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Building Strong Connections through Rupture and Repair

Building Strong Connections through Rupture and Repair

by | Jul 23, 2024 | Applied Principles, Parenting and Counseling Children, Personal Growth

By Bettina Shultz-Jobe and Kate Naylor

One of my mentors and teachers, Margery Segal, once said that if you’ve made it to the end of a therapy (or coaching, wellness, etc.) session and haven’t needed to make a repair yet, that you need to hurry up and make a mistake. . . so you can make a repair.  And she meant it!

In one of her trainings we even practiced making mistakes and repairs, because the repair is where the healing takes place – it is in the repair of a mistake that we connect more deeply, grow, and strengthen ourselves and our relationships.

AND repair cannot happen without rupture.  In order to reap the benefits of repair, we must embrace mistakes, conflict, and stress.

Rupture and repair over and over again is how our muscles grow and strengthen. It’s what is needed to develop a strong, flexible, and resilient nervous system.  It is how secure attachment is formed in our earliest years, and how our relationships throughout the lifespan become more intimate, fulfilling, and able to thrive in the midst of life’s tribulations.  Indeed, the cycle of rupture and repair is needed to grow and thrive, so it is no wonder that Margery encouraged curiosity and the freedom to misattune and make mistakes (small ruptures), giving us a powerful opportunity to repair.

Practitioner:  “It seems like that situation brought so much sadness.”

Client:  “No, not really.  It made me angry. . . so angry I could hardly breathe.”

Practitioner:  “Goodness, I really missed you. I misunderstood what you were telling me.  It makes sense that you were angry – of course you were.  Can you tell me more so I can understand your anger more deeply?”

The reality is that perfection isn’t an option – much as we might like it to be.  When in relationship with ourselves and others (whether it be friends, family, colleagues, or clients) we will make mistakes – learning the art of repair is then a necessary and loving way to strengthen our connections.

Many of us need to explore our history with rupture and repair and the beliefs we therefore carry in our body, mind, and soul, if we are to embody a practice that helps our clients heal through reparative experiences.  You see, so many of us and so many of our clients have been robbed of the very important cycle of rupture and repair that is needed for growth.  So, when I say to my client “I missed you.  I didn’t get it, but I really do want to understand,” I may be the first person who has ever acknowledged a misattunement and genuinely sought to repair it in the moment.  These types of interactions over and over again are a salve for attachment wounding – it’s the stuff attachment repair is made of.

Why is this conversation important for the EAS field?

Understanding rupture and repair is important for everybody and for any person in the helping professions, but it’s particularly important for those of us who do experiential work.  When we do experiential work like Equine Assisted Services, real life happens in our sessions. If our clients are building a genuine relationship with a horse (and us), things will not always go as planned. In vivo, our clients will experience stress, misattunement, and conflict, and it will be up to us to model healthy ways to repair relationships with self and others. When we do experiential work, this stuff isn’t just theory, it is a practice in each and every session for us and for our clients.

Let’s discuss the cycle of rupture and repair further.

Rupture and Repair Grows and Strengthens our Muscles

I love the way the physical body can help us understand more abstract things like emotions, attachment, and relationships.  For example, when we lift weights, our muscles are, in essence, damaged.  Tiny injuries to the muscle fibers, called microtears, occur when we workout. However, given proper nutrition, blood supply, and rest, these ruptures will repair allowing the muscle to grow bigger and stronger than it was before. The rupture, however, has to be such that repair is possible, and there has to be a pause that allows repair to occur.

If we continue to stress the muscles without time for rest and repair, the opposite of growth occurs. Muscles can begin to break down, a condition called Rhabdomyolysis that is life-threatening.  Rupture without repair will cause our muscles to disintegrate.  That said, we can’t avoid the rupture if we are to grow our muscles.

There has to be rupture AND repair for growth to occur.

Rupture and Repair Grows and Strengthens our Nervous System

Our nervous system is the same way. Our nervous system grows and becomes flexible and strong and resilient through something called allostasis, the rhythm of stress on the nervous system.  For stress to build resilience it must be moderate, predictable, and short-term – in NL we often use the term eustress to describe this.  Eustress can be metabolized by our bodies.  We can recover from it. Eustress is a rupture for which repair is possible.

Again, the stress needs to be moderate enough that repair is possible, and there has to be a pause that allows repair to occur.  When the stress just keeps coming and coming, we can no longer metabolize it.  There is no pause to allow for repair – oftentimes this is called allostatic load, and it compromises the nervous system instead of building resilience.

