A Day with Bruzer

Welcome early Spring! I have returned for the fourth time to Sierra Rose Farms (http://srfhealingheartswithhorses.org/) where it is, in a word, MUDDY. The miniature horses are practically up to their knees in mud.


I had a task this week that at first seemed childish. But as I have thought more about it the last several days, I discovered sometimes the things we learned as children are the very things we need as adults. Little fairy tales you haven't thought about for years come back to life to show you old lessons, learned for new times.

My teacher, LeeAnn, handed me a pile of wood sticks and a marker, and asked me to write a word on each -- something that is important in my life. While I wrote things like "joy" and "warmth" and "laughter," Bruzer the horse was brought into the barn. That's his picture -- all 141 pounds of him! I'm the one with pants.

LeeAnn took my sticks along with a pile of other sticks-with-words and she dropped them around the barn in various spots. She presented me with a broom handle and looped a flimsy plastic bucket on each end. "This is your life." Well, okay..... and then she placed Bruzer's lead in my other hand. "Your task is to pick up all the sticks, put them in the buckets and keep your life in balance!" said LeeAnn. This twinkly-eyed redhead is a reincarnated leprechaun, I swear.

So I'm trying to balance my "life" in my left hand with these teetering, toppling, lightweight plastic sand pails on either end, and I've got a horse in my right hand. I cleverly remembered from last time that I need to show the horse I'M in charge, so I made that clear to Bruzer by holding him close on the lead. We walked to the first pile of sticks and I was challenged, to say the least. I squatted down, lowered my "life stick," and the buckets toppled immediately on contact with the sandy floor. I righted the buckets, grabbed sticks from the pile, tried to place them in buckets AND hold on to Bruzer, who sensed SOMEHOW he was losing my total and complete attention and decided to take off in another direction. At this point I feel like I'm on some sort of "Survivor - Comedy Edition" as I am trying to get Bruzer back, get a hold of my life, get the sticks in the buckets and get the buckets on the stick. (At this point in the writing the author is certain a video would surely be more a more effective tool but the reader's imagination will suffice.) I still only have two hands! Feeling that LeeAnn and Christine are having much more fun watching me than I am having trying to accomplish this task, it doesn't take too many tries before I say, I have to let go of this horse. I like Bruzer a lot, he is a do-gooder in the EAL world and a sweetheart to boot, but he's impeding my progress.

Once I let go of the horse, the task becomes much easier (AHA! moment) -- I pick up the sticks from the various spots in the barn, place them evenly in the buckets and voila! Balance! LeeAnn gathers a pile of sticks I had overlooked from a far corner of the building, and brings them to me. "Which of these do you want to keep? And which to throw away?" Many of the sticks had words describing feelings on them: Hope. Acceptance. Anger. Approval. I chose the sticks I wanted and then my task was to walk with my buckets balanced on my life stick around four beach balls placed in various locations in the barn. I walked to the first ball and completely circled it, like a planet in orbit, with Bruzer following me voluntarily. (Darn that horse? Who is in control here??)We repeated this three times, Bruzer following all the way. As you can see, I literally interpreted "around" -- for LeeAnn commented that I had ellipsed each ball instead of making a huge circle that would include all four balls. No, I don't know what it means except for my usual rule-following pattern (or being in orbit), but the way I understand it is that I need to learn to think outside the balls...er, the box. I need to open my mind to a wider view... a panorama instead of merely a picture window?

As the days followed, I spent a lot of time thinking about the balance in my new life following the transplant. For in many ways, it is a new life, especially if I use this opportunity to make it a new life -- and why not? There was a lot of imbalance in my pre-transplant life. I had a long break from the routine I had created... why not rebuild using ONLY the materials I need to keep me strong and healthy, and let go of any unneccessary or damaged pieces?

And do you need a transplant or another life-altering experience to choose to rebuild/rebalance/remodel your life? I think not -- just makes it more obvious. The panoramic view!

So let's go back to those childhood tales I mentioned early on. Remember those Three Little Pigs? They each had various building materials for their homes but they all had the same Big Bad Wolf who could huff and puff... and, well, you know. The pig with the bricks won the building competition and went on to become a sought-after construction engineer, taught his two brothers WHILE saving their little hams from the BBW AND charged them rent. I think that's how it went, anyway. Maybe he wasn't such an opportunist but there's many years between me and the last telling of such a story. Pearls were thrown. Ears were turned into fine Coach accessories.

And new lives, like the new bird's nests for spring, popped up everywhere!

Spare Some Change?

Thanks for joining me again, and tuning in to my brand new blog! I'm excited to get my messages of wellness and hopefulness out in to the world from a new perspective and to a wider audience.

Last week at Sierra Rose Farms, Lee Ann ended my session with a question to ponder for the week. The question was "What do you do when you can't change things?" This was pretty dicey territory for me, because as we all know... there aren't many things we CAN change except for our own actions, reactions, thoughts...just ourselves.

