My Beginning
I have always loved horses. I feel like lots of people say that, but that shouldn’t take the power away from it. Most people are interested in horses and find them beautiful and inspiring, but some people are inseparable from them. It’s hard to tell where the horses start and the person begins. I feel that I am one of those people. I can’t remember a single day I wasn’t in love with them. It has always been my heart's deepest desire to have horses around me all the time, and now that I do, that desire expresses as exultant joy, even when doing mundane chores like cleaning stalls. There are times just being able to place my hand on their shining coats is enough to make every wrong in my life justified. It’s all worth it to be with them.
I got my first horse when I was 12. To me it felt like centuries of waiting –12 years is a long time for a little girl. But now I see just how blessed I was to get a horse at such a young age, and to have parents who were supportive enough to facilitate that for me. I’m sure, in fact I know, that it required a lot of sacrifices on their part as parents of 9 children, yet they somehow made such sacrifices for each one of us. The story of how they got me my first horse is a miracle in and of itself, but I’ll share that on my blog another time
I can’t even say that my life changed on the day I got a horse. In my mind I always did. My life continued as it always had, but the physical space for a horse was now filled. The little gelding that came to me on my birthday (and is still with me) was followed by many other horses over the years, and each one has brought their own specific and divine lessons that have made me the person that I am. From severely traumatized mares to over-confident, even dangerous youngsters, each one has molded my understanding of relationships, healing, and the world around me.
This connection with horses was accompanied by a great love and respect for the Earth and my place in it. The only childhood experiences comparable to those I have had with horses were the ones I spent in the wilderness of Utah’s mountains, the backwoods of Pennsylvania, the scrubby undergrowth of southern Texas, and many other places. Climbing trees, collecting rocks, identifying flowers, and swimming with alligators were childhood moments that were just as formative as any church service or scripture passage, and far more memorable. The sacredness of these places was instinctual to me as a child, and I found myself seeking this connection to the Earth every day of my life.
And my life, like anyone’s, has had a lot of challenges. Childhood poverty, undiagnosed depression and PTSD, sexual abuse, chronic disease, rampant allergies, bullies, neck and head injuries from riding accidents, intense crises of faith and disenchantment with my childhood religion, among others. Are these things unique to me? Not at all. Do they make me unique? Yes. Without them I wouldn’t be myself. As much as they hurt, those phases of life were simply scenarios to show me myself. Again, I feel like lots of people say that, but we shouldn’t let that take the power away from it. If anything the multiple witnesses make it that much more true.
Through all of these dark places there was one unwavering constant: horses. I really can’t imagine my life without them. I want to be careful in saying that they were there for me through everything, because it’s easy to see our animal companions as therapists or crutches during life’s redemption arcs. While there were times I leaned on my horses probably more than was fair, even at a young age I knew that they were simply a bridge to the power that could truly heal me. Their innate ability to hold space, to simply graze and swish their tails as you cry into their manes, is the horse’s gift to us. To be a vehicle, in the most sacred of ways, to the source of all life and love. They are mirrors and windows in equal parts, showing us the most divine and most horrifying parts of ourselves, as well as the possibility of wholeness just on the other side of what we’re going through. Their miraculous healing prowess, both to overcome their own traumatic experiences, and to help us through ours, is something we will never be worthy of. But they offer it to us unconditionally nevertheless.
Seeing this depth of spirituality in the eyes of my horses was my first introduction to true, eternal healing. My early memories of the guiding, wise, and loving words of my parents were also an immovable corner stone in my conversion to universal truth.
It was my mother that first introduced me to healing. When I was a baby, she was a full time nurse. When I was a child, she was a budding herbalist (pun intended). When I was a teenager, she was devoured by a horrible sickness that transformed her into a powerful shamaness and wise woman, capable of curing herself of an “incurable” disease. Now that I’m an adult, she calls herself an alchemist: one who takes primordial, unfinished materials and forms them into their divine, true nature. She does this with plants, turning their raw forms into powerful tinctures. But she has also done this with herself, and with each of her clients. She has definitely done this with me.
It was this woman who taught me about Mother Earth, her eternal love and the thousands of ways she expresses that love through plants and animals. It was at my mother’s side that I studied flowers in Pennsylvanian ditch banks and forests. I helped her harvest the very plants that would save her life as they miraculously appeared in our backyard in Texas, because she didn’t have the strength to do it herself. In all of these experiences she would make sure to point out to me and my siblings the source of these beautiful things, and encouraged us to give quiet thanks to the Earth and to her Divine Creator. She taught me to see God in the flowers, in the trees, in the insects that bite and sting, in the rocks around my feet. To see God in myself. As young as she was in my youth, she carried a deep knowing that even she was unaware of, but as her gifts were put to task in healing her body (and soon after mine of the same disease) she learned the deeper, and more eternal gifts of healing her soul. And these, all of these, she imparted to me. I could never hope to be the expert herbalist that my mother is, but at least in the spiritual gifts I feel I can keep some pace with her.
Her first mention to me of alternative healing was in my young adulthood. I was very religious at the time and was serving a Christian mission. She emailed me about very exciting things she was reading about, and I shared with her what I was learning about God from my experiences. I found myself very dissatisfied with my work as a missionary, and with the impact (or lack thereof) that my efforts made. The state of the world alarmed me, and I felt destructively inadequate. This dissatisfaction led me to questions I had never asked before and I started looking at spiritual things in deeper and more desperate ways. Scriptures took on new meanings to me and my view of divinity began shifting. Yet when I shared these things with other missionaries or leaders they discouraged my newfound interpretations. I was told to stick to the basics and teach others what I was told. But the basics weren’t working, and people were suffering.
When I returned back home from my mission I was very depressed. As much as I loved the majority of the experience I couldn’t help but feel I had failed in my attempt to better the world.
My mother offered to me the new things she had been learning; things about energy, chakras, auras and the like. I was skeptical at first, but I trusted my mother.
That was over 8 years ago. Since then I have been both the farthest and the closest to God I have ever been. Though my faith looks different than it used to, in reality it is the same faith I have always had, but now it is unfettered. It has been a difficult few years piecing my understanding of reality back together and I am still in this process to be sure. But I have overcome challenges that I thought were permanent, and I have had experiences that I thought could only be imaginary for me. While the difficult things of life have not lessened, my ability to navigate them has increased as I have planted my feet back on the only things that have been steady since my birth:
The Divine Mother Earth, and the horses she has given me.
