The Healing Power of Animals

I want your story of your animals, dog, cat, birds, skunk. I think our animas are like angels, come to teach us how to love. For example: Sixteen years ago I prayed to God to bring me a Relationship, the companion of my heart.  I was lonely.  I wanted a man to share my life.  I thought a man would heal the ache in my soul.  Instead I got a horse.      

   A horse? I didn’t want a horse, but once having ridden this young Arab mare (only three years old, just a baby), I was captivated.  I’d never met a horse so smart. Or so courageous.  One day we were riding with a group out on the spacious New Mexico mesa under that huge Western sky, when we came to the carcass of a cow.  The older  horses shied, balked, twisted, lunged, refusing to walk past the carrion smell.  It was my little girl, Spring, who at my urging stepped daintily past the corpse, leading the others in her wake.  

    I won’t go into my refusal to buy her. But one morning I woke from sleep with a sudden clear “knowing” that Spring was going to be sold and moved to Portland, Oregon— that I would never see her again. I telephoned the stable in New Mexico.  “If Spring is ever for sale,” I said, “please let me know.”  

    “That’s strange,” said Katherine, the stable owner.  “Only yesterday her owner called to tell me she’s moving to Portland, and she’s putting Spring up for sale.”

     When God is in charge, there’s nothing you can do,.  I put an option on the horse, and flew to New Mexico for a month to make a decision.  But I’d already made up my mind.  It made no sense for me to own a horse. I lived on the East Coast, with a vacation cabin in New Mexico. I’d always be in another state, far from my horse. And horses are expensive!  How could I afford a horse?

      But all that month, every time I sensibly decided to deline, I’d feel that little tap on my shoulder that I think of as the voice of angels: “Try again.”

      There is a character in Shakespeare’s play, The Merchant of Venice, who “talks only of his horse. That’s me. (Actually that’s every horse owner that I know.)

      I won’t bore you with her beauty, the way she lifts her head or tail when she steps out in her long walk, the way she moves into the bit, or she lowers her head to make it easier for me to latch her bridle, or thrusts her head into her halter; and if she could, I think she’d probably buckle the snaps.  

     Moreover, she loves me.  Non-horse people don’t think that horses love.  Once I was brushing her beautiful hind quarters when she swished her long tail—and held it by muscular force draped over me. I was veiled in her embrace.  After three or four seconds, she relaxed, letting her tail fall free. I was shocked. That takes effort.  She deliberately held her tail over me, in a kind of touch.

     We have been together now for 15 years.  I brought her East. We have fox-hunted, done dressage, won ribbons in horse shows, but our favorite is jumping and trail-riding, and we trust each other enough that she will even go out alone on trails we’ve never seen before.  I say this because some horses I know will hardly leave sight of their stable, they get so nervous all alone.

   Now with the pandemic, she has become even more significant. My sister has a lap dog. One child has budgies. I have a horse.  Masked and isolated in lock down, I went for months without touching another human or being kissed or hugged. I was avoided by grandchildren and daughters and friends.  At the end of four months, I felt myself going bonkers. Humans are pack animals. We are supposed to touch, relate, not live in sequestration, like a prisoner in solitary. Few can live like hermits or a yogi in a cave.  (And this has given me new rage and indignation at how we throw prisoners into solitary confinement, letting them out once a week to walk outside one hour: some confined to solitary for months and years! Cruel and unusual punishment: that’s torture.) 

     Intellectually, I knew this sequestration was enforced for my safety, but my Unconscious mind had other ideas: that my children, grandchildren and friends wanted nothing to do with me— that I’m old, worthless, useless, unwanted, unloved. It was a message I fought and often lost.   Still, I had my horse. 

