Spring Reflections with Emma
To date, Miss Emma has made it through four nights outside 24/7 — through warm nights, thunderstorms and cold frosty mornings. 30-degree temperature fluctuations are stressful for all horse guardians. Loving and caring for seniors, sensitive beings, and those with chronic health conditions can be especially challenging during these seasonal shifts. It shows us what needs tending to within the body and what needs to be released. While spring is a natural season of new beginnings, growth and rebirth, if you have horses in your care, you are also aware of how fragile the veil between life and death can be during this time. Nudging us towards learning and accepting the painful reality, there will always come a point where all the wonderful healing modalities we’ve learned no longer work to heal the body. Throughout my long weekend, anticipatory grief re-entered the conversation, alongside questions about quality of life and a continued quest to understand what living truly means for each individual.
Saturday, I cried in my TCM appointment. Then I cried again in the field, after she had her first gloriously normal poop. (IYKYK.) And then I cried even harder after having the beautiful opportunity to tell her how I see her gift to us all: unconditional love. She took that in. Then, radiating sweetness and confidence, she walked into the field to meet the boss mare — all on her own free will. Emma made her presence known gradually, respectfully. She didn’t invade. She didn’t avoid. She invited. She approached gently three separate times. And each time, when the boss mare said “heck no,” Emma stepped aside, giving space without giving up. She simply held this beautiful, loving energy.
In recent years, Emma experienced the most horrific herd introductions I have ever known in my 30 years in the horse world. Yet here she is, choosing to take steps to join a new herd and live outdoors full-time because that’s what her soul needs. She is living with chronic health conditions, has experienced trauma, and is navigating a round of digestive and endocrine concerns — and she is still courageously choosing to heal at a heart and soul level.
It prompts us to look within — what circumstances have we been dealt that we are letting define us? What can we rise above in order to live freely? Even in an animal’s journey toward the end of its life, healing is still happening on a soul level if we are open to it and can be quiet enough to listen and support them.
Our horse show days are complete. Our riding days are beautiful memories I will forever cherish. Yet she still has a purpose. She is still here to teach me, arguably deeper lessons than those we learned in the saddle. She is here to teach others, to grow and evolve. To inspire love and healing in everyone she meets. Six months ago, she shared that she wanted more peace and stability in her life. And what has she done? She’s embodied it. She has learned to become the peace and stability she was seeking. The soul healing that is possible… it makes my heart burst and moves me to more tears. In fact, from the journey Emma has taken me on over these 19 years, I would argue that while modern medicine and dominant culture seek a cure-a way to stop symptoms, or to save a life—healing has very little to do with life and death. It transcends both. That’s a powerful shift I’m still in the process of feeling my way through.
As I reflect on Emma, especially in these last few days, I’ve come to believe that not many horses are used to a horse like her in our present time. The spiritual leaders are a gift to any herd lucky enough to have one. It took me the longest to realize that while every horse has the ability to heal themselves, not every horse’s human walks the healing path alongside them that allows them to live as Emma does now. So many horses have been ignored, suppressed, mistreated, misunderstood, and forced to disconnect from their true selves. These, along with other common practices inflicted in the name of “training” and “healthcare,” all disconnect horses from their natural way of being. So many are living in fight, flight, or chronic freeze state, even after they have landed in a good and safe environment. We’ve met people who believe it’s natural for horses to fight to the brink of death when introducing a new herd member — that’s just horses being horses. But that is not a healthy herd. Natural herds would not survive without a sense of harmony. We’ve witnessed the common practice in boarding barns of whips, chains, patience poles and starvation for any behaviour that isn’t ideal.
Through the healing work we have done together, and continue to do — through acupressure, Bowen therapy, Reiki, animal communication, herbal medicine, aromatherapy, k-tape, homeopathy, and the freedom to ask for what she wants and needs, and have it be honoured. Emma has strengthened her ability to overcome suffering through her own energy work and mindset. Life brings pain, challenges, heartache, disappointment, mistakes and misteps — these are not to be dismissed. But suffering is a choice. She reminds me that we choose how long we stay in that suffering — or whether we do at all. Emma brings genuine love and peace to every being she meets. She’s not here to fight or argue. She knows harming others doesn’t ease suffering — hers or anyone else’s. She communicates now more than ever, but never to harm. She is simply here living her purpose. She is a horse who leads with love. A healer of the herd.
My cherished mare with many lifetimes of wisdom.
Emma reminds me that we all have our own unique roles to fill in life and our community. We don’t need to become someone else to have a purpose in life. We are all whole, worthy and bring value to this world, as we are. In fact, she encourages me to live my truth, so deeply, so calmly in my being with blinders on to the way others are living out of harmony, that they fall away over time, and it’s no longer up for negotiation or debate. She checks in with everyone in her world, tracks their health, and notices everything about them. As she senses things, she adjusts within herself to shift the energy of the field. People new to horses, outside of the horse world, and even those in the industry for decades, often ask what the purpose is of a horse that isn’t ridden.
Every horse — every animal — has a purpose, regardless of their job.
Emma’s purpose is to embody peace, show us how to live a heart-centred life, and hold space for healing within all who desire to embark on the journey. She’s a spiritual teacher cloaked in a horse’s body, a quiet anchor whose presence invites others to soften, to feel, to remember who they truly are beneath the layers of trauma or expectation. Her life is a living example of how to simply be. Not through force, but through energetic alignment, awareness, and choice. She doesn’t lead with dominance; she leads with love, intention, and wisdom. She is a one-person horse who has made it her life’s work to support reflection with me and awaken me to the infinite possibilities. Healing is not about fixing, but about witnessing, honouring, and evolving. She is here to guide us all back to our true essence.
This is the healing work that transcends life and death.
With Love,
Sarah & Emma
