Author Archives: stablewomen

I sit quietly tonight listening only to the rolling clatter of thunder that was distant but now sounds overhead. The dogs squirm at the rumbling and a sparse bit of rain is trying to drum itself on the roof… I have a feeling the storm gathers outside!

I am too weary at the moment to go observe these happenings, even capture them with a photograph. The last few days have consumed me. I sit reeking of the smell of Forschner’s Hoof Packing – a distinctly tar like smell – that has permeated my hands and refuses to wash away. Horses are fed. Dogs are not, yet. I am not, yet, and don’t care if I eat or not (lunch was big enough for the whole day).

Now the house crickets (a special luck blessing, you know) are chirping as the light pales behind gray to black clouds. I feel peaceful. I feel okay.

I have been pondering the diversity of horse people. Really thinking deeply about how we run the entire spectrum of possibilities. I know riders and non-riders, Dressage fanatics, rodeo bums, Veterinarians, natural hoof trimmers, crystal healers and blacksmiths (and everything in between). We often choose to disagree; we often roll our eyes at techniques used by another – but we will hop up and help another horse peep at the drop of a hat without even thinking about it. We are connected by horses. Period.

The flies have become obnoxious out there as the rain builds, ready to pour on us (I hope!). Through the office bay window I see tails in motion and feel sorry for the “less endowed” skimpy tailed Vega, Sage and Gritz! Majic is able to swish across his entire body with merely two swipes!

Majic

We are all different. Horses, people… we are uniquely the way we each are because of the circumstances of our lives and the challenges we have faced. We have so much we can learn from each other when we choose to listen and observe. Tonight, I’m remembering people I miss and all the things they taught me; remembering horses; observing my horses and recognizing all the differences they express simply in how they accept the storm approaching.

How cool!

Into what sort of vessel can I pour my doubts? A life of charmed circumstances and a constant flow of love still cannot suppress the mind chatter of uncertainties…

I remove the fly masks from my horses tonight and watch the balloon-like rising of a silvered moon, nearly full, and wonder how I could ever entertain a doubt. But, I do. Once a day, on average, the thoughts of limitation or misdirection creep across my mind as welcome as thorns strewn along a path. I deny them. I banish them with new thoughts of gratitude and the assertion of my confidence. Next day… they return and laugh, no, fart, in my face with such disrespect and ulterior motives. Yet, I will prevail. They cannot bend me.

Perhaps our strength arises from such pestering of doubt – without something of this ilk to work ourselves away from, we might be slack and numb to the disruptions and ignore our lives into a lackluster existence instead of truly being. I feel the draw of sight setting low, of expectations beneath yesterday’s accomplishments. One can be dishonestly proud of oneself in this mode of functioning – or dis-functioning…

Instead, my doubts fuel the fire of decision and devotion. What I choose to embrace will not be discarded on a whim! The voices of disruption, even when they come from my own mouth and mind, have no power to circumvent dreams set into motion… the voices provide a counter energy to remind me of where I refuse to drift. Steady on. Deep breath.

Tonight is a night of lunar introspection. I have learned a lot from this mountain and this moon.

Delegating responsibility is a strange thing for me. Today, my wonderful working student is turning horses out and mucking while I try to “rest”. I got rear ended in my truck at a red light yesterday and have to judge a horse show tomorrow… I’m pretty sure I’m okay, just dazed and shaky mostly because it scared the willies out of me. The SUV that hit me was more damaged than my Ford Ranger XLT – what an awesome little truck I have. The hitch and ball arrangement has been bent, I pray that it is an easy fix… will investigate it all next week (yep, needed to add stuff to my plate!).

When I got home with hay yesterday, I noticed that my little ET magnet from Roswell had fallen off – strange, isn’t it, I was unhappy about losing that magnet… even thought about my bumper stickers from Hawaii when the guy hit me. I realize today that there are seemingly small, insignificant things that can mean a lot to us. Where these items came from is my attachment to them.

Now, my trailer hitch ball is bent up under the truck, but the tailgate works & she seemed to drive fine… I know I’m lucky.

I thought about a package of things that were sent to me from Australia and how, even after months of disconnection from the peep who sent them and lots of up and down energies, the things sent are precious to me…. I even put them in the dumpster a while back, then climbed in and dug through a week’s worth of horse poop to retrieve them on the morning the trash truck was coming. It’s not the things, it’s the people and places the things are tied to that give them such value.

I have the bear fetish my Mum got in Sedona on a trip she and I made many years back. I can clearly recall how she reacted when I drove us down into Sedona on the road from Flagstaff; how she gasped at the beauty… how she and I connected on that trip. How precious the memory and the carved bear are to me.

