Access the audio version here. Girls can really bond. They have this massive sensitivity to love which unfortunately comes with this colossal sensitivity to hurt. Take a girl and a horse. When two perfect companions find each other it’s a match made in heaven. Hours upon hours are spent literally in close contact in the saddle, even when preparation from the ground seems like a needy little child. The fact is, horses are labor intensive. They’re problematic. They eat a lot. They poop a lot. Horse owners build dwellings and fence pastures always preparing for the worst but expecting the best. Saddles, bridles and boots are designed for function in the worst of times. It takes years to build a

Access the audio version here. I’m amazed at how quickly my perspective can change. I walk the same path through the forest, day after day, and don’t recognize that familiarity dulls my delight—how the brown, barren landscape that has recently failed to catch my eye, holds the potential to rock my world. Then, when I least expect it, a simple dusting of snow and a lack of clouds suddenly turn an ordinary scene into a vibrant performance. On the way down the path one day, my child voiced a concern: “Mom, I’m not good at anything specific.” He’s about to turn fourteen. Next year he’d be entering high school if we hadn’t stumbled upon a compound word my spell check just recently learned to iden

Maybe you don’t know this, but I’m sober. I made my decision to stop drinking without a public service announcement, bells, whistles or fanfare. I was simply forced to make a difficult decision and I did. Since then, I’ve realized that alcoholism is only one addiction that requires a difficult decision. Replacing “alcohol” with gambling, narcotics or sex seems intuitive but replace “alcohol” with any number of phobias, fears or anxieties, and suddenly reducing any dysfunction to a thought form completely spins the bottle to where true responsibility for addiction lies. Good Feeling Gone Recently I was talking with a young person. We’ll call said person YP. YP had tried alcohol. Twice. Even t

This article also appeared as a guest blog at Dragon Intuitive online. It’s overcast so I intend to speed past, believing that without the sun, nothing will shine. But I’m wrong— admittedly. I stare into the still water, opaque darkness obliterating what I might see beyond the surface. As I watch, wondering why I was called to the edge, the messy, majestic forest that lines the opposite shore like a crowded cityscape, points to its reflection, a perfect replica of what I believe I see, lying silently in the water. A mirror image obscured from reality yet evidently just as beautiful. The depth of hues and shades of nature on a morning so still there are no scents, have a message. Then a croak