Ashdown Equestrian

Joey is progressing nicely! What a lovely horse she is becoming 😍

Happy birthday to the centre on our universe! Mark you are the best daddy and husband and we all hope you have the best year ever!! Love Quinn, Henry, Charlie, and ME!! Xoxoxo

I don’t know what to write today. For the first time in a long time, I have nothing. Right now, my words and my voice are not what you need to see and hear. These things of which I write, this lifestyle and all that usually consumes me, feel meaningless and small.

I’m watching people and their businesses begin to crumble with taking sides, going public about what they believe. I’m not ready to take part in this, yet, though you can be sure that I have increasingly strong thoughts and feelings about what is going on in the world right now.

This is not a political page. It never has been and I would rather shut down entirely than allow Keystone to spiral down into our going tribal, with barely-veiled threats and rants. Raising our fists and voices, waving our flags.

I am very aware that some of you feel rage and helplessness about what is going on in our world. Some of you feel righteousness, while others feel overwhelming fear. I would invite you to look at this thing we are teetering on, just as you would with a frightened horse, perhaps.

I so often think that our horsemanship parallels life.

As long as the one fears, or misunderstands, or is frustrated with the other, there will be discord. Friends become opponents. Relationships are so soon undermined with distrust! We suddenly reach a point where nothing anyone says, or writes, or actually does, is going to change the mind of the other. Nothing.

We dig in.

I, for one, do not appreciate being gaslit—from any side—for being consumed with the fear that we are on the brink of worldwide war. My fears, according to reputable news sources, are entirely justified. I maintain that fearing for one's loved ones, for the wellbeing of strangers, for small and powerless countries and for beautiful, vulnerable natural spaces goes far beyond politics. It goes far beyond any one individual's beliefs.

Yesterday, I slogged out to do my daily routine, the quietly hopeful round of rehab exercises with my horses and instead, I hung onto the gate post and cried.

How did we suddenly wake up and find that we will be either on the team of victors, or among the vanquished? How did we not see that there would be no familiar touchstone of right and wrong? That life has boiled down to being on the winning team? That if you are not among the chosen, you are not worth saving, any more?

When did being tough matter more than being willing partners? How did we allow ourselves to be pitted against friends?

There are a lot of us who are no longer walking our talk. We may strive for calm, for attunement, for balance in our lives but in reality, our hands no longer have any feeling. There is no softening, no empathy, no release of pressure. In our hearts, there is no kindness, no patience, no lightening up.

Half of us are riding on the muscle, using our spurs, pushing through at all costs. The other half are sucked back, shut down, sulled up… or else, fixing to bolt.

Most years, our hearts would be light at the impending arrival of spring. Instead, we are now living in a state of fight, flight or freeze. We have given up on partnership because no one is listening. We thought we knew the rules of engagement but what we knew for sure has suddenly changed.

Just like our horses, we are unable to find serenity—in horse speak: to lick, chew and swallow—because we are feeling unsafe. Unheard. Unloved.

When our own truths and beliefs matter more than anything or anyone around us, we’re in trouble. Right or wrong, we’re no longer living in harmony, or sustainably. We’re riding for a fall.

No, I have nothing to say about horsemanship today that will make a bloody bit of difference to the world around me. Tomorrow, I might have regained some shred of strength and composure. But not today, not right now.

Text: © Lee McLean/Keystone Equine.
Photo: Theresa Chipchase.