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clearing out of our hearts that which no longer serves us or others. Leaving problems behind & allowing ourselves to move thru & past the anger, rage, hurt that we have held onto for way too long. The wrong can only be righted by her. You must remove yourself (& especially your emotions) from the situation so it can no longer hold you back.
Happy Trails as you move into the new w/o the old holding you back!
think back to when you were 11 years old. When you are 11 years old is when you knew and expressed what you were meant to do.
When I was 11 years old, I saw the Disney movie "Miracle of the White Stallions," which told the story of General Patton saving the Spanish Riding School horses from the Nazis.
Like many little girls, I was already in love with horses. When I saw those dancing white horses, I knew that is what I wanted to do. I wanted to be the first girl to ride at the Spanish Riding School. I wanted to dedicate my life to horses and dressage.
I started as a self-taught rider. At 14, my best friend and I went to work at a local barn cleaning tack in exchange for riding. The new barn owners had brought in a large number of thoroughbreds straight off the race track, and we were each "given" a horse to re-school for showing. After they saw me ride, they took me off tack cleaning duty and gave me 5 horses to ride. While we were riding, various kids would come to me for help if they were having problems. Every day after school, I'd end up riding 6 horses, plus I'd get get on the other horses for a few minutes here or there to work through issues. So I sat on up to 12 horses/day pretty much every day. I'd get home by 10pm and do my homework then.
When I was 16, my sisters decided to take riding lessons together for fun, and asked me where there was a good lesson barn. I saw my chance...a very large facility about an hour and a half away had just brought in a national 3-day event champion as manager and resident trainer. So I recommended they go there, and then my parents let me take lessons too, so my 2 sisters and I formed an official group lesson. One day, about 2 months into our lessons, we were having a jumping lesson indoors with one of the assistant instructors. We started with gymnastic jumping (e.g., sequences of low jumps that are 1 or 2 strides apart, or even no strides between called 'bounces') and she took notice of my riding. She pulled my sisters aside, and raised the jumps. Then raised them again. And again. She had me jumping over 4', myabe up to 4'6", when she ran and got another one of the assistant instructor to come watch. They talked to my parents after that lesson, and I got moved into the top pony club group,and a 2nd group of professionals, both lessons with the chief instructor, Lockie Richards. Lockie had already one the national 3-day championships at that point. Originally from New Zealand, he had trained in dressage with Oberbereiter Franz Rockawansky, former chief rider of the Spanish Riding School, and was a fellow of the British Horse Society. His own students in the UK had included Princess Anne, who was on the British Olympic team.
I rode with those 2 groups for a year, finally getting the foundation for my dream. After 1 year, my parents decided to get me a new horse and that is how I got my Teago. He was a super talented horse, and we bonded very closely. There were problems in the local barn where we were boarding, however, caused mostly I think by jealousy. The farrier told my father we should move my horse because a horse of his quality didn't belong in a barn like that. My father blew him off. We went through a solid month, shortly after Teago arrived, where he wouldn't let anybody touch him. I knew something was being done to him and begged my father to let me move him. He blew me off. We came home from a 2 week vacation and I found Teago had saddle marks in his fur, showing he'd been ridden and not thoroughly washed off. I told my father, and he told me I was lying. A space opened up at the local pony club barn and I begged again for him to let me move Teago there. It was only $5.00/month more, and we'd be able to do pony club events and lessons there. He told me again I was spoiled and refused.
I should have just made the arrangements and moved him, and then told my father after the fact. But I was too obedient. 
Soon Teago and I would be going away to college, so we just had to hold out a little longer. Lockie had been made the Principal of the American Dressage Institute, which shared riding facilities with Skidmore College. To satisfy my mother's insistence that I get a college degree, instead of the riding instructor certification that I wanted, I applied and was accepted at Skidmore.
3 weeks before we were to leave, I had a nightmare. It was unlike any dream I'd ever had before or since. I felt like I was "outside of time." First I was hovering outside of the barn and everything was eerily silent. Then I was hovering in front of Teago's stall. The door was open and along the wall by the door stood the barn manager, her niece and 2 nephews. Teago was lying down in front of them and facing the door. And then he stood up, and his left hind leg ended in a bloody trail. I woke up.
And then, 11 days before we were to leave, I got a call from the barn. Teago was "hurt bad." I raced to the barn and when I got there, I found him in his stall. Along the wall stood the manager and her 2 nephews, but not her niece. Teago was standing facing the door, covered with lathery sweat, holding his left hind leg off the ground. I examined his leg, running my hand down to feel heat and swelling. The was a cut at the hock, with a trail of blood running down his leg.
His hock, a major joint in his back leg, was mysteriously broken when he was supposed to be in his stall eating breakfast. The manager claimed she found him wandering in the paddock. Bullshit. Instead of going away to college with me, where we would realize a major step in my dream training in dressage with Lockie, Teago had to be put down. A day has not gone by that I have not wished it had been me to die instead of him. He didn't deserve any of the shit those bastards did to him.
