In 1954, Ernest Hemingway survived two plane crashes in two days.
Yes, you read that right. Not one, but two crashes.
The man should’ve been dead—hell, the media did declare him dead.
Yet, as the story goes, Hemingway stumbled out of the jungle days later, gin in one hand, a bunch of bananas in the other, barely alive but somehow triumphant.
It wasn’t just survival. He emerged as a living legend, literally drunk off his own supply, laughing in the face of fate.
I think about that story more than I probably should. It’s funny how life can blow up in your face, repeatedly, and you still somehow find yourself walking out of the jungle with nothing but scraps of dignity, a bottle of gin, and maybe a metaphorical banana or two.
Lately, I feel like I’m deep in the jungle. Honestly, I’ve pretty much set up camp here for the last eighteen years. You might as well write me into The Jungle Book and call me Mowgli. I’ll be here munching on bananas, waiting for my friendly bear mentor to finally show up and guide me through jungle life—*sigh* a girl can dream.
Let’s turn the page back to an earlier chapter: me at 17, terrified and staring dead-eyed at a positive pregnancy test. In that split second, I watched my dreams of global travel and world domination go up in flames, like a slow-motion car crash in a movie I couldn’t stop.
I found out I was pregnant while I was still in high school and I knew what I was going to do—there were always options, of course, but the choice for me was clear. That didn’t make it easier. It was a crash, and there was no parachute, no map for what was next, just the knowledge that I was about to go through hell to make it out alive.
As we flip through the chapters of the last eighteen years, the crashes haven’t stopped. Life has taken the controls and sent me spiraling more than once. I barely survived a traumatizing marriage, only to face the harsh truth that I was now the walking stereotype of a broke, single teen mom working herself to the bone. Against every stacked odd and every dismal teen mom statistic, I clawed my way up over a decade of workaholic trauma responses, hitting my peak as a corporate mogul—only to get fired mere weeks after I signed the dotted line on a life-changing promotion. Make it make sense.
So, I bet on myself and started my own company. After licking my wounds, I clawed my way back again, made more money than I’d ever dreamed possible…until—boom—COVID hit, and I lost it all. Great idea, in theory, but a worldwide pandemic and economic crash wasn’t exactly in the year-one business plan.
Cue the mental health breakdown. Healing, rebuilding, and finding stability all over again…only to confront those unsettling realizations about what I actually want out of life. After years of bleeding for my career, and now my business, it just didn’t feel right anymore.
Ohhhh, they didn’t tell you about the harsh reality check that comes with healing, did they?
Me, either.
Well, let me tell you about that core-shaking moment of truly meeting yourself—for the first time—without the cloak of challenges or trauma to hide behind.
No workaholism or perfectionism pushing you toward material goals and superficial expectations that, in hindsight, were never even yours.
And for the first time, you see everything clearly—stripped down to what’s actually true to you. In that moment, you realize you’ve been fighting your whole life for things that were never meant for you, that maybe—gasp—you were wrong all along. And that realization? Terrifying.
And while we’re at it, let’s talk about love—or, in my case, the hot mess express that’s tried to pass for it. Post-divorce, I’ve waded through the emotionally unavailable, a tortured trainwreck, a commitment-phobe or two, an avoidant ghost, and a gallery of men who seem to have Peter Pan Syndrome down to an art form.
Yet here I am, standing firm as ever the romantic. Now, with a refreshed perspective, I still believe in love. More importantly, for the first time, I believe that an extraordinary love—the one I truly deserve—is waiting for me at the station as I finally jump off this hot mess express.
Eighteen years in and out of this damn jungle, and here I am, staring at the eject button once more. But this time, it’s my choice. Do I dare?
Crash. Burn. Rebuild. It’s a loop I know well.
But here’s the thing: the jungle? It’s not just where you land when things go wrong. It’s the place you learn to survive. It’s not about the plane crashes; it’s about what you do when you’re in the jungle, bruised and beaten, wondering where the hell to go next. That’s where I am now, not giving up, but learning how to live in the crash.
Radical acceptance is the buzzword, right? It’s trendy to say you “accept what you can’t control” and “live in the moment.” But when your plane is nose-diving toward the ground, and there’s no eject button, what do you do? Forget the positive affirmations—those aren’t going to stop the crash. The reality is, we can’t manifest our way out of everything. Sometimes, you’re just in the jungle, and no one’s coming to save you.
The truth is, I chose this jungle. This time, I hit the eject button, and now I’m figuring it out as I go. I could sit here and complain about the crashes, but let’s be real: what’s done is done, and this time, the choice was mine. I could continue to play it small, care about how things look on paper, but the real work is now, in the jungle, learning to navigate with nothing but intuition and sheer will. The jungle is where we figure out who we really are, bruises and all.
And let me tell you, nothing humbles you faster than standing in the wreckage of what you thought your life would be. You watch all those shiny planes flying overhead, heading to destinations you used to dream about. Planes you thought you’d be on. But guess what? You’re not. You hit eject. You made a choice to jump, to leave, to crash. And now, you have to survive.
True confidence doesn’t come from perfect outcomes—it’s built by proving to yourself that you have what it takes to survive. That’s when you feel truly alive, emerging from the jungle triumphant, a bunch of bananas in hand, a little drunk off your own supply, and ready to set yourself free.
“Your new life is going to cost you your old one.
It’s going to cost you your comfort zone and your sense of direction.
It’s going to cost you relationships and friends.
It’s going to cost you being liked and understood.
It doesn’t matter.
The people who are meant for you are going to meet you
on the other side. You’re going to build a new comfort
zone around the things that actually move you forward.Instead of being liked, you’re going to be loved.
Instead of being understood, you’re going to be seen.
All you’re going to lose is what was built for a person you
no longer are.”― Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery
I spent most of my adult years fighting for something I thought I wanted. The money, the love, the validation, the success. I put it all on a vision board, wrote it down in every manifestation journal, fought tooth and nail to make it happen. But what I didn’t see coming was that all that success—those wins—they weren’t what I thought they’d be. The men who said they loved me aren’t here. The money I made didn’t keep me safe. And the success? It didn’t fulfill me like I thought it would. So, I hit eject.
Hemingway didn’t stumble out of that jungle because he was lucky. He survived because that’s just what you do. You survive. You find your bananas, your gin, your reason to keep going. And in doing so, you become the legend of your own story.
The romance isn’t in escaping; it’s in staying in the jungle, fully aware there’s more chaos to come, and laughing in the face of it anyway. And when the next crash comes—and trust me, it will—you’ll be ready.
Maybe you didn’t choose this jungle, or maybe, like me, you hit eject on a life that didn’t fit. Welcome to the jungle, my friend. I hope you brought some gin, because this shit is bananas.
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Christ! I love the way you write.
Hell yes to this