Horsemanship for Health

Our community garden is small. Every week, even during rain and hail, volunteers come to take care of it. They have dug some steps down to the compost area, cleared the space between the beech hedges, and laid four vegetable beds on cardboard. They do this out of love.

Each week they create something new and alive from what was a dormant space. They have planted garlic and onions, fruit bushes and herbs. I put in some dwarf narcissi bulbs that were sitting in my vegetable rack. Before we started the project, a few people looked over the gate and saw only mess and menial work. The garden had no meaning for them at that time and so they moved away. This created space for others to come forward with ideas of how to transform it. And now, rather wonderfully, their ideas are beginning to take shape in the form of conversations, enthusiasms, previous experiences and fresh insights.

The garden is giving people hope. ‘I love it here and never want to leave,’ shared one volunteer last week. The garden has become a safe space in which to connect and open up. It rings with laughter and robin song. It feels light and warm even in bitter March. We had no grand vision when we started it. We have simply let it show us what it needed and what it most needed was time and love.

This small project also gives me hope. It is not something I need to direct. The volunteers know what they are doing better than I do. All I have asked for are vegetables and salad I can one day eat. Now I am not even so bothered about that. We may lose what they have planted to slugs or pigeons or blight. It’s not the outcome of fresh homegrown vegetables piled up in a basket that fills me with satisfaction, but the knowledge that this garden is taking care of us in other ways. It is uniting us and motivating us to craft something lovely together.

I believe we can only truly create from a foundation of love. Hard work, qualifications, experience and structure are all useful, but we can get by with so much less than we think we need. So many creative projects never see the light of day because they never really move out of the preparation stage. For years I researched story ideas I never got round to actually writing. The same goes for film ideas, and new business ideas. It is possible to start something new and get people interested in the service you are offering, but, I believe that without love your service will never truly flourish.

It’s not possible to manufacture love for an impossible project that most people shake their heads and walk away from. This kind of inspiration comes from inside. It’s the light that comes on in a volunteer’s eyes when you show them a stretch of bare earth covered with weeds and old carpet and they start to imagine it as it could be, not how it is.

I love the way they are creating this garden. This week a watercolour popped into my messages. A vision of loveliness. I asked the volunteer if I could share it and she said yes. When people who have been hurt hard by life say yes to creating something beautiful together, it lifts us all. I can’t wait to see what they will make of the garden as we properly move into spring.

The last time I fell in love with a human it was unrequited. One of those romances that started with so much sparkle and promise and ran for a few years before ending in painful disappointment. Humans are creatures who often have trouble with affairs of the heart. Whole creative industries have been built around our agonising search for connection and cherishing.

My love affairs with animals have never been unrequited or disappointing. They have never let me down because they have opened their hearts and let me in. When you think of it, this is astonishingly courageous and generous of them. For animals don’t particularly need us to complicate their lives. It’s humans who go looking for complexity in love. It’s humans who think there is something missing and work hard to feel worthy in the eyes of others. Animals simply give love. They don’t ask for anything back. This is the unconditional love we all secretly seek.

Over the years many people have shared openly with us that they prefer animals to people. It’s why they were drawn to our work and our way of working with animals, putting them at the heart of all we do. It’s a wonderful feeling to begin the work of love with a tender example, a story that moves others in the circle. Nearly all the conversations we share in our work with animals are fundamentally about finding and living with love. Not a substitute for love, a dimmer version of human love, but the joy of love itself in all its wonder.

Love elevates us. It also brings us down to earth. Living and working with seven animals means doing the daily work of love even when I don’t feel like it. Even when the rain is flinging down again into already sodden ground, I know I must go to give the horses their evening feed. They greet me with rumbles of gratitude. I spend a few moments with each one and let them know I care. It’s a daily ritual no matter how tired or frazzled I am.

Sometimes I receive something remarkable in return. One day recently feeling upset and overwhelmed. I went to see the goats and found Trevor lying down. He didn’t get up when he saw me, he relaxed even further and chewed with little smacking sounds. When I sank into the ground next to him he lifted his head and pressed it firmly against mine. We stayed like this for a while, forehead to forehead, and I felt my busy brain begin to calm down. Trevor kept up the pressure just long enough for me to feel a release. My mind became light and free. Having completed his acupressure treatment, Trevor fell into a deep sleep.

