The drawbridge and the grass: How we heal, retreat, and begin again
Like most of us, I’ve had my fair share of failure and loss over the years.
And I’ve watched plenty of mates go through it all too.
It’s always different, for every person.
The situation is different, the compounding circumstances are different.
The person is different.
But more and more, as the years have gone on, I’ve started to see patterns.
Whether it’s a loss.
Betrayal.
A breakup.
Death.
Or failure.
After something painful, most of us do the same thing.
It doesn’t really matter what shape it takes.
Something breaks, and we retreat.
We build walls of stone to keep others out.
We dig a moat to send a signal.
Then we pull the drawbridge up behind us.
Inside our castle, it’s quiet. Controlled. Safe.
There’s no exposure. No risk.
No more surprise blows to the chest.
It’s just survival.
And for a while, that’s exactly where we need to be.
Healing doesn’t happen in the middle of a battlefield.
You can’t hunt or plan or build when you’re under siege.
Sometimes the most courageous thing you can do is stop moving.
To tend to the wound.
To protect the part of you that still hurts.
But then comes the harder part.
What happens when the storm passes, and we’re still inside the walls?
At some point, that safety starts to harden.
What once felt like peace, becomes a kind of stasis.
You forget how to scout.
How to risk. How to be seen.
And that stasis then becomes fear.
We weren’t meant to live behind gates forever.
But after a while, it starts to feel easier than the alternative.
Because leaving means carrying the wound with you.
Maybe even risking another one.
And the world is unpredictable.
Messy. Loud. Unscripted.
So we brace.
We overcorrect.
We do life with our armour on. Just in case.
But the question was never meant to be “how do I let go of what happened?”
It’s “how do I carry it differently?”
You can’t erase it.
You won’t forget it.
But you can move with it.
Not in defiance of it; but because of it.
So when you’re ready, you start letting that drawbridge down.
Not all at once.
And probably not with a parade.
But bit by bit, you let it down.
At start to move toward the world.
But when we step forward, past those walls and out of our safety, we often carry another kind of ache.
This longing for who we were before.
Before the pain. Before the mistake. Before the ending.
Our courage, ambition, and lightness is hard to find.
That voice of optimism starts feeling quieter than the cynic.
When you’re in a moment like this, it can be hard to keep going.
And if you’re witnessing someone else go through it, it’s hard to watch.
But when you stop and think it makes perfect sense.
Take a moment and think back to the first time you ever walked barefoot on soft, green grass as a kid.
Curious, carefree, calm.
Now, think of the first time you stepped on a bindi.
One sharp stab, and everything changes.
That’s what grief does.
That’s what failure does.
That’s what heartbreak does.
It rewires our body.
Even when the bindis are gone, your whole system tenses.
The field might be clear now, but you’re still flinching every second step.
Still waiting for the pain that you “know” is coming back.
But the only way to unlearn that fear...
Is to stay on the grass.
To keep walking.
Carefully.
Gently.
But deliberately.
Because if you stay off the grass forever, you’ll never learn that it can be safe again.
Even if we romanticise the early days; in love, in business, in creativity.
That rush. That recklessness. That freedom.
And tell ourselves it was realer then.
That maybe we’ve lost something essential.
The truth is, that version of us had never been tested.
Had never been burned.
Had never had to choose whether or not to show up again, after everything.
So yes, we’re more cautious now.
Maybe even jaded.
But we’re also deeper.
We’re wiser.
We know the cost of things.
We understand the shape of loss.
And maybe that’s not a worse place to begin again.
Maybe it’s a better one.
Or maybe it’s just different.
Because you can’t out-think pain.
You can’t out-plan fear.
Only action heals.
Movement.
Repetition.
Risk.
Step by step, rep by rep, we teach ourselves to trust again.
To feel again.
To live again.
So if you’re behind the walls right now, that’s okay.
You’re allowed to be there.
You’ve earned that stillness.
But when the time comes:
Let the bridge down.
Walk the fields.
Risk the bindi.
Because the real you isn’t back there, behind the gate.