After I was away at school, other boarders started coming forward to my father with stories of what they'd witnessed, in case he wanted to sue. Instead, he tried to blame them for not coming forward sooner. They responded that they thought I'd told him. He told them well he'd assumed I was lying. So they told him they were sorry he didn't communicate with his own kids. I heard this from my best friend, Scotty, who was a fellow boarder.
Since then, it seems I've always been cursed when I try to rebuild my riding life. I've had multiple re-starts and fresh starts, with more setbacks than anything else. In between, I've lived with substitutes and smaller, mini-dreams. I was nearly killed once when either a barn owner or resident trainer spiked Algiers' food and he flipped over on me. When I bought this farm, it was to finally be free of boarding out. I have worked and worked and worked, trying to repair the damage done, but people sabotage me faster than I can repair. I was defrauded when I bought this place, which is half the acreage it was supposed to be. Then the contractor trashed my place with his bulldozer just 3 weeks after I moved in.
For me, this is it. I always wanted my own farm; I have one (sort of). I always wanted a dog; after having birds as substitutes for 15+ years, I now have my 2 dogs.
But I'm suffering from PTSD from the fall I had with Algiers, and I don't know how to move forward. I started Dahli so carefully last summer, and everything went perfectly until the day she turned bronco. The thing is, it wasn't a couple buck because she felt good. She intended to dump me and kept going until she did. So I've lost my trust in her and don't know if I can ever get it back.
I keep telling me the universe doesn't give us anything more than we can handle, but I feel like this time it has. I don't know how to move forward with her alone, and there isn't a horse person in the world, or at least in my local world, that I can trust to help me and not either be hopelessly incompetent or viciously sabotage. I called a local barn about lessons and they immediately, and I mean immediately, started trying to sell me a horse. 
For me, this is the bottom line. Ride or die. I'm just praying for the strength and guidance. It all just seems so incredibly unfair... It is too much. I was born with Saturn at 0 degrees Scorpio, so am going through my Saturn return on top of everything else.
This is all I've lived for. I just want to be able to sit on a horse again and feel joy, instead of PTSD panic.
With Jupiter going in Cancer, having just trined your Saturn, this should be a better and lucky time...it's hard, but there is a lot about forgiveness and letting go before one can move forward...it's especially hard for Scorpios, who can remember every hurt so clearly as if it were yesterday 30 years later...i know lol...
Good luck
Dear Heart! I just read this post after having spilled my pain all over my keyboard and I'm sorry for your pain. May we each find our heart's desire.
This gives me hope. I have been in a pit of existential angst and despair. I used to have some idea of what I was and where I was going; but I've been rejected for any position in our party twice in the last couple of months, I feel my mortality and each day only seems closer to death and I can't think of a single reason to do ANY THING.
My beloved reminds me that the Dalai Lama and our teacher do everyday, so there must be something worthwhile.
I look forward to the next reveal in my life that will allow me purpose. Although I know our work is important on a real level, the daily business is somewhat boring and nerve wracking all at the same time. I long to do something that will make some difference to our world and our lives. I have been rejected politically and my body hurts so much of the time, it is hard for me to work in my garden or sit at my keyboard...all the things I know.
Wish me well! and thanks for the posting, again!
As I was lying in bed this morning, I realized that it has been almost 40 years since I broke my back and it has been a good run of mostly pain free living. Now I have to figure something else out because everyday is a new adventure in pain and how to move, not just through pain, but because of it. Every move that I make must be modulated; no more jumping into bed, now it is an easing into it. I am so right side dominated that I have to change all my movements because that is the side that is so f*ed up! I helped my sister pack to move into a new apartment yesterday and I can barely move today. Yikes!
The rejection part really hurts because I thought I had something to offer in the political world and now I know that is not what I'm supposed to be doing because they don't want me!
And my garden, the place I thought I would end my days is another exercise in pain. I think we may have to sell our country home and move to something smaller that I can manage without working in the earth.
And I guess that is the question. What do we do? What is the point? I know that barring unforeseen accidents, I'll be old and the idea of being a semi vegetable watching tv for the rest of my days makes me want to stick my head in the oven!
So, I'm waiting for the great reveal. There must be something I'm to do besides eat, sleep and shit.
Good luck to you in your search for meaning...call out when it comes!
I don't think our political system is changeable very much from the inside-out at this point. I stay in DU because of my cyber-friends here and in case I'm mistaken. But when the Archdruid started writing that we need to be pointing the way to new political systems, along with new ways of being here, it resonated totally. I take it to mean organizing locally and informally, with like-minded neighbors. That is one reason I want to sell my home...there are people to my north who are already homesteading and looking to horses for local transportation, because neither they nor the earth can afford cars any more.