As I got up to go, I took the photo of him I share here. He seemed at peace, utterly relaxed and centred in his own kind being, free and filled with love.

Over the past weeks I have returned to this picture of him and the feeling it gives me of connection, this sense of an offering from one being to another. Trevor used to be known as the ‘thug’ because he liked to spar with his twin Tucker. Trevor has softened, perhaps because he now feels safe. He knows we care about him because we have shown him that we have his best interests at heart. He is now so relaxed he can show who he is undefended.

When animals allow us in, it is to my mind a mysterious romance. A secret threshold into another reality. Our self-centred preoccupation with our small stuff melts away when an animal looks into you and sees you as you truly are. They take in the pain and the confusion and the fear and they alchemise hopelessness into acceptance. With acceptance comes love.

Animals have literally changed the way I think. For the past twenty two years, they have shaped every aspect of my life and shown me who I am at my deepest core. When I shared with a prospective partner that he would have to compete with a horse, he was gracious enough to ask about my animal affair. After I told him, he went very quiet. There were tears in his eyes as he said. ‘Most people will never experience a love like that.’

It is a mistake to think that love exists only in the human realm. We have invented a tepid, artificial and sanitised love to suit our anthropocentric way of life. Every supermarket is currently stuffed with red roses, many of which will be thrown away unloved. The annual ritualised commercialisation of romance leaves many people cold. And yet it continues year after year.

If I gave a red rose to Trevor, he would probably eat it. He likes thorny things. It might make his day. Seeing him and all the animals I am so fortunate to love will make mine.

This weekend I joined a group of wonderful women on retreat in the woods. Our flower symbol was the snowdrop. There were little shy gatherings of these perfect pearls lighting our way like tiny lamps. I have always loved snowdrops for their audacity and courage to bloom when most other plants are still sleeping through winter.

Our poem of the day was All the Hemispheres by Persian poet Hafiz and his words invited us to Change Rooms in Your Mind for a day. I love the idea of the mind as a series of rooms. Many January rooms have been cluttered with essential tasks such as the end of year accounts, applying for funding and recycling old furniture. These are my practical rooms. They are not rooms in which to dwell for too long.

I am drawn to more spacious outdoor rooms, sounds of water and wind and the crunch of frost. Some evenings this past week, I have sensed a shift toward spring with the birds singing through twilight.

Changing rooms for a morning to connect with my current season within was both grounding and uplifting. Eating savoury hot soup in the woods with the smell of woodsmoke in my hair, eyes still stinging, I am twelve years old again and needing little except the company of those who wish to connect. I see how crazily full my life is. I go from a webinar in my car to a circle of raw, honest truth and then into conversations about the future. The rooms of my mind have connecting doors. Sometimes they are all open at once. Often I long for a day when I could choose just one room – the cleanest, quietest, most beautiful room where there is a single mesmerising idea that I could turn over and over.

The snowdrop signals simplicity. She needs far less than I do to live her full life. Her example calls to me to follow a clear path. To surrender control and step into the coming year with grace.

For us, it has been a year of change. We have moved the horses to a new yard and the ponies and goats to new grazing. It has taken time for the herd to settle. Moving home for animals is similar to moving home for humans: it takes a while to adjust and become used to new surroundings, new people, other animals and routines. We have not rushed the process. We decided that we would let the animals take whatever time they needed to feel at ease in their new home. We have supported them find their own way through the change.

This unhurried approach has paid off. All the animals are happy, healthy and thriving. They are connecting with people in sessions again. We have also taken a longer term view with our sessions and are offering some people a much longer time to be in connection with the animals and with us.

I love the long view. It’s how I have always wanted to live with enough breathing space and uncluttered time to fully reach into the experience of being alive. The challenges earlier this year called us to act and that mobilised all our energy. Looking back I could say, I wished the year had been smoother. I wish the challenges hadn’t been quite so intense, and all of that is true. A smooth, free flowing, peaceful year of deep creative and collaborative community work feels like something to aspire to. What we got instead was a chance to bond more strongly as a team, to speak from the heart and to let our animals take things at their own pace. We healed wounds, we forged new connections, and through it all we found a new energy that contained all the grit, determination and loving sprit we needed. It wasn’t what we expected, but it has opened our hearts and minds to doing things differently.

