The other week I made the comment to my therapist in response to her usual "how was your week?" question and I told her, "it was like death by 1000 chicken pecks". We both shared a chuckle, and then she asked me to elaborate. I let her know that I've been pecked by chickens many…
Religion has become a bad word because of the actions of some groups and individuals. For those who wish to reclaim religion in their lives, it's important to reenvision what religion looks like. How could we cultivate safety within a religious framework? What would that look like?
In this episode, I'm going to talk about…
Well that was a longer than expected pause to the show. Between technical issues and illness, I swear it was just April a few moments ago. Right? Right? Nothing has happened, right? You can laugh. It's okay. But we are back. A brief explanation as to why we were gone for so long. We'll be…
Mother Nature and horses have two things in common; they are subject to their own whims. In the case of Mother Nature, late summer and into fall has been rather dry here in the Ozarks and that meant I received the text I'd been dreading: my hay person would not have the bales I needed…
Today is my heart horse's 26th birthday, and I've cherished all the years we've gotten to spend together, and I hope we'll spend a few more together too. When I started training her, there was a shift toward "natural" horsemanship. Clinicians such as Clinton Anderson were claiming they used natural training methods. I was quite…
I've often talked about having a lot of tools in my toolbox to help people in uncovering their authentic selves through spiritual storytelling. Being an alchemist, I like to bring different things together to see how the energies work or how it feels. And the part of my mind that's still tied too much to…
As embodied beings we need a few things to survive. Food and water are the two that come to mind, and shelter ranks high on the list. But we also need to take care of our physical body, and part of that involves being aware of it. You might be wondering just how we can…
It's not a secret I have a difficult relationship with the word "healing". In our modern society healing seems to be a "one and done" situation. You get sick, you take medicine, and though it may take a while to recover depending on the severity of the illness and the treatment proscribed generally if someone…
Intention begets action. We must have the intention to change our stories and to dive into our own personal storytelling before we actually make change. But when a recent article said that "we all know people who know the right things to do, but can't do them consistently", the shame implied in that statement gave…
Recently an article came across my social media feed that talked about how the equine therapy industry has deified horses to the determent of honoring their unique personalities, behaviors, and rights as a sentient entity of their own. This mirrors some discussions that have been happening within the spirituality communities, namely the pagan one, who…
I've been reading a lot of Sallie McFague's work. She was an environmental theologian and her work on the Models of God is important, dare I say vital, to my thesis. In her work she talks about those who choose to hold onto the monarchic, parental authority model of God, who see of themselves the…
The stories we tell about ourselves shape our lives, both our inner worlds and the exterior worlds. Often we don't even realize we picked up these stories, and it takes something profound to shake us out of our stories or even to make us aware of them. The process of working with those stories is…
July is Disability Pride Month and so for this month I will be talking about spirituality, sacredness, and our relationship to the divine in a body that's both socially, medically, and through the minority group model disabled. In short, there are multiple models of disability, and what this means is that people are disabled through…
I walk among the herd to gently guide senior mare to the shed so she can have her leisurely, "gooshy" lunch, as I call it, of soaked senior pellets, soaked beet pulp shreads (We really need Unbeetable Feeds to sponsor us!), and some supplements. It's our noon-ish ritual. I go in the house, take care…
When the original Pride flag was created in 1978 by Gilbert Baker it included a purple stripe on the bottom for spirit. Though the flag we use today has been revised, it has six stripes instead of the original eight, the purple bottom stripe representing spirit remains. (Outright International) I did a quick web engine…
I'm almost 30 pages into my thesis talking about disability liberation, so allow me to indulge myself a bit by blogging about not just a topic I'm extremely interested in, but also one that impacts me personally. Today is an especially rough flare day for my chronic illness/disability. Honestly, with this wild weather we've been…