Some of this. Some of that.

❍

 

Saturday was the final session of Equine Therapy for me. For now, anyway. 

I did not want to attend because I have been grappling with such deep grief I felt I was not able to focus on the directed questions each week. I felt divided. I felt split. I am only one person, so it seemed important to me to be able to concentrate on each separate problem until each solution surfaced. However. The night before I was to meet with the herd and the counselors and the other participants, I received Divinely Intuited knowledge how to deal with what was fiercely perplexing me. My answer : what would my herd do? Much like the old question, what would Jesus do, only this, more pertinent for me. 

What would my herd do? 

My herd,

they simply be. 

They simply do. 

There's no hidden agendas with horses. 

They be. 

They do. 

So, since I was invited to learn from these creatures who are empathic and highly sensitive, I decided to go with it. Do what the herd would do. 

And, that, for me, would be, feel what I feel. Allow it to be. Don't take my own pulse. Just be. 

Just put one problem with the other, add them together, and allow the solution for both to simply come to me. And do.

Mid-way through the day's therapy, the tiny mini came up to me. 

She had never approached me before, not in any of the sessions. 

She did not want me to touch her. She stood in front of me. Just stood there. I didn't speak. She didn't budge. We just stood there. Quietly. I didn't process any thoughts. I just stood there. After about 5 minutes' time, she turned left, I turned left, and we walked away from each other. 

The group was then directed to consider if there were anything we should leave in the barn, leave behind with the herd. I knew what I should do. 

 I burst into tears, sobbing hard, turning my head away, walking the inner perimeter of the arena. 

I need to leave my deep-seated grief with the herd. 

Didn't mean I would no longer feel sadness that Ziggy had gone Home. 

Didn't mean I wouldn't ever weep over his physical absence from me. 

But, it was time. It was time to break from drowning in grief and move a few steps forward into some form of acceptance. 

Gone is gone. 

Gone is gone. 

I'll never have him back at my side. 

Not physically, anyway. 

My personal purpose in slow-walking the arena was to make it mine. Not that it didn't belong to anyone else. But, I needed to be able to remember that, once I left there, my grief was safe in that space, in that building, held by the herd. That space, that time spent, will always be mine.

After completing my walkabout, the wee mini sauntered towards me, and in passing, bumped me with her nose as she slipped on by. 

I came home, empty yet peaceful, and napped three hours. 

*

Yesterday I began a new series of watercolours. A good friend lovingly named my old set of blackpaint feathers Talking Feathers. It was time....it is time....to once again watercolour my way through fragile feelings. 

I opened my watercolours supply box and pulled out the paper. 

Therein began the process of tearing paper. 

With each clean tear I whispered "thank you" to the now-stardust friend who long-distance tutor'd me in watercolour techniques a few years ago.  

Time for more Talking Feathers. 

And, my Old Man Doggie?....he's stardust now, also. 

Saturday night Mister Jones and I witnessed the most spectacular display of aurora borealis. Bands and curtains of indescribable colour. 

I hadn't been able to snowshoe up Coyote Hill Saturday, so, in the dark of the evening I stood on the deck and looked up over Coyote Hill where Ziggy's tiny body is in repose. I looked to the sky and whispered the poem which is now a prayer for me. 

Sleeping in the Forest. 

As my recitation spilled out into the indigo skies, a straight-to-the-heavenlies shot of aurora rose from above the exact spot where my doggie now sleeps. It flashed, and then it was gone. 

❍