THE BIG JUMP
My Story.
Once upon a time, there was a child named Moxie. Born into a lowly farmer family in the region of the kingdom most commonly known as the Midwest, she grew up working hard in the fields with her family: planting, weeding, watering, harvesting, and picking rocks away from particularly difficult plots of land.
Although she was a girl, they treated her, spoke to her, and worked her like a full grown man. Not only was there field work, but there were also animals to care for. Goats, cows, chickens, a dog, and more than a few cats. Who all lived outside, of course. Before she became a teenager, she was responsible for the care of the chickens. Hundreds of them, day in and day out. It was hard, grueling work for a child, and not the work she would have chosen, had she been offered a choice.
She didn’t know it yet, but by time she was 16 years old, she had multiple fractures in her back from the loads she was made to carry.
It wasn’t all work and no play, though.
Moxie had friends in the village, which was mostly cut off from the outside world and who met every week to sing songs, listen to the preacher, who was usually her uncle or her grandfather, depending on the week, and share a meal together.
Some of her favorite activities with her friends involved playing outside, especially during the winter. She loved exploring snowy woodlands, ice skating, skiing, and eventually, snowboarding.
One cold day toward the end of January, about 10 years ago, Moxie was snowboarding with her friends. They had all gone inside the chalet to warm up, and she was to join them shortly. However, she had a plan. Well, less of a plan and more of an idea.
A big idea, too: she was going to jump the biggest jump at the resort.
See, because she was raised as a boy, she was always being compared to the other boys. Most of them were stronger, tougher, and bigger than she was. Even some of the girls were tougher than her.
She was tired of being belittled by them, and always feeling like life was a competition, instead of simply being accepted for who she was and the strengths she had.
Nonetheless, she was determined to prove herself that day on the ski hill. Her name was Moxie, after all.
Alone, at the top of the hill, she kicked off and began picking up speed—as much as possible, as fast as possible. She would need more speed than she was used to to clear this jump. She cleared a smaller jump further uphill, picking up even more speed in the air.
As THE BIG JUMP loomed ahead of her, closer by the second, she was flying downhill. Maybe I’m going too fast, she thought to herself. It was too late to back down now.
The ramp greeted her body through the bottom of her board, and she knew instantly what was about to happen the second her knees buckled beneath her.
The ramp was steeper than she had thought, and with all the speed she had picked up, it bucked her into the air like a ragdoll on a mad bull.
Time slowed by a factor of 10, at least, and the world had never felt so silent. 15 feet in the air and traveling fast, she watched in horror as her body rotated, facing uphill. She was flying backward.
A million thoughts raced through her head, most of which she wouldn’t remember after she woke up.
And then,
Impact.
Board, butt, back, head.
Gravity is a bitch.
It wasn’t just physical impact. It rattled her skull, and left her thoughts reeling. She couldn’t breathe, or move.
The world faded quickly—a brief mercy before what was to come.
Moxie found herself in a warm, expansive place, filled with light and those she loved. They were happy to see her. She felt a sense of home, peace, and belonging like she had never felt before, even with her family on earth.
Am I dying? She thought to herself.
For better or worse, the answer was no. It was the feeling of cold snow on her cheek that eventually told her she was still alive. She woke up, and then she could feel it—a pain in her back so severe that not even the adrenaline blocking her from feeling her sprained wrist could help numb.
She tried to get on her knees and crawl. She couldn’t even do that. She couldn’t move. She was hoping no one else would come down the jump after her and land on top of her.
Finally, someone noticed her. He ran to her, and began assessing: “Can you move? What’s your name? Do you know what day it is?”
The ski patrol was there shortly after, and they loaded her carefully onto a stretcher and brought her to their shack for a closer examination.
Her parents arrived, and they were told by the medic she had a strained back, at least. Her family was so skeptical of the kingdom’s medicine that they didn’t even fully vaccinate her as a child. She had only ever been to the hospital once before, after they thought she broke her wrist playing on the stairs with her friends.
