A reflection....6 year ANNIVERSARY of buying my dream ranch...

Standing in the field with the herd.

Today is the 6 year anniversay of buying this beautiful retreat center.

Each year on December 18th I like to share a reflection on the anniversary since buying and stepping into my dream of having my own property.

In many ways 6 years has flown by, it is surreal to me to be sitting here at this point in this space when in truth I barely thought I would make it past my first year.

I like to be honest as always in sharing the journey, and all parts of it, and so here is another truthful reflection of this journey.

Stepping into this dream was a trip, it felt magical and surreal, I had lofty goals for my journey here and I was really naive in many ways of it.

This has been a much harder path than I realized, and even though I know it would test my edges it has been that and more.

This year in many ways was a hard one for me personally, I have had more loss this year than I think I ever had in my life.

And a space of pride for me has been to look at how far I have grown from this place as compared to year one where instead of embracing the contrast of life I felt victimized by it.

My first year I felt like a punching bag for the universe, I struggled a lot, I also had loss that year in my beloved equine partner Nazir, I fell back into debt, I doubted myself heavily, and burdened myself with the guilt of feeling like a failure.

When people look at me and tell me they are amazed at how I have walked this year gracefully, I can say that it wasn’t always this way.

My first year in many ways prepared me for the contrast of this life, it taught me that when we fall deep into our doubts and insecurities we dig ourselves a hole that is painful and hard to come out of.

I didn’t handle the adversity of my first year with grace, I felt as if I barely survived, it took me years to recover from it.

This year I could feel that even though it was a hard year I had grace.

I had a moment of walking this land early this year and being grateful for what it forged in me, I feel the medicine of this place in many ways is to help us find our strength and our courage.

This land never saw me as weak, or unable, it held me to the fires of holding it and said you are strong enough and we see you in that.

I felt gratitude for that witnessing this year and it gave me the strength to meet what has been a hard year with grace and acceptance while embracing all contrast of life.

The theme for me this year and what it taught me is to how to be with contrast, to be able to meet the joys of life as equally as the sorrows and to feel the gift of it.

To embrace the life sometimes gives us things that feel hard, and to meet them with honor as equally as the times that feels blissful and full of blessing.

To share the elements of my year and what we walked through.

Our first loss was the sudden death of our beloved soulmate dog Luca on March 3 the anniversary of the death of my beloved grandmother, there were spaces and pieces of this journey that I was not expecting that threw me in a space of grief for months.

Losing luca was one of the hardest things I have ever been through, he was more than a dog to me, and his loss shocked me deeply.

During that time one of our beloved horses Rudy also let me know that it was his time to transition, as his crippled body had become too much for him to bear and so began our journey to holding his passing.

Rudy had a 6 week process as that is what he needed, and I had to hold that space of being a doula to his death while still processing the loss of Luca.

It was tender and potent and deep, I don’t have all the words to hold around that but it changed me deeply.

With Luca and our other dog Odin.

With Rudy and Indy.

There were also some joys this year, I got married and had a beautiful and magical honeymoon on Sonora island. I got to visit and be in the energy of the ocean and whales, it felt abundant and sweet and I was grateful for this gift.

My wedding was how I always envisioned it, in the field with my herd, surrounded by an intimate circle of loved ones, it was perfect and I feel so grateful to have such an incredible man and partner by my side.

However the sweetness didn’t last, 2 weeks after we returned from our honeymoon we had a wildfire explode across the street from us. We were forced to evacuate our entire herd and lived a month on evacuation alert. Our entire summer had to be cancelled or postponed, a busy time for our retreats gone.

I am still feeling the lingering affects of living in this space, the trauma of moving my herd, and also living on edge for such a long time.  The despair and the hopelessness was heavy, it was the first time in my life that I felt the darkness and doom to the extent that I did about our world.

And the brightness of this space was to feel and be held by community, it was a reminder of how powreful this medicine was and how much we need it.  Although I still feel the impact of living that closely to a fire and having to evacute my herd, on the flipside of that, I also remember the tremendous amount of warmth, generosity and love from the people that held us.  

We need community and this was a big space of this year for us.

With my Husband on our wedding day.

Orca whale from our honeymoon.

Then came the fall and I was blessed with the fullness of retreats, being able to continue my work with the indegenious community, my equine training and women's retreats.

There was an abundance this year of feeling that my hard work over the last 6 years and the dedication to my purpose and my own growth was being felt by those drawn here.

The gratitude of being able to hold this work with my herd and my fortune in that, there was a sense of satisfaction of the course I have stayed to get to this space to be able to hold such purpose in my work and to witness the impact of it.

I felt I was where I wanted to be in the fullness of my retreats and those coming here to my vision of where I began, I could see the fruits of my labour and the power of this space and work.

An image from our October’s Women’s Retreat.

And then another impossible dream I got pregnant, after a couple of years of not knowing if I could and struggling and feeling challenged around my hormones. We also received the gift of a puppy that felt divinely guided and showed up at the right time. I do feel that Luca and the essence of him came back to me in the form on this new puppy we call Shiloh.  He has been a joy and a bright spark the last couple of months.

At 6 weeks and 2 days, I miscarried, which also came 2 days after we lost another one of our beloved horses Peter Pan, then our elder mare Flicka decided it was also her time to transition a week after we lost Peter Pan.

So this year ended with loss and…

As has been this year, I have found myself walking the space of all these transitions yes with grief and I have cried more tears this year than I have in awhile but I als0 have an appreciation of the journey of finding my way to embrace all elements of it and knowing that there is a solidity in myself that I can.

Wisdom is forged through living our lives and our dreams, in that living we can expect to experience all parts of life, the good stuff and the stuff that feels hard.

We don’t get to choose, life is always going to be life, our road to our dreams is always going to be paved with growth it is how we hold it.

This year I saw and experienced the deep change in myself in my ability to walk through the harshness that life sometimes has for us, without losing myself and without missing out on the bright spots around it.

There is no good or bad as my horses have taught me, just the journey, if we can learn to embrace all elements of the journey than this is true mastery.

And as a side, mastery does not equal perfection, mastery is messy and it is vulnerable and it has range of what we experience.  

I can walk out of this year knowing I lived it deeply and well, I found the growth and it forged another ring of wisdom for me along the way.

Deep gratitude to my community as always that bear witness to my journey, I hope there is something for you to take away in this reflection as well.

Happy 6th anniversary to this space and this path of purpose, deep bow to you.

Stay tuned to an upcoming post on the learnings of 2021 and what we are growing through into the new year.