We will continue to take the long view and to put our work into the world in the best way we know how. We are encouraged and supported by all our colleagues and friends. Thank you for standing with us. Thank you for believing in us. We are truly grateful. Happy New Year.

I’m musing on manure at the moment. Every day we collect three barrow loads and wheel it to various resting points in the field. Some of it is eaten by other animals and birds who pick through it to glean the nutrients left behind. Mostly, though, it sits in a pile and gently rots. I have long held a creative idea of using the manure to grow vegetables, herbs and flowers. I’ve imagined this garden project many times over the years. Not having a space or the right conditions has meant the garden remained imaginary.

Now due to a series of new circumstances, which involved moving the horses to premises where there just happened to be a dormant garden, the idea can come to the surface and start to take shape.

We have funding to create a community garden and the space which has lain under cover is opening up to new energy and ideas. Already some wonderful people who know more about growing vegetables than I do have come to see what our space has to offer. I must admit when I first saw it, my thought was: yes, maybe, but too much work, and clay soil is heavy work. Focus on what you already do. Don’t start something new. Forget it! You know how it goes when the voice of resistance and sensible restraint starts muttering.

For years, I have listened to that voice and allowed it to limit me. The dreams were pushed underground where they stayed under cover of darkness, waiting for the right conditions. And that was sometimes necessary. Sometimes we do need sensible limits, or we become depleted and exhausted.

Nevertheless, much like compost, creative dreams wake up when the right conditions arrive. My sleeping garden project has now become a daily reality. I’m on YouTube watching Charles Dowding, I’m grabbing cardboard from supermarket dumpsters, I’m reading about three sisters planting and propagating. My friend Matt, who knows about these things, has enthused me by coming over, testing the soil, visioning the garden into being with plans for tomato beds, pathways, a Mediterranean rockery. And compost. Everything circles back to compost.

Across the road from our project, which already has the name Grass Roots, is a wood yard, and the workers there have offered to bring over a load of woodchip to mix in with manure. Yesterday my friend and colleague Harriet was sweeping leaves into piles in her outdoor school. Before I left, I filled two feed sack loads and put them in the back of the Yeti. I listened to Gardener’s Question Time and the panel were passionate about leaf litter and its remarkable benefits for clay soil. I have the means to make wonderful compost.

I used to think I did not have time to garden and care for horses. In my mind, my horses were my garden. I grew them instead of plants. Now I see that growth does not happen as we anticipate. Shifts take place when we make room for them. In just two weeks, the community garden is taking shape and the energy I feel, the support from those who want to make this happen, inspires me to give this project space to flourish.

Composting ideas and creative projects is time consuming and requires energy. As a way of being, creative living, is a daily practice, and reflecting on that practice is something I aspire to do regularly, most often in my writing. Starting this project has helped me to see where my limits lie and where I might open once more to possibility. It is true that I do not have the time to bring all my creative ideas into being all at once. It is also true that those creative ideas and projects that are waiting for the right conditions will find their way to thrive.

As crisis, conflict and control continue to dominate our world, sending ripples of unease and anxiety across continents, we are in need of saner, wiser, more compassionate ways of being.

Like many of us fortunate enough to work with animals, I am often given a different perspective on how best to conduct myself in times of crisis and distress.

When our Dartmoor pony Tinker first injured her eye, I was appalled at the damage and took immediate action to call the emergency vet. His prognosis was matter of fact. It was one of the worst injuries he had ever seen, he said. He was professionally curious. He took photographs. Then he told me with regret: she will probably lose her eye.

Believing in the seriousness of the situation, I accepted it. As the vet said, Tinker could live a perfectly happy life with one eye. If this was what needed to happen, we would do everything we could to ensure it was as straightforward as possible and given that we had no stable for her at the time, it required some flexible thinking.

I spent weeks thinking of the worst case scenario, preparing for inevitable surgery. As I cleaned and treated her eye twice daily, Tinker and I became closer. This was unexpected. She had been sedated for the examination, which involved injecting green dye into her eye to show the extent of the injury, and the vet was sceptical about her ability to tolerate treatment. She looks wild, he said. You may have to twitch her to put in the antibiotic. I won’t be there to sedate her every time.