That night, they brought her home. She could do nothing but lay there as her father read her bible verses to try soothe her. Painkillers did nothing. Her body shook and shook as it began processing the shock, adrenaline, and pain she was in.
For two nights, she lay at home, her spine completely severed. Thankfully, she could move her toes and feel her legs, so her spinal cord was still intact.
But before night three came along, it was abundantly clear (even to her parents) that she needed a doctor.
After a brief examination by the local doctors, she was transferred by ambulance to a pediatrics unit 2 hours away, where, after more questions, scans, and getting incessantly poked and prodded by many different doctors, she and her parents were told she needed surgery.
One of her lumbar vertebrae (the ones in your lower back) was completely shattered, and there was a sharp piece pressing dangerously close to her spinal cord. It was a miracle, in fact, that she wasn’t paralyzed from the waist down. There were also fractured vertebrae both above and below the shattered one, and the scans also showed pre-existing fractures in her upper back—she could only assume from her work on the farm. Her parents made no remark as to how those could have happened.
She had the surgery, which involved the doctors picking out the pieces that were broken, and putting them in a small metal cage, which was then put back in place of the shattered vertebrae. Then, a metal bar was fastened across that vertebrae and the ones above and below, fusing all three together into one, long vertebrae.
In a matter of days, with the help of a physical therapist who seemed convinced that performing the “Whip” and “Nae Nae” had as much healing power as his PT skills, and a full-torso brace she would become the best of enemies with over the following months, she could sit up, and then slowly get out of bed, and finally, walk.
At the ripe age of 16, she felt old, gingerly walking through hospital halls, stabilizing herself with her IV stand.
But before she knew it, the doctors told her she was ready to go home. She didn’t feel ready. Life was different now, and she had to wear a rigid, plastic brace for the next 6-9 months.
Before she knew it, 4 years had passed.
Moxie didn’t let her injury stop her. She held onto the way her life was in as many ways as she possibly could. The brace was eventually gone, and she enrolled in college that fall. She played in bands, she worked a job, and she took a full class load. She did well in school, getting mostly A’s and B’s. Those letters were really important to her. She was still trying to impress the people around her who she felt were secretly telling her she wasn’t good enough for them. Especially now that so much had changed for her.
Despite the pain she was now in every day, she worked as hard as she could to make her life one that others would accept. Especially her parents.
But by the time she had graduated college, at the height of the 2020 lockdown, she was exhausted. Beyond a little booklet with pictures of stretches they gave her when she finally ditched the brace, no one had helped her understand how her body had changed or how to take care of it. Her parents didn’t help her pay for massage or chiropractors or physical therapy, despite her going to them multiple times in tears, begging for them to understand how much it hurt.
“You just need to do your stretches more consistently,” they told her. “If you want a chiropractor, you’re old enough to pay for that yourself now.”
In fact, after she graduated college and came home for a summer, thoroughly burnt out and unable to keep a “real job”, they kicked her out of the house.
Moxie, although her feelings were hurt, kept her head up. Maybe this was a good thing. After all, she was pretty sick of her parents’ indifference to her pain and unwillingness to help her in most ways. They only added to her burden at this point.
She left to live with her aunts in another village in the Midwest, east of where she had grown up. She had fallen in love with a girl for the first time since her first big heartbreak in college, and life was better in many ways now that she was away from her parents, toward whom there was an ever-growing resentment within her.
Although she wasn’t fully aware of it at the time, she was still living her life for them. Trying to get their approval. Trying to prove she was enough. She was trying to be the man they raised her to be, hold the job they wanted her to get, and raise the family they wanted her to have.
It started to make less and less sense to her, and she started to become even more depressed than she had become since her accident.
Eventually, after another experience high up on a mountain (she seemed to have a thing for those—mountains), she started to realize the world had been lying to her, and she had believed them. Not just about what she was supposed to do with her life, but who she was supposed to be.
