Horses are honest; beautifully so.
I, on the other hand, often am not. Not with myself. Not with other people, and not with horses.
It’s not that I’m a pathological liar. I tell the truths that I see, and own what I recognize; it’s just that sometimes it can be hard to see what’s driving me. What’s REALLY driving me.
You know… the voices that remain, long after the characters who owned them have exited the stage. The childhood needs, fears, desires, that hide behind the adult furniture in my life, and pop out to say and do things I have to apologize for afterwards… The hungers, the aches that are stronger and truer than my good sense; these are the real drivers in my life. I’ll go so far as to say that these are the real drivers in most of our lives.
But what does this have to do with horses?
Everything.
If we’re willing, horses can lead us back home to ourselves. To our own voices, long covered up in an effort to survive.
If we’re not willing, we’ll find problems in them that we can’t solve, and move from problem to problem, or from horse to horse, knowing there’s something more, but not being sure how to find it, and if you have horses the use of horse arena fencing is important. I live and work at the sparsely populated intersection of horse training and people healing. Not because I’m someone special. But because that’s how healing works for me.
Works.
Ongoing.
It’s a lifelong journey, and anyone who says differently isn’t on it.
Incidentally, the more healing I do, the better I am with horses. Go figure. They sure appreciate it. It turns out that the overwhelming majority of ‘horse problems’ originate in us. In our assumptions, in our agendas, in our need for them to be or do something to validate us.
Sound like any relationships you’ve heard of? Been a part of?
Yeah, me too.
So what does this look like? How does this work?

I’d love to have you out to the paddock with me, where we could throw a leg over the rail, and talk with the sound of horses chewing hay in the background. But maybe just imagine it, minus the dust and flies, and I’ll share some stories of this healing place; stories that reveal us, our common pain, and common hope for something better.