What is meant for you will always be around you because we are connected to all life and the sacred threads of the ancient heart. While grief can be disabling, it is also fruitful. When we choose to live in the face of dying world and people, we embody forgiveness and let go of the pain of wanting the past to be different. With our grief we pollinate the flowers of life and return to living at our own pace and time. This is a story of how a herd of horses helped me heal an injured pelvis and heart. It is also an invitation to wild hearts who work hard and think like a herd and would like to support me on my journey and share their own.

On Mother’s Day I decided that I would not stay home in grief but I would show up in the world as I am with the care of a parent who supports a child with their wildest dreams. I booked a private trail ride with Pinto R’ Us in Rincón, Puerto Rico, the most Western town in the archipelago of Boriké and home to many, my great-great grandparents and surfers from around the world. I had passed this trail herd over a 500 times in 6 years (I think the number is higher). Two of their mares always caught my attention while walking and one day I asked the forest to help me connect to this herd and a higher sense of self. Little did I know I would end up learning how to ride a horse.

The 5-miles of trial is behind a massive deactivated nuclear dome reactor that the United States brought to Puerto Rico shortly after we were granted U.S. citizenship by force. I would often hear their tour guides share, “There are no predators in this forest,” and often think that humans are the only predators in the forest who brought nuclear weapons, exploitation and more. You can see the evidence of colonial and Taino history everywhere. There are cotton plants brought by the slave trade, poisonous plants that our ancestors placed on darts to defend the shores, and abandoned backpacks of Caribbean relatives arriving by boats for a chance of a better life. There is also an old railroad track my family used to drive on in the 1970’s.

I have walked this trail in joy, awe, desperation and sorrow. Ruby, who I now know by first name and Athena were the mares who I would walk past and see their eyes look into my direction. Horses have a field of vision that spans 350 degrees. Their blind spots are directly in front and behind them. I can relate to these blind spots as well. I can also related deeply to the nervous system of a prey animal given the ways I have had to survive in this lifetime. I would watch the way the instructors rode them with a straight back as I dragged my tired feet while still recovering from my near death C0VID experience, knees swollen and pelvic pain from injuries in my childhood. My dog’s floppy ears would distract me and I would follow his joy.

Earlier this year, after many changes in the beach including lighting, development, and crowded surf, I began to feel the presence of a horse spirit walking with my dog. I wondered if it was the herd or my horse. I am active in ceremony with Indigenous relatives around the world and it did not occur to me that this was a sprit that I could meet again in the flesh. My relationship to spirit was similar to my relationships to dissociation, a safe place where my body could not follow. These recent years, the trail, the ocean and the people that surrounded me today have affirmed that I am not a soul in a body but rather a body in the entirety of my soul. Briefly dying of COVID and heartbreak taught me that the soul is infinite and the heart is ancient. You make your way no matter what.

The horse nation had surrounded me for the entirety of my rematriation back to ancestral land in Boriké Puerto Rico. I am surrounded by horses that are bred and belong to a local family. Their mare who I have watched birthed 6 babies alone in an enclosed pasture reminded me of the solitude I faced moving back to the island. I did not learn until recently that my family had lived and taken care of horses for thousands of years in different continents. I did not grow up knowing my family history. My biological parents were the first generation to not grow up on a farm. Trauma, colonial violence and the effects of PTSD not only shrinks the amygdala that stores memory but also makes us short-sighted into survival versus remembering the entirety of who we are and who we have always been.

On that private ride on Mother’s Day I rode Athena. I spoke about dying of COVID and met the owner of the barn and trail herd. She shared the same name as my Mother and Grandmother. She was blonde, tiny yet mighty with an accent from the South. I tried my best to listen as my pelvis melted into the seat. I looked around and for the first time I was not thinking about whether or not I would run into a man on the trail and have to defend myself or if my knees hurt. I was fully supported. Athena tripped on a part of the beach where I once collapsed on my knees and cried. The owner stopped and apologized and asked me to get off the horse and called the other guide to help her assess the horse. At that point the guide asked me to hold two horses. They leaned close into my face and we shared breath, the way that horses get to know each other and the instructor joked, “You’re hired.”

