The other night I received very clear and direct guidance to set a vision of a life that I have been holding for seven years, on fire.
To burn it.
Recount it, wrap it in love and ceremony and honor it, and give it to the fire so that it can alchemize fully and free myself from the energetic attachment that remains within me as I hold tightly to the possibility that it still might come into fruition.
The “knowing” of what I needed to do came after I’d had a conversation with a dear friend and felt the now-familiar stab of deep sadness overtake me as I longed for the horizon that once beckoned me long ago. I took hours to rewrite it all, the whole vision that had come to me many years ago, a vision of a life that has been silently guiding nearly every one of my decisions up until I became pregnant with Sofía.
Swan dives in love
“We can never know in the beginning, in giving ourselves to a person, to a work, to a marriage or to a cause, exactly what kind of love we are involved with. When we demand a certain specific kind of reciprocation before the revelation has flowered completely we find ourselves disappointed and bereaved and in that grief may miss the particular form of love that is actually possible but did not meet our initial and too specific expectations. Feeling bereft we take our identity as one who is disappointed in love, our almost proud disappointment preventing us from seeing the lack of reciprocation from the person or the situation as simply a difficult invitation into a deeper and yet unrecognizable form of affection.
~ David Whyte - Excerpt from The Three Marriages
Two years ago I was walking in the square of Coyhaique talking with another beloved friend back in Pucón, sharing a glimpse of the territory we were traversing as we continued our process of finding our way home. She was celebrating the way that it seemed things were pulling together for us. I burst into tears as what felt like these endless depths of sorrow erupted within me. We were making a decision that I knew within my core was the right decision. I knew, without a doubt, the gravitational pull of our lives, of our familial soul journeys that interwove with the soul journeys of our horses and dogs and cat and the landscape we were leaving, this landscape that had called us to it, and the communities we were leaving and being called toward - they had all collaborated to bring us here.
And it made me so sad because I knew that in our arriving that I was really, truly, leaving behind a dream that I’d fallen so deeply in love with, and a vision I’d also fallen in love with being so devoted to all those years ago when it came knocking at 3:00am one cold March morning.
In truth, the letting go of that dream had actually begun 5 months prior to that walk in the Coyhaique square, when we began our little long ride across Northern Patagonia, riding south with no certainty of where our journey would end, how long it would take nor who we would be at the end of it.
We were swan diving yet again, as Ale and I have done so many times together in this wild life we have shared these last 17 years.
We were leaping with faith that wherever we landed is exactly where we were meant to be, and that in our leap we would essentially tug on the threads of this magnificent weave of universal energy that pulls us there with precision in a manner that our fear-averse minds has no capacity to grasp.
For years I’d devoted myself to the gentle yet steady nurturing of this dream of creating and tending to a sanctuary where horses, earth and the soul come together in conversation and collaboration. When the dream first came through me it was so clear and so loud that it roused me from my bed and I wrote it all down sitting on a sheepskin as the full moon cast a white light through the living room. I can see myself now in that moment, I can feel how it felt to “see” it, to receive it, to believe it and to know, without a doubt that it was meant to be. It was invoked as Ale and I had been tending the beautiful question that began CuraKuda - How can we grow a life, and an organization, that can be of service to, and honor, the intelligence and wellbeing of the Earth, the Horse, and the Soul?
“Nothing looks the way I thought it would look. Some of it has been more delightful than I expected, much of it has been more heartbreaking than I ever planned for — or thought I could survive. Yet here I am, living out the story that I am, at best, co-creating in collaboration with mysterious and invisible forces. It has been, at every turn, interesting to me to see where I end up, and I have gotten very good at saying that I have no cherished outcomes when it comes to plans big and small — and meaning it.”
~ Elizabeth Gilbert - Letters From Love
Life between now and the last seven years has taken so many wondrous, amazing and wildly unnerving yet also deeply grounding twists and turns. So much of what I wrote in those early morning hours by moonlight has come into fruition in magical and synchronistic ways.
Over the years the herd came and as they did it led me into a deep and intentional journey of personal healing, evolution and expansion. I shifted my life’s work away from responsible business and ethical supply chain and gave my heart back to the possibility of collaborating with the horses and the earth as my work.
I entered a deep process of study, practice and integration. I became certified in Equine Facilitated Learning and Coaching, I immersed myself in personal, ancestral and collective trauma healing work, I looked to the horses and the land for guidance in their soul-oriented wellbeing and also deepened my study of equine nervous systems, brain function and generative ecosystem relationship. I studied regenerative grazing approaches, rewilding methods, native and ancient forest restoration and indigenous wisdom relating to holistic relationship with land, spirit and animal.
I followed every thread of resonance, attuning to the collaborative pull of the horses, the people who came into our circle seeking something, and the land that we inhabited. I refined my approach, then dissolved my attachment to all I thought I knew so that I would again be open enough to receive more from the land, more from the horses, more from my soul.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. For years. I was like a monk in a cave - the ancient forests were my monastery, the breathing volcanoes, free roaming horses and wild untamed rivers were my sensie / sage guides.
