A few weeks later I was back on the island, still with my first wing. We were at a spot for groundhandling, and actually everything was going quite well.
Then a gust came. And the letting-go thing hadn't sunk in yet. It was more about control and holding on. The gust grabbed my wing, and because I had the brakes on and was turned in, it flew backwards a little. I stumbled, lay on my stomach and only let go of everything in that moment. The result: a scraped arm, a scraped knee and a huge scratch on my ego.
I needed that. I had already been doing quite well, but I didn't yet trust myself. Or trust letting go.
Setbacks like that are totally okay, too. Development is not a line that only ever goes up. It goes up and down, sometimes there's a plateau where nothing happens, and then perhaps another huge leap. I think we have to get used to that: success is not linear. But we learn from situations like these.
Afterwards I was a bit scared of groundhandling for a while. And then I understood more and more what Kai always says: let go. Holding on is not a solution. Let the wing work, use the wind and your body. I understood that in my body on a completely different level. And over the next few times I worked at it until I trusted myself and could put it into practice.
