equine therapy

mr. solly ~ groomed and ready

getting more acquainted (photo by, tina)

losing my fears by the minute (photo by, tina)

lunging with mr. chance (photo by, tina)

and...the muppet of my dreams~ renaldo!

(he is fond of my bag of apples)

it is said that everyone grieves differently. that grief is a process. that it will catch you off guard over and over again. my process has felt like falling down a well, causing me to feel un~well and reclusive. not being one to easily ask for help, it has taken some time to devise a plan of how to climb back out.

i began with the simplest of silent prayers to no one in particular~ "please help me." i asked this over and over for days and weeks.

along with my prayers, i knew instinctively the way out of the well included horses. but the lift up and out would require losing my baseless fear of them. overcoming one fear to soothe another.

so, i asked for help.

and miss tina answered with generosity and compassion and her 2 rescued horses. this is my second week of meeting her at the big barn with 11 apples split into bites. i've learned to put a harness on both her horses, to walk beside them, to groom them and shift with them when they fidget. today we worked the lunge line. 

already, i can feel a change. more courage, more calm, more willingness to speak up. i am beginning to see the light.

fresh hay

There came a recent time when the barn was almost empty. There were no words to speak of that almost emptiness, that dearth of all things that felt sustaining. I walked the floors kicking at the thin layer of hay and dust, searching for what to do, how to fill it all back up again. But in the kicking and shuffling back and forth, I came to understand there is no filling back up or in with what has already been and what used to be.

There came a recent time when the only option was to let the almost emptiness be.

To allow, allow the ghosts of fear and falseness dance the length of the dusty boards until the dirge of decades exhausted itself.

It still has a few more refrains to play.

And I still have almost nothing to say.

I am only just now scouting fields for fresh hay.

The time of choosing and cutting and baling to fill in the almost emptiness will arrive, I trust, someday.



{p.s. and by the way~ do not interpret this as tinged with sadness. it is re-calibration that cannot be expressed. neither happy nor sad. simply what is and has been. xo}