Near to Death: A Lesson in Navigating Trauma

This blog post is transcribed from Bonus Ep01 of the WholeHearted Living Podcast.

So, the last podcast episode that I recorded for you was all about how to deal with your inner critic. This is something that we need to learn to master and really take charge of in our life. We have to start to become very good commanders of our mind. And I believe in walking my own talk. So on Thursday, when it came to recording the episode all about your inner nurturer and your cheerleader and how we go about really crafting this part of ourselves, I just felt really 'off'. And rather than try and push through and maybe not give the energy to the podcast that I really wanted to, I decided I'm going to go practise what I preach. I'm going to go and change my environment. I'm going to go for a walk, take myself out re-centre, re-ground myself, and then I'll come back and record the episode.

So it wasn't a great weather day here in Italy. It had been raining on and off the most of the day. It was raining a little bit when I headed out, but nothing too crazy. I took a backpack and some water with me and I also took Bailey, my big dog. He's just turned 12 years old and I've had him since he was a puppy. He is the most fearless dog, always has been ever since puppy classes and he's done many, many hikes and treks with me, so this is not unfamiliar territory for him.

Where I currently live in northern Italy, just off the edge of Lake Como, I live pretty much in the middle of a National Park. So it's really, really stunning. There's acres and acres to explore...

I started the walk heading down to an area that I know quite well along the river. And rather than take my usual route, I decided to take a new track.

Now as we go through all of this, there's many, many points I could have made different decisions that would have led to different outcomes. Maybe this was the first one.

We set off and all was well. Bailey does really well off the lead as it gives him a chance to navigate all the different obstacles on the terrain much easier. We navigated what was quite a technical bit where there was some stone steps and were both absolutely fine with those.

Just from looking at the signs and, and knowing the area a little bit, I thought if we keep following the river upstream, we're going to hit the small little village that's just above where I live and then we can follow the road back down. So that was the plan.

We'd been walking for maybe 40 minutes and we'd navigated quite a technical bit, and we'd come to a normal gravel track to walk along. Bailey was about 6 feet in front of me and literally within a split second lost his footing right at the edge of the track. This track dropped into a ravine of about 40 feet. So I witnessed him lose his footing and slide all the way down.

In the two seconds it took me to get to the point he fell, I couldn't see him. There was no sign of him at all. There was potentially a little bit of a ledge after the steep bank, but then it dropped into the river. Now the river is pretty fast flowing and full of boulders. We had just navigated the step section where there was a pretty hefty waterfall. So at this point I'm panicking. My fight and flight survival is kicking in. I am shouting him, shouting him. There's no sign of him. There's no sign of movement. I don't know whether he'd stopped at the ledge or whether he'd gone down to the river. It was just sheer panic at this stage. I looked down at where he'd slid in and of course I had the initial thought of, OK, I need to go down after him.

But, there was a really, really strong part of my brain that would not physically allow me to do that because it was really dangerous. I weigh more than Bailey does. I mean, he's a big dog of 37 kilos but I still weigh significantly more than that. And all I could think of was 'this is slippy, if I if I go down and I can't stop myself, then I'm going into the river.' And that could be me hitting my head on a boulder and passing out. Or maybe I get down to where he is and neither of us can get back up. A signigifcant point to note here, is that there is zero phone signal in this National Park.

I had to make a really tough decision, which was to leave that area and get to higher ground to try and get a phone signal to phone David, my husband, who was back at the apartment, so he could bring the van down as close as he could get where we had ratchet straps and all different kinds of stuff to use in a rescue attempt.

At that point, I ran as far up as I could get.

I ended up reaching a small, tiny little village where I got enough phone signal to phone David and tell him that Bailey has had an accident, we've got separated and I don't know where he is. Please bring the van to to the closest point, which is a little trout farm Agriturismo and we can figure it out from there.

So I see this village and I'm thinking David might be able to come and pick me up from from there. However, it turns out that this was a village literally at the top of the mountain in the middle of nowhere. It would have taken David an hour to drive there and we just didn't have time. I was like, well, I just need to to figure this out. At this point, the rain came down really, really ferociously. I didn't even notice this really until the end, but I was absolutely soaked to the skin and my legs were absolutely on fire.