I'm am so sorry for your back pain. I trust you have tried sacro-cranial, accupuncture, chiropractic, etc? Is it arthritis in the area of the fracture, or did it just not heal "right?"
I don't know if any of these resonate with you, but Louise Hay separates the back into 3 areas: upper is "lack of emotional support, feeling unloved" and her affirmation is "I love & approve of myself. Life supports and loves me;" middle is "guilt, get off my back" and her affirmation is "I release the past. I'm free to move forward with love in my heart;" lower is "fear of money, lack of financial support" and her affirmation is "I trust the process of life. All I need is always taken care of. I am safe." Arthritis is "feeling unloved. Criticism, resentment" and the affirmation is "I am love. I now choose to love and approve of myself. I see others with love."
I keep managing to bruise my ribs: twice self-inflicted by accident on the left side backing Dahli when I was laying across the saddle, twice I've been kicked in the ribs resulting either in fracture or severe bruise on the right side, and when Algiers flipped on me I fractured the area where the collar bone joins the sternum. Hay doesn't say anything about ribs, though.
for the opportunity to ride on a reliable, quiet school horse in an enclosed arena until I get my seat back. I have trust issues, however, with other trainers for a number of reasons. As I wrote above, the first place I contacted immediately started trying to sell me a horse over the phone. Apparently their 17 hand rehab dressage horse is perfect for me....NOT. 
I boarded Algiers out for the 1st 15 years that I had him. I also started him under saddle myself and trained him through Prix St. Georges dressage. That made me a bit of a pariah; the resident trainer/instructors in most boarding barns could not ride, let alone train, at my level. I had the fortune (or, in their view, the unfairness) of having got my first formal training under a national champion who became a very successful Olympic coach. As soon as most trainers see me ride, they hate me. I'll never forget one "wanna be" screeching across the arena "WHO TAUGHT HIM TO DO THAT?!?" when Algiers and I were practicing 2-tempi changes across a diagonal. They can't handle the fact that I spent a few decades in a sitting trot for 20 minutes/day with stirrups crossed over; to them it's "unfair" that I can sit a horse the way I can. So we were sabotaged every step of the way, from cutting us off in the arena, to chasing him over jumps in the indoor when I wasn't there and without my permission, to doubling his grain behind my back and not turning him out. That is why I did most of my training out in an apple orchard or on trails and in hidden away fields, and why I am reluctant to board out ever again unless I can board in a world class barn, which I cannot. My first horse was killed; Algiers was permanently injured and me nearly killed, all in suspicious circumstances. It is only in top barns that I am accepted. I walked into Vitor Silva's barn "off the street" 15 or so years ago, back before my career died, with the idea of buying a Lusitano. As with all guests, he let me ride his top horse, Salvadore. He ended up beside himself with joy and excitement when, within 15 minutes or so, we were able to demonstrate half passes, pirouettes, flying changes and passage. But at this point it is only with trainers of Silva's level, who are a lifetime ahead of me so aren't threatened by my existence, that I am truly safe and comfortable.
My injuries when Dahli bucked me off last fall weren't that great and it wasn't a matter of a hard vs soft landing. I pulled a muscle in my groin/inner thigh, which took a week or so to heal. That would have happened landing on a pillow, too. But I am aware of what she is capable of and am saddened that this wasn't a few feel good bucks, but was all-out get off my back bronc-busting. She has the athletic ability to go to GP, but clearly not the attitude for it. 
Dahli, like my now gone gelding, is an arabian. I started a friend's entire small herd of arabian mares under saddle a few decades ago, all of whom were trustworthy, caretaker types, even the most nervous and high energy. My own two have been the high energy type. Algiers always loved me because I rescued him from starvation and neglect. Dahli, however, has never missed a meal in her life and clearly is not a caretaker.
Long term, the riding has to be on my own horse on my own land due to finances and my personal goals. I'm pushing 60 and a lifelong rider and trainer, so am well aware that I don't bounce back from injuries. I have already decided Dahli will be my last arabian and listed her for sale. After some research through my memory banks and the internet, I've also decided on my next step as far as which breed will meet my short and long term needs and finances and living situation.
older dressage horse for getting my seat back is perfect.
17 hand horse for me to buy is not the perfect horse for me for many reasons:
1. I'm not in the market to buy *any* horse
2. I'm 5'2 1/2 and 125 pounds, so a) don't need a tall horse, b) am at huge disadvantage mounting from the ground on tall horse. Can I? Could at age 20, not so sure now.
3. 17 hand horses cost more to feed, more to bed, more to shoe, are harder to keep sound, and usually cost more to buy since many Americans are under the impression that bigger is better. So *if* and when I'm in the market for a 2nd horse, I'll be better off with a smaller horse more compatible with my small size, my small pasture, my smaller wallet, etc.
Anyway, it's all moot. I've been back on twice in the last 3 days. Will have 3rd ride today. All is good. 