That said, in order for our nervous system to develop resilience – strength and flexibility – it has to “work out.” We can’t avoid the rupture all together.  We need moderate amounts of stress AND time for repair.

There has to be rupture AND repair for growth to occur.

Rupture and Repair Helps us to Develop Secure Attachment

Rupture and repair is also what helps us to develop secure attachment, because it is a strong yet flexible nervous system that paves the way for a strong yet flexible person – a person who can better cope with, accept, and adjust to difficult situations.  Adults with secure attachment are less likely to shut down or become emotionally dysregulated when interpersonal conflict arises  – basically, they handle conflict in a way that builds relationships instead of tearing them down.

Secure attachment is formed when a baby experiences a bit of stress (an inevitable experience for any human) – hunger, discomfort, over stimulation – and a caregiver comes in and offers reparative actions of connection like holding, rocking, singing, etc. Eustress (rupture) and soothing (repair) over and over again, builds secure attachment.  Our need for soothing through relationship (co-regulation) continues throughout the lifespan, and it is the co-regulation (repair) that builds the “muscle” that eventually makes self-soothing possible at times.

In order to develop secure attachment at any stage of life, there has to be rupture AND repair.

Rupture and Repair Builds Relationships

It is conflict resolution – basically rupture and repair – that builds relationships with others throughout the lifespan.  Again, rupture and repair is at the heart of all growth.  When we have secure attachment, we believe deep in our bones that conflict resolution is about reconnecting.  When our attachment is more insecure, we tend toward two extremes:  rupture avoidant or rupture centric. This relationship with rupture is typically learned on a cellular level in our family of origin.

Growing up in a family that was rupture-centric

In a rupture-centric home there is often an enormous amount of chaos, conflict, and aggression, without the healthy modeling of repair.  Maybe feelings are expressed, but there is seldom healthy communication about those feelings or movement toward resolution.  Fear is a primary emotion in these homes, and children learn to do whatever it takes to keep their parents happy.  Oftentimes, in this kind of environment rupture is a major threat to safety.  Repair is not considered when survival is the primary concern.

Those of us who grew up in rupture-centric homes may handle conflict in a way that “just gets us through it.”  People please, appease, become defensive, withdraw and then pretend nothing happened – whatever it takes to feel better.  This is an approach that originates from survival mechanisms, and is inherently self-focused rather than relationship focused. So, we get stuck, alone with our feelings, and miss out on the relational repair; the one thing that will help us to learn that rupture doesn’t have to be so scary.

The allostatic load in this home is high because the stress just keeps coming and repair is seldom sought.

Growing up in a family that was rupture-avoidant

In a rupture-avoidant home, conflict is avoided at all costs.  Maybe you never saw your parents fight?  Or only emotions seen as “positive” were allowed.  Feelings were not discussed.  “Go to your room and when you are calm you can rejoin the family.”  Maybe image was really important.  “Don’t do that in front of your grandmother.”  If you grew up in this type of home, you may have learned to internalize feelings and check out from body sensations, because the best way to keep connection with your caregivers was to always be “okay.”

Those of us who grew up in rupture-avoidant homes, might find conflict deeply threatening and terrifying, because conflict means that the relationship will be damaged beyond repair.  We might find that we are scared of feelings that all people have, like anger, jealousy, and grief.  The repression of such emotion leads to more conflict avoidance and the cycle continues.

The allostatic load in this home is still high because pretending that everything is okay doesn’t make it so. Our nervous system still experiences stress, but when we are young we don’t have the benefit of a caregiver who helps us repair – soothes us to completion – thereby helping us learn to self-soothe.  We believe the only way to feel okay is to avoid rupture, thereby also avoiding repair.

In either childhood environment, we also miss out on the practice of conflict – so when we inevitably encounter it as adults, whether it terrifies us or feels all too familiar, we do not have the neural pathways to know what to do next.

How do we learn productive rupture and repair?

