Your Horse Knows The Way Home

“Always trust your horse. Your horse knows the way through the forest… The way home… you know, to your happy destiny”

Hmmm… well on one level this resonates with me. When I was 11 or 12 yrs old I got lost while riding through the river bottoms.. After going round in circles for a long time, unable to find the path to get me through the dense thickets and trees out of the river bottom, I dropped my reins and started crying. My horse, as if thinking, “oh can we stop this nonsense and go home now?” immediately turned and found a seemingly invisible path and took us out of there….

There is much more to this story… a story my mother claims not to have heard until recently… I would argue that I told her all of it but, my memory is often giving me fits these days, so I don’t want to point fingers…

The part I’d be willing to admit I might not have told her about was that we, my riding pal and I, were actually someplace we were NOT supposed to be when this happened. 

We’d followed a girl we didn’t know, who was quite a bit older than us, and riding with a grown up man she didn’t seem to know well. We came across them at the riding stable where we always stopped for pop before our day long rides…We’d tried to keep up with them as they left the stables, but the man kept leading the girl ahead as though trying to lose us… We followed them through some woods into the flats of the shallow river that ran the distance from my house to town. Followed them until we could see the highway bridge in town. Town that was five miles from home.  It was at that point we turned back and let them ride on, aware we’d gone WAY past our boundaries. 

We retraced our way without trouble until the part where we had to get out of the dense wooded area running next to the river…that’s when my horse saved the day…

 What I “apparently “ neglected to mention to anyone until now was that later that night my riding pal called. Her parents were watching the news about a girl raped under that particular highway bridge earlier that day…. I don’t remember the details of the newscast but we always felt sure it was the couple we’d ridden with that day…

 My horse knew the way home… It’s the horse in these pictures by the way… She pretty much raised me….

 Here’s what I’m trying to have faith about… How can I trust the “horse” of my life to know the way “home” to a “happily ever after” that I have never seen….

 Horses, good ones, are obedient. They go where you rein them… I took Corky all over those river bottoms in all the wrong directions if home was my destination….The same can be said for the “horse” of my love life…

 So…I’m learning to let go of the reins and hope.. trust.…that I’ll know my happy destination when it kisses me… 

As I ride on through the forest this is what I tell myself…

No matter what got me off track… No matter who looked like my happy destination but turned out to be a path to nowhere or worse yet, heartache…

I get back on my horse and ride – with or without the situation or man.

Whether it’s hanging onto the saddle gripping me for dear life, or trying to get me to stop and let him on, or whether I’m holding him, or it, with one hand behind me (for the moment) as I ride on.

It is NOT about “letting go” of the past, or forgetting, it’s about moving on with ME..

I may take the memory of a man, or situation down my path with me..

I may dream about him when I sleep…

But I will make a concentrated effort to take with me only what was said and done that made me feel good. What helped me to understand myself, and expand…

This is easier said than done… I read the other day that we sometimes have to fake it till we make it… even if it means dancing around the house flapping our arms and clucking like a chicken until we make ourselves giggle when we have fallen into a funk…

And as ALWAYS, it is about gratitude… for every tiny thing that is good… the big things should be a no-brainer right? Actually, sometimes I need to be reminded to be thankful for them too… I’m still learning.

The important thing is that I am RIDING ON!!! And I am apparently continuing to blab about my journey as I do…

There are times I feel foolish laying my heart so wide open here for all to see and judge. I write it anyway because I just cannot believe I am the only one who has felt these things or traveled these paths…

So in case anyone else ever feels foolish for their choices in life, or is tempted to believe the voices telling them it’s silly to continue hoping and dreaming… At least this way they’ll know they are not alone… There is a blabbermouth out here waving her heart, the one covered with Wonder Woman Band-Aids, persistently at the sky, as she rides on.

Angels on your bodies.

Prairie Girl