As I enter the village, about 6 feet away from me, I'm confronted with a wild boar. Now, for anyone who has ever come more or less face to face with a wild boar, it's really scary. There's quite a lot of them in this National Park so we hear quite a lot of stories of people who have been attacked and they're pretty ferocious.

So as I come face to face with this wild boar, it starts running and I start running and all I could think about was 'OK, so now I'm going to get impaled by a wild boar.' So I start running literally for my life at this point and I run into whole the family of wild boar. So there's now six of them all running and all I can think about is just keep running, keep running. I managed to find a little shelter and catch my breath for a second with no sign of the wild boar, thankfully.

The phone signal is so patchy and I'm looking for something to give me some indication of where I can go to make my way back down into the the park where I can meet up with David. The only way that logically makes sense, is to take the path back down where I saw the wild boar. At this point, my fear response is pretty hefty but that path is my only way down. So I just said this little prayer, 'please let the wild boar find a new spot' and I moved on from my shelter asI made my way down the track. Thankfully no more wild boar. They had clearly got as freaked out as I had and and went and hid, so I was able to run back to the trout farm.

I saw our van in the car park, and I assumed David had gone walking, trying to to see whether he could find Bailey. I waited at the van for a few minutes until David returned and I told him we need to go back to the place that he fell because if he isinjured or something's happened, that's where he's going to be. We grabbed some straps and some equipment from the van, with weirdly enough, one of those massive blue IKEA bags which David said might come in as a handy makeshift stretcher if we need to lift him up out of anywhere.

We then started retracing my steps, and all I could think of is if he did end up in the river, I didn't see a way that he was going to survive.

It's crazy the mind tricks that your brain plays on you because as we walked along the river, whenever we saw a black boulder in the river, we were double checking that it wasn't Bailey's body- it was just horrific. We retraced my steps, calling him, just in case he did get free and was finding his way back.

We found our way more or less to the metre of where he fell, and the most miraculous thing happened...

Bailey came walking up to us on the track.

I can't explain to you the sheer relief, confusion and elation of seeing him walk to us along the trail.

I can't explain how he possibly got back up. It was a near vertical drop that that he slid down and I can't imagine what it took for him to find a route back up or to have the sense to stay in the place where he last saw me. I lost all sense of time during the events of the day and I had no concept of myself in any of this. All I could think about was getting to Bailey and making sure that he was OK or that I could rescue him.

We worked out afterwards that he was probably on his own for about an hour and 40 minutes and living with not knowing what happened during that time, isn't an easy thing. And you know, it's an absolute miracle that 1) he got back up and 2) he was not injured at all.

I mean, we still had the 40 minute walk back to the van, which he managed absolutely fine. He was a bit shaken as you can imagine and he was exhausted but there wasn't a scratch on him. I can't explain it.

We get back to the apartment, everybody's absolutely soaked. I check Bailey over, make sure he's OK, give him lots of food, rest and cuddles as he spends the next day getting lots of rest.

And then I then had to process the succession of decisions that had led to that happening.

When I talk about the critic, it can be immensely ferocious and dark at times. The point when I'd had to leave him to go and get a phone signal to alert David that my brain was going, 'Well, there's a part of you that must have wanted him to die because you didn't go after him. You weren't prepared to risk your life for his. There's people who jump in frozen lakes to rescue their dogs. You're not feeling anything. Why aren't you upset? That shows how much you must not really care for him.'

So when I say that that critic voice can be really harsh and really dark, I know that because there's times when I live that. I understand the depths that the critic can go to.

At that point, there's not a huge amount I can do with it, other than go, 'this is not helpful right now'. All I need to do is stay focused on getting back to him and doing everything I possibly can to ensure that he's OK, so that kept me focused.

However, returning home when the adrenaline subsides and you really start reassessing the event, I was very, very aware that in that moment, I had to choose a meaning from that event that served me going forward. Otherwise I would continue to beat myself up and take myself to a dark place that was not going to serve me or anybody.