Twitching involves using a piece of twine to twist around a nose or lip or ear. It’s supposed to release a flood of endorphins so that the horse or pony takes their mind off what might be happening elsewhere in their body. I have seen twitching and what it looks like to me is the infliction of extreme pain. I said to myself: we will find another way.

I asked Tinker to help me. At first she was not impressed with having ropes of yellow gunge cleaned from her eye two or three times daily, and she was sceptical about the need for a fly mask. I let her know each time that I came with the best of intentions. I spoke with her and explained everything I was about to do. I used diluted lavender oil to smooth into her forelock to keep the flies away. I took my time. She accepted the soft new turquoise fly mask I bought for her. Sometimes after treatment, I simply stood with her and meditated, breathing in time with her. I let her know that all she needed to do was heal.

Soon she started to come to me when I entered the field with all my cleaning and treatment kit. She would lower her head so softly and push her nose into the halter, that often, inexplicably, I would be in tears. What had started as a practical preparation for surgery had become something more profound. Her eye was still clouded across most of the surface. Two or three vet visits confirmed that things were getting better, but progress was slow. Removing Tinker’s eye was still an option.

We continued with the daily treatment for weeks and I began to notice small improvements. In certain lights, Tinker’s eye seemed to recover some of her old sparkle. I began to wonder whether it might simply heal. Two vets who assessed the injury said it was unlikely.

Tinker began to relax so deeply into the treatment, I also began to wonder whether she was trying to show me something. There was a quality to her presence in these times I could not ignore. It is hard to put into words, but the feeling tone that came across from her was around surrender. Her whole being seemed to be surrendering to healing. As a wild animal, her system has an inbuilt healing capacity. I believe that she was trying to slow things down so that I didn’t book her in for surgery before she had given herself the best chance to heal.

Six months later Tinker’s eye is clear. It glows in the autumn sunlight. She is at ease and our connection through all those weeks of learning together is also strong and clear. The last time Tinker saw the vet, he said her recovery was a miracle. This is not the kind of language you expect from vets, and even though I smiled at his declaration, in my heart I know that her recovery was not a miracle. It was not supernaturally rare.

What happened was commonplace, the course of nature doing precisely what it knows how to do. For us this was extraordinary because it meant letting go of the expected. Once I decided to follow the pony’s lead on how to approach her injury, there was a subtle shift in our dynamic. Instead of merely treating her, I let her guide me towards what she needed. And the healing unfolded all by itself.

Human intervention is often healing. It is often the opposite. The key to knowing what to do is to ask the injured what they need. Ask the wounded to tell us what to do. Ask the hurting ones to direct us and guide us. We don’t do this enough.

The attention was first on Sheranni. He lifted his head, acknowledged each person who entered respectfully into his space. His attitude was open, enquiring, interested and also matter of fact. His presence had a particular emotional resonance. People described it as Strong, Grounded, Capable, Powerful, as if he wanted to fly, someone said. When we completed our enquiry, Sheranni nonchalantly wandered off. Nothing more needed to be added.

Dragonfly remained in our circle. He took his time to settle. The feeling from him felt different, people said. Sensitive, Tender, filled with Love, and, the poetic observation that he seemed made from porcelain. He relaxed a hind hoof as we sat in circle with him, asking nothing, doing nothing, merely observing the emotions we felt.

The longer we sat with Dragonfly’s gentle presence, the more relaxed people began to feel. Frazzled nervous systems began to smooth into synchrony with the resting horse. Some people spontaneously put their heads against the ground and went to sleep. When they came back into the circle, they said they felt calm, relaxed, as if they had been away for a week’s holiday.

Meanwhile Dragonfly remained with us, sharing the experience we were attempting to translate into words. We all felt that something extraordinary had occurred and yet for the horse this was ordinary. This was just time to be present with little distraction on his mind. This was just time to be in company with people who asked nothing from him.

Over the years we have been running courses with horses, I’ve noticed that the less you ask, the more horses give. I have also noticed a shift in our groups and students who have eased away from wanting to know about horses, how they behave and go about their lives, to wanting to understand more of how it feels to be a horse. More of how it feels to be animal. The central paradox of being human is that the more we hold on to our human perceptions, conceptions, and ideas, the less we experience life itself. Many people are drawn to animals because they enable us to get a glimpse behind the veil, as it were, to peek into another world altogether.

