The Horse, the Rain, and a Breath That Held Me

A reflection on presence, weight, and the quiet rituals that steady us.

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It rained yesterday. At last.
The waiting had thinned everyone’s patience — earth, animals, people.
This morning the ground exhaled a dark, generous scent.
Aurora let me lie beside her and press my forehead to hers.
Her breath was slow, warm, unhurried.
For a few moments, mine learned the pace of hers.

Her breath was slow, warm, unhurried — and for a few moments I matched it.

The icy wind cut through me as I lay there, sharp against the skin, a reminder of how exposed everything feels in this season.

They grazed around us, the herd keeping watch in their silent way,
Their bodies made a circle in the wet sun — not dramatic, not staged, just there —
and inside that ordinary ring, something in me settled.

There is a weight I carry: the uncertainty of health,
the fragile work of building a future,
questions that do not answer when called.
My chest tightens around them out of habit.

But in those shared breaths, the habit loosened.
Gratitude took a seat beside the weight, not to cancel it,
but to keep it company —
as if the body knew a practice the mind keeps forgetting:
peace is not the absence of burden;
it is learning how to breathe while you carry it. I have looked for steadiness in plans and timelines,
and they have their place.
Yet the body — this quiet, faithful animal —
keeps offering a simpler instruction:
Come back.
To breath.
To ground.
To what still holds.

The Echo That Reaches Back

I think of my mother. Not as a monument, but as a pattern —
small rituals done when no one was watching:
making tea for hands that trembled,
folding laundry like prayer,
opening a window to change the air.

Perhaps I am retracing her steps.
Perhaps I learned them by standing in her quiet weather.
Either way, the echo meets me here:
what steadies us is rarely spectacle.
It is repetition — a humble choreography
of returning when the mind runs,
of softening when the chest hardens,
of placing one more faithful foot on the earth.

I wanted certainty. Instead I was given a circle of horses,
a damp field, and a breath that matched mine.
It was enough.

Steadiness, I’m learning, is not a verdict but a verb.
It is practiced, not possessed.
It lives in the ordinary — hand on a warm coat,
bare feet on wet ground, the measured cadence of inhale–exhale.
It lives in choosing, again and again, to return
to the small rituals that teach the nervous system a kinder rhythm.

And when I cannot believe, I can still repeat.
When I cannot solve, I can still soften.
When I cannot see the end, I can still keep company with this moment
until my body remembers the way.