When a performer's life teeters on the edge of a high wire, every step is a dance with destiny. Lijana Wallenda, from the esteemed Wallenda family, joins us to share her riveting tale of survival and steadfast courage, taking us through her earliest days on the wire to the heart-stopping moment that nearly ended it all. Her journey isn't just one of spectacle and thrill; it's a profound narrative of legacy, dedication, and the resilience required to rise again after a fall that could have spelled the end of a storied career.
Leana's voice carries the weight of her experiences as she recounts the nightmarish fall from an eight-person pyramid and the grueling path to redemption, culminating in a daring skywalk above Times Square. Her story transcends the circus tent, offering insights into the human spirit's capacity to overcome and the importance of maintaining focus on our goals, irrespective of the perils that line the path. It's a conversation that promises to leave you inspired, pushing you to consider how you face your own wire walks in life, and how, perhaps, we're all performers in the grandest show of all.
Don't forget to listen and follow on your favorite streaming platform and on Facebook. Subscribe on Your Favorite Platform: https://reigniteresilience.buzzsprout.com Follow Us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reigniteresilience
Disclaimer: The information provided in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The co-hosts of this podcast are not medical professionals. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast. Reliance on any information provided by the podcast hosts or guests is solely at your own risk.
When a performer's life teeters on the edge of a high wire, every step is a dance with destiny. Lijana Wallenda, from the esteemed Wallenda family, joins us to share her riveting tale of survival and steadfast courage, taking us through her earliest days on the wire to the heart-stopping moment that nearly ended it all. Her journey isn't just one of spectacle and thrill; it's a profound narrative of legacy, dedication, and the resilience required to rise again after a fall that could have spelled the end of a storied career.
Leana's voice carries the weight of her experiences as she recounts the nightmarish fall from an eight-person pyramid and the grueling path to redemption, culminating in a daring skywalk above Times Square. Her story transcends the circus tent, offering insights into the human spirit's capacity to overcome and the importance of maintaining focus on our goals, irrespective of the perils that line the path. It's a conversation that promises to leave you inspired, pushing you to consider how you face your own wire walks in life, and how, perhaps, we're all performers in the grandest show of all.
Don't forget to listen and follow on your favorite streaming platform and on Facebook. Subscribe on Your Favorite Platform: https://reigniteresilience.buzzsprout.com Follow Us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reigniteresilience
Disclaimer: The information provided in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The co-hosts of this podcast are not medical professionals. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast. Reliance on any information provided by the podcast hosts or guests is solely at your own risk.
Speaker 1:
In the Grand Theater of Life. We all seek a comeback, a resurgence, a rekindling of our inner fire. But how do we spark that flame? Welcome to Reignite Resilience. This is not just another podcast. This is a journey, a venture into the heart of human spirit, the power of resilience and the art of reigniting our passions.
Speaker 2:
Welcome back to another episode of Reignite Resilience. I am your co-host, Natalie Davis, and I am so excited to be back with you all. And joining me, of course, is Pam. How are you, Pam Cass? You know I'm fabulous. I feel like we haven't been together in a minute. I know, I don't know what's happening.
Speaker 1:
It's been a little bit too long, because I need this in my life Exactly. We'll go around.
Speaker 2:
I think what happens is that we end up recording five days a week and then we take a week off and it's like what am I supposed to do with all of this extra time on my hands? We figure out how to fill it, that's for sure, Exactly, I don't have a problem with that.
Speaker 1:
No, not one bit.
Speaker 2:
Not one bit I love it. Well, I am so excited about our show today because we have a special guest, so, pam, why don't you introduce our guest? I'd love to just dive right in because we have, I feel, a lot of ground to cover. I love to hear about another story of overcoming adversity in a way that we haven't touched on yet on this show.
Speaker 1:
We have not touched on this at all, and when I heard about this woman I was like she's got to be on our podcast. And so just because of the story and I think there's so many ties to what she has gone through and just the things that we go through in life that I think there's a beautiful message here, so I'm so excited to share this. Our special guest today is Leana Wailanda, and she is a seventh generation circus performer, a high wire walker from the world famous Wailanda family. Having performed amazing feats all over the world. After nearly losing her life in a tragic 35-foot fall from the wire, she faced her fears, overcame her trauma and returned to the wire performing a skywalk 25 stories above Times Square. She has proved to herself and to the world that this devastating fall would not be her defining moment and is now sharing her inspiring message. She is on a mission to show people it is possible to rebound from trauma and rebuild a meaningful life, career and destiny. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for taking the time and joining us today. I have goosebumps because I'm just so excited about having you with us. Well, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so what's your story? Because it's seventh generation type of walker. Yeah, so I grew up. I was born into a family of circus performers. We date back to the 1780s performing in circuses everything from train sea lions to flying trapeze. But four generations ago, my great-grandfather, carl, started wire walking and it became very well known. They were all celebrities over in Europe until they got brought over to the United States by John Ringling in 1928.