In order for me to process it and really be able to move on in a way that was empowering, I had to be real with the emotions. I was in shock. It was quite a traumatic event to go through. I was beating myself up. And so I had to be real with myself about the lessons and the things I'd do differently in the future. This is the second time that I've had an incident in that park and I have to be real with my naivety. I'm used to trekking and running trails in the UK where I'm on the edge of cliffs and all kinds of stuff. And doing so in not great weather conditions either. And so I had this belief that I'd be fine. There was nothing that was going to be that bad. What this National Park is teaching me is that nature can be treacherous and it can be an unforgiving and unrelenting place. I really do need to think about that and take that into consideration in future.

All I could do was keep reassuring myself that in the future I will choose differently, which means that I've taken the lessons from this and I can allow this to integrate into my experience. I don't need to keep replaying it. I don't need to keep bringing up all the 'what if's.' Fundamentally everyone was safe. I also chose to take a meaning from this that supported me in that moment. For me that was taking the miracle from this and holding huge gratitude for the universe that was looking after both of us on that day.

I can't express the sheer amount of gratitude and appreciation I have for the fact that not only, did I find my way back to Bailey and he found his way back to me, but that he was totally unharmed in the process.

I wanted to share this story with you because it's a vulnerable moment for me. I tend to keep the tough stuff fairly close to my chest. And that's not what a wholehearted life is, right? Life, in all it's unexpectedness, happens.

We can end up in these situations that are not expected that test us, and and I want to be real and honest and truthful with you that it's not all sunshine and happiness and rainbows and floating through life on a cloud, life happens.

This is an example of one of the more extreme things I've gone through recently, especially given that my intention was for that walk to clear my head, reconnect with myself and be out in nature.

I'd done a video recording probably 5 minutes before Bailey had his accident and all I could think of was, 'Oh my God, that could have been the last moments of him alive.'

How we choose to navigate these times in our life is where our power lies.

I've had the experience in the past, for example the burnout I had during my my first business, and the torture that I kept myself in for months because I chose to see that as some kind of epic failure of myself, of my past trauma, my disconnection from self. And it kept me locked in pain and suffering for so much longer than I needed to be.

This time, I have been able to be real and integrate and be with the emotion and the shock and the trauma of all of it, whilst at the same time take the meaning and the story that is going to ultimately serve me and empower me.

One of the fundamental shifts that helped me really navigate my way out of burnout was being honest with what had led me to that place and take the lessons that I was not going to allow that to happen again in the future. I'd learned the lessons. I changed. I was a different person, which meant that I would make different decisions in the future. And so that's really what I had to do with this situation. I managed to do this pretty quickly because, this podcast is amazing for highlighting the tools and the techniques that are used to navigate a WholeHearted Life, and so everything I teach is all very fresh in my mind.

I also have the most amazing loving, supportive husband who knew to not give me a lecture, especially as his final words to me when I left the house to go on that walk were, 'please be really, really careful. It's wet. That's going to change the conditions of your walk and you need to be really careful.' He just held me in so much love and so much comfort and that is so healing.

My lessons from all of this and, why I wanted to share this with you, is to show the importance of us taking that director role when it comes to our mind.

We have to assume that role, because if we don't, it will just go off on its own tangent and it's not necessarily going to support us. You need to be that commander of the mind that says, 'OK, I maybe chose wrong. It was also just a one of those fluke accidents. He could have lost his footing at any point on any walk that we've ever done in our life. It was just an accident.' I've taken the lessons from it and I'm actually going to choose to be immensely grateful for the outcome. Bailey now has absolute legendary status in our household and the outcome still absolutely baffles me, as he is the dog that will get caught up in his own lead and not know how to get out of it, and yet somehow figured out his way back up the raveen and waited at the point where he last saw me, which was just absolutely amazing. I'm aware it could have been a very different outcome.

I wanted to share this story with you as an example of life, but also what it is to to know what it is to be with, and navigate, the inner critic. Bring in that nurturing, compassionate voice, holding yourself with so much love, so much compassion and being with the the gratitude and the lessons.

So let me know how you've experienced this type of situation in your own life, how you've navigated it, and whether this has helped you to put into context what it is to in real life, put these tools and techniques that I'm teaching you through this podcast into real life action. I'd love to hear from you. And normal service resumes with the the normal twice weekly podcasts over the next few weeks. Bye for now.

Debs x

Contact me at hello@debsthorpe.com

Oh and below are some pics of Bailey living his best life on Lake Lugano on a friend's boat two days later...