The presence of an exquisitely sensitive horse at rest is an opportunity to witness a whole different level of reality. I know I am not alone in finding this humbling, thrilling and wonderfully compelling.

Here are some words from one of our students who came on a retreat with us last week which expresses how it feels from the inside.

Arrive at the venue. Stop and read instructions again. Clearly can’t go far but no brain needs to re read it all.OK there’s someone greeting everyone with a big beaming smile. No chickening out now.

Everyone was so warming and after quick wc stop we got to the field where everything was set up. Instant feelings of peace just seeing the open field ahead as though it was saying look here is space for you to breathe and and just be.

I sat down with the group and it felt OK. It actually felt OK. Can’t remember the last time I had sat with a group of adults but the environment is so lush and peaceful. But hang on I don’t know these people so instantly my body is trying to put on a coat of armour around me as soon as I’m asked what brought me here today. Its a simple question, a simple question…

Time to go meet the horses. OK legs that means you have to move, ah they feel like they’ve been disconnected from my body. Heart racing. After people spending some time each with the horses we all sat down and the horses could choose to stay or go. It was so heart warming to hear people’s positive reflections of what was happening for them but then a complete feeling of panic took over. In one way it felt like the most natural feeling ever to be in a field with strangers (as nice as they were) and on the other hand my body was about to have a full blown panic attack. Telling myself this was not the time or place was not working.

At that moment Dragonfly slowly made his way over and just stopped close by. Not so close that made me run ( I wouldn’t get far with these dodgy legs) but close enough. At that moment something ‘huge’ happened and he looked right at me with complete stillness. His look will always stay with me forever. It was as though his beautiful eyes were shooting out calming beams like a laser gun aiming at me and saying simply ‘you’ve got this’. I looked away and looked back and he was still looking helping me to zone in on myself. At this moment it was like the rest of the world had just been swallowed up. Then the feelings kicked in of just feeling Dragonfly’s presence nearby. It felt like he was slowly unpicking the first layers of trauma, loss and stress and trying to and trying to help me take the ‘coat of armour’ off. As this happened feelings of pure emotion were taking over and I felt like I was just going to burst into tears. Something I haven’t been able to do in a very long time. I stopped the body doing this but some layers had definately been ‘peeled’ off.

Completely speechless and a bit overwhelmed I was unable to share with the rest of the group but with time to process I have realised for me this day has been a massive step in helping me to begin to process, connect and reflect. For the first time in weeks I left feeling calmer and that I could breathe. The burdens were still there but felt that little bit more manageable and in one word ‘hope’.

A day I will never forget

Some people sail into your life and lighten every day. Kimmie was such a soul and her death after a long and difficult illness was wrenching for all who knew her. I knew her and loved her for a stretch of time during the eight years we shared a flat together in Palmers Green. Those years were precious and with Kimmie I shared some of the happiest times of my life.

Her family and friends gathered this week to pay tribute to Kimmie and honour her life. Work and animal commitments meant I watched her funeral service via a live feed which was surprisingly intimate and moving, if a little strange. Kimmie would have appreciated the laughter in the chapel, the hugs, the jokes, the mobile phone that wouldn’t stop ringing, the teasing tribute from her little brother Marc who had organised such a perfectly beautiful send off for his beloved sister, it makes me well up just thinking about it.

Losing a sibling is hard. You know them so well and they are such a huge part of early life experiences few others know about. Kimmie often spoke with fondness of her brother who was still in Australia while she worked in animation studios in London. Eventually he would follow her lead and move across continents to forge his own path in animation. Listening to Marc, it was evident how much love he had for his big sister. Indeed the crematorium chapel, one of those beige places that could be anywhere, was filled with overwhelming love.

It struck me so poignantly that this is what matters in the end. Kimmie was incredibly accomplished as a talented artist and this was mentioned, but not as much as how much she made people laugh. As Maya Angelo said, people may not remember what you said; they may not remember what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel. Kimmie made us all feel blinking good. She was not keen on the limelight – finding photos of her was challenging because she was camera-shy despite her luminous beauty – and she made no attempt to put herself first. She was the best listener, warm, funny, wicked and tremendously kind. Her heart was like the sun. All who knew Kimmie, loved to bathe in it. She soothed many troubled souls, usually by taking them under her wing and off to the pub or out the back for a crafty fag.