  1. Explore your relationship with rupture and with repair, and give yourself so much grace.  The building of this relationship you have with rupture and repair is not something over which you had control.  The re-model, however, is totally up to you – and it will take time
  1. Remember that we need to practice repair over and over again in order to begin to trust that mistakes and stress and conflict are truly safe.
  1. Self-care is a form of repair, and it begins with you.  If you have a stressful day, take time to pause so that you can do reparative behaviors – go on a walk, stretch, sit in a rocking chair, talk with a friend.  Notice when there is a rupture, and then listen to your body and respond by giving yourself what you need to repair.
  1. Make a request for a reparative conversation that is needed.  “We need to talk.”  For many this is the hardest part, so it takes great bravery.  So, again, exercise self-care and self-compassion first, and then say, “We need to to talk.  Is right now a good time for you?”
  1. Lastly, have a repair conversation.  Given that many of us are just beginning the practice of healthy rupture and repair in our lives, I thought a bit of guidance might be useful, which is why I wrote The 5 Steps for Repair in a Relationship. I hope you find it helpful as you begin having conversations for repair.   Remember, these conversations take practice and will likely be messy, giving you even more opportunity for repair.  🙂

 

 

Developing Secure Attachment with Your Business

Developing Secure Attachment with Your Business

by | May 6, 2024 | Applied Principles, Business

This Sunday we celebrate those who mother – all of those who have given birth to beautiful new things and nurtured those already in existence.  Those who have fully embraced and bravely unleashed the kind of creative, nurturing energy that supports, grows, heals, and then releases.  

I am a mother in the more traditional sense and I do very much love this role, but my children are not the only ones I mother. 

Lately, with the release of the Business Building Master Class, I have been thinking a lot about this business that Tim and I birthed back in 2010.  I have thought about the birth pains, the growing pains, the complete bliss, and the utter heartbreak that this child has brought us. 

In one of the interviews we did for the Business Building Master Class, Sara Sherman with Discovery Horse shared some of her thoughts about how we build a secure attachment, a healthy relationship, with this being called. . . our business.

Attachment Theory & Building a Business

I LOVE attachment theory.  When it comes to being a mother, wife, therapist, sister, friend, daughter, and animal steward, the attachment world is my guiding light.  BUT the first time I heard  Sara mention this idea of having a secure attachment to our business, I lost my breath for a moment.  The attachment theory lens had not yet extended to my role as a business owner.  I think I said, “Sh**!  I’m totally enmeshed with this baby!” 

For so many of us, our EAS businesses are passion projects, and they can become all consuming.  We can unwittingly become profoundly anxious, entangled or enmeshed – terms often used to describe one type of  insecure attachment – with our mission, our vision, and our business.  For others, the overwhelm we feel can lead to more avoidant behaviors that cause us to freeze, procrastinate, or check out – a more dismissive attachment to our business.  

Separating Your Business from Your Own Identity

Sara’s first suggestion, as we begin to practice secure relating with our business,  is that we let the business truly be its own entity.  What do I need? What does the business need?  These are separate questions and each has different answers.  In conversations with employees or funders, these are also separate.  “The business needs. . .”  When someone does not meet this need, it’s not personal.  This small shift has been powerful for me.

I am still trying very hard to practice secure relating with this entity called Natural Lifemanship, this absolutely stunning being we have lovingly birthed, nurtured, attuned to, and grown.  It’s a work in progress for sure.  The soft flexibility and balance between nurture and structure, closeness and distance, attunement and differentiation, and discipline and delight takes so much grit, and such a vulnerable exploration of our own story.     

Listen First, Then Respond

In a conversation I recently had with Tamasin Thomas, who Shannon and I will be chatting with in a webinar next week called, “Money Mindset:  How Business, Money, and Your Story are Uniquely Connected” we discussed the importance of attuning to our business.  We birth the business, and then in order to build a secure attachment with it, we first and foremost must protect it and then attune to it. (The first 2 pillars of secure attachment from a book I love called Attachment Disturbances in Adults).  

Tamasin said, “Our business will tell us what it needs to grow and thrive if we listen to it.” We must first listen and then respond, and this response will certainly require that we employ all of our skills,  knowledge,  life experience,  and so much heart and soul.    

AND this is why we created the Business Building Master Class.  It is our desire that you have the information, knowledge, and support you need to be responsive and flexible in your relationship with your business.  

Mothering transforms us  

While many have had spiritual awakenings at the top of a mountain or in the depths of the sea,  I think the most profound metamorphosis happens in the grueling dark of the night, with an inconsolable baby, yet another dirty diaper, an aching body that can hardly move, and the kind of exhaustion where you really think you might die. Those nights when you can’t feel your fingers for the cold, or the heat is crushing your body, when one more fence is down, one more horse is injured, one more client struggles to stay alive, and for you to make payroll or purchase another load of hay will require a miracle.  