And, how precious the DH Tribe is to me – how a friend can take over and the horses are safe and cared for and I can rest… I can be still for a bit. I can heal.

My dogs gather around me and all put their paws on my body and lie down beside me… loyal little healers… best friends.

And my mare Penny is improving. She tore ligaments in her lower leg. The healing process is very slow. I make medicine for her, tribe members bring medicines for her, we are loving her through this. I do not know if she will be able to carry weight again after she recovers… her favorite thing is to work with tiny children anyway, so whatever the outcome, Penny will be okay here. She is adored.

Making Medicine

So today remains strange for me. I feel a bit sideways, kind of off center, a little dizzy but not in trouble… my neck and shoulders are so stiff that I think Monday will be a soak in hot mineral water day IF I can get the truck checked out early & feel safe driving it up north… and if the day isn’t 100 degrees, which it might be!

I’m realizing just how difficult it is for me to be still. I meditate, but that is my practice, it is actually doing something in my mind. I guess this day will be for practice of being still. To find the stillness again in my soul. The scary part about that is the possibility of “letting my guard down”; of feeling things I’ve been setting aside; of being aware of myself. Hmmm…

The rambling of this day, of these thoughts lets me see again through different eyes and know that I am on the right track with what we are doing with Dharmahorse. To watch my student caring for the horses and feel secure about their good manners in the (now gusty) wind and her good sense in their care and handling, well, I know we are special. We are important, even if it is only to these horses, we are important.

I sat for an hour watching the storms ease in last night. I needed that Earthing time to just stand barefooted in red dirt and breathe the ionized air. So much is happening in life here that I forget to breathe deeply. I can hear my Mum’s voice telling me to do so. She always reminded us to breathe – even when not riding a horse!

People used to not be able to tell our voices apart over the telephone. I wonder if that is weird now for some folks… if I sound that much like my Mum, now that she is in Spirit and no longer on Earth, if it is disconcerting. I watched the storms coming in and thought about the thunder. My sweet Anglo-Arab Dorje’s name meant Thunderbolt and his best friend, Darjeeling’s name meant place of the thunderbolt.

I miss them.

I sleep with a Himalayan Crystal Salt lamp that ionizes the air in my bedroom. It really supports my good health and it feels good to see it glowing beside my bed. The feeling it brings is so similar to the thunderstorm air, the freshness of crackling lightning charged ions lifting my mood and energizing my body.  I also have two large, smooth, quartz river stones that, when rubbed together very quickly will glow in a dark room and create the ozone smell of lightning charged air. I keep them beside my bed, also.

All the trees are full of life after last night’s soaking rains. I am so grateful today – even if I am sliding about in some mud and having to rake up wet poop into piles to deal with tomorrow! WATER IS LIFE.

I fixed a cup of Darjeeling tea. Have a quesadilla heating for lunch. I’ll finish some indoor work here while Vega is in turn out, then go rake his poo before he goes back to his “room”. The day is a peaceful one with no outside contact. I’m organizing my mind.

The thunder always vibrates in the ground, the walls and in my chest. I feel the storms before they arrive. So do the horses. If only I could feel other things before they arrive – but then, there would be no surprises! And while horses are not exactly fond of surprises – I am often thrilled when something catches me “off guard” and shifts my perspective. Even the strange things… they keep life interesting.

Now, for that lunch and a bit more ‘puter time.

I keep trying to go to sleep tonight, but the west wind blasting against my bedroom walls has no soothing properties nor sense of “white noise” to it. It is simply noise. And at decibels of not just annoying levels, it feels like a deliberate assault! The wind is usually colder from the east and always more violent. I hope it does not shift – even if that would allow sleep for me (gusts hitting the office walls instead), it would be a meaner wind for the horses.

And today I had a wave of weariness wash over me that left me almost “sleep walking” through the treatments for the horses. I had made a full quart of comfrey root decoction spray that I wandered around the stable yard dispensing to those in need every couple of hours. Penny has just wrenched her tendons low on her cannon and into her fetlock on her left foreleg. I do hours of cold hosing; had poulticed it for 2 days; keep her as quite as possible and used support wraps at first. Now, I drench her leg with the comfrey and use homeopathic arnica gel topically and ruta grav orally.

Majic has tender hind hooves, so I’m soaking his hooves in tubs of apple cider vinegar while I’m mucking and spraying the soles of his hooves with the comfrey as often as possible. Wally played too hard with the “board of directors” (Wally, Sage and Grits – they stand in a circle, heads in the middle as if they are in a meeting) yesterday and he has a puffy fetlock (Arrggghhhh) that I’m spraying as well – with the comfrey.

