Truth & Loss...

For us to speak our truth, we must be in relationship with loss. This understanding is so easily forgotten in the details of life and relationship but if we don’t pay attention, our unspoken truths become resentments and then we are truly lost in ourselves and to the other person. 

When I’m in the round pen with a horse, I begin the “conversation” by asking for what I want. Sometimes I get it right away and other times I need to ask bigger or differently.  It depends on the horse but I’ve worked with enough horses that I know in the end I will find what works.  I don’t take their response personally, get angry, or create a story about it. 

I don’t think, I’m not good enough to get this horse to do what I want it to do, or if this horse really cared about me it would do what I asked without me having to ask again, or the big one, if I truly ask for what I want this horse will not like me and abandon me. 

It always comes back to, I want this horse, man, woman, child to love me.  So we do mental and emotional summersaults for this result. 

It took much practice and exercising of my “ask for what I want” muscle to be able to do this effortlessly, to read the energy of the horses, to know how to approach, give pressure and release pressure.  But to even begin the practice I had to release my fear of abandonment.  That was the first lesson. 

I accepted that the horse might not come back to me if I asked for what I wanted and expressed my desires clearly. What I learned was that when I got clear and honest, the horses wanted to be round me, they would always “join up.” 

This isn’t easy to practice with our fellow human’s because they show up with their own stories and it get’s complicated quickly.  It is with the horses that we can first get our own sense of how it feels to ask for what we want and practice feeling the energy of clarity.  Then with baby steps we can take the work out of the round pen, realizing that not speaking our truth is no longer an option.  Even if it means loss. 

Because in the end we will find those who can hold a space for us in our entirety and this LOVE.