Those nights when we think that there is no way to carry on, but our love, our purpose, and our connection to those who have come before us, those who are in it with us, and those who will come after us, somehow helps us show up when we staunchly believe we can’t.  

Those nights transform us.  

In those moments, when we know that we are not alone, we become stronger and softer, and more secure in our attachment.  It is in those moments, when we have the support we need, that we become part of an army of Mamas that are making this world a better place.

If you are looking for support and guidance as you mother your own business, take a look at our Business Building Master Class. We were not made to mother alone – it takes a village.  

Mothering is, by far, the highest calling.  Happy Mother’s Day to all of those who mother.  Today, I honor you.   

 
 

What is Equine Therapy?

What is Equine Therapy?

by | Apr 3, 2024 | Applied Principles, The Latest in Equine Assisted Therapy and Learning

By Kate Naylor and Bettina Shultz-Jobe

“Equine therapy” is probably the most commonly used term to describe, well, just about any therapeutic service involving horses.  It is the most commonly searched term online, and we as practitioners use it all the time.

But, there is a problem.

It’s incorrect and it’s confusing.

Using the term “equine therapy” to label the work that we do in equine assisted services not only muddies our work, but complicates marketing and most importantly, leaves consumers confused and often seeking the wrong services for their needs.

This matters.  For the integrity of our field, for the wellbeing of our clients, and for the health of our businesses.

So what is “equine therapy”?

Equine therapy literally means therapy for equines. This can encompass many wonderful services such as equine massage, masterson method, chiropractic work, reiki, nutritional therapy…the list goes on and on. But importantly, it is a therapeutic intervention for the horse, not the human associated with the horse.

How many times have you explained the work you do to somebody who thought you did therapy for the horse? I’ve had people tell me that they were picturing an actual horse on a therapy couch. We often giggle and then I clarify, but the language we use in this field seems to contribute to this image.

Enter: Equine Assisted Services

The correct umbrella term for what we do is Equine Assisted Services. Making this distinction is valuable on multiple levels. You can learn a bit more about our terminology here.

I hate to muddy the waters here, but it’s worth mentioning. . . Some practitioners do, indeed, integrate equine therapy (therapy for the equine) into equine assisted services (services for the person). This is powerful work that Bettina touched on in a recent webinar. In NL we do believe that Equine Assisted Services should be good for the equine too, but our primary goals are specific to the person receiving services.  

Getting Clear on the Services We Offer

When we describe our services as “equine assisted”, it prompts us to understand what services our equines assist.  In a recent paper, leaders in our field argued for more clarity in terminology.  One suggestion was, when speaking or writing about our work, we should lead with the service and then add “…integrating equines”; as in “mental health counseling integrating equines”.  Or “psychotherapy in partnership with horses”, or “physical therapy using equine movement”, or “occupational therapy in equine environments”, etc.

While this is a mouthful, I admit, I often use this language when describing what it is I do for work. It just is more clear. And importantly, it leads with what it is I actually do. When I lead with this concept, not only is my potential client more clear on whether I can meet their needs, but I am more clear as well. I have to know my scope of practice, my skill set, in order to speak in this fashion. This is a matter of ethics and competence, as well as effectiveness.

We have a problem in our field of believing that just being with the horses is sufficient. While horses are incredible partners in healing work, I think we can all agree, it is necessary for the health and well being of the humans we serve that we develop ourselves professionally separate from the horses. Knowing the service that I offer, with or without equines, makes me a better practitioner.

Now, maybe saying “I offer mindfulness practices in partnership with horses” feels like too much of a mouthful – that’s where “equine assisted mindfulness” can come in.  Using this language instead of “equine therapy” is not only an important point of clarity for the work itself, but is incredibly impactful in your marketing and business building.

Incorrectly using “Equine Therapy” creates confusion

When I search “equine therapy” I get a bazillion results all touting a variety of equine related practices. It is confusing and overwhelming, to say the least. But if I am a consumer searching for mindfulness, and “equine assisted mindfulness” pops up as an option? Cool! Now that’s more like it.

Your business is more likely to be found by the right people, the people who want what you do.  This is a win-win created by more clarity and precision in your language. When you are clear on what you offer, separate from the equines, and use the correct terminology, you will reach the right audience, and the right audience will be able to find you.

