This week, I have done little more with my horses than sit briefly with them while they have eaten their hay, and tended to them in ways that we would consider most basic.
I have not set foot in my arena, nor written words in my notebook that mark the start of a project I promised myself I would begin this week.
There are a host of flowers that have bloomed without my witnessing. Oddly shaped mushrooms that have completed a full life cycle without my noticing, until I glimpsed them just near the end.
There are things that have not got done that people are waiting on me for.
What I have done is been with my child as they navigate big feelings and ways of showing up in the world that sometimes exceeds what their body is able to manage.
I have allowed myself to flow with days broken up into fragments, snatching moments to get things done that allow my work, my family, my horses, my life to keep ticking, to keep going.
I’ve gathered with groups of women- so many glorious women- for the equinox; heard their stories, created reverence for the moment we are in, the coming of the new season (thank you, you are all a blessing).
I’ve grieved a little, let myself flow with what is, instead of what I’ve planned.
I’ve thought deeply on what is means to move with tenderness, what softness means as a practice. The ways we can hold each other and the ways in which we are held.
I’ve recognised my privilege to be able to put work down and pick my child up. The privilege of being needed and being able to meet that need.
I know I’m not alone in this. I’m so far from alone in this.
And yet.
And yet, I see little acknowledgement in the horse world, in wider conversations, that speaks to caregiving. That speaks to its reality.
And yet most of the women (with a handful of exceptions it is women I am in conversation with) that I work with, gather with, have caregiving roles that often extend them beyond what a human over the course of an average day should be asked to manage.
And yet they still show up. They are at the barn and the lessons and the clinics. They don’t ask first how to put down what they carry; instead their questions consider how it is they can hold all that they hold with more grace, with more love, with more ease.
And they are tired. So desperately tired.
I don’t know what this is, other than a post that says I see you.
It’s not going to be for everyone but those it is for will get it, will see themselves in it.
So many of us hold so much, silently, invisibly.
I hope you can meet yourself gently in the directions you are pulled.
I hope you are met gently in the spaces you show up.
And perhaps we need to create more of these spaces for each other
