The Little Girl in the Yellow Dress and White Pinafore

Sunday, March 27: Last day of CORE. I’m all packed and my room is cleaned up. A fellow student has offered to take me to the airport later on. It has been quite a journey!

We’ve done a lot of work in the last couple of days, a lot of pieces. As we wind down, a soon-to-be-graduated Coach takes the facilitator seat and offers to do a piece with me. She had worked with me on a geneogram on the first evening, and an interesting bit of information had bolted from my mouth just as we were finishing up:

“I’ve always been terrified of dying.”

If that isn’t every coach’s idea of a riveting subject, I don’t know what is. The reasons for fearing death are endless. Yum, yummy, YUM.

So we sit across from one another in the plastic chairs, with QT, a massive former stallion, pacing in the round pen next to us. The fact that QT is to be my equine partner in this piece isn’t lost on me; I had confessed to being intimidated by him shortly after watching him stalk into his stall on Thursday evening and look me up and down as though I was his personal plaything - and maybe not in a good way.

Coach starts asking questions and we dialogue for a while. I’m awfully calm about this dying thing, smiling even. Truth is, I’m smiling because I’m hanging real tightly onto myself. I don’t want to start blubbering when we’ve barely gotten started.

A lot of things are discussed, dialogues played out, and somewhere in all of this it becomes not so much a fear of dying as a fear of the unknown, for when I look at the vast expanse that is “over there”, it is beautiful, and the love I feel from it is overwhelming. THAT is what is so scary; opening my heart to that abundance of love and accepting it.

QT whinnies and lets us know he is ready to do some one-on-one. He’s also connected, and he wants to be part of the adventure!

I get up, take a deep breath, and with Coach clearing the way (as QT is right at the gate, so eager is he to help), I move to the center of the round pen and wait. QT checks me out from a distance and then moves in. He snuffles my hair and puts his lips on my neck. I just stand there. He is huge, and the love he is giving me, just like I felt from the vast expanse, is overwhelming.

Coach asks me to become a little girl, and to move around the round pen, being the little girl. So I start to walk around, and do a little sing-song, and QT comes right along, and then I start to dance, feeling the hugeness of love expand within me, turning in circles with my arms out wide, and grinning, and inviting this big horse to join me in the fun. QT watches with a bemused expression on his face, as though he’d like to dance, but isn’t certain which of his front hooves goes around my waist. At one point, he moves from side to side, as though matching my movements.

I feel the vastness of love sending me to a more and more joyful, childlike place. I drop to my knees, little girl like, and invite QT to me. I’m tiny. He’s immense. Slowly, he walks over and brings his head down to my level. It is a sweet, sweet moment with this monumentally confident and loving horse. When I let go of worrying, and just bask in the beauty that is in all of us, it is a feeling without measure. Total JOY. Anytime I feel fear, I can go there, being in the moment, in the love, and know that no matter what, all is well.

Ahhhhhhh.

The Dinner that became a Master Mind

Since I'm in Colorado at CORE and my sister-in-law, Danae, lives just a hop-skip-jump away, we made arrangements to meet for dinner on Friday night at a local Japanese restaurant. The timing was perfect; I had just completed my first client experience and was pretty much babbling. With D and her wonderful friend, Allison, we planned a nice evening of playing catch-up and just having a fun girl's night out.

Well, things don't always go as planned, and our little girl's night out turned into much, much more - and it was major FUN!

D and Allison have been entrepreneurs their entire careers, and I'm moving in that direction after too many years to count in the corporate world. So we started riffing about our different businesses and what works and what doesn't, and pretty soon, without even trying, we all started channelling master marketeers and were bouncing ideas off of one another like ping pong balls.

Man, we were on a roll! By the time we were done, we all had ideas for providing our customers with value for their interest, free gifts, new ways of presenting our products, and I think somewhere in there we may have even solved a couple of the world's ills.

I don't know what was in the Sushi, but I'd like another helping, please!

Ima Client Today

What a day! I can't remember when I was at an event where I didn't know what time it was and didn't care, because there was such a plethora of riches to savor and enjoy!

The day began with some review, and then in the afternoon we did our first pieces of work. We did a group session which involved a horse and some drawing. Sounds trivial, but nothing about this course is trivial, believe me. Suffice it to say I connected myself with a horse and was hard at work doing the assignment. At first the horse was interested, and even helped me a little bit, chewing the edge of the paper and making his own mark. However, as I continued to color and draw he quite pointedly turned away. His tail gently raised, and the familiar odor of passed gas wafted by my nose. Well, that was an interesting response from my assignment buddy....