When I arrived at the farm this week, the question was posed again. What do you do when you can't change things? "The right answer," I said, "is what we all know from the Serenity Prayer. ACCEPT the things we can't change." But in reality, I know I spend a lot of time in frustration, beating my figurative head against a figurative wall.... making plans......wishing for the Golden Ticket. I followed Christine to the pasture to collect the horses for today's lesson.

We went to a smaller area in the farm where only two miniature horses were penned. "Hi handsome!" Christine greeted the black and white horse. I noticed that neither he nor his cream-colored pasture-mate was excited about being led into the arena barn. These horses were definitely different from the playful, snorting minis of last week, but I didn't know why. In fact, Black-and-White was even rather obstinate! It took a pull from Christine at the front and a push from LeeAnn in the rear to get him into the barn. Once the barn doors were shut and the leads were off, it was go time. These horses galloped and trotted and pranced in circles through the sand. They'd kick up their rears, throwing grit in the face of whomever happened to be lagging behind at the moment, and just keep on running. The energy! The beauty!

Lee Ann, from time to time, would ask me a question.... "What do you think that means?" You know, like when one of them poops and then the other one poops right on top. "Territorial," I mused, feeling ever so like I'm going to get caught being dumb any minute. "Where is their comfort zone?" "Where is your comfort zone?" Lots of observing these wild miniature horses until finally.... Lee Ann hands me the lead. "Go get yourself one!"

"HUH????" Little Ol' Me? Clearly I was even more at loose ends than I was last week. It didn't seem like Lee Ann or Christine had control of these two animals -- what was I supposed to do?

I knew chasing them wouldn't work. See last week's entry for how well it works to chase a horse when you want to catch one. I walked around the barn and observed. There were construction workers on one side of the barn, hammering loudly. The horses seemed to stay away from the side of the hammering. I clapped my hands and found little, if any, response from the horses. I made clicking noises with my mouth. There was a barrel nearby and I began to pound on it in cadence with the hammer, and the horses responded by going into a corner for a moment.

Again, with the questions... "Where is your comfort zone?" ("I don't have one!") "Where is their comfort zone?"

I flipped the barrel on to its side and sat on it and then, the idea.... to fall on to my knees in the sand. I did... and the horses stopped, and walked right to me. They did not allow me to put them on a lead, but things had changed. Things had definitely changed.

I had gotten into their comfort zone by leaving my own. Ah ha! As I pondered the miraculous moment later I was reminded of those graph-thingys in Psych 101, where there are two separate circles but when a small bit of each one integrates with the other, there becomes an overlapping oval. I had created the oval!

I stayed there on the ground and got acquainted with Sailor, the black and white horse who was

born at Sierra Rose, and Major, the cream-colored horse. In the photograph, Sailor and Major are taking a much needed drink of water. Did you know -- and I did not -- that horses sweat? They had become quite hot with all the exercise and because it was a cold day, they had to stay in the arena after my session to cool off before going back into the winter air.

Lee Ann asked me if I wanted to know what was special about Sailor and Major and of course, I did! "They're stallions!" she grinned. Ah, stallions. Stallions with all the testosterone and energy and piss and vinegar you expect from young men. Stallions who are responsible for the majority of the pregnant mares I mentioned last week.

I never ended up "getting" a horse on a lead, but in the end, the idea wasn't that at all. It was getting a horse to come to me.. and it was up to me to figure out the terms of the agreement.

I want to find a way to articulate the way learning from horses is different from sitting on the therapy couch. You have to DO instead of SAY what you're going to do. My mind doesn't work the same way around the horses that it does in my world-- I'm trying to see where they are coming from and how I can fit into their world. My thinking seems more visceral, somehow.

Leaving the session I felt energized, hopeful and grateful. A short while ago I never knew this type of thing existed and now I am enrolled in it! My self-confidence is growing so much that I even decided to take a course on Cranial Osteopathy -- more on that at a later time, but trust me, I would never have looked twice at something like Cranial Osteopathy before the horses.

I can not yet say whether my anxiety and sleeplessness are improving. As I write this, I have a scheduled appointment tomorrow at the Bone Marrow Transplant Clinic at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit but according to the weather, there's an unscheduled giant storm en route, so a sleepless night would not be out of norm, checking through the blinds every little while.

Change is slow, but imminent. We can always count on things to change but maybe, with a little help, we can count on ourselves to ease out of our comfort zones, just a bit, to make life work.

A final note: A friend in need is a friend indeed! Many thanks to Sue and Patte who noticed my need of warmer clothes and boots after last week's post and came to lend the same to me... so that venturing out of my comfort zone is a little more...uh...comfortable.

To read my earlier posts, check out carepages.com, then, sarahsbmtadventure.