I’m always fascinated by the number of phone calls and emails I receive from women who start out by saying, “ I really don’t know exactly why I am contacting you, but somehow horses keep showing up in my life. I feel them calling to me.”
Often I discover, they mean the horses in their dreams, or the horses in a field they pass by on their way to work each morning. Books fall out of the bookshelf at the library with a horse on the front cover and their heart skips a beat.
On occasion someone has a real four- legged horse in her life and wants to feel more connected in the relationship. Always quick to point out that she doesn’t mean just while riding. But rather the deep reach into the heart and soul of the horse, learning to connect and interpret the vast energetic, kinesthetic territory of “horse speak.”
Often I will hear similar comments from participants on the first day of an Equine Guided Education program. The energy underneath the words almost sounds apologetic, as if the answers to such a mysterious invitation should be obvious. They aren’t obvious, they aren’t even answers. It’s so much bigger than this.
I understand all too well this intuitive reach, these longings and musings. It is no accident these women find me and often come to study with me.
Hearing the Call
Eight years ago I heard horses calling to me and as it turned out… quite loudly.
At the time, I was traveling 21 days a month on a plane, working in a high paced and demanding field as unrelated to horses as you could get. I flew to exotic locations, wore expensive suits, stayed in fancy hotels and walked around daily with a huge hole in my heart. The only horses in my life were ceramic ones that I had collected since childhood.
Looking back, it wasn’t that I lacked anything, nor was I identifiably unhappy. Upon reflection these many years later, “ the hole” was the disconnection from my spirit’s calling, the yearning for integration and completion.
Horse Medicine
On Thanksgiving Day 1998 while hiking at Tennessee Valley, a horse (named Mystery) literally fell out of the sky and on top of me. A young rider had lost control of her horse when someone playing Frisbee missed his or her mark and hit the horse. The horse spooked, reared and like a derailed train slid off course and right into me. I was thrown into the air and landed sprawled on the hood of my car underneath 1300 pounds of horseflesh. Miraculously, I didn’t break any bones, although my body was so black and blue and swollen that it took about eight weeks to fully heal. But the accident abruptly and irreversibly awakened something deep inside of me and I would never be the same.
I slowed down; I listened intently to that odd, inaudible voice and gave it permission to inform my life. I took long walks in nature and observed the natural cues from the environment that beckoned me to take action and believe. I tuned out everyone who told me I was nuts and/or too old and/or too inexperienced to center my world around horses. I decided to pursue my love of horses and sponsor a horse appropriately named Sage. After a few months the opportunity presented itself and I purchased her.
Eight years have passed in what seems like the wink of an eye. Sage and I are still together. Today we live on 1000 acres in Tomales, Ca and teach Equine Guided Education classes. I also have a retirement home for 28 horses that Sage helps me manage as lead mare in the herd.
Like the women who call me today, I could never have imagined this life all those years ago. Nor the countless adventures of Sage and me in between then and now that shaped both our destinies. I only know, it was impossible for me not to follow the call, to trust that voice of intuition and test the muscle of faith.
And if you are reading this and saying to yourself ‘she sounds like me,’ I say to you hold your dreams up to the light and pay close attention to the horses in your life.
