derailment and runaway horses
To be derailed. To get off track. To find yourself sitting, staring at the track wondering quietly why you even cared so much about getting off it because you’re sitting in a field of wildflowers? This is where I find myself.
The week started with the Universe calling my bluff on the “no good very bad day” actually being an awesome thing (for reference read last week’s newsletter) - The cosmos raised me with a wink and a smile - laying down one awful interaction that pushed every. single. one. of my trauma buttons; all my fuses were blown leaving me in the good old darkness of my mind with only my inner child (she was a mess let me tell ya) and a few good friends I phoned in desperation to keep me company. A lovely three day migraine was my loyal companion, kept firmly in place by the broken record in my head replaying over and over and over the conversation that happened, the conversation that didn’t happen but I thought should have happened, and the conversation that might happen the next time I saw this person. Anyone else do this? Rumination they call it. I call it the reason I burst into soft quiet tears when I open my eyes on a Wednesday; the record was STILL playing.
And it ended with me, fully exhausted from the spiritual dilemmas I’d been wrestling with, sprinting across an arena and bear clawing up a sheer California hillside faster than I ever thought possible, trying to prevent any of the three ways I saw unfolding in my mind, of which my daughter was going to die. Scenario 1: the runaway horse she was on would lose its footing and roll down the mountainside crushing her. Scenario 2: The horse would rear up, lose its footing and roll backwards - again crushing her. Scenario 3: And the scariest for me. Her foot perhaps wasn’t free of her stirrup on the side I couldn’t see, she would try to dismount from the running horse and get dragged to death in front of me. All of this, in case you didn’t know, will play out in your mind within three seconds of you realizing that your eight year old daughter is on an out of control horse, making its way up a sheer hillside, she is screaming for your help and there is no way for you to get to her in time.
Miraculously, none of these fearful scenarios unfolded. In a moment of pure luck the horse paused to step over a boulder and she fell off the back of the horse, rolled down the hillside and was stopped by a tree. And this is where I met her, my hands all messed up from clawing my way up the hill, my heart racing, my tears threatening. I held her head in my hands, taking off her helmet, looking her in the eyes and loudly and lovingly telling her “You did SO GOOD baby, do you HEAR me?!! you did SO GOOD. I’m SO proud of you. Breathe baby…just…breathe.” Fair warning your voice will come from the center of the earth in moments like this. It will be deep like a channel, deeper than you’ve ever heard your voice sound before; it will shout but also softly hold the entirety of the moment you feel, pulsing like a heartbeat in your ears pouring hallelujahs onto the person you love in your arms.
Amidst all this, sitting there holding my kid, hearing the stable hands yelling “how do we get the horse down?” I noticed we were sitting in a bunch of yellow wildflowers and I oddly had the realization that the damn record from earlier in the week had stopped playing. All my over-thinking, reacting, and self-judgment from earlier in the week was replaced by an immense halo of humble gratitude that left me almost numb, my body and mind couldn’t hold it all - It felt like I was seeing myself outside myself sitting there alive on a hillside with my kid…who was also still alive. And that was enough.
The record came back a little bit later in the week. Softly though, almost like when you hear music from a car down the street and you think “oh yeah, I know that song” then the car drives away…and suddenly you can’t remember the melody. When that happened I just walked up to my kid and smelled her hair, and poured her some more of her favorite cereal. Life lessons, personal growth, spiritual expansion, all the work that we must not lose sight of…all of it could be held in this one moment, a container if you will, of intense heartbreaking gratitude. I could still reach out and touch what I loved.