Fire Walking

Lessons learned in ashes— burnt down a prison that is not mine.

One morning of August 1987, I read a short ad in Psychologies Magazine; in bold letters, it said: Dépasser vos peurs pour de bon: Overcome your fears for good. At twenty years old, I weighed 280 pounds. My body was an annoyance to be dealt with; my mind, a potentially great tool, so far completely untapped — or worse, used against me; my spirit a dimmed light, with little hope of ever fulfilling my destiny.

In fine print, it said: ‘Walk on hot coals, barefoot.’  I always liked drastic stuff; the more I asked of myself, the more resources I was forced to mobilize. Walking across a bed of sizzling coals with no shoes, sure qualified as plenty drastic, even for me. I signed up immediately. If I thought about it too much, I’d talk myself out of doing it. I really wanted to overcome my fears for good.

Between my obesity and failing my baccalaureate a second time, I was a mess, and I needed to do something different before I derailed. I negotiated a budget with my parents, to finance the repair work needed on my inner edifice: the fire walk fit in the budget, so it was a go.

All my friends who didn’t fail their exams had moved on. Most of them to business and law. One got into the best med school in the country. I felt left behind, and not an inch closer to knowing what I wanted to do when I grew up. I already had a friend in jail and another who’d died. The escalation was hard to ignore. To avoid what seemed to be a similar, inevitable fate, I had to shift gears and start turning my self-destructive vehicle around.

A few weeks later, I boarded a train — destination, Orleans — where the fire walk was to take place. A facilitator had welcomed us walkers at the station, saying nothing about the experience itself, just a few logistical details: arrival, departure, and break times. He rode the train with us, deliberately silent as if to say, “Be with yourself, do not use me to escape your experience.” His grounded energy was strangely encouraging. By just being, he was inviting us to be, as well. Looking at him, I could feel my panic decrease — somewhat.

I looked around. It seemed like we were all oscillating between excitement and fear. My brain was screaming, “Get the hell off this train,” but my soul screamed back, “Sit down, my love.” It was time for me to crack out of my proverbial and literal shell. 280 pounds is a lot of shell, and I had a sense this walk on fire could initiate the cracking.

As I would always do in those years, I brought comfort food: baguette, ham, and lots of butter. It worked. A few bites in, I felt the numbness that comes with carbs and fat. Like a security blanket, but on the inside.

I saw a guy in our car that I hadn’t noticed at the station. His piercing blue eyes matched the denim he was wearing top and bottom. Note to self: never wear denim top and bottom. My sweater had a rainbow on the back that had a childlike quality to it; as if to say, “No big deal, we’re not about to walk on coals, just to play in a sandbox, la la la.”

I sat next to him, and in a grand gesture, offered him my extra sandwich; he accepted. We ate in silence, fully aware that this food was helping us forget it could be our last meal. It seemed to calm his nerves, as well.

“Are we crazy to be doing this?” I whispered, as if we might decide to jump off the train, and didn’t want to get caught plotting our getaway.

“Maybe,” he answered between bites.

That didn’t help.

I was desperate for this workshop to deliver. Something was holding me back from living a bigger life; keeping me small; keeping me fat. I needed to let go of some parts of my past - which parts, I wasn’t sure. But I was committed to getting to the bottom of it; to the bottom of me. So I stayed on the train.

Reaching our destination, we were bussed to the edge of the forest. We walked under old oaks to the spot where magic would happen. Some of us were silent; some of us were talking too much. I was one of those. Even if we didn’t know each other, we weren’t strangers. Back then, very few people had walked on coals, so we were already connected by the invisible bond that ties together those about to do something dangerous. And, arguably, stupid.

 “Are they going to be my friends for life?” I remember wondering that morning. One did. Françoise is one of my best friends, and we often talk about having no idea what happened to the others; we never saw them again.

As the train pulled into the final stop, we could hear drums coming from the forest. We walked a short distance into the woods, following the sound of drums and the smell of smoke. When we arrived at our destination, several incredibly tall guys were starting a fire. The drums were tended by shorter guys - no less intense.

A guy of normal height, who turned out to be a doctor, was there, ready for anything. We were quickly introduced to our facilitator — who recently landed from California— taller even than the fire-tending guys. His presence was an unusual mix of reassuring and scary.

The walk was to occur at eighteen hundred hours. 6 PM. A few hours before the main event, we were taken to an obstacle course that’d been set up prior to our arrival. A rope ladder was dangling from what seemed to be the tallest tree in the forest. Certainly, the tallest I’d ever seen. We had to climb to the top; the fatter the climber, the harder the climb. Forty feet off the ground, you had to turn around with not enough space to do so, and being fat definitively added an extra layer of intricacy.

This ordeal brought up traumatic memories of my sixth grade PE class, having to pull myself up a pole and never, ever, ascending more than a foot or two. This day in the forest was already delivering, and I hadn’t been near the fire yet. I was going to brave that memory and carry that fat girl up that tree if it was the last thing we did.

Carrying your weight around on the ground when you weigh north of 280 is a workout in and of itself. Carrying that up a forty-foot ladder loosely attached to a tall tree falls into a whole different category: death wish, maybe. I did it anyway.

People yelled. I couldn’t hear. My heartbeat was too loud. My legs trembled. I could not move. There is such a thing as fear-induced physical paralysis.

I am sure the forest was stunning from so high up, I wouldn’t know; all I could see was how far I was from the ground, down there. I did a quick calculation: elevation x velocity x 280. The fear that my weight was going to collapse the net added an element of terror; as if jumping from that height wasn’t enough.

Lesson #1: The longer I waited, the more difficult it became.

“What do you want from life, Sophie?” our tall Californian yelled up at me.