   Every day I could drive to the stable and brush my horse, or give her a carrot or apple. Even if we didn’t ride, I could run my hands down the smooth muscles of her beautiful neck, rub her ears, kiss her soft muzzle, breathe into her nose, so that we exchanged breath in an intimacy as deep and calming as sleeping with a lover. She would nuzzle my neck, gazing at me with her enormous brown eyes. The eye of a horse is the largest of any land mammal, exceeded only by that of an ostrich, whale, or seal. A horse is so sensitive that, even through layers of a heavy leather saddle, it can feel the blood pulsing in your thigh.  She knows, therefore, when you are excited, angry, frightened, irritable, and likewise when you are quiet and calm. Being flight animals, a horse responds to your emotions as she would in the herd, so that she jiggles or jumps in appropriate fear, according to your emotions, or else she walks calmly along, trusting you even in danger (a cow, for example, or smelly pig or goat, if she’s never seen one).  On the other hand, you learn to trust your horse as well. She snatches the scent of bear long before you, and tells you with startled hooves and ears of peril. Believe her. She knows more than you.

    Sometimes I would go to the stable anxious and upset, but in only a few minutes of brushing her, I would grow calm under the influence of her love. I think I could feel her sending out waves of loving tranquility.

    Lockdown is easing now. Restaurants are carefully opening outdoors. People still wear masks, stand apart, careful not to touch.  My grandchildren still will not come near me, fearful of infecting me. But when I go to the stable, my horse out in her pasture pricks her ears and lifts her head at hearing my car. She steps out in her loose long walk, approaching me, and she lowers her head for her halter.  Then we walk along together, companionably, to the stable, where she will be brushed and touched and massaged and then ridden, she and I out for an adventure together. I will feel her muscles moving under me in a walk or canter.  I come home, take a hot shower, and all is well with the world.

   I had wanted a man. I got a horse.  

at a horse show

How Strangely Needs Are Met

This is a story of how our needs are met. It’s also about an angel, but mostly about how Spirit, the Guiding Principle, the Universe, God, whatever you choose to call this incomprehensible Mystery, works invisibly to heal our pain. The solutions are not what we’d impose if we were in charge, but the quiet, almost unnoticeable outcomes work miraculously not only for ourselves but for people we never even thought involved.

I felt I was managing the pandemic pretty well. I have it easy: a cottage, a garden, a car, the internet, TV, radio, a phone with which to call a friend. How could I complain?

But one morning, after 12 or 13 weeks, I woke up exhausted—at end of my rope.  I was undone by loneliness. I felt I couldn’t go another day without a hug, a hand on my shoulder, just human touch. My two daughters live nearby with their families, but they have carefully avoided coming close. Intellectually, I knew they’d withdrawn to protect me. But, unconsciously, the interpretation that pounced that morning – like a lion— was distaste.  If I were loved, said the primitive brain, I would be touched, hugged, kissed.  I knew it wasn’t true, but I pitched into a hole of despair.

A recent article in the New York Times confirms our need for touch.  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/04/well/family/coronavirus-pandemic-hug-mask.html

It’s so powerful that babies left untouched, uncuddled, don’t develop properly, and surely we adults, left alone for too long, fall back into mire of “not good enough,” “unloved,” “useless,” “undesireable.” Indeed, scientists now find the stress and isolation of the pandemic has created a historic wave of mental-health problems.

Looking back, I felt I’d been infected.  Continue reading

Talking to Myself

If there is one benefit to this coronavirus isolation, it’s in offering the luxury of time.  But when, like me, you live alone, the days are sometimes long, especially on dark, rainy, soggy, sad days like today— which gives me time to watch what I’m thinking about.

Here’s what I’ve found:   90% of what’s in my mind is none of my business. It involves things I can’t do anything about:  gossip, daydreams, politics, ecology, past disasters or future ones to fear. But the other 10% is my business, and this is where it’s interesting. I wouldn’t talk to a dog the way I talk to myself. When I meet a dog, I burst into happy smiles:  “Oh, look at YOU,” I say, bending down to stroke his ears and face.  “Aren’t you beautiful!”

I never talk like that to myself. I say, “What nonsense!” and, “Well, that was stupid.”