His interest was renewed when my mind went on a tangent and started thinking about a fellow participant. She had left a corporate job and was currently pursuing her passion. 'How did she do that?' I wondered. Shadow wondered right along with me, while I wrote the word Courage a few times on my paper. However, when I started drawing little gold hearts on the page, he once again turned away and gifted me with a rear-end raspberry.

Geeeeez.

After the session was over and we had given our feedback, it was time for one of the more experienced students to do some coaching. Any volunteers? My hand shot up. I really wanted to know what was up with Shadow and his editorial hindquarters.

Coach and I reviewed my drawing, me talking about connection and not being able to have the courage to take the next step in my career by myself, blah blah blah. Shadow, in the round pen, had his back turned during my explanation. We seemed to be getting nowhere in terms of coming to any conclusions. Coach asked if he could touch my drawing, and he held it toward me and asked me what I saw. I pondered for a bit and knew there was something not right but wasn't finding the words to verbalize the discomfort I felt as I looked at all the pretty hearts. Finally, a couple of syllables escaped my lips and immediately tried to shove themselves back down my throat. Coach, though, was quick. He encouraged me to continue, and I blurted out "The colors are all wrong and the whole thing just doesn't feel right." Wow - I had just called a rear-end raspberry on myself! Shadow, of course, had known all along the picture was cow dung.

I was then invited into the round pen with Shadow, and what ensued was my first real taste of the power of an equine healer. Shadow stayed out of my way until I hit upon my truth and everything that my heart had been trying to tell me, and then he joined up and walked with me around and around the pen, gaining momentum with every step. In my vision, I give people, especially women, their voices back. Me and my equine counterparts, we assist people in finding their power, to discover what is best for them and then to effectively communicate that, to say out loud what is their heart's desire. And they do this in a way that is harmonious for everyone involved, from their authentic, loving, heartfelt self.

What a day!

Colorado and CORE, Day 1

Phew, what a day! I was excited about getting to Colorado and starting my first CORE. An interesting phenomenon occurred: I felt kind of spacy, and I noticed that I was really "vibrating". It was almost the shakes, but not quite. Another student remarked on the same thing happening to her today. Fascinating!

The trip to Colorado was uneventful, but I'll tell you what. A carry-on bag that goes into the overhead bin is a monumental pain in the bum. I had to put my bag up a couple rows behind where I was sitting, so of course when we were deplaning it took some time to get it, and had to be passed over the heads of a couple of passengers. I thought it was pretty amusing, but no one else was smiling. Guess they just wanted to get off the plane! It seems the world is becoming quite a grim place - or maybe I just have a totally twisted sense of humor.

Kelly from Touched By A Horse picked me up at the airport, and what a pleasant trip it was up to the ranch! Kelly was in the Navy, so of course I told him about my stepdaughter, Hilary, who is serving right now, and we talked about all manner of things. I felt so at home with Kelly, and can't thank him enough for being so open and caring and helping me feel like one of the gang.

I'm so glad I decided to bring lots of layers! Earlier in the week, the weather was predicted to be sunny and in the high 50's, but in typical mercurial Colorado style, somewhere along the line that changed to cold and maybe even a little snow. Brrrrr! Lots of dark clouds and dramatic weather this evening - it was GREAT after the dreary day-after-day rain of a typical Northwest winter!

There are eight participants in this weekend's CORE, a wonderful number. It provides us with a little extra time to get things done, which means we get to start a little later for a couple of the days - woo hoooo! After getting up at 4:45 am every morning, just the thought of sleeping in until 6 or 7 is a total treat!

This first evening was a checkin and then we did a couple of exercises, learning a couple of the tools for our toolbox. I got to be the client for a couple of more seasoned students, and it was a wonderful experience. Lots of things around fear came up for me. It will be interesting to see how they play out over the weekend.

Time to settle in for the night, call my beloved, and then get some shuteye. It's great to be here!

CORE!!

Been crrrazy busy the last couple of weeks, and now, suddenly, it is time to fly off to Colorado for my first CORE! Excited, a little nervous, and looking forward to the experience!

Melisa is giving Abhainn a weekend pass from the training stable and is bringing him home so I can see him. It will be great to give him a huge hug and see how he's changed, now that he's a grown up boy and is carrying people on his back. What a star he is!