I was humbled each time I had to witness the way my ego would emerge to claim an identity, and each time another layer of shadow was cast before me that I knew I must learn to love. I remained willing. I remained devoted. All the while I trusted that the place where the vision could be fully inhabited, and a team that could join me in this deep and heartfelt work that would allow us to open access for others, was coming.
Over the years we experienced this incredible journey of receiving invitations to be in places where we were meant to be, but they were always like wombs, safe for development and growth, but not ready to give access to others. When we moved away from a beautiful property in Carhuello that we had caretaken for three years, we began to actively seek the land that would be the the home base of the sanctuary I’d envisioned and imagined. A place that would be a center for experiential learning that embodied a deep commitment to the wellbeing of all. After years of seeking, the place where we could open the gate and call others in to join us, it didn’t come.
The widening of the web
Within that time, another soul decided to join the crew, and when Sofía came earthside, I knew I would be directing the life force that had previously been available for the growth and development of my work through CuraKuda, to the growth and development of this tiny, precious little human. I lovingly put down the dream and the vision of this life devoted entirely to healing the relational context between the horses and the earth and humanity, and instead I carved a new stream bed within myself for this vital life force energy to flow to Sofía.
As I settled into my mother skin, I tended to a loving kind of grief work for my beloved maiden self who would not live into her child free dreams. And I felt this beautiful, authentic joy as I discovered that I quite liked being mother to this lovely little being, and I quite liked discovering these soft, gentle and uncharted territories within myself that motherhood led me to.
The horses, the land, our family, all of these threads were weaving a much broader web and expanding, and I soon felt the ground beneath my feet cracking a bit. The clarity I had for so many years, that I was meant to build a change-making organization, grow a team, nurture an approach and an embodied practice of work that was grounded in integrity and commitment to equine, earth, personal and collective wellbeing…it began to pull apart just as I felt my own other layers of identity being stretched and reshaped as I surrendered all parts of self into the path and flow of motherhood.
I was content to just follow the tug of the needs of my child. I was content to just sink into the embrace of the herd, to delight in the nourishment of the forest, to follow the call of the river and the glaciers and the wind and just pass my time breathing through this magnificent life chapter.
I didn’t have to change the world with my presence.
I was essential and enough in my simple commitment to embodied presence.
All of the mysterious gifts that love bestows
As Sofía grew, and Ale and I both began to speak out loud deeper longings that were not nourished by our lives here in Chile, we knew we were evolving beyond the vision of the sedentary life we had been working toward all of those years. We didn’t know exactly what that meant, but we did know that we needed the freedom to follow the gravitational pull of our lives.
“The act of loving itself, always becomes a path of humble apprenticeship, not only in following its difficult way and discovering its different forms of humility and beautiful abasement but strangely, through its fierce introduction to all its many astonishing and different forms, where we are asked continually and against our will, to give in so many different ways, without knowing exactly, or in what way, when or how, the mysterious gift will be returned.”
~ David Whyte - Excerpted from The Three Marriages
I’d already had these questions stirring within me…why hadn’t the land come? Why was I still essentially doing this work alone? This was/is work I never longed to do alone. Plenty of people are “sole practitioners” when it comes to transformational work with horses, but I’m uninterested in this…the work isn’t about me, or some method I plan to trademark or brand. This work is the life practice, it is deeply relational and meant to be shared with and among other people. It requires the engagement of attuned nervous systems in order to generously and genuinely hold the space for so much energetic reshuffling, digestion and integration.
Becoming a mother had only heightened my awareness of how much I didn’t want to do this alone. But I’d also been deeply mentored by the horses, by the magnificent synchronistic flow of this life we live here in Chile, not to push, and instead to invite the pull.
It was time to leap, to let it all go and to leap. That is when I began the process of burning this dream - but it has taken me more than two years to complete the process. Things take the time they’re meant to take, another beautiful lesson this life and these horses and even my beloved daughter teach me every single day, again and again and again. And I am willing to take this lesson deep into my bones and allow it without any sense of urgency.
The lovely way it was…
Nurturing a porous lifepath
It is now two years since we decided to move our herd and family to Coyhaique, shifting our life context in a manner that offered us roots and wings. Rather than the large scale investment we’d envisioned for the equine sanctuary, we have found a little piece of land that connects us with resonant community where our herd can live healthfully in a landscape that is being intentionally restored through holistic grazing practices. We live alongside them within this landscape, but not in the manner that I’d envisioned so long ago. We are not heading in the same direction that we once were, we are being pulled toward something else, that is woven together with all of these beloved threads of our past - yet also woven forward.
Many things might still be possible, but others are simply not.
All of this has opened my eyes to how powerful it is to hold onto something that needs to be let go of. In many ways I had consciously done this when we decided to leave our home up north, but still, I had roped myself to this beautiful vision in subconscious realms, and I wasn’t entirely aware of that until lately when I heard myself say things that I didn’t really entirely mean… such as the time I described our current life context to an old friend and she said “wow, it sounds like you are living a dream!” and I responded flatly, “well it’s not my dream.” Or the other moment when I heard myself saying something that was judgmental and quite frankly a bit condescending about the way some people were managing the care of their horses.