I remember laughing with Kimmie until we were both crying, her wiping away the teary mascara from the wild eye makeup she always wore. We borrowed each other’s clothes, once memorably buying the same green jumper which we wore until they were in shreds. We shared recipes, many glasses of red wine, more cigarettes than was good for us, late night chats that felt transcendent as we navigated the joys and sorrows of love. Every conversation we had was about love on some level. Everything felt alive and vital and charged as we tried our best to stay level and grounded, keeping each other going, being there for each other no matter what.

Our friendship changed when we stopped living together, and if I had known then that I would mourn the close connection we had, I would have taken better care of honouring it. The last time we met was poignantly at a funeral for my close friend’s sister. We hugged and laughed and all the years between then and now, a span of more than 20 years, fell away. We were back in our shared front room with our wine and our fags and our tender hearts.

Kimmie has gone. She has flown elsewhere and she is more real than ever. This is the curious thing about loss. The most heartbreaking part of death is that it reminds us how connected we all are. When we lose a thread to someone we lose part of who we are. Part of me has gone with her, the young and insecure part of me that loved Kimmie like a big sister. Kimmie was the most warm-hearted person I think I ever met. The legacy she has left for me is to know that love is what matter most. Nothing you do is ever as important as how you make others feel.

After the service ended, I took a beer (non alcoholic these days) to the field with a packet of hula hoops, Kimmie’s favourite. I drank the beer and saluted her memory. She never met the horses, but always asked after them as if she knew them, which of course she did through their Facebook and blog appearances. Kimmie’s farewell song from Mary Poppins Let’s Go Fly a Kite was still playing through my mind as the celebrant said it might. I didn’t have a kite. Instead I tossed my last hula hoop in the air. That’s for you Kimmie, I said. My hound dived for it and snapped it up. My last tribute. Now Kimmie would have laughed.

I

There were talks I found compelling during a recent Global Mental Health Summit. Several times I exclaimed out loud in relief at what I was hearing. The summit speakers came from many different disciplines from psychology professors to meditation practitioners, cold water, exercise and nutrition experts. What came across loud and clear is the changing approach to viewing mental health not only as the crisis of our age, but as an opportunity to educate ourselves in how to be well.

Recovering our health is part of taking a stance which says: I may not be where I want to be in my life, and I may not like what is happening to me, but I can do this for my mental health today. I can take my rucksack to the river and for ten minutes feel the cold water rinse my mind clear of anxiety. I can eat strawberries and cream in a beautiful dish. I can switch off my phone and listen to music. I can sit in wonder.

Sometimes the next best step we can take for our mental health is to do the simplest thing. When all else fails, I open a window. It might not be the long walk I think I should be doing to get fit, but fitness is not so much what we should do but how we actually approach each moment. In becoming fit, whichever way we choose, we shape the raw material of our lives.

The raw material is sensitive to all we have lived through and no matter our view on what has been allocated to us through forces long past our influence or control, we get to have have a say on what we do next. It might not seem like much. It might seem that deliberating how to live your next moment is of little significance given all that we have to suffer and bear.

One summit talk that truly made me pay attention offered the view that leadership is the way you walk through the world. Leadership is the stance you take. Leadership has nothing to do with command or control. Children know this. Horses know this, dogs know this. And cattle, too.

After the session this week, the farmer asked if I would help with the cattle. The yearlings were arriving for the summer, to pasture where some of them were born. I was given a long hazel stick and a spot on a bridle path to block the route. We waited while the lorry unloaded. The cattle were bellowing their heads off and the cattleman confirmed ‘they are a bit lively.’ He added. ‘If they come towards you, just wave your stick and shout.’

As he began unloading, I began to lose my nerve. It already sounded like a stampede. I decided to look for an exit route. If the cattle came towards me I would be waving no stick. No shout would pass my lips. I would be in the woods saving my life.

The cattle came down the ramp, still yelling their heads off. I was still caught up in my story. So this is how my life ends. How poignant to have just spent the morning working gently with horses only to be trampled to death by a different kind of quadruped.

The cattle came for me.