She had forgotten who she was. She didn’t even know Moxie was her real name.
Up until that point, she believed her parents when they told her she was a man. Not just “a man”, but the kind of man they wanted her to be.
Moxie wasn’t any of that. She knew this deep down and as slowly as she had begun walking again in the hospital, she slowly started to take steps to accept this about herself.
Several more years passed.
And a lot of life had happened for Moxie. She had taken great steps to break away from her parents’ expectations, and now they grew to resent her (or at least they stopped hiding their resentment). She traveled where she wanted, fucked who she wanted, and gardened a lot. It helped with her pain, both the physical and psychological kinds.
But deep down, so deep she was barely aware of it, she was still holding back. She wasn’t trying to fit her parents’ small expectations of her anymore, but her life was still revolving around them. Only, now it was defined by how far away she could get from them, and how much she could rebel against them.
She didn’t quite get it yet, and her life had no problems showing her: she kept getting into relationships and living situations that ranged from mildly codependent to physically abusive, and she experienced brief homelessness off and on for years.
This brings us to the present day.
See, the universe had brought Moxie on a journey. It all started the day of her accident, when she decided to take THE BIG JUMP. She wasn’t just doing it to impress people or prove herself. She was Moxie, after all. Taking the biggest jump in sight head on was a very Moxie thing to do. Years later, she would look back on that day and give a little smirk at the guts it took that younger version of herself to commit to such a stupidly epic move despite the obvious risks.
But what it took her a decade to realize was, that day left an imprint on her spirit. An imprint the shape of an epic, stupidly big jump.
The kind of jump that changes your life forever, for better or for worse.
It took her a decade to realize, that day didn’t just break her. It made her the kind of person who could survive a jump like that. It set the standard for her life from that point forward.
It took her a decade to learn the lesson, which was more of a question: would she get up and take the next BIG JUMP, no matter how bad the last one hurt?
She had taken lots of smaller jumps in the meantime, but she was avoiding the big ones. Love among the greatest of them all. Love scared the shit out of her. Making money was another big one, because her parents only taught her how to be poor. And having a safe, stable home was another big one, because she had never had that before in her life.
Beneath all these overwhelmingly big jumps was a theme: was she enough? Did she have what it takes? Did she possess the raw power, the sheer Moxie, to succeed?
My name is Moxie. And today, I am at the end of this decade-long lesson. Over the past 10 years, I became enough and I acquired what it takes. I don’t just have Moxie now, I BECAME MOXIE ITSELF. I have broken countless cycles and generational curses just to survive as long as I have, and now I need to make another big jump that scares the shit out of me: asking for help.
I am in yet another abusive living situation that the past version of me got me into, and I’m determined to make it the last abusive home I ever find myself in. I would rather be homeless than subject myself to this treatment ever again. The good news is, I might be homeless before long. I’m getting kicked out on the 21st of this month, which is in 11 days.
The even better news is, I made another BIG JUMP and launched my practice as a spiritual healer and creative coach. I’m ready to provide for myself and create a home for myself. I’m not just a healer and a coach, I’m a musician and entertainer. I recently released my debut album and followed with a fun, gutsy single called “EVERY TIME”. I know what it takes to persevere through challenges as a creative and someone on a unique life path.
That’s the kind of person I want to work with, and I need your help finding my first few clients. I would love to work with you, or your friends. My process is a simple weekly loop: desire, limits, intention, action, repeat.
As in:
What do you want?
What are you willing to experience to get it?
What is your intention?
Take action aligned with your desire, limits, and intention
Repeat!
I hope this story of moxie was inspiring to you, and I want you to hear it from me: you have what it takes to write moxie into your own life. It’s an experience that’s available for all of us. And if you need just a little help getting started, I would be honored to serve your healing.
Thanks for reading.
Love,
MOXIE MAVERICK