to life.
I am letting life meet me.
I am letting life support me.
And for the first time in a very long time, I don’t need to know exactly how.
I just need to be willing to receive.
Life, I’m ready.
Be my parachute.