Speaker 1:
Okay, yeah, so he brought the family over here and then, a couple generations later, I'm born and I grew up traveling the country with my mom, my dad and my brother in an airstream trailer, performing in circuses Little things. When I was younger not until I was 13, did I perform in the high wire. But, yeah, that was my life. Okay, so your whole family. I looked at the family tree that is online and I was like oh my gosh, okay. And so you're born into this family and what does that look like from very young age? Like? What does that training look like? What does your childhood look like? So when people ask, what was that like? And like I don't know, what is it like not traveling and walking?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, we don't even know.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so you know it was just normal. I would always see my parents go up in the high wire and perform and they would sometimes push the stroller right there under the wire so they could see me while they were performing, kind of thing. My mom was six months pregnant with me while she was performing on the high wire. She performed up to six months pregnant. There was always a low wire in our backyard when we were home off the road and I don't remember a time I couldn't walk that wire. You know, you'd always just go and play on it when you were little and saw your parents doing that. That was just life. I watched them. My brother and I would play and pretend like we were them on the wire, and it wasn't until I was 13 and was old enough to kind of understand that this is life and death. There are real risks I'm taking here. That's when I started performing up high after training for a while with my parents.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so you train on a lower wire, I'm assuming close to the ground, and then start moving it up, correct? Yes, you started a wire three feet off the ground, so you start low and then graduate to a 10-foot high wire when you've perfected it down low and then you eventually go to 30-foot wire for performing an act in a show. Okay, and when you're training, do you have safety gear on when you're young and you're training, or is it you're from the very beginning? You are, yeah, no, I mean you're literally three feet off the ground so you could get scratched up and stuff. But you're not. You know you're going to step down off the wire. So that's why you start down low, so that you can train at a height where you're not going to it's not death to fine at that height.
Speaker 2:
You're like three feet. It's not that big of a deal. I literally get butterflies when I get on the top step of my step ladder, so thank you for that.
Speaker 1:
But at the 10-foot when you're training, do you have safety gear? No, you've got to get good enough down low that you know you're fine. And then you get to 10-foot and you got to like get, it's all about your mind being strong, right, yeah, remember. Oh, this looks scarier up here, but I know that I can do this because I did it down there and I got comfortable down there. Were there things that your parents did when you were training on the low wire? Were there things that they did to help with that mindset, to get you into that space where, if I can do it at this level, I can do it at the 10 feet and it's not as scary? I mean, they would tell us that they would also do things like they would toss pine cones at my brother and I were training because you have to be ready for anything.
Speaker 1:
I tell a story about when I was 30 feet in the air and I was going down into a split on a bar between my brother and father's shoulders.
Speaker 1:
They were holding we call it a pyramid and I was sliding down the split and a beast on me and I was glad for those pine cones being tossed at me because I learned that it doesn't matter Like. You have to focus on your task at hand, you have to focus on what you're doing in that moment. So they would do things like that. They also taught us to like go reach for the wire if we ever were to fall, so much so that if we were, my brother and I were playing and we just stepped off the wire and walked off. We weren't allowed to do that. We had to physically turn around, grab the wire with our hands and then we could walk off. You know, but they wanted that to be second nature, but it was just about as we graduated higher, they'd be there with us. Of course, my dad would always be under us, like looking up body, and say it's the same thing. I know it looks scarier, but it's the exact same thing, I love that, and what is your birth order?
Speaker 2:
Are you older or is Nick older? I'm older, you're older.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so then you're the oldest. I look much younger though.
Speaker 2:
Yes, I love that. I know you are much younger.
Speaker 1:
You're welcome, nick, because in the tree that showed the family tree it has his date of birth. It didn't have yours. I'm like, oh, she's probably younger. No, we're not even two. We're a little under two years apart, so we're fairly close in age. Yeah, he's the baby.
Speaker 2:
So he's following your lead as you're, and I'm assuming that you guys are progressing together, especially with less than two years between you. If you're going from three to 10, he's going from three to 10 as well.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I mean, I started performing up high first because I was older. Yeah, years after that he started performing up high. But yeah, what age did you start?
Speaker 2:
performing.
Speaker 1:
Well, little things in the circus, like I would do some aerial stuff. That was, you know, not as much risk. I was five years old. I remember performing that Always, like my parents would put me in a cute costume and I'd wave to the audience in the opening parade, stuff like that. But yeah, on the high wire they waited until I asked them, because they'd ever wanted to push that on me. And so when I was 13, I had decided I wanted to join the act and I went to them and asked them and they said, okay, go out back and practice and show us that you mean business. So I did. I'd go about for a couple of weeks by myself, practice, and once they saw that I was serious, they came out and started training me. So yeah, I was 13 when I started performing up high professionally.