So, I walk around the stable yard with the spray bottle, treating each horse, every couple of hours. The new horse, Vega, stomps his front feet because of the flies (all 3 of them right now!) and he has his knee a little filled from the concussion – you guessed it, comfrey!

I also have scraped my arm on a hoof while trimming and had to let it bleed a lot to clean it out, then sprayed colloidal silver on it and later, comfrey. Making all my own medicine (including the colloidal silver) means I know exactly what I’m using and can be specific to the needs of the animals and myself!

So, I dropped a cinder block (used to hold down the tarps on the hay in my horribly leaky hay barn) on my toe last week and pulled my boot off immediately to apply the comfrey root remedy which heals bruises especially well. I did not even need to remove my sock – said toe was sticking out through a large hole, making treatment that much easier 🙂

I was watching one of those Retro TV Stations and thought about the way people have changed in just their relationship to a “life style”… In the past (not SO awfully far back ’cause I was alive then!), a family was prosperous if they had shelter, utilities, good food in the pantry and lots of love to share. An automobile was a fun thing to decide upon and it was usually a necessity to have one…. ONE.

A telephone was another necessity, but a television was a luxury. I can see the eyes rolling on kids who have heard it all before and are just as smart, adventurous and savvy as my generation was when we stood up for Peace and challenged the notions that women and people of color were not entitled to the same respect and rights as white men. You see, we sort of blazed a trail for those who came after us and set a foundation to build upon…

To build what…? I kind of wonder now. Of course, we have just, thankfully, seen some of our gains in human and women’s rights preserved – and that is no small achievement! I was a worried American for a while there, but the energy of sane, compassionate principles are holding steady. But, I see a strange style of prioritizing in the lives of my fellow citizens. When a cell phone that costs as much as a mortgage payment is a necessity for an eleven year old child (and the monthly payment for the service to that phone could feed that child for that month!), I am stunned. When planned obsolescence is the rule. When everyone wants to be a millionaire and citizens go hungry; when the lady on the TV complaining about her shabby apartment has a room size flat screen television behind her and a $200 manicure… well, I am just baffled! People are racing along, headlong into the abyss, following the advertisements and fads and fancies designed to suck up their dollars (hard earned or not) and use them, then spit them out as chaff, and these people are participating wholeheartedly!

I sound pessimistic and I really am not – I see reason making a comeback and a glimmer of hope for the Earth as planetary citizens see “the BIG Picture” behind the veils of capitalism’s misguided ravings. It will all work out. I can feel it… but I wonder why there isn’t a widespread acknowledgement of the problems (almost all of our problems!) caused by human abuse of this planet and I wonder why anyone would prefer a hamburger and fries shoved through a window over a plate full of veggie pasta, good wine and a salad served on a patio on a moonlit evening!

But, that’s just ME!

What makes a person (a woman especially, methinks) risk their own well being to avoid embarrassing someone else… or to be polite, or to be “liked”? I’ve done it. I have a very potent example from my past that I use to remind myself how absolutely dangerous it is to eat (to consume or accept) something questionable.

Such as warm cheesecake.

I was on a date with a man who was fascinating and attractive, many years my senior and being especially kind and gentle that night. After a nice supper, he took me to a tiny dessert place with incredible coffees and really cool art all over the walls. I chose a big piece of double chocolate cheesecake and decaf. Both were just warm. The latter, I could handle and had no reservations about. The former, I knew was going to be my undoing if I ate it… but I did… I didn’t wish to offend this very special man.

It takes a few hours to kick in – the food poisoning.

We had gone to my house and we were sitting in the grass, looking at stars when the world began spinning. I tried to be brave and got to my ginger root… chewed on it like a ravenous bear… threw up all over the bathroom… burning ginger making it up through my sinuses… gross to the tenth power.

He took me to the emergency room at the local clinic that was open until midnight. They actually had to give me IV fluids and an injection of something to stop the retching (and the violent “spinning”)… the shot worked within an hour… the needle hit a nerve in my hip where I had burning pain for over a month. My date was kind, helped me through the entire night and was still my companion after the “event”.

I have had many similar situations since (not involving food), where I was willing to overlook my own innate good sense or needs or well being or even the advice of close friends, so I could be a “good partner” or maintain a relationship or “not give up” when I believed I had “invested” a lot of myself into something.

Here it comes – nothing is worth the misery of the consequences of eating the metaphorical warm cheesecake! Seriously.

