It’s a tender, imperfect thing to write about beginnings when so many are facing new beginnings in ways that seem unfathomable. Where homes have been lost, or worse still- loved ones. Through wind and rain or war. Perhaps all of them together.
Beginning, and beginning and beginning again is something we collectively struggle with.
Especially when beginning again is not something we have chosen.
Especially when beginning again is being asked of a body already running on empty.
Where to begin, how to begin, what to begin with.
What does beginning even look like, we might just ask ourselves?
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I told myself that this past weekend marked the return to a regular horsing schedule. This last month, I’ve struggled to find regular horsing time. The moment I went to pull on my boots, there was something else that was required.
A little person needing me in particular ways that are important right now, creating a domino effect of behind-ness on tasks that needed to get done, shading in the windows when I would normally be outside.
For me, writing and being with my horses help me make sense of myself and all my conspiring parts. They help me order the disorderly in my head, connect me back to my roots, allow spaces to reappear between cells.
Not riding and not writing- two things that often get consumed in the cracks of needs- produces a particular kind of tension on my insides. One of yearning and a certain tinge of heartbreak.
I’ve long since lost the desire to dismiss this as dramatic. I’ve long since recognised what I need and I’m happy to embrace it.
And yet, when the rhythm has been lost, there is a fog that can descend. One that convinces you that beginning involves a big-ness that requires something special for you to start.
A big wad of time. More space. The right weather. Everyone around you being happy.
But to begin does not require this.
Beginning is a pen and paper, and two minutes to write within the seams.
Beginning is not ‘I only have 20 minutes to be with my horse’. It’s ‘I have 20 minutes with my horse’.
And so, I begin again.
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In 2004, I was based in Sri Lanka after the Tsunami. I felt out of my depth, a young and privileged white girl in a sea of devastation I found hard to comprehend.
Unsure how to take care of the 30 or so children charged within my care, I bought paper and pencils and set them on the table.
A solution for circumstances that existed beyond words.
They drew for me. Bodies lodged up trees. Big angry waves. Boats, houses, cars, chopped in half.
I sat down, looked at the sky and said, I don’t know where to start.
I felt things looming, overwhelming.
You start by acknowledging where they’ve been, a voice inside me told me back.
And then you begin.
You begin with what’s possible and you make your way from there.
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My husband placed an old glass milk bottle on the table and directed me inside.
I found this buried outside the stables, he told me, a natural terrarium. I think it’s from the 60’s.
I looked inside the bottle. A tiny tree fern grew inside. Roots flush against glass sides, bright green leaves fanning to its ceiling.
I marvelled.
Life finds a way, he smiled.
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For those beginning and beginning and beginning again.
However life might find you.
