Learning to Cope
I am not a horsewoman. I didn’t grow up around horses and when people start talking to me about withers and hands, I shake my head and agree with every word they say. I don’t know what lead my horse is in most of the time, and figuring out how to keep my butt in the saddle when I come to a complete stop is still on my bucket list.
I pushed my horse beyond a lope and ran for the first time last summer, and I assure you, if anyone would have seen this event in real time they would have thought “I don’t think she does that much…” My horse often deserves the credit for telling me where I need to be in a hairy situation, and while I love my own horses dearly; I unfortunately did not notice yours, or any other horse a person was riding earlier in a given day.
Though I am far from an expert on equine, I can confirm one thing to be absolutely true on the subject: a horse feeds off the emotions of its rider. This is a theory I have tested and confirmed myself throughout the last 15 years with the cowboy. While I may not be a horsewoman, I am a woman, and when I met Lucas, I was an 18-year-old version of a woman- with many emotions.
I honestly thought I was a fairly rational person before I met horses—but nothing had ever made me feel, or act, like a little kid more than these large animals. Scared. Frustrated. Nervous. Annoyed. Stupid. Embarrassed. All of which were the opposite of helpful in almost every situation.
I was also dating (and eventually married) a man who had little sympathy for a grown person behaving like a child, and the various consequences that took place because of this behavior. [Just to list a few: falling off, bucking off, wandering off, running off…many scenarios that ended in off.]
Since Lucas’ approach to laugh hysterically at my predicament was also not helping the matter- we both agreed to consent to a verbal contract to address the problem.
Terms and Conditions: I was not allowed to remove myself from a horse in an irrational state and he was not allowed to make fun of my irrational state to my face.
This was a difficult task for both of us.
I recall several newlywed evenings turn to night as I was stranded in the round pen, stuck in the saddle, as my husband kept his distance to let me sort it out. I would reach frustration to the point of tears, and he would give himself permission to walk away. Far from most love stories, but nonetheless it is our story.
For a long time, I tried to control my emotions. I would attempt to force myself to feel differently than I did, and in turn try to control the horse to do the same, but that didn’t work. I quickly found out that control WAS the problem. Not the emotions. Not the horse. But control.
Out of necessity, horses taught me how to cope. They didn’t teach me coping skills, like deep breathing, counting or tapping until I’m calm, but they taught me a process for managing the emotions I had in a way that didn’t feed my own body—and in turn theirs.
To this day, I still have moments when I feel scared, frustrated, nervous, annoyed, stupid or embarrassed on the back of a horse. While those moments aren’t nearly as frequent as they once were, they remind me just how far I have come. Not only with horses, but with myself. I used to carry so much shame for having any unpleasant emotions, but finding a strategy for navigating this discomfort was worth my time. Learning to cope with my emotions has been the key to unlocking some of my life’s greatest adventures, and helping others discover this process for themselves has been just another one of life’s many treasures.