11/05/2025
A long read but for me she speaks of an uncomfortable place but a place of alchemy
I want to talk about something I came across recently in a post called “Let the Horse Say No to Get a Deeper Yes? A Kind Idea That’s Quietly Creating Chaos."
The author was saying that letting our horses say no creates chaos, that “instead of leading people toward greater skill, clarity, and confidence it's leading them into fog,” and that everyone’s “feeling everything but nobody’s doing anything.”
I don't necessarily disagree that it can lead people into fog. I don't necessarily disagree it can lead to folks spending more time feeling and less time doing... at least for a time.
*And* I don't think that's a bad thing. Actually, I think it may be really necessary (I'll explain this as we go).
I do disagree that it's not leading people toward greater skill, though.
Here's why.
Having the tolerance to sit in the space of not knowing is a skill.
Refraining from rushing to solutions is a skill.
Being able to process the difficult emotions that arise in this space between, when the old no longer works/feels right but the new path hasn’t fully emerged yet, is a skill.
Breaking free from the colonial pressure to always be doing, producing, delivering, achieving and allowing ourselves to let go of our own personal agendas and idea of “progress”... is a skill.
Navigating the space of foggy not knowing & the hard feelings that accompany it are skills. And not just any skills – These are skills for meaningful change, deep growth and… *drumroll*... relational skills.
Skills, I would argue, this culture is profoundly lacking in. I think we could really use some practice with these. I think it would serve us – and others, including our more than human kin– well to spend time developing them.
~ A Relational Skill ~
How is tolerating this space of not knowing – and sitting with the uncomfortable emotions that may arise in that – a relational skill?
Here’s one example, for brevity: If we can sit in our own discomfort of not knowing, and the difficult emotions that can come with that, then we can also be there for someone else who is experiencing difficult emotions. In summary, we can have empathy.
Empathy leads us to feel less alone and more connected with one another. People who don’t have the capacity for this are often the ones who squash intimacy by rushing to offer solutions and advice, or going after the silver-lining or everything-happens-for-a-reason bandaid.
Here’s an example from Brene Brown, a research professor, author, and speaker who studies vulnerability, courage, shame, and empathy. Brene looks at empathy through the analogy of someone sitting in a hole, shouting from the bottom “I’m stuck, it's dark down here, I'm overwhelmed.”
What do we do in this situation, if we are hoping to cultivate connection?
Empathy, Brene explains, is when we climb down into the hole with them, into those dark and mucky emotions, saying “Hey, I know what it's like down here. You’re not alone.”
It’s not even the response that makes someone feel better – it's the feeling of connection. The feeling of being less alone in the hole. And in order to climb down into the hole, we have to connect with something in ourselves that knows that feeling. We have to have the tolerance for sitting with it.
Brene explains that if we don’t have this capacity, we may go into sympathy. Sympathy is standing at the top of the hole, looking down and saying “Oof, its bad down there, uh-huh. Uhh..Want a sandwich?”
We try to make things better. The sandwich is tossed down as a way to make the person feel better – or, perhaps to make ourselves feel better, because the person in the hole feeling hard things is causing us to feel uncomfortable (due to our own avoidance of the emotions they themselves are experiencing). The sandwich is made up of things like unasked for solution & advice giving, silver-lining chasing, etc. These things, according to Brene, tend to bring *disconnection.* They make the person sitting in the hole feel more alone and misunderstood.
So, our capacity to show others empathy is going to be much greater if we can develop the tolerance to sit in our own discomfort of not knowing, and the difficult emotions that can come with that. We can sit in the hole with someone. We can help them feel seen, and less alone. And often? We find the hole lifting.
~ A Skill for Deep Transformation ~
Having “a lack of direction,” losing our way in the fog, is a stage of deep transformation.
I love this quote by David Whyte:
“‘in the middle of the road of my life i awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost.’
how do you know you’re on your path? because it disappears. that’s how you know.
how do you know you’re really doing something radical? because you can’t see where you’re going. that’s how you know. everything you relied on for your identity has gone - you are going to enter black competitive splendors of self doubt at the same time you’re setting out on this radical new path.”
The not knowing is an essential stage of transformation – when the old falls apart, but the new hasn’t yet taken shape. When the old is being unlearned and unwoven, separated into its component parts so it can be put together again in a new way. This is part of growing, too, and a really important phase. From this darkness, from this pause, is where new life emerges. But you only get there if you can sit in the unknown, if you can tolerate the dark, and if you trust that something new might emerge.
If anything has made me the horse trainer I am today, it’s growing this capacity within myself. I’ve experienced so many evolutions in my horsemanship that wouldn’t be possible if I had not been willing to tolerate the space of not knowing.
When we skip the feeling part, the healing part, the unknown, and we rush into solution mode, we often just create solutions from the same kind of thinking that created the problem to begin with, creating more of the same. On a collective level - Electric cars, for example, are being touted as green energy, when they are requiring a massive amount of lithium mining, extraction, and genocide of indigenous peoples as their waters are poisoned, their first foods are demolished, their young women are targeted by “man camps” (see Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women - MMIW), etc. This isn't different, it’s more of the same, being rebranded and repackaged.
I believe horses want to teach us these relational skills – the tolerance of sitting in the uncomfortable, in the not knowing – because they know our survival, their survival, and the survival of this planet depend on that. I believe the way we relate to horses, to land, to food, to water, to shelter, to each other, needs to undergo a huge transformation (transformation into something new, or likely, very old). The survival of the Earth literally depends on us slowing down, engaging in serious reflection, unlearning, and unraveling, of sitting in the space of not knowing… and tending to the accompanying emotions, such as grief, that arise here.
So why not practice these skills with our horses?
> For more on the component of grief and its necessity for deep cultural shifts to address the polycrises of our times, this is such a powerful and succinct post: https://www.instagram.com/p/DJb8gCUx25Q/?img_index=1
> Want to learn with me & practice the relational skills required for birthing a new world together, guided by our horses this summer? 5 Day Mentoring Intensives happening in Ridgway, CO May (full), June, July, August. Link in comments for application + more info if you’d like to join us!
PC
