The Forest Knows: A Birthday Reflection on Change, Fear, and Becoming

This week, I celebrate my birthday—not with loud candles or crowded rooms, but with something quieter, more intimate. Recently, I found myself deep in the heart of the Czech Republic, hiking with a dear friend through the tender breath of early spring. The trees whispered their stories, the earth smelled alive, and the light felt like a blessing.

As we wandered further from the familiar paths, we came across a hill—modest in size, but tangled in stone and root, still slick from the rain. We decided to climb it.

My Story, My Fear

At first, it seemed simple enough. But as we ascended, the slope turned steeper, the ground less steady. My feet began to slip. My legs trembled. The earth beneath me felt like it could vanish with a single misstep. The bag on my shoulders grew heavy. My breath turned uneven.

Fear rose—visceral, real.

It wasn’t just the fear of falling, but of losing control. Of surrendering to something wild inside me.

For a moment, I teetered on the edge of tears.

And then I heard myself say it—quietly, between gasps, to my friend and to the trees: “I want to use this. I want to face this fear. Let this be my birthday gift to myself.” So I kept going.

Searching for Release

I crawled. On all fours like some feral creature, I clawed into the earth, held tight to roots—many dry, many breaking—but I didn’t stop. I moved upward, step by step. I was no longer a woman climbing a hill—I was something older, rawer, instinctual.

When we finally reached the top, my friend reached out her hand. We stepped onto a hidden path that opened into a golden stretch of forest. It was quiet there, as if the trees had been waiting for us. As if they knew.

And in that silence, I understood: this hill wasn’t just a hill. It was a mirror.

What I feared on that slope wasn’t just falling—it was the letting go required by life itself. These past months have brought deep transitions: beloved friends leaving for distant lands, the unraveling of what once felt like home, the bittersweet closing of a university chapter, and the ache of moving countries. So much shifting. So much unknown.

On Discovering....

But just like that climb, these changes have asked me to crawl, to dig deep, to tremble and still go on. They’ve asked me to find my footing not in certainty, but in trust. To speak softly to my own fear and say: “I’m still here. I’m still going.”

And maybe, that’s the map of life: not a smooth road, but a forest path revealed only after we dare to climb.

So this birthday, my gift to myself is this: To walk through the fear. To feel it. To love it even. To remember that beauty often lives just beyond the hardest part of the journey. And to know that no matter how strange or animal I may feel in the climb, I am always becoming something truer.