Speaker 1:
When I saw you talk in Vegas, you talked about not focusing on the wire. When you're walking, you're focusing on where you're going. Tell us a little bit about that, because I think that goes along with life. Don't focus on this, focus on where you're going. Yeah, don't look down, look at your destination. So we always look kind of at the end of the wire. Where we're heading. We're not looking at our feet. We're stepping, that's all feel. We feel the wire with our foot and then kind of slide into place. You're looking at where you're going. You're not looking down at where the danger is. Yeah, so you're trusting that your feet know what to do as you're focusing on where you're going. Yeah, as soon as you look down, it's all the fear. I would imagine that would just be like oh, my gosh.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I mean not when you're a seasoned wire walker, you're used to it. But yeah, I mean you're not focusing on where your feet are stepping. All because we remember I trained out low doing laps back and forth for hours so I could slowly make it across the fire pie muscle memory at that point. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:
Well, when you decided at 13 then to actually train with the team some of those being family members, I'm assuming I think you reference it to you and your family as being like circus royalty. So what was that? Like you know, being the 13 year old, that's like. Is there pressure to prove yourself? What does that look like?
Speaker 1:
Well, I don't call myself circus royalty, but I'm part of my family as that because we date back so far, because my great-grandfather really put our name on the map with his amazing feats Pressure gosh. My parents never pressured me. We were homeschooled for much of the year. Then we would fit back into our private school and we came home from the tour. So that was. We had to do that. But performing was not a pressure. You know, if you want to do it, great, but if not, which I so appreciate because I genuinely love it.
Speaker 1:
I many people I grew up with they were kind of stuck in performing and they didn't like it. So I'm so thankful that my parents gave me that choice. I don't know. I mean, the pressure is when you're up high and you're looking down. You're about to start the act. You know that's when the pressure, that's when your mental toughness, you show kind of who you are in that moment.
Speaker 1:
Because even as wire walkers it is scary. Like if you move to, we would put our high-wares up in one building and perform like maybe that week then we take it all down and move to another building, so that wire is going to feel a little different, it's going to look a little different, so that would be scary. Sometimes that's the pressure point. We're going to say, you don't know, no, I do this down low. I can do this, you know, and you have to take that first step out.
Speaker 1:
Is there something that you do to mentally prepare yourself before you step your foot on that wire? You know my family, we always pray before we perform. That's just what we do in life. But, yeah, you just a normal higher act. You just do it. When I'm saying on top of Times Square, that is a thing where you're like, oh, this is what am I thinking. This is really scary, like all these fears come in your head for a split second but then you say, no, this is what I was born to do. You know, this is what I trained for this moment my whole life. I'm not going to let these lies in my head tell me I'm not good enough or what am I doing. Rob me of this experience and did you?
Speaker 2:
do Times Square prior to the accident or was Times Square post accident? Times Square was my comeback performance after the accident that was, yeah, so you'd never done Times Square before.
Speaker 2:
No, no, oh, wow. I know that your story of resiliency one of, because we all have adversity that comes towards us in life, but one of those is in having a high wire walk accident. Is that how you yes, just can you share that with the listeners? What happened, kind of bring us back to that day, what you can recall, what became fuzzy and yeah, and where you are today? Sure, yeah.
Speaker 1:
So my brother had called me and asked if I want to come down to Florida and join his high wire troop, because they were training to do an eight person pyramid on the wire. It was to be a world record. It was to break our own world record that we still hold from Japan in 2001, the highest four level eight person pyramid on the high wire. And so he asked if I want to come down there. I said yes, of course. So I went down and was training with them. It was my passion, I love it, and so we were doing one of the final rehearsals up high, full height the tent, before the show was to open. It was a day or two before the show was to open and I remember building up the pyramid. You know there's several levels. I was on the second level and then the pyramid started bottom. Guys started walking the pyramid out onto the wire and I said I love guys, this feels great because it felt really solid and good. And the next thing, I know I got this jolt like I never felt in my whole 35 prior years of wire walking. And we're trained to stay very solid on the wire because I have someone on a bar on my shoulders above me so I can't move my shoulders, I'll knock them off. I have people below me, I'm standing on a bar, so I can't move my feet. So I was trying to stay as solid as I could and I just remember my balancing pulled in up and down and up and then it went totally vertical and it pulled me off and I was like, ok, this is happening. It all was kind of slow motion and I thought, ok, and nothing had happened like this to me in my life. So it was crazy. It was very calm. I was never scared that moment. You can't be scared those moments. You have to think through in your head what's the best option. So I thought, ok, I have to grab the wire, like my parents had taught me. So I remember turning to look for the wire. It was below me at that moment and I went to reach but I was too far away because I was on the second level and I fell away from the wire. So I saw that wire below me and it slowly fast. But in my mind it was very slowly moved above me and so I was like, ok, this is happening, what do I do? And for some reason I thought about my little boy at a five.
