Freefall #01 — Back in the Sky
The club was shut for winter, and the silence was louder than expected.
Before the drop zone closed last November, I was finally starting to feel calm in freefall.
Fear was still there—but manageable. Integrated.
For the first time, I could jump without fighting myself.
Then came winter.
The club shut its doors, and I was grounded. Five months of no altitude. No adrenaline.
No wind on my face.
At first, I treated the break as an opportunity.
I told myself I’d use the time well—and I did.
Every morning: yoga, breathwork, mobility.
Every evening: posterior chain resistance training or cardio.
Saturday? Bouldering. Full send. No excuses.
I trained the arch position on the floor like a ritual—tweaking angles, tightening form.
And I met incredible people.
But something was missing.
The adrenaline. The clarity. The identity.
The longer I stayed away from the sky, the more I started to doubt.
Would I still be able to jump? To focus?
There’s so much stimulation during freefall—can you really be present when everything is rushing past?
I didn’t feel like myself.
Turns out, the chill I thought I had wasn’t natural—it came from the sky.
March 29, 2025 — Return to the Sky
I stressed the whole week leading up to it.
In the car, I was nervous.
At the DZ, even worse.
Gear on? Faked confidence—didn’t work.
But once I got into the plane…
It came back.
That past confidence—the grounded stillness—returned like it had never left.
The fear dissolved. The excitement grew.
And when the door opened, and the wind slapped my face, all I saw was the sky.
Clear. Blue. Calling me.
I jumped.
Rust and Realignment
The arch? Terrible.
No power through the hips. I made constant micro-adjustments to stay stable.
I was arching only through my upper body, not my whole form.
No glute engagement. No real structure.
But under canopy, I felt ease.
Peace.
I did three jumps that day.
Each one a little better.
Each landing brought back a piece of who I was before the break.
I understood exactly what went wrong, biomechanically and mentally.
I know what to fix. And that’s the path forward.
After the Sky
The day after, the post-jump blues hit me harder than usual.
I expected it—five months of silence, now broken in three jumps. That’s a lot to hold.
But despite the crash, I feel like myself again.
The sky gives me something I can’t find elsewhere.
And the smile—the one we always shout at the door:
“Et on n’oublie pas… avec le sourire !”
—it still works. Maybe now more than ever.
I met new people. I felt back home.
This was re-entry.
Next jump day is April 5. One week from now, I am writing this piece on the 1st of April.
We keep falling. And we keep rising.