I was trying my best to take it all in. Did Athena stop the tour because she felt that I could barely breathe and was reliving the worst day of my life in Puerto Rico? Was she walking me? I truly felt Athena had read my mind, my pain, my body and gave me the ride that I needed. I knew that when she brought me back to the trail herd that I was not supposed to do this alone or one time. When the ride ended, I asked the owner if there was a way to volunteer or get to know the horses. I was invited to the barn on Monday and this past Monday I rode a horse on my own down the road for the first time and then for three hours with staff on an training day for the herd. I am not only with the trail herd but also enrolled in an equine school that also does equine therapy.

On the Monday I arrived at Pintos to visit the farm with hopes for volunteering I packed my medicine drum in the trunk of the car for the horses. I waited until I had the courage to play in front of the staff. This was always tribal work. I kept following my heart and showing up in the body. For the first few days by body shook while grooming horses from the tips of my fingers to toes. I was genuinely scared of the horses in person. They weight over 1,000 pounds and are not raised in a stall. On the Monday I came into the barn, I went into the pasture to fill the water and Athena, who is known for not showing interested in humans when she is not working walked right up to me. Alexa, the instructor who was on the phone with the owner, Julie said, “The herd has accepted her” and at that moment, there was something in my heart that opened but I could not explain.

I kept showing up and asking questions. I wanted to understand myself in front of the horses and had no intention of riding a horse. I showed up day after day to wash the horses after their trail rides and learn their names. One day after a long trail ride the trial guides were busy washing horses so I decided to take my drum in the pasture and they came. I learned how to call them in and the to play with pressure and release. I got to know them on the ground and I did not realize that often people learn how to ride or work horses before getting to know them. But the took I was taking to get to know the horses was the time that I was taking to get to know myself. I did not realize how safe people felt in their bodies until I rode a horse.

On my birthday which is also Juneteenth the barn staff surprised me with a birthday ride. “Just don‘t fall off,” the owner said. I watched the instructor in front of me loosen her hands. Athena was trained to follow. Looking back to where I am now, my posture and feet were horrible but we all have to start somewhere. I felt proud. I felt carried but I also felt connected to other humans in a way I hadn’t felt before. In my career in social change (re)imaging a new future and storytelling I often felt like a ghost from the future who hadn’t fully landed in the body. Here we worked together and the enlightenment was found while shoveling horse poop. I felt like what I tried to do in social movement was to be more like a herd and most humans were often resistant to change. In the presence of the wild and trails, you can never stop learning.

We took two rides that day. The second ride was to Tres Palmas, a marine reserve that I had protested to defend and a very important spiritual site for our peoples. I was asked to move Athena in front of another horse, stepping out of following and into a small snippet of what is was like to lead. I understood at that moment that connection also meant being a trustworthy leader and I moved her with my body from my seat. There was knowledge in my body that I remember from the cells in my womb. That was the first moment that I wanted to learn how to ride and I am writing this hours before my lesson. Being a part of the herd also meant that I could not hid behind one horses but that in connecting with her I also had to take care of the entire herd of 26 horses. My sense of individualism was rapidly dissolving.

It has been three and a half months since that first ride. I write this to you before my lesson this evening at Western Ecuestre, an equine school for young dressage competitors, rodeo and PATH-International Equine Therapy. It was not until I rode a horse that I realized how safe people feel in this world. This activated unspeakable grief and also a deep reservoir of courage to continue walking with the herd and become a rider. Riding requires a confidence, leadership and a power that has always been within me but did not have an outlet for in harmony with nature. I was a city girl and a Harvard graduate but I also belong to the land. The herd not only brings me closer to myself but they also have brought me closer to them. It is honor to ride with protectors of this land. The pasture I work in has not been touched by recent development. It is a place I have always known that has existed and can now steward in the body, not just spirit.

They call me the one who gets the spiritual stuff. Cowboy and Vaqueros don’t say much, but they feel me as much as I feel the horses. It’s not easy to do this work in Boriké. It requires working in direct sun with triple digit weather in the midst of a water crisis. The economy works for a select few yet we are still here. Funding was eliminated for my work in April which is what gave me the physical and mental space to volunteer and join the herd. If you would like to donate to my life’s art, lessons, coconut water and gear, please use the links below and thank you for witnessing this journey. Deep gratitude to my oldest followers who have seen me sell poetry in Central Park, promote Café con Cass as a public access television show and grieve. Thank you!