I read recently about a little girl, maybe four years old, perched fearfully on the top of  the BIG sliding board. Finally she took the dare and SLID. As she hit the bottom, she raised her fist in the air and shouted, “YAH, ME!”

I never do that.  I never say, “Yah, Me!”  I say, “Ok, you’ve done the dishes. Now for the laundry. ”

Yesterday I decided to say, “Yah Me!” all day long.  Continue reading

The secret of getting well

 

A few weeks ago I “pulled a muscle.”  You’d think at my age that I would know better than to shovel snow; but it was such a pretty, blue-sky day, and I felt so good, that I simply didn’t think.   Two days later my back ached. By the end of the week I couldn’t walk, and soon an old sciatica, reignited, was shooting pain down into my foot.

I’ve done everything imaginable to get well again, including doctors, chiropractors and PT, heat, cold, back brace, and prayers by wonderful Silent Unity, plus energy work like Reiki and Cranial Sacral. It’s just going to take time. Meanwhile I would find myself falling sometimes into such self-pity that I started scolding myself for the pity-parties I despise.

“If self-pity hastened the cure,” laughed one friend who has her own problems,  “I’d have an amazing recovery!”  And yet the pity is not wrong.  Instead of critical self-pity, though, why don’t I call it self-compassion?  When I acknowledge my sorrow,  my low spirits shift, move off.   Let’s talk, therefore, about loving ourselves with all our frailties and failures.

Last week as I lay on the massage table for a long and luxurious cranial-sacral treatment, drifting in and out of awareness, I found myself praying to my body.  All my life my body has done whatever I asked of it, and I don’t think it had ever occurred to me before to give it thanks. Continue reading

Intentions. Connections. Only Connect

Oh boy, here we are in January. The new year. This time the new Decade. January is the month when we make Resolutions—and usually forget them in a week. Instead of resolutions, I offer myself one word, an Intention, that I can muse on and meander beside throughout the year.

One year I took the word Gratitude.

Another year Generosity, and a third Beauty and Bounty, which I liked so much that the following year I repeated it as Bounty and Beauty.

An intention requires no effort, no demands for success.  It is simply that throughout the year I remember my word and pause to look around, especially in challenging moments, reminding myself of gratitude or the beauty and bounty and goodness and generosity that lies about me, that fall as blessings with mercy and grace, unearned.

An intention is similar to an affirmation, but different. Continue reading

Fear and Anxiety, ghosts and ghouls

“Writing is a form of therapy: sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in a human situation.”   Graham Greene

 October, and again we have the pleasure of frightening ourselves with witches, goblins, ghouls, and ghosts; with skeletal hands reaching from the grave, or zombies clunking heavily toward us with sightless eyes to drink our blood.

Why do we like to frighten ourselves? Most animals find life quite scary enough without adding in imagination. We court fear.  We pay to watch horror films (there is always a girl who descends the basement steps in the dark where you KNOW the murderer lies waiting!). When I was just a little girl, I remember reading Dracula late one night in my father’s study, and being so frightened that I couldn’t leave the lighted room to go to bed! Such is the thrill of being afraid—when it’s safe.

Then there’s unsafe fear.  Once when I was a young girl I met a man who confessed that he saw a therapist for his anxiety—and my innocent response, “What’s anxiety?”

I don’t think I ever heard the word as a girl, but as I grew older, a wave would wash over me sometimes, boiling me like an ocean breaker. I’d be sitting at a swimming pool watching my little children play, and suddenly I’d be overwhelmed by the sense that I ought to be somewhere else, except I didn’t know where— Continue reading

September: Journeys and Transitions

“Look, the trees are turning,” she said, glancing out the picture window toward the New Hampshire woods, and everything in me wanted to cry out: Not yet! Too soon!

