I knew she broke it when I kept insisting, in a voice that started to sound less and less like my own, that I was fine. I’m fine, I’m fine, I said as we drove back up the hill, I’m fine, I’m fine as I gathered up my bag of treats, I’m fine, I’m fine, until in the sanctuary of the driver’s seat of my car I could let my heart beat unreasonably fast and let my tears fall in quick succession.
A couple of hours later, I have my pinky toe taped to its nearest neighbor, my foot in a black orthotic shoe, and instructions to rest it, which I do not want to do. Immediately, I look for loopholes. I test the edges of the pain - is it really, I say, that bad? It is worth it, the slowing down that it will cost me?
A horse stepped on my foot while I turned her back into her pasture. It’s a collision of the kind that happens so fast and is so obviously accidental - our two feet tangled up where they shouldn't, in just that one way, and there is a crack in the bone of my toe. The bruise is almost hoof-shaped, its edges now turning the colors of the fall leaves I miss so much in my parent’s backyard.
When I say it out loud I think, oh, that’s an injury. If you were to tell me this happened to you my first question would be how are you caring for it, how are you slowing down, how are you making space for your body? When it happens to me I say, how far can I push myself until I have to admit to pain? How much can I handle? How soon can I ride again?
I treat my body like an expendable commodity - this one member’s pain only worth a passing glance, the tiredness of my limbs worth at most an occasional admittance and if that, only to my husband, only to the one person who knows how my face shifts from courage to honesty. I do not think my body’s signals are nearly as important as the world in which we - my body and I - live. How dare you make demands, I tell her, be quiet I tell her. I remind that we are built of something stronger than bones - we are built of determination. I coach her right up to the edge and tell her she’s earned rest when she can’t do the next thing. Not before.
The best worst part of writing this down is knowing how unoriginal I am. Me, the woman of a well-placed metaphor, is telling you a story that I imagine you already know. It’s been woven into us, hasn’t it? We know it better than we know the other path, the road less (barely) traveled, of luxurious and unnecessary rest, of waiting longer than you technically need to, of having no reason at all to lie down or sleep late.
Ironically, all week before the horse stepped on me I’d been thinking about how our riding is our way of living. How we go with the horse is how we go with ourselves. There are, after all, two animals in this sport, two members of the team, two athletes joined in work. I was audacious enough to tell a friend that part of her riding had to be kindness to her own body, the very same kindness she gave the horse. There are two animals here. They need the same things. That soft animal of your body, Mary Oliver, the best line of a poem I know.
When we ride as if we are expendable, when we act as if our bodies should be made to do what is in our head, however unreasonable or outside our abilities, we do not go as well. Perhaps, in the end, we do not go as full of love. And perhaps it is going with love that makes the difference.
Let that soft animal rest, Mary Oliver says, let it love. Let it bear witness to what is, let it be present to what is not yet. There is sanctuary in slowness, refuge in rest.
I am letting this animal rest. I am showering her with the same love I shower the horses with, even when they are not working, even when all we do is stand together in the field and breathe the air and let our bodies be.
Let us live the way we ride, ride the way we live, let us go this way. Let us go with love.