Sharing Sharon

The beautiful lady in this photo is my mother, Sharon Louise Thornton. Today would have been her 75th birthday! I honor her -- one of the best people I've ever known -- in today's post.

My mom loved peanut butter. Peanut butter never failed to give her the hiccups but she ate it frequently, in indiscrimate and odd combinations that made me shudder. Peanut-butter-and-potato-salad-sandwiches were a real summertime favorite with her. A slice of onion or tomato along with that wouldn't be unheard of, either!

Mom loved to grow vegetables in her garden and bake bread. She was a lover of simple things, living her last 18 years in a farm house where the heat was generated only by a wood-burning stove. To me, a hater of all forms of chilliness, this fact alone puts her on a pedestal.

As a little girl, my mother would sometimes sing me to sleep. The song I remember best is "Turn Around." Maybe it was by Harry Belafonte, one of her favorite singers. The lyrics went: "Turn around and you're small, turn around and you're grown, turn around and you're a young wife with babes of your own." Now that my OWN children are grown, the words remind me of the preciousness, and speed, of life. At night, she taught me to pray "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep." I remember her soft, melodic voice and her cool, gentle hands stroking unruly bangs off my feverish forehead. When I didn't feel well -- or perhaps, when I didn't look well, Mom would say I looked "peaked" (This is a two-syllable word that means pale -- I don't hear anyone use it these days.).

Before I knew her, Mom had platinum blonde hair she wore in a French twist, a cat named Cleopatra, and a brand new 1957 Rambler. She had silk dresses and pointy toed shoes with tall, slender heels.

My mother was kind and generous, and carried a quiet elegance rarely seen these days. She practiced etiquette and taught me that it's never, EVER, too late thank a person and it's never wrong to speak or write a kind word to someone. She was intelligent and articulate, and her laugh was music that lifted your spirit to hear it. Her sense of humor was dry, often leaning to the macabre, and oh, how we did laugh! When she knew she would be passing soon, she suggested I put some of her ashes into a pendant I could wear shopping -- so she could continue one of her favorite activities, post-life. I told her I would not be able to afford shopping with her but without her wallet.

It was a gift to be in her presence.

Another thing Mom loved was gold shoes. I bought my first pair of gold sandals for my wedding two years ago, and said, not for the first time or for the last time, "I'm turning into my mother." Dear God, please let it be so!

Winter has put her glittering icy garments into storage and Spring has gathered gleaming buds and blossoms galore for her elegant new frock.

All things are made new... over and over again. I arrived at Sierra Rose Farms for my final equine therapy session, and when I opened the car door, I was greeted with fresh, spring air! I honestly can not remember a more amazing spring than this. Is it just me, or....?

I approached the now familiar pens and barn, and remembered the experiences I've had there. Memories flashed in my mind like mid-term of a reality series. I thought about how frigid it was my first day there, how unprepared my wardrobe had been for the beginning of this adventure. I remembered getting Stormy's tooth, which is now part of my home altar. I looked at the gorgeous blue sky, now aflutter with chirping robins. What an experience this has been. I could only smile in gratitude for the ability to have this experience.

"Today we will culminate everything you have done here," LeeAnn told me. Stormy, Savannah, Bruzer and Littlefoot galloped around the barn. All the props from my former lessons were laid out on the sand floor of the arena: plastic pails, styrofoam pool noodles, shims with words written across them, a blue tarp, beach balls. My inner child loved seeing this playground. In one corner, two wood rafters had been laid into an L shape to make the corner into a small square. Lee Ann told me my first task was to label anything I wanted to in the entire barn, for anything symbolic of my time at SRF. I ran with the tape roll and pen to the corner rafters, eagerly writing BOUNDARIES! There's a little step stool we sometimes used for a seat. ONE STEP AT A TIME!! Tape on the wall of the barn: SCHOOL! LeeAnn reminded, "You can label the horses if you want to." Stormy happened to be in the vicinity and again recalling his tooth, I taped GOOD LUCK on his tangled mane. Finding my figurative head and heart from last time, they were labeled OPEN MIND and STRONG HEART.

After labeling, the task was to take the things I wished into the cordoned-off corner of the barn. This corner was to be my new "house,"-- my new life, my new experience.

First I dragged one of the blue barrels which LeeAnn, Christine and I had sat upon to confer each week, labeled, GOOD FRIENDS. Better have some good folks in my new house to talk to! As I carried each labeled item or stick into my "house," LeeAnn urged me to talk about each one, and why I was choosing it.