Accurate terminology helps people find right-fit services

Lastly, and most importantly, when consumers have heard the term “equine therapy” used over and over, and then utilize that term to search for a practitioner for themselves or a loved one, they can be lost in a sea of services that do not fit them. Worse, consumers self-select an inappropriate service.

If a licensed mental health therapist specializing in trauma processing markets as an “equine therapy” practice, and so does the life coach down the road, and so does the yoga teacher around the corner, and so does the therapeutic riding center across town – how is a consumer, likely uninformed in all these different modalities, supposed to choose what is right for them?  

Each of these services is very, very different, and is designed to meet specific and unique goals.  And, if a client with undiagnosed PTSD (or another specific and sensitive issue) chooses a practitioner that is unqualified to recognize and treat that issue, significant harm can be done. That is the last thing we all want.

Clarity in language fuels our professional evolution, better marketing, and more safety and accuracy for our clients – better services for consumers is absolutely the goal. This clarity is a necessary detail that shouldn’t be overlooked.

For more conversation on this topic, check out Bettina’s recent webinar.

 

 

True Healing Cannot Happen at the Expense of Another

True Healing Cannot Happen at the Expense of Another

by | Mar 4, 2024 | Applied Principles, Basics of Natural Lifemanship, Personal Growth

When I was a pre-teen I was horse crazy.

I had Breyer horses in my room and horse shoes with pictures inside of them all over my walls.  One year for Christmas my parents got me a subscription to the Quarter Horse Journal. I read every single word and even indexed all the information so I could come back to it when needed.  I was organized, committed, and passionate.

My horse’s name was Mr. Ed. He certainly wasn’t show or performance material but he loved me, and I was smitten.  Absolutely smitten. I can still smell him today and feel his breath. Bathing him was probably my favorite thing – an even better smell that takes me back to all things wonderful in my childhood.

Mr. Ed was SLOW.  So, I spent a lot of time on trail rides or pretending to help “work cattle” a mile behind my dad.  I can remember singing “you are my sunshine” to my horse, while ignoring my dad’s pleas for me to catch up.

I now know the science behind what was really happening for me in those sweet and utterly perfect moments – those moments that formed me – powerful attachment and regulation stuff that I love nerding on and on about nowadays.  The thing is, it’s not just research for me, nor is it for most of us.

It’s personal.

It’s why we do this work – we BELIEVE in the power of the horse/human relationship to heal and to help us develop and grow.  We want this for ourselves, and we go to great lengths to offer this to others.

We need the horse human relationship

Some of us may not have had a living, breathing pony when we were young, but even so, many of us knew deep down that we NEEDED one.  Intuitively, we knew what those who have come before us knew, what science is finally catching up to, and what those who will come after us will find deep in their bones – the relationship between horse and person is special and somehow part of the very fiber of our existence.

AND most of us, at some point, if we are in the EAS field long enough, find that our heart and our passion get fractured.

Bills to pay.

Horses and families to feed and care for.

A business to fund, and clients and communities with needs well beyond our capacities to meet.

And grief and loss – oh, the loss that is deep when we love our horses, and that can be particularly complicated to process.

So, we plug along.

And plug along some more.

And plug along some more, because. . .

Goodness me, horse people have some serious grit.  It’s a strength until it’s a hindrance.

In Natural Lifemanship, one of our core principles is that true healing cannot happen at the expense of another.  The first time we ever said this, we were talking mostly about the horses, and about how important it is that their physical, emotional, and psychological well-being is cared for in and out of sessions.

But a good principle is a good principle regardless of where it is applied (another foundational NL principle), and true healing for my horses and my clients cannot happen at my expense or at the expense of my family.  I, too, need care for my physical, emotional, and psychological well-being in and out of sessions.

Maybe read that again, because you need this, too. We all do.

Returning to our why

So, this year it is my intention to return to the heart of this work – the relationship that formed me – my real why.

Selfishly, I’d love to have support and a little accountability, so I’d like to invite our NL community to join me.  Connect or reconnect to what childlike love of a horse feels like – this simple, yet profound love is at the heart of what we teach and what we do in the world every day.

My invitation to you is that you spend time each day for 30 days with your horse or horses, then we’ll meet as a community once a week to support each other and reflect on our time.  For those of you that find it useful, we’ll give you prompts each day – some gentle guidance as you deepen your relationship with your horse. You can learn more about what we’re doing here.

I plan to do my best to create space for this each day, with all kinds of grace for imperfection.  It’s okay to miss a day (actually, we’re building in a few extra days for this purpose).  Your community will still be here when you get back.

