Horsemanship for Health

A few weeks ago I pushed a few barrow loads of compost onto a bank lined with cardboard to make a horse herb garden. I mixed the herb seeds with horticultural silver sand and let them do their thing. In the past few days the seeds have sprouted into green shoots. I am checking these every other day now to see how they might grow into proper plants we can either let the horses eat from the bank as a natural pharmacy or harvest to dry and add to their feed.

There is a childlike joy in creating something so simple and nourishing. Looking at the sprouts on the bank reminds me of my first attempts to grow mustard and cress in a saucer on pink blotting paper. The delight of new life is a reminder that joy can come to visit in simple form.

For a long time, I felt uncomfortable about introducing the theme of joy into our sessions. I knew that many, if not all, our visitors, had experienced lives of despair. To speak of joy in the midst of such suffering and pain felt provocative. I was told by one gentleman that he had never experienced a day of happiness in his life. How could I speak of joy to him? He had nothing to share of the light only darkness. I remember how sad I felt for him hearing this. I could not imagine living without joy and I felt privileged to count it among my life experiences.

Listening to writer, teacher and community gardener Ross Gay this week has helped me to view joy differently. It is not a luxury to be delighted, he says. Joy is not just sugar coating. It is more radical than we think it can be. Joy is a form of protest, a way of looking at the world and seeing beyond our suspicion, cynicism and hostility. It is easy for us to keep fighting, Gay says. Much harder to open up to delight. As way of testing his idea he gave himself a year of recording every day delights. And his funny stories of ordinary scenes in cafes are moving and beautiful and inspire me to take notice of the small eruptions of delight in my own life.

It was not exactly a joyous week. A few nights ago tired and achey with flu symptoms, I took a shortcut home up some steep steps in the dark and fell and lacerated my hand. The cuts were deep and jagged. At the hospital, plastic surgery referral was mentioned. A student medic was brought in to have a look at the mangled mess of three fingers on my right hand. I whimpered with the pain. Even so some part of me remembered that only a few days ago I was speaking about how joy and pain could co-exist. Was I being tested now?

With my fingers cleaned and wrapped in a white dressing, I waited for an x-Ray. On the seats in front of me were two elderly Polish women. Most of us waiting for imaging were stricken, stiff with anticipation. Not these women. They were softly animated, chattering away, smiling with light touches to the arm and a graceful way of listening and responding that spread across the waiting room like balm. Here is my delight, I thought. Here is something else other than my rigid focus on knowing whether my fingers are broken.

They weren’t. And so the second delight. A clinician who bandaged each finger with such dexterity and care, I forgot the pain and became fascinated with the procedure. She used a surgical steel nozzle, like a piping tool for a large wedding cake, to twizzle the bandage in place. Told me to come back to get it checked and snapped off her surgical gloves ready for the next patient.

A hospital injury ward was the last place I would have expected to find joy but it was undeniable- I just had to unstick my mind to meet it. And mark it. I’m noticing more delights each day. The Robin who sits in the pink plastic party plate and eats the wild bird seed I put in there every morning. He flies before me and shows me his secret hiding places. Today I heard that the Robin population in England is up by forty percent and I cheered out loud. Hooray for small victories.

The pain is still there. I can’t type properly and putting on a coat is laborious and frustrating. I am appreciative of my fingers which still work- what a marvel is the intricate human hand. Not being referred to a plastic surgeon means my tendons have not ruptured and each time I have the bandages taken off I see signs of healing and repair.

I am joyful and I am sad. The last time I visited the hospital I took in my friend. We relied on each other to do the driving when one of us was injured. Our drives to the hospital were always joyful even when we were in agony. There was one particular year when we both had a run of dog related injuries, and usually the dogs came with us in the car. Our friendship had a festive feel. I passed the coffee wagon where I stopped the day I took her in. I bought coffee and sticky polenta cake that day. I knew I would need something to keep me going.

My friend was admitted to another hospital for ten days where they ran tests and she discovered she had incurable cancer. Typically she asked her oncologist to give it to her straight. How long have I got? The oncologist said between three months to a year. My friend said to me: I’ll take six months.

She lived for just six weeks of her six months. In those weeks I saw her every day. I took something delightful each day. Sweet peas from the community garden, small bright courgettes and rainbow chard, freshly pressed organic apple juice, roast chicken dinners, fish with coconut rice, roasted vegetables, soups made from proper stock, including one made with pressed tomatoes. I took my time. I wanted everything to be lovely. We laughed a lot in her front room where she sat in her winged armchair which held her diminishing tiny frame. On her last day I took a bunch of vivid crimson, flame and aubergine coloured dahlias from an honesty stall and put it on the kitchen table where she could see it. After she died, the hospice nurse took the crimson and flame coloured blooms from the jar and placed them on my friend’s chest close to her heart.

My friend and I laughed every single time we met and the joy of our connection remains. I am less coy about introducing more joy into my work because I have witnessed the strength and healing power of looking through pain to the edges where the light streams through like a crack in an old wooden door.

Joy is my light teacher. I have much to learn from her.