How Can I Orient in a Disorienting Time?

Question of April

I was standing legs akimbo with a blue flag.

I was defending my corner.

She stood next to me and kept saying in a calm voice “This is our corner” as a 1200 pound animal hurled toward us. I was trusting her and my entire focus was there—in that moment. How could it not be?

Context: My family now owns an 18 year old ranch horse named Rocky. If you aren’t familiar with horses (which I wasn’t, which I am becoming), that’s old. He spent a good life working cows and being ridden by cowboys with spurs who likely made him do whatever they needed despite his state. Not much down time. Not much 1:1 attention. Not much choice. Low man in the herd (bite marks from other horses to prove what his previous owner said). Why we have him is a long story but that’s not the story I want to tell. When he came to us, he was much skinnier and tight, as in muscle tight, as in alert, as in tense. He’s changing. He’s a love: remarkably chill around sudden movements and loud noises, an expert at full rolls in the dirt and starting to feel nourished. Now he’s got a new job: un-learning some habits, being loved on by all of us and ridden by Eula, responding to boundaries, and enjoying life with his paddock mates, another horse, a bunch of goats and some black chickens who insist on eating by his side.

By some stroke of divinity, he lives down the road at my friend’s house next door to a woman who works with horses and their nervous systems through liberty work. What are the chances?! Her clients are skilled “horse people” who come to her with their challenging horses. Plus me! She was open to taking Rocky and I on and, in our first lesson, we worked on promoting oxytocin and dopamine, waiting for him to settle, giving him choices, locating my own grounded energy in my belly, and defending the corner he always wants to go to (it leads to his barn). We gave him that gentle but firm boundary. Our energy emanating out. Our stance clear. Unconditional love toward him and toward myself, she reminds me. After his 4th galloping approach of not being able to get past us, she said, “Okay, now he knows. Let’s now give him a little bit of the corner.” We started to walk away. Instead of darting to the corner, he joined with us as we moved around the arena. Shoulder to shoulder. A horse without a halter connecting now to us—the herd. Clear in his position but not beaten down. Safe.

Holy shit.

I am learning how to parent my kids and how to love myself through this process.

I am learning how to bring pure focus to one task.

Sometimes, I am overwhelmed with all the care, mucking, feeding, and—gawd—the amount of $$$. On warm days, I’ve sat on the grassy ground with my head in my hands and said to my friend, “I can’t believe we own a horse. What was I thinking? I don’t have time for this. There’s so much I need to be doing that isn’t this. There are so many other important ways I could spend this money.”

Yet, it and he have perfectly exposed all of my edges.

Eula too! She is learning how to breathe more deeply as the horse trainer instructs her to bring him to a halt and blow out onto his mane, “Let him know that you are relaxed and then he will relax.”

The whole situation is PERFECT.

The fig. The horse. The daughter.

You know that we live in a disorienting time.

Maybe all eras are disorienting.

I don’t think so, though.

I keep circling back to seasonal living and being exactly where I am in my tactile life. Here I am, watering my plants, hugging this person, sweeping the floor, listening to a story, learning how to do loving fascial work on a horse (!!), letting him know with my arm block that he can’t mouth or nip me. When everything becomes vaster and faster, when AI and war and pings and screens and time speeding up is coming at me, I double down on this day, this month not the 5 year or 10 year plan. I once read about a man who had fallen into a crevice and been left for dead on an icy mountain. He made his way out and had to crawl miles upon miles back down with two broken legs, no food or water, and very little life-force. He spoke about finding small points in the short distance to focus on: If I can get to that rock, then I’ll rest; okay, now I’ll go to that next rock. In tiny mental increments, he made his way down. He said that If he’d focused on the feat and impossibility of the epic length of the journey down the mountain, he never would have made it.

Titration of sorts.

Or, what Somatic Experiencing folks call “pockets of safety.”

I worry whether I’m ignoring the big picture.

But then I remember that the only way to truly be in the big picture is by bringing enough resilience on board to be in the big picture without collapsing.

So, this is my exploration this month.

HOW can I orient in this disorienting world?

How can you?

How can we?

Because being disoriented in a disorienting world isn’t going to help us or anyone else. Eula watched one of the liberty lessons and has hawk ears when I’m talking with friends. She’s overhead me telling stories about the nervous system work with Rocky. I intentionally tell generally uncensored by age appropriate stories to other people in front of my kids because I wanted my kids to feel my human texture, to know how amazed I am by life, how I am learning, how they can be imperfect and learning their whole lives too. A few days ago, she walked out from her room and circled around me like a wildcat as I stirred the beans. I know that subtle move of hers—gearing up with a question, deciding how she’s going to ask it, nervous and pumping herself up. I took note of our wise fig tree, once as small as she was, now on our countertop, large and arching over us. I remembered how it is breathing for us and we are breathing for it.

“Mom,” she asked, “what does unconditional love mean?”

There it was.

There it is.

All the feelings in her body, in my body, in the bodies,