Like the serenity prayer says, there are some things we can change and some we can’t. It’s our job to draw on our wisdom to know the difference, and to pluck up the courage (and sometimes just the willingness) to make the changes we can.  

A few years ago, I was diagnosed with tongue cancer. Who knew? I’ve never smoked and I rarely drink, but somehow I had small lumps that needed three surgeries.  They were successfully removed, but every time I went back for check-ups, there would be iffy, pre-cancerous cells present. Finally I asked myself, “What can’t I change and what can I change here?”

I went to a complementary healer, Anne Westfall, and found that I had underlying candida that ...

Horses heal in many ways. Just hanging out with horses can be soothing to the soul. Among more guided approaches, there is equine assisted therapy which treats mental health issues. There is hippotherapy (or therapeutic riding) where people with disabilities, mostly children and youth, ride a horse with the assistance of trained instructors. (The riding stimulates the muscular and neurological systems as closely to walking as anything can. Not only that, the disabled person has the added benefit of being in relationship with a horse.) Then there is equine guided coaching and learning, which is the modality I use. This coaching-based approach assumes the client is creative, resourceful and whole, and that there is nothing to be fixed. The ...

Recently I was in a seminar where the question was “What gives you your purpose?” We were to look at what calls us into life. I wanted to say all the things that have always in the past given me purpose: my work with the horses, connecting with spirit, bringing joy, dancing. However, we were asked to look at how much of that came from the past, from a place of survival, from too much thinking, or from some sort of solidified sense of accomplishment. As I stepped into this challenging question, I remembered a Buddhist saying that I’ve had with me since I was in my twenties:

An old man lives in his past saying “Look what I did when I was young.
A young man lives in his future saying, “Look what I will do ......