| Launching & Landing |
| Two days before we left the farm in Florida, we stood outside and stared up at the bright blue sky watching Artemis II propel into space. You could see it from our place, not the rocket itself but the bright thread of light pulling away from Earth, and I took this picture from our backyard. The horses lifted their heads from the hay and turned east, ears swiveling toward the sound. We stood and watched humans go to the moon for the first time since 1972. It felt like the beginning of something momentous. A few days later, we were packed and on our way to our new life on the opposite side of the country with our dog, Gracie. The whole reason for the move is my husband’s new job in the space technology industry. His career was on a new trajectory, and so were we, all of us pulled toward the great unknown. The day we crossed into California was the same afternoon Orion came down off the coast of San Diego. The capsule was named *Integrity*. We had arrived at our new house only an hour earlier when we realized that this momentous occasion was happening, so we jumped back in the car and headed to the beach to see if we could spot the splashdown. We weren’t alone. Hundreds of people lined the boardwalk watching the live stream of the event all while straining to see a glimpse of the capsule of the four astronauts splashing into the Pacific Ocean. It felt like a welcome. A whole coast of strangers gathered for the same moment of return, and we got to be a part of it. Launch from one shore. Splashdown on the other. Us, driving across the country, then arriving just in time to be on the opposite coast for the landing. I keep thinking about this. The synchronicity and the symbolism. For me, leaving the farm felt like my biggest expedition, and our road to California felt like the longest journey ever. Part of me wants to call it a sign. Of course I do. The launch happened from my old life, the landing from my new one, with my heart split between the two. In our work, we are very careful not to hand people meaning. The HERD Model asks us to stay in the here and now and let participants come to their own interpretation in their own time. I do not interpret what a horse is doing for a participant, because the moment I do, I have taken something that belonged to them. So I am suspicious of myself when I want to call something a sign. I know how quickly meaning-making can become meaning-taking, even with ourselves. And yet, pattern recognition is important. It is the oldest intelligence we have. Long before language, long before reasoning, we relied on noticing that this shape in the grass moves like a predator and that one does not. My horses will notice the smallest change in their environment and assess risks. This is the nervous system doing the work it was built to do. We do it too. Our body recognizes the pattern before the mind has words for it, and the words we come up with afterward, the stories we tell, the meanings we assign, are us catching up to something the body already knew. Meaning-making is not separate from the animal in us. It is the animal in us, narrating itself. So when I ask whether the Artemis timing is a sign, I realize that I’m really asking something else. I am asking what meaning does it have for me. The capsule was named “Integrity”, and that is a core value I hold. Integrity is the word for something that holds together, that is whole, that is what it says it is. It is also the word for holding true to your beliefs, even when it’s hard. And here is the thing about this season of my life. The hard and the good are happening at the same time, in the same body. What’s hard right now is that I’m in California and my horses are in Ohio. My chickens and my cat are still on the farm in Florida. I am thankful for everyone who has stepped up to take care of them and know that I’ve made the best decision for them all. But for me, knowing that I made the right call doesn’t mean it’s easy. I’ve built my life around the relationship between people and horses. I teach, every day, that the relationship is the thing. So I cannot pretend that moving three thousand miles from my own herd, beloved chick chicks, and Dottie cat, is something my body can wave off. It cannot. It is not. The body knows. My body knows. And what’s good right now is also true. My husband is starting work he has been moving toward for years. We are on a new coast, in a new house, watching humming birds instead of horses grazing. We have friends and family nearby and we’re building a new community of support for ourselves. And I’d be remiss not to mention the best Asian food in the country is now right on our doorstep! There is grief in the leaving and there is joy in the arriving, and both are real, and neither cancels the other out. So when I watch “Integrity” come down on the day I arrive, and something in me wants to call it a sign, I have to ask what I want the sign to mean for me. Is it permission? Is it the universe saying you did the right thing, you can stop second-guessing? Because if I let the coincidence do that work for me, I am using the launch to soothe a grief that has not yet finished moving through me. And if I ignore the moment entirely, I am dismissing a joy that is also part of what is true. This is where integrity, the value and not the capsule, comes back to me. Integrity isn’t the absence of doubt, nor the certainty that I was right. Integrity is the willingness to hold together around what is true, all of it, without letting any one truth dissolve the others. The horses are far away, and the move was right, and my husband is starting something new, and hundreds of strangers stood on a beach with us to welcome four astronauts home, and a capsule called “Integrity” splashed down on the day I arrived, and it might be a sign. All of these can be true at the same time, and the work is to let them all be true. So I am trying to do what I ask of our students. Stay in the here and now. Let the moment be what it is, and let the feeling be what it is, and trust that both belong. This is why we don’t interpret what the horses do for our participants. What I think it means might be completely different to what they think. The meaning belongs to the one who is living it. Mine belongs to me, and right now it feels like waves of grief and joy at the same time, and I am surrendering to it. |