Horses and life

Fight the good fight

/ barnraised / 1 Comment

0403191222.jpgI’d like to revisit “heart medicine”- a post I wrote up a little while back, around the holidays. Heart Medicine. This past weekend, I was just touched again by the same sentiment at a  festival, a contemporary Native American Arts FestiVal.

Side note- we homeschool (as some of you might know)- my daughter is getting ready to turn 13. She’s entered adolescence. She’s lonely. It’s sometimes a lonely path- homeschooling. That doesn’t make it wrong, it just makes it different. I firmly believe homeschooling will produce an incredible, amazing, brilliant, strong, beautiful, connected, aware adult…. but in this moment, homeschooling is different. It will be fine I know, but I also know that right now it’s hard seeing her lonely.

Anyways, back to point 1- we saw this amazing Native American hip-hop singer dancer comedian Supaman at the festival who blew my mind in so many different ways.  He was so inspirational and my daughter’s been quoting him all week. Her favorite quote being “go out and get it, don’t wait for it to come to you”.  Keep in mind, she’s a super shy, timid, quiet girl. She’s learned a lot and she’s grown a lot this week. She’s gone out and “got it” this week. She’s also suffered her first heartbreak and the death of her grandfather and in the midst of all of this I sometimes just don’t even know how to help her. I feel her pain as if it’s my own. I never understood that before. Her pain is my pain. Now I do. I love her so much. I cry for her, cry with her. I cry at night after she’s gone to sleep, for myself. I cry to be the mother she needs.  To keep her safe in my arms. I sometimes wonder why life has to be so damn hard. Then, I have to look hard for the good……

“Supaman” called it Medicine. The good in life is “medicine”

I have an alarm on my phone set to go off every day at 1:20. This is my gratitude alarm.  Long story about why its set for 1:20! But when it goes off, I remind myself to take a soft breath, be in the moment and find something to be grateful for.  I have found myself actually being grateful for many things. Despite. present. circumstances.

Conclusion: 😉 Healing. I read an article about how a parent needs to be the calm in the storm. The tree that bends, but never breaks. The roots that are so deep it just sways in the storm and holds on through the storm . Then provides the shelter after the storm. The tree that has seen so many storms pass through and stays steady.

One more thing that feels like fitting medicine, there’s a song by Peter Mayer called “Everything Is Holy Now”.  If you haven’t heard it, I encourage you to search it and listen. I am realizing everything is indeed holy now.

And, now, I encourage myself (and you) to get up again tomorrow morning and keep on fighting the good fight.

Because everything is holy now. And the good in life is healing medicine.

 

 

 

life assignments

/ barnraised / 12 Comments

 

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my daughter naturally wakes up at the crack of dawn. She says she likes to watch the sunrise. Bless her sweet little heart. There is beauty in the sunrise that’s for sure. But since we moved out of the barn where I had to be up and feeding at sunrise into the barn where I’m now the boss- and THIS boss says feeding time is at 8:00, I think the sun can rise ok without my supervision. Anyways, she likes to be up. She also likes work. She likes “assignments”. She likes worksheets. Sometimes I wonder about her. It’s so funny. We life-school as I like to call it. Barn-school. Un-school. I don’t care for worksheets and curriculum-type schooling at all. I guess when you don’t force stuff, you get kids that love to learn. Maybe I’m just lucky, but she literally asks me for this stuff.

So I oblige and compromise. I give her morning work that she can complete on her own while she watches the sunrise and I get a few more zzzs. Oh boy, that makes me sound lazy. Really, she’s just a way over-achiever.

This winter has been unseasonably warm. We haven’t had snow yet. Crazy. She’s been bummed. She REALLY REALLY wanted a white Christmas. She’s been waiting. And doing snow dances. It rained all evening. In bed last night she told me that she “believed”. On my way to bed last night I peeked out and saw it was finally snowing. I walked back out to the dining table and swiped away her “silly” assignments, replacing it with this.

We all need more life assignments I do believe.