The Dance of Memory and Mirror

At seventeen, I juggled three jobs like a desperate circus act, I was a gas station attendant, short order cook, and a ranch hand at a horse boarding and training facility.

This was during the same chaotic stretch when I was homeless for nine months,
living out of my 1963 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, a story for another time.

What I discovered pretty quickly at the ranch was that I was allergic to horses.
Not full-on anaphylaxis, but close enough. Throat closure, trouble breathing,
eyes and face swelling... Like I'd been in a fight or car wreck.

Lucky for me, the ranch owner was a doctor. He got me patched up and on meds so I could keep working. I needed the money more than I needed comfort.

Fast forward nearly forty years. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd been around horses. No reason for meds anymore. No EpiPen in my pack.

Then I came around the bend on the trail and locked eyes with three of them.

Normally, horses come up to me like cats that can smell your disinterest -
nuzzling, asking for affection. This wasn't that. These weren't wild horses,
but they sure as hell weren't tame either.

One of them decided I was a problem. He charged, then stopped nose to nose. Then reared up, bolted back, and charged again. Over and over.

I tried to make a break for it, but where the fuck was I gonna go?
I was standing on an open trail in an open clearing. No cover, no trees,
just sparse brush and sky.

I angled toward a small cluster of bushes. He chased me in circles,
threatening to kick as he spun. It was ridiculous. Terrifying.

We did this weird dance, over and over, until finally, instinctively...
I dropped into a deeper state. Settled my energy. Found something calm.
And like horses do, he responded.

He wasn't totally at ease, but he stopped charging.
We both stood there, breathing.

Before I came around that bend, I thought I was fine. Calm. Happy, even.
Just enjoying the trail. But the moment I saw those horses, something lit up
in my nervous system. And they read it like a fucking book.

My mind had filed that ranch story away, neat and distant. But my body?
My body remembered. The threat. The swelling. The breathlessness.
The old equation of fear plus need.

And the horse? He caught it. Mirrored it. That's what horses do.
They see past our masks. They strip away the bullshit and reflect back
whatever we're actually carrying.

Especially when we're lying to ourselves about it.

The moment we locked eyes and I dropped in, that whole dynamic shifted.
It wasn't dominance. It wasn't fear. It was presence.

A kind of negotiation built entirely on energy. No words.
No control. Just a shared field of truth, raw and unfiltered.

What haunts me now isn't the fear. It's the honesty.
Horses don't lie. And they don't let you lie either.

That day, I learned I was carrying far more than I thought.
Forty years of cellular memory, adolescent desperation
and the tangled root system of trauma and survival.

That dance in the clearing wasn't about territory. It was about memory.
About the body's truth surfacing through motion and stillness.
It was about being seen by something that didn't need a backstory
to understand you - just your presence.

And it reminded me:
sometimes the wild doesn't just witness us.
It mirrors us.

→ Explore more Field Notes
→ Related: Full Send, Full Stop

Keep momentum:

Do a 2-5 min ritual: quick reset for low-capacity moments.
Build capacity: sleep, basics, and minimums that matter.
Reflect for a minute: short reads with a long tail of calm.

*Peer reflection, not therapy advice. Your healing journey is uniquely yours.*