September marks the beginning of the new year. The children are back at school, anxious or excited, happy with their new classes, or disappointed. You see them on early mornings at the side of the road waiting for their yellow buses.  The little ones are so brave, their enormous book bags towering over their heads, almost taller than their tiny legs. The big kids jostle and push, overflowing with energy too strong to allow just standing still. My garden, too, is in transition. The grass grows slower now, needing less mowing. The straggly, leggy plants have given an explosion of defiant berries and bloom, as glorious as springtime but more beautiful somehow, yet moving inexorably toward decline– as leggy as my teenage granddaughter, who is also in transition, but in her case toward young womanhood.  The squirrels dash heedlessly across the roads and spiral up the trees, as if there’s no time left to relax in late summer heat.  Burrs fly onto our clothes if we take a walk, clinging to be carried to new environments, and all of life—bees, moths, chipmunks, squirrels, children, grass, trees, and, yes, we adults too—feel the planet tilt in its orbit, sharpening and shortening the light:  Time speeding up.

        We are all in transition. To be closer to her children, my sister has sold her house and is moving to a city where she knows no one. Continue reading

Summertime

Summertime, and the living is easy. Our cultural memories are rich with summertime: the slap of a screen door to the excited calls of children; of dozing in a hammock over a good book, or casting a fishing line onto the black river; of days on the beach, ice cream cones, and iced tea sipped on the porch; of just slowing down; baseball games, and barbecues, or cold suppers served in a long, sweet dusk that extends for hours. More recently it’s remembering to snatch a sweater as you step into the heat, because of the freezing air conditioning at the store.

Summertime. And in this period when we are assaulted—barraged—by our culture of FEAR and the constant recording of inescapable grief, anguish, sorrow and suffering . . . I think we need reminders of the bubbling, playful, lighthearted side of life. We need to remember that all is not lost, and it is our heritage to laugh and play.  I don’t know who first coined most of these sayings, but here I offer to you, little bubbles of happiness: Continue reading

My Inner Judge and Mistakes

There is a saying in the 12-step Alcoholic Anonymous program that “You will not regret the past, nor wish to close the door on it.” And mostly this is true, except when I find myself awake in the darkest hours of a morning night defenseless against the Inner Judge who prowls the corridors of my mind, slashing the heads off any blooming optimism with his savage cane. Why am I so helpless at that dark hour? Are all the angels sleeping still?

It has set me thinking: Where did I learn that although lesser mortals may make mistakes I’m not allowed to?  Of course, we were taught so many axioms as children that are downright wrong. For example: Opportunity Knocks But Once.  NONSENSE! I shout. Observation and experience have shown me that so generous is Providence, so loving, so adventurous, that She offers opportunities over and over and over again; and never does She feel annoyed by our refusal to accept. “You don’t like that opportunity? She cries out tenderly, Here! Try this one instead.”

Here’s another thing that I was taught at my elders’ perfectionist knees: that mistakes are bad. Yet how many times have I made a mistake, tripped off in a completely wrong direction, only to discover the misstep was a blessing.  Continue reading

My Mother’s Card

May is Osteoporosis Month, whatever that means. It’s also, as most people in the USA know by now, Mother’s Day on the second Sunday of the month, when I phone my children to remind them that they have a loving mother without whom (plus chance, God, a father and doctors) they would not be doing whatever they are doing right now.

It’s also the month when I remember longingly my own mother. I waken in the balmy dark, the stars still swinging gallantly overhead, and squirm with regrets made harsher by my defenselessness in these black hours. Did I tell my mother I loved her?  Certainly I never sent a card. My mother was a woman of strong convictions. When she told us, voice dripping with scorn, of her disdain for a Hallmark day—created by Business to make people drop their well-earned money on soppy cards for the benefit of some unknown Business—none of us would have dreamt of sending her a card.

But lying anguished in bed at 4:00 a.m. with the bats of remorse battering at my brainpan, I wonder if her scorn was not a defense, to ensure that she would not be disappointed when she didn’t receive a card. Why did I never send my mother a Mother’s Day card in spite of her disapproval?  Or phone. Did I ever phone? Continue reading