That is not my work. I am not here to judge. I am not here to condemn others. That is not how my light flows through me.
As I heard her speak, I heard the sharpness of her tongue, I knew that part of me was stirring up the her discontent and wanting to be seen and heard. It was the part of me David Whyte so eloquently acknowledges - …we find ourselves disappointed and bereaved and in that grief may miss the particular form of love that is actually possible but did not meet our initial and too specific expectations.
And then there were the waves of intense sadness and sorrow that would sweep over me when I would ache for the way we used to live alongside the herd. We live beside them now, I can literally walk out my door and go find them in the fields at any moment. And yet, it is different, and the part of me that is so sad about the way it is different is the part of me still longing for that old vision to have manifested. The part of me that just wishes we were still moving toward the image that was once so clear and so potent and so possible.
The lovely way it is…
The part of me that was speaking out with a sharp tongue and igniting these waves of sorrow- she was expressing herself in the shadow, and with my awareness of this, I’ve turned toward the light. I know how to speak with her, how to nourish her with ceremony, and how to give her the space she needs to light the fire, and shriek and weep as her longings turn to ash.
These last two days, since the burn, I have encountered so many beautiful reflections that feel deeply supportive in this letting go and this allowing that which has matured to be harvested and composted so it may be alchemized in order to shape shift into something more generous in its nature.
Such words include these of our beloved John O’Donohue, reminding me again to embody my inner nature most fully by turning toward the guidance of outer nature:
“Even though a choice sets the fundamental direction of your life, it should not hermetically seal you off from the rest of life. The outer lines of choice should remain porous…We are fashioned from the earth, are clay shapes in human form. We are children of Nature, where borders are seldom sealed. In order for life to flow, frontiers must remain porous…
Skin is porous and in a constant interflow with nature. Were it to seal itself off in some hermetic act, it would kill the body. Similarly, the outer lines of a clear choice or life-path should also remain porous in order to allow our other unchosen lives to continue to bless us.”
~ John O’Donohue: Excerpt from Eternal Echos
Thank you. I love you. Be free.
Within the two hours it took me to hand write my old beloved vision (seven years ago I’d typed it as it came through), I felt my love flowing through my aching hand with every word. It was such a beautiful vision. It is such a beautiful vision.
Perhaps I am living it in another dimension. Perhaps it will manifest in some wondrously magical way in this lifetime in some other life chapter when there is more life energy available to tend to it. Perhaps another beautiful soul catches hold of it on the wind and they create it in some beautiful corner of the world, helping to heal the land, heal the horses and heal the wounds festering within our human collective.
I don’t know what will become of it. As Elizabeth Gilbert so beautifully puts it, the more of this precious life I am privileged to live, the more I find myself able to authentically feel and say that I too have no cherished outcomes when it comes to plans big and small — and meaning it.
But I do know that I remain a dedicated spirit. To the horses, to the earth, to the soul.
“We name mostly in order to control but what is worth loving does not want to be held within the bounds of too narrow a calling. In many ways love has already named us and called us before we can even begin to speak back to it, before we can utter the right words or understand what has happened or is continuing to happen to us: an invitation to the most difficult art of all, to love without naming at all.”
~ David Whyte - Excerpted from The Three Marriages
Our life and work in collaboration with the horses continues. With this release, CuraKuda still remains, and it shall until my last breath. As Ale said, this is our life project, it may inhabit itself in unexpected ways, but this is a life walk, so we let it take the time it takes and also let it grow into itself with our loving guidance but without to heavy a hand in its shaping or too much unnecessary pressure - a bit like raising a child I suppose.
Releasing this vision though somehow allows me to make it more porous, and certainly it releases it from too narrow a calling. It also allows me to stretch more fully into the vastness of my work as it continues to flow through me in these different embodiments. It also allows us to be more fully available energetically for all the ways this new place is calling for collaboration between the horses, land and our souls - and we continue to play with all that is emerging naturally through the path of resonance.
Just as David Whyte says - love has already named us and called us before we can even speak back to it - so I know I can trust whatever it is that love is guiding me toward.
No matter what, I continue to devote my heart and my love to the wellbeing of the earth, the horses and the soul, even if the context is far beyond the limits of my imagination. I am here in service, in whatever way this work beckons me towards it, in whatever shape and form I am offered to nurture wellbeing in this manner, here I stand, with all my love.
And, as is the spiraling nature of life, as I let this all go, I’m pulled back to the very beginning of our return to a life with horses - and these words that I wrote shortly after our first long ride:
“Without a doubt, beyond any rhyme or reason, I believe entirely in the guidance of my gut, my heart, my soul, and in the destination that calls me onward. Even when I cannot entirely grasp that destination, I can feel it grasp me. And I’m overwhelmingly certain that I can manage all that unfolds before me as I continue finding my way toward it.”
~ Greta Matos - Extracted from The Road Ahead
The spiral also brings me back to the deep, innate knowing that I felt within me during early motherhood - that I am essential and enough in my simple commitment to embodied presence.
And so are you, beloved one.
Thank you. I love you. Be free.