GOOD LUCK -- Stormy -- wandered in and out of the "house" and LeeAnn noted, "Good luck comes and goes." True enough, but I wholeheartedly believe that sometimes the things we think of as bad luck turn around after time and become good luck. For instance, having cancer was bad luck. But it reunited me with my sister and she saved my life when she gave me her bone marrow, so it turned out to be good luck.

I grabbed sticks with ACCEPTANCE, TOLERANCE, HOPE and TEAMWORK and added them to my house. The tape from the barn door, SCHOOL, was brought in as a representation of one of my favorite themes -- life as school. Every day has a learning experience!

It was easy to leave out things like fear, judgment, seeking permission, anger. I could put them in storage if I need to use them again, but do I need them in my everyday existence? If I am to build a new life then what shall my new spring wardrobe include?

A crazy and colorful hat, Kentucky Derby-worthy, to remind me to keep an open mind AND a sense of humor. Maybe some rose-colored glasses not for denial but to help me see things in their best possible light. A heart-shaped pendant to remind me to keep my heart open and treat every situation with tender loving care. A cloak made of the strong, silken threads of hope. These threads are created and woven together by the relationships in my life. The nature of the cloak is also to allow any negative influences to fly off of me instead of clinging and becoming burdens. I keep my comfortable jeans, t-shirt and shoes to keep doing the things I love to do best: working, walking, writing.

Nature cycles and re-cycles. Winter always turns to Spring. As human beings, we also cycle and re-cycle. We can let go of old beliefs or patterns of behavior that don't fit us or don't look good on us anymore. We can outfit ourselves in new garments appropriate for new circumstances, or maybe just because it's time to have something NEW. There are lots of places to "shop" for the new and better things. I happened to find Sierra Rose Farms a most delightful place to look, and to find, a fresh wardrobe.

I Heard a Fly Buzz...

This early, wonderful spring brought a house fly in yesterday. It landed on the inside of my front door pane. I didn't want the fly in my house, so I opened the door and the fly flew out. Can life be this easy? Imagine what it would be like to keep your body and your self safe and separate from anything you don't want!

A recent experience at Sierra Rose Farms.....

Per instruction, I picked four horses from the pasture at random -- the four I could most easily get! I picked one that looked like -- and turned out to be -- a donkey, a very small brown horse, a regular size brown horse and a fourth horse. I had to put halters and leads on each one and take them into the arena. Be sure, this was not easy for me! (After five sessions in Equine Assisted Learning I still do not qualify as a horse woman) Once in the barn, I let the horses go and Christine showed me, there on the floor, my "body." Thank goodness it wasn't a chalk outline! It was created from toys... a hula hoop for my head and styrofoam pool noodles for my torso and limbs. LeeAnn handed me five plastic buckets and told me to put them on "my" most vulnerable areas. Being an Aries, the first one went on my head!! After I'd placed the buckets, I named each horse after something that is a problem in my life right now. I named the little brown one "Physical Pain" and the big brown one got the privilege of being "Emotional Pain." The task, then, was to keep the "problems" away from my "vulnerable areas," which was fairly easily done by shooing the horses away. Then LeeAnn added hay to the buckets! "This is called external influences," she said. More of a challenge to keep those problems out of the realm, but do-able.

As the horses caroused around the arena, we could not help but notice how Physical Pain followed Emotional Pain everywhere. These are the types of coincidences that happen at Sierra Rose Farms all the time. I'm a huge believer in the somato-emotional (body-mind) connection and find in my healing practice and my own life that sadness, anger, resentment, etc. are often harbingers for aches from head to toe!

It also happened that Physical Pain was a juvenile horse and Emotional Pain was, in the arena setting, its surrogate mother. Another coincidence? Doubtful. Just so happens that even though I've got several surrogate mothers I never get over missing my own mom, who passed in 2001. Little Physical Pain was missing his own mom who was back in the pasture and needed to stay near his surrogate in the arena. Just because I'm a certain age doesn't mean I don't need the love and comfort of mom-influences, and I take this moment to bow down to those who have provided this so generously -- Ann, Kathleen, Jewel and Dolores, beautiful women all.

The exercise was empowering and also thought-provoking on many levels.

Think about your most vulnerable areas and what you perceive as problems in your life right now. What if you could just shoo your problems away from not only your vulnerable areas, but your body, your self, and your life? Let an irritating fly out the door....

What could you then allow yourself to be open to?