Remember, true healing cannot happen at the expense of another

As of late, I need this reminder on the regular. And I need time with my horse, while ignoring the world’s pleas to catch up – even if for just a short time each day.

If you need this too, please join me.  Join our community as we take time for ourselves and time for our horses. . . on our own and in community.

 

 

 

Belief in Magic: The Grown-up Version

Belief in Magic: The Grown-up Version

by | Dec 19, 2023 | Applied Principles, Personal Growth

By Bettina Shultz-Jobe

In 2018 when I was pregnant with Mabel, our second child, I began watching This Is Us during the last trimester when I was on bedrest.  I was already a little late in the game on this series at that time, and now I’m even later. So is life as a business owner and Mama. . . 

So, I recently watched the last episode of season 4. If you’re a This Is Us fan you might remember when Gerald McRaney, the actor who plays Dr. Nathan Katowski, shared some words of wisdom that he supposedly pulled out of thin air in the moment. Maybe you also cried (or wept) like I did. He said: 

“I think the trick is, not trying to keep the joys and the tragedies apart. But you kinda gotta let ’em cozy up to one another. You know, let ‘em co-exist. And I think that if you can do that, if you can manage to forge ahead with all that joy and heartache mixed up together inside of you, never knowing which one’s gonna get the upper hand. . . well, life does have a way of shaking out to being more beautiful than tragic.” 

At our home, our Christmas tree tells our life story. Memories of people who are no longer with us, homes and lives in which we no longer live, moments we will never get back. Each year tears fill my eyes as we unpack and hang ornaments that take me back to younger love, younger children, and seasons I thought would never end. Each year I remember, reminisce, and grieve.

When we decorate the tree I also feel the joy, magic, and mystery that is all around during the holiday season. Sometimes this comes easy, but more often than not I find that it is a practice.  It’s a discipline, because life is hard. It’s hard for everybody. Even when it looks kinda easy. . . it’s still hard. It’s gut-wrenchingly heartbreaking, and for many of us these feelings are profoundly worse during the holidays – in juxtaposition to all the Christmas Spirit and the implication around every corner that we should feel joy. I call this grinch pain, and it is all too real for many of us.

Some of us were blessed (or lucky) enough to remember a time in childhood when magic seemed easy. Ya know, it just happened (mostly because we had parents who really loved us! But that’s another conversation). The awe and wonder of the Christmas season was simple. I was one of those lucky children.  

As life happens, the magic of this season can become less. . . well magical, if we let it. It’s so easy to lose sight of the magic of twinkle lights because they take so damn long to put up. It’s a lot of work. It’s terribly easy to lose sight of the beauty of just about anything worth working for, especially when we’re in the thick of it. 

During my childhood, Christmas traditions, twinkle lights, trees, and Santa Claus all just happened – the innocence of this kind of magic is something I cherish. It has brought me great joy to be part of creating this kind of magic for our children, because I believe this helps to set the foundation for something even more miraculous and magical to occur. . . 

To find awe and wonder and magic and joy even amidst all the work it takes to create it. Even during the very real pain that life often brings. This is a miracle. I do believe that to recognize and accept a miracle takes great work and oftentimes even greater risk.  Very seldom do miracles just happen.  

For me, the entire Christmas season, especially tree decorating day, is a perfect time to practice letting the joys and tragedies “cozy up to one another”.  Deeply holding and feeling both.  The risk is huge, because there is no way of knowing “which one’s gonna get the upper hand” moment by moment. At times, I have been overcome by grief when unwrapping and hanging ornaments, but it’s mind-blowing what those lights look like through tears. When we just stay in it, keep feeling all the things, the reward is great.  It’s a high risk, high reward venture.  

The belief in magic we experience in our youth is innocent and beautiful. . . and fragile, but the magic found at the end of a pilgrimage and a voyage  – the grown-up version of believing in magic, in miracles, is worth dying for.   

My wish for you this holiday, however you may celebrate, is that “you can manage to forge ahead with all that joy and heartache mixed up together inside of you, never knowing which one’s gonna get the upper hand.”  Because this is brave, and this is what prepares the way for things to be “more beautiful than tragic.”  

This is the miracle of Christmas.  