I noticed how small they were. Thirteen chunky red yearlings, lively, exactly as the cattleman said. All shouting, not with intent to do harm, but with glee. Hollering they came down the track and as they turned the corner they kicked their heels like Cossack dancers.

The cows never even saw me. They ran after each other, exuberantly calling in anticipation of spring grass. My near-death story evaporated leaving a trace of ridiculousness as I watched the cattleman encourage the youngsters to follow him down the lane. He was kind to them, used no force, no stick. The yearlings could have been a herd of eight-year-old boys he was cheering to the finish line on a cross country run.

Afterwards I realised I had witnessed something lovely. A homecoming that had been pitched as being stressful yet turned into a lesson in leading, and maybe even living, well. Of course we all had to be prepared and alert had the unloading not gone to plan. When it was over, what struck me, though, was how long the stressful story hung about even when it was unnecessary, like a troll in the woods, waiting for the opportunity to spook.

The deft handling of the herd clearly demonstrated that the stance you take determines the outcome. In reality, this doesn’t mean all will go well. Sometimes a different stance might be called for – waving the stick might have been needed had one of the yearlings bolted- the ability to shift your stance in high stakes moments means not being mesmerised by your own static thinking.

It’s compelling to be in control. To think you know better. Many companies and organisations and governments are run by such leaders and bosses who use bullying and intimidation to keep people in line. Many of us have witnessed people acting without consideration or compassion. Many of us have wished to be braver. Speaking out seems impossible in some situations especially within families or communities ruled by fear. Taking a stance might feel edgy at times. It may even be condemned by those who would prefer you to tow the line. At the same time, the stance you take is simply your next move. It may even save your life.

The artist Charlie Mackesy never expected his work to become a sensation beloved by millions. His quiet, thoughtful drawings and sparely beautiful words express feelings we instinctively understand as coming from the heart.

Driving through the Devon lanes listening to a radio interview with Charlie Mackesy, reporting the Oscar nomination of the animated film of his work, I heard the artist express his surprise and excitement at the prospect of getting on a plane for the first time in 20 years. He had not travelled because he did not want to leave his dog who suffered from separation anxiety. His simple solution was to stay home.

In that decision lies the absolute essence of kindness. To gladly choose to put another’s needs before our own without a trace of resentment is to share what is best in our humanity. To be kind can almost be seen as radical act when there are so many temptations in the opposite direction. It’s difficult to be kind when you believe you deserve more. Or when you believe your needs take priority. We all get caught up in ourselves without realising how blind we become when we shut down on others.

As Charlie Mackesy illustrates in his delicate drawings, kindness is a form of clear seeing. When we approach others with kindness, we show them what is possible. We show them there is freedom from cynicism, from suspicion and viewing others as fuel. Kindness creates a momentum all of its own.

Given enough space and air and time to breathe, kindness is all around us. It’s in a single look between strangers who have passed each other on the street for years without acknowledgement. It’s in the person who takes the time to walk over to your car with the ticket which still has hours until expiry. It’s in the person who makes sure your shopping doesn’t fall over while she packs it carefully for you. It’s in the feeling of release on a warm day on the beach watching two guide dogs freed from their harnesses to roll in the sand and chase each other through the surf. It’s in the young mother watching her daughters dance and laugh until they cry tears of joy. It’s in the slim moon on a cold night elbowed by two bright stars. It’s in the trees as they soften at dusk. It’s everywhere.

As Viktor Frankl observed during his years in Auschwitz, being kind gave life its meaning. It literally made the difference between living and dying. Being kind in captivity gave those who were incarcerated in the cruelest prison, a sense of freedom. I heard this powerful message echoed in the voice of the Ukrainian railway man who reported that the railways were taking bodies of fallen Russian soldiers to be buried in their homeland. They did this not to honour the enemy who had taken away their peace and freedom, but to honour their own decency.

Kindness teaches us about honour. Reading scientific studies of happiness, gratitude is a consistent key to opening our lives to more fulfilment. Taking time to appreciate, we create circles of reciprocity that enlarge all our lives. Remapping the world in ways that feel more human and less alienating, each act of kindness is a breath, a leap in the dark, a stance we take fully into our hearts. With kindness by our side we are strong and bold. We honour our own humanity.