Speaker 1:
At the time my son and I thought I'm right handed, my stronger arm. I want to protect my right side, to pick up. I don't know why that came to my mind. I thought about that and I think I tried to kind of protect my right side and I think I accomplished that kind of twist into the left because I broke primarily the left side of my body. So I thought about that and I saw the ground, the big circus ring I saw getting closer and closer and closer to my face and then smack, you know, I hit and I couldn't breathe. And I looked up at a man that was on the ground standing above me and I was like can't breathe, I can't breathe and I realized, oh, it's just the wind knocked out of me, it's OK, you know, my breath finally came back.
Speaker 1:
My brother was at my side almost instantly. He was on the wire as well, but he was able to grab that wire. So he says he doesn't remember how he shimmied off the wire and got down. But he was at my side almost instantly and I kept trying to get up. I wanted to check on everyone else. I was so worried. So funny how it comes to me sometimes when I'm talking about it. I remember that feeling of being so worried about everyone else, you know, and I kept wanting to get up. My brother was like no, stay down. And I kept going no, I want to get up.
Speaker 1:
And I thought about an accident that happened back in 1962 that I was told about. My great uncle was paralyzed from the waist down from that accident and so I thought about that. There's video actually of me kicking my legs, laying on my back, kicking my legs in there, going I'm fine, I'm fine, let me up. But what my brother has told me since, I had no idea. In my face I was completely unrecognizable. Within a minute of the accident my face had swollen out so much there was blood coming out of everything. I had no idea. I was just going to get up and make sure everyone was OK. So, finally, I was listening to my brother and I just laid there and waited for the ambulance.
Speaker 1:
I remember so many things. I remember my brother, my dad and me and, like dad, we fell. I get emotional when it's about my family. I'm thinking what they must develop, I'm fine, right, but I'm thinking about my dad hearing that. Oh yeah, I remember that. I remember finally the ambulance getting there, the paramedics eating me with ambulance and my brother jumping in the ambulance with us and getting to the hospital. I never lost consciousness.
Speaker 1:
Got to the hospital, a doctor friend of ours heard about it, ran over and was like, right, there was like you're going to be okay, and then it all gets blurry. They gave me medication. I was in an incredible amount of pain at that point. The whole time I was like I'm fine, guys, I'm fine, I'm going to be fine. But I didn't know the extent of my injuries. I didn't know. My dad recently told my mom that the doctor told him they didn't know that I'd make it through the night. I didn't know that I was fine. You know, shall I list my injuries? I kind of. I think so. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
So I broke my left calcaneus, that's in your heel. That bone was tenty now and that's a pretty serious injury, they say, as far as like quality of life after the injury. So I broke my left calcaneus. I broke my left humerus. I got a rod and nine screws here. That's a bone in my arm, like kind of my bicep area, that big bone there. I broke ribs, lacerated my liver punctured, my right ear canal knocked out, a bunch of teeth sheared a bunch of like an angle off and I broke every single bone on my face. Everyone, everyone from the like orbitals in my eyes and down was like shattered Hence.
Speaker 1:
I was unrecognizable, you know, within a minute of the accident. I had no idea. I thought I was fine. I did it. Quite no, I was in the hospital and everything was blurry. They had done a handful of surgeries on me, but I wasn't real aware of that because I was under medication at that time. The first surgery they did is they repaired my calcaneus, they bolted my heel, I think. The next day they did my arm. Then I had a day off from it.
Speaker 1:
I turned 40 in the trauma unit, which was great right, you know. They put my face back together. I had something I believe it was 10 plates and 72 screws in my face. I still have a ton of metal in my face. All of that's kind of a blur. I don't remember a lot of that. The moment that I remember at the hospital very vividly is I woke up in the middle of the night and I was like I'm not breathing. Oh, my goodness, I'm not breathing. I looked and my mom was in a chair and the dear friend was there sitting there and I was like trying to go. Mom, mom, I can't breathe.
Speaker 2:
We hope that you've enjoyed part one of our two-part interview with Leana Walenda, the world renowned and known seventh generation high wire walker, who experienced such a tragic event at an early stage in life while attempting to do an eight person pyramid. Come back and join us for part two. We'll continue to hear about Leana's recovery story and how she's overcome this one experience in life and has determined to not let it define her and what she's going to do in the future. We'll see you soon.