I heard that.

He remembered my name. That mobilized me, somehow.

“I want to be free,” I said, hearing a voice come out of my throat as if it belonged to someone else; I turned around magically, and jumped.

The net came fast, and didn’t break. The fire tending guys that I’d noticed earlier, were standing around it; helping us to extract ourselves rapidly — so the next brave scaredy-cat could jump.

Lesson #2: It’s a good idea to trust my environment.

It was clever to have us jump from a tall tree before we walked on hot coals. That had taken our fear away from the fire. It gave us a taste of the fact that our body was capable of more than we thought.

Right after the tree jump, as the sun was setting, we were brought to face the coals. Two lanes; fifteen feet long; 1,000 degrees. There were about fifty of us, ready to walk. The air was loaded with heat. And thrill. And dread.

About to go in, I noticed this girl, cross-legged on the ground; she was too small for her big sweater, her thin hair and legs made her look younger than she probably was. I could read her vibe; she had talked herself out of doing it.

I walked toward her, wondering if she was hoping that no one would notice her, or wishing someone would. I kept her engaged, asked her questions, held the fort until the official facilitator could join us.

“Did you come all this way to let fear win?” he asked, kind of in her face.

I got to sit in as he explained the price she would pay if she didn’t do it; not to anyone but herself. She didn’t even bother to answer. He smiled and offered his hand to help her up. Being so light, she flew off the ground. I remember thinking I would never fly off the ground if someone helped me up. We got back in line. 

I was among the first to go. The woman before me was very thin, and I thought: “Easier for you to do, less-heavy person.”

Drums drumming, sun setting, fog rolling: my turn.

The leader was standing right there to usher me along.

 I had this funny thought that my pants could catch fire, so I folded the bottoms up — making me look like I was about to go crab-fishing.

“You can do this, Sophie,” he chanted, as I pressed my right foot heavily into the embers. I immediately broke into a sweat. I wanted to speed it up; be able to say, I’d done it. But I also wanted to give it time and make sure I experienced what the ad had promised: to be free.

I was marching on red, hot, sizzling coals. This was not the moment to think, calculate, reason, deliberate, cogitate or analyze. This was the moment — if ever there was one —  to take a step and then another (etc.).

Lesson #3: When it gets difficult / dangerous, don’t stop, keep going.

I was aware of the heat, but it wasn’t hurting. Strangely, my feet called for the least attention. My adrenaline was pumping hard and that helped. So did the team’s presence. They stood around the fire, chanting, cheering, stomping their feet to make us feel like they were marching with us.

To this day, when I experience fear I think of the flames, the strangers-turned-friends, the drums, the absurd simplicity of just putting one foot in front of the other when I am stuck. The facilitator and his tall assistants gave me confidence. Their faith and trust that I could do it, made me believe that I could.

I reached the end of the bed of coals.

“Want to do it again?” one of the guys asked.

 “Yes!” I heard myself say.

There I was, in front of the lane, stepping into the fire; again. Not much going on in my head, other than, noticing that my feet were not burning; and wondering how that was possible.

I was maybe ten feet in, when it happened. I started seeing images in my mind of a concentration camp. Emaciated faces. Dogs barking. German spoken.

My maternal family lived in Nazi-occupied France. Bedtime stories at my grandparents’ house were of barbed wire and medical experiments on people in striped pajamas.

I stood tall. I felt proud. I extended my arms and yelled out. Not sure what. Something about them not owning my soul. Something about taking myself back. Something about being free from this sinister legacy.

When I got to the other side, I landed in the arms of one of the tall ones, and sobbed for what seemed like hours. Not because my feet hurt, but because I’d found my answers. I’d escaped from the cell where I’d been held hostage without knowing it. I’d faced my unknown inherited enemies, and I’d kicked them out of my psyche.

As fast as the moment passed, it changed my most profound beliefs about myself. I saw competence and courage. Since I would probably never be in an actual war, this moment — although not life-threatening — gave me a chance to test my grit, braving flames and coals. Given the circumstances, I liked who I saw.

Lesson #4: Sometimes, a shift in perception happens in an instant.

Physically, I was empty, raw and cold, as if someone had Roto-Rootered my insides. My upper lip, my fingers, and my legs were trembling. Had I looked in a mirror, I would have seen the expression of someone visiting their inner landscape, sorting what was mine and what wasn’t, cleansing the pain of my lineage, honoring their stories but declaring I was done carrying them; so I could move on with my life.

On the train ride back home, the girl who almost didn’t walk sat next to me, and pulled out sandwiches; I could tell she was grateful to me for not letting her fold.

“My favorite, brioche with butter and Nutella, want one?” she asked.

I smiled and declined. That sandwich would have acted as a sedative. Today, I wanted to feel every bit of me.

I went back to my parents’ house that night, found them in bed, watching TV. I wanted to tell them about my day. But, I abstained; what mattered to me most — depth, self-discovery, and intimacy — were the very things that scared them to death.

My clothes smelled of fear, ashes, and sweat, and my mother dislikes all of those; I announced I was taking a bath, and that brought a smile to her face.

I knew trying to talk to them would be a disruption. Usually, I enjoyed that; bringing back the work they were paying for and forcing them to get some of it for themselves. I felt like it was my job to shake them, wake them up and demand more of them.

But not tonight.

After my bath, I was going to go right to bed with this new emerging self. The ad delivered, and then some. I’d known that courage is not the absence of fear, but feeling fear and doing it anyway; that day in the forest gave me a chance to shift that idea from my head to my bones.

The terror. The rage. The grief.

The guilt of being alive.

I left all of it in the ashes: the dark legacy of my family — of our tribe.

Lesson #5: Let go of stuff that’s not even ours.