Waiting on the Drive

Waiting on the Drive

by | Sep 26, 2023 | Applied Principles, Natural Lifemanship Events

If you’re not familiar with the term Waiting on the Drive it’s probably because you have never helped gather cattle in a very large, very rough pasture. It is a term I learned in my early teens. In just four words, it encompasses some of the best characteristics of a good cowboy or even just a good person.

There is so much of the unwritten, unspoken code of being a cowboy wrapped up in this term. It was never explained to me – only modeled by countless good cowboys (the word cowboy is certainly not gender specific) that I have had the good fortune to get to work with in the course of my life.

Let’s start with the literal meaning. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was running a very large cow ranch in New Mexico. One of the pastures on that ranch was around 8,000 acres.  There was only me and two other men working on the ranch.

Many of the ranches in that area were large, with only a few men working each one. When it came time to gather and work the cattle, none of the ranches had enough men or women to do that on their own so all of the cowboys on the neighboring ranches would help each other.  It was called “neighboring”.

Neighboring

Usually when we were gathering and working the 8,000 acre pasture there would be me and my two guys plus 10-15 neighbors. We would meet at the working pens and get our horses saddled and ready for the day. We would ride out before sunup to make the two mile ride to the start of the 8,000 acre pasture.  Then we’d ride to the backside of that pasture to start gathering the cattle about the time the sun came up.

As we were heading to the back of the pasture I would drop cowboys off at strategically planned out places to make sure the entire pasture was covered. The cowboys that were dropped off first, and each one after that, did not start gathering cattle immediately. They had to wait until everyone was in position to start the “drive.”

In an 8,000 acre pasture with 15 cowboys there is no way to see what anyone else is doing because they are so far apart.  So the first ones dropped off had to wait until they judged that everyone had time to get in position to start the drive.  Usually if everything was timed right, the drive would start about the time it got light enough to see.  The first ones dropped off would spend more time waiting on the drive than the ones dropped off further along in the pasture.

Good timing doesn’t happen by chance

The goal of the drive was to arrive at the gate out of the pasture with all of the cattle that were in that pasture and all of the cowboys accounted for.  Timing was critical. If one cowboy got his cattle to the gate ahead of the herd it was almost impossible to just hold them there until the others arrived.

These were not gentle cattle that were regularly handled.  On these large ranches they were only gathered twice a year, once in the spring to work the calves and once in the fall to wean the calves.  They were usually pretty wild and not easily handled. They were easiest to handle when they could be in one big herd.  So anyone that didn’t merge their cattle with the other cattle as they were moving in the direction of the gate would cause problems for everyone.  Ideally all of the cattle would come together simultaneously in the vicinity of the gate. None of this happened by chance.

When you are waiting on the drive, you have several responsibilities that contribute to the success or failure of the drive.  It is a time when you can relax a little and take in the wonder of a new day beginning and the world starting to wake up. This was always my favorite part of the work, alone with just my horse, watching the sun start its fight to drive away the darkness, completely devoid of any man-made sights or sounds.

But that feeling of peace didn’t exist in a vacuum.  You had to be keenly aware of any sign that the drive had started.  You didn’t want to be ahead of the drive but you also didn’t want to be behind it.  That sign might be the first hint of a cow bawling for its calf, or a herd of deer moving out in front of the moving herd of cattle.  It might be a slim wisp of dust circling above a distant hill.  Sometimes it was just a gentle nudge coming from somewhere inside, saying “It’s time now”.

If you are not fully attuned to yourself and all that is around you it is easy to miss the sign.  If you miss the sign it makes everything harder for you and for everyone in the drive.  It makes things harder for your horse and for the cattle.  It makes everyone have to work harder.

The time that you spend waiting on the drive can be the most rewarding part of the day, but it is also the most critical.  Great, important things are about to happen but you have to be prepared and ready to do your part.

It’s nearly time

Our upcoming online conference, Sunrise Summit, reminds me of Waiting on the Drive in so many ways. It’s an opportunity to get in the right position and settle in for the magic that’s about to happen. It reminds me that being in the moment and enjoying what’s happening right now is just as important as anticipating what’s to come at Sacred Landscapes, our in-person conference that will be happening in November.

Waiting on the Drive isn’t passive. It’s not something that happens to you – it’s a condition you create by attuning to the present moment and focusing on what’s to come while connecting with other cowboys who are preparing for the journey, too.

We invite you to join us for Sunrise Summit October 13-14 and do some neighboring with us. Grab your ticket here: naturallifemanship.com/sunrise-summit.

 

 

 

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