This past weekend, I took a 3-day workshop called ‘Mothering the Bones’, led by Angela Dechaine of Wellspring Craniosacral Therapy.  This course intrigued me when I read about ‘tending the female pelvis’ – an area that I had not learned much about in my Somatic Experiencing training – and we would be taught how to touch and hold women in their pelvic area in a supportive and healing manner.   In my previous bodywork trainings, I have never had the sense of safety and clarity

This is me, just a few months old – a very long time ago, as you can tell by the picture.  I had a difficult birth, with my mother in labor for many hours.  Finally, the doctor ‘put her out’ and delivered me.  That is all we know.   Birth trauma has become my passion in the Somatic Experiencing work.  The more I learn about how a difficult beginning affects us throughout our lives, the more I see evidence of this in my clients.  Asking what they know about their birth is now

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. Ernest Hemingway     Wanting to understand what it is about the work I do that resonates with my clients, I asked a few if they would be willing to write a couple of sentences about their experience of working with me. One client couldn’t condense her experience into a short paragraph, so wrote what came to her and asked if I could condense it into a shorter form.  As I read what she wrote, I knew t

I have sung in choirs my whole life and now, as a senior citizen, singing in a chamber choir is one of the few intergenerational things I still get to do, so it was a great pleasure when our choir was asked to join three choirs from our local university in a production of Vivaldi’s Gloria.  The rehearsals introduced me to the current generation of students, and I can now see how much society has evolved since the time I was a student.   I had attended this university for my s

‘Softness is what emerges when we don’t need defenses.’ Lasell Jaretzki Bartlett, in A Journey to Softness , by Mark Rashid   I keep bumping up against this concept of ‘softness’ in my horse life.  Mark Rashid is a well-known horsemanship clinician from Colorado who has spent his life trying to find what softness is in connection with his horses.  He says that this is a journey, a lifelong journey, and that we will not find it with our horses until we find it in ourselves and

I am getting better at running braids.  I like to braid Paris’s voluminous mane when I ride her so that the hair doesn’t get caught up in...

Neurodivergent and hypersensitive nervous systems have a lot in common with nervous systems that hold trauma.  I have learned that my...

Trauma can cause a nervous system to be in constant flight or fight mode. It can also cause someone to dissociate when flight or fight is...

Faraona and I are on perhaps the biggest journey of our relationship.  After she came off 6 weeks of stall rest last fall when she...

It’s been a wild spring at my place with horses.  After Ella’s unexpected death, Faraona and Diva were jittery.  Ella had been the leader...

How is this sweater a metaphor for trauma?  And I don’t just mean the trauma of my husband taking a 100% extrafine merino wool sweater of...

I am struck by clients’ comments about their time spent with Ella and how viscerally they remember how they felt.  It is as if bringing...

Winter came back last night and I went out this morning to wet, heavy snow.  Faraona and Diva were waiting for their breakfast but I had...

I feel my body become more alive as I read poet Mary Oliver’s words, knowing that we only get one chance in this life, in this body, to...

A beautiful photo of a girl and her horse.  But look a little closer.  All is not as it seems.   This is a younger me and my first...

Why is it a big deal that Diva is finally yawning?  Because yawning is a sign of relaxation, and this is another step in Diva’s trauma...

There are horses that come into your life in plain packaging and it is not until you get to know them that you realize how special they...

I have a confession to make – I am venturing further and further outside the box.  Manjiri Latey came to my attention as a guest on...

“Coming back from the dead is not quite the same as coming back to life.”  Sarah Winman Psychedelics are the latest rage for working with...

Ella is 25 years old this year.  Now that she is retired from being a show horse and lives outside year-round, she grows a lot of winter...