Category: Introspection
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The Devolution of the Pushbutton Horse
About a decade ago, I went to the Scottsdale All Arabian Horse show. I was excited to revisit a place I had happy childhood and early adulthood memories of. I sat in the stands, watching an English class, feeling a sense of unease washing over me. As the class went on, all I could see […]
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What Sustains You?
We were working in Arizona last month, doing a series of clinics. After the warm day had cooled to a crisp desert evening, my friend Lori asked me this question. “What sustains you?” I didn’t have an answer off the top of my head. More disconcerting was that upon reflection, I couldn’t come up with […]
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Truce
When I started learning about horses, it was from a place of deep and abiding love. The way of being with horses that I fell into came from a place of entrenched warfare. Not everything done to them was horrible, or drew blood, but looking back I can see how dominating it was. Between learning […]
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Sanity in a Wheelbarrow
I confess: cleaning stalls, scrubbing water troughs, and slinging hay have been my lifelines to sanity this year. Add in horsehair in my mouth as I groom the summer coat from our horse’s bodies, and I can almost forget this is 2020. The barn, the horses, and all the chores that aren’t really chores are […]
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Thinking, Judging, Feeling
Despite several big worries that have been gnawing their way through my psyche today, that hot bath feeling of peace visited me. A part of my brain, the part that seems to ignite with anxiety at the smallest spark, jumped up and said, “What’s that?!” “What’s what?” I answered myself. “That feeling! What is it? […]