I know this from far past and recent past experiences. If you sacrifice yourself (your well being, your principles, your finances or your heart) for the sake of a relationship or its possibility – you will be vomiting and spinning, figuratively, because a real partnership does not base itself upon the sacrifice or the silence or the suffering of one of the partners. Ever.

While I thought I had learned this pretty thoroughly, I had a little lapse last year into the fantasy of a cheesecake experience that turned out to be warm – I’m kinda speaking in code now and I’m sure you get what I’m saying. Kinda, Oooops!! Yet, this time, I’m coming out okay. No hospitalization (so to speak), no bathroom to clean up (metaphor again), only a slightly rattled spirit and partially shaken heart. It’s a learning experience. A reinforcement of what I know deeply as truth. If something feels one-sided, it is one-sided and you cannot shift it if you are the one on the shitty end of the deal. You can spit it all out and save yourself. If the other was or is genuinely caring about you, they will shift things to balance it all. If they do not, count the lucky stars you see and move along. I know.

My life is unfolding in this brilliant and exciting way with the rescue of another special horse, the expansion of my fur family and the Dharmahorse tribe and a gradual release of the emotions that I have kept tamped down all these months for fear of them possessing me. I’m stronger than I thought!

And when I open a can of veggies and it seems puffy or smells odd – I toss that sucker in the trash! If I’m eating out and a meal seems questionable – I don’t eat it! If I sense that my own well being is in jeopardy, I speak up… I say, “what do you mean?”, “why are you doing (or not doing) this or that?”, “how can we solve this?”.

I am no longer going to just sit there and eat the warm cheesecake.

Every morning when we wake up, we face ourselves. While our thoughts may be of work to be done, plans to be made or people to please; our first awareness each day is of our own embodiment. I have found that if I wake up to chaos – a jumbled bedroom, a messy bathroom, a kitchen in disarray – my awareness is naturally negative. If we begin each morning defeated by circumstances and our own thoughts, how can we expect to grow and accomplish things?

Simplicity can free you. I had a riding student whose business was teaching people to un-clutter their lives. When offered a brochure, she would read it and hand it back, making a note if necessary in her own little book. She did not even take on, momentarily, the objects that would become clutter in her life. Her car was clean, neat, simple inside and out. I can only imagine how her home would be! Her life, truly, must have been (and is, she is just no longer my student) filled with clarity.

After knowing her, I took a long look at my own “feng shui”, the energy of my home and stable. I found that I had, once again, accumulated tons of things I did not need, but felt compelled to hang onto… just in case. Now, I must quickly say that you have always been able to walk freely throughout my home and see every wall, window, piece of furniture, etc. But, the clutter was there on the surface and, with the picture of my former student’s probable abode in my head, I decided to find myself under the accumulation.

A roll of trash bags in hand, I started at one end of the house and worked my way through… I only partially filled one large trash can, but I had opened up my world and the morning after, I faced a lovely bit of simple neatness. With 4 wonderful dogs sharing my home, I know it will never be spotless – but organized it must remain so I do not lose myself again under the insulation of clutter.

And insulation it can be. If you want to disappear and be “comfortably numb”, nothing works quite as well as just not caring, not cleaning and being a victim. Slipping quietly into the cocoon of the “setting sun world” where you do not have to shower, shave, dress or be productive. It can happen. Then, when your senses return, you see the sadness of it and look to the “great eastern sun”, the sun rising on your world and shining light into all the corners.

You take a deep breath, then another, clearing the “mind” and “soul” clutter with each exhalation. You begin to see everything around you, the trees, the earth, the horses and dogs and the world you create as sacred. Then you see yourself as a genuine, good human being and you find the joy of a day spent in meditation with a pot of tea and a cheese sandwich and it hits you – life is its own answer.

As I walked about the stable yard this evening, I felt a deeper connection to my past. I was remembering past stables, past horses – but not in a regretful or comparing way – I felt a keen sense of it all being linked. As if the energy of all the things I have done, seen and been were just as real and immediate as what I was doing tonight. I felt more real. more valid, more present than I have felt in years. It reminded of my childhood when I would spin head over heels under water in my grandfather’s pool with a swim mask on; churning thousands of bubbles, then release and let myself float to the surface with those bubbles… watching them… being them. In those moments, I felt connected to all the water on the planet. It was as if all water everywhere was dancing with me.

Tonight, I want you to feel deep connections to the important things in your life. I found the clarity and inspiration of my meditation to be my catalyst. It never hurts to relax. It never hurts to just breathe. It is powerful to take a penetrating look directly at yourself and allow that vision to become something awesome.