Let the Light In

Inspiration is everywhere, if you're open to receiving it. I always welcome the light of beautiful ideas, possibly to a fault if I count how much it distracts me from whatever I'm supposed to be doing in the moment. 

Since my work has married me to my laptop and my mind resists focus like it's my other job, I often find inspiration online as I bounce between work and whatever feels good. Last week, as I rewatched a TikTok of a baby mini-horse over and over, the mounting pressure of adorableness nearly imploded my heart. I put it on my Someday wishlist. Someday when I buy my own slice of  almost heaven that's not too far from town and not too close, with just enough land for a mini horse, a garden, a couple of big dogs, and a few spins on my oldest son's 50cc dirtbike. Depending on how long it takes  us to get there, he might outgrow that bike, but I never will. 

I'm no stranger to equine adoration. I spent many glory days of childhood riding ponies that my cousins and I caught with buckets of grain in the holler where they still live to this day, their assortment of manufactured homes and double-wides erected alongside the ruins of a 1980s feral-child wonderland. At Aunt Kathy's hillbound homestead, I was enraptured by fuzzy muzzles, wiry manes, the clip clop of hooves on forbidden pavements, the knotty roots of trees like aged fingers guiding us through wooded paths. 

On hazy West Virginia summer evenings, a group of cousins, soiled with sweat and dirt from a hard day's play, would sit on the porch and sing along to Alabama's "Roll On 18-Wheeler," an homage to my ruggedly handsome truck-driving Uncle Fred, whose rig income eventually bankrolled his family's horse-racing business in the northern panhandle. In the morning, the order of events was eggs and pancakes, then grain buckets and pony-catching. 

Just last week, en route to dinner in my hometown, I showed my two wide-eyed little boys the highway-adjacent valley where my cousins and I would emerge after riding bareback through the woods. It was a rare moment in which my children perceived me outside the constraints of dreaded schedules and rules (which I resent as much as they do, if they only knew) and saw the me who has actually savored freedom. As the valley began to disappear in my rear view, I promised myself to remember to savor it again, and again. 

Three weeks from the day marking my 47th year of life, I'm an eager student of the girl I once was. When I couldn't have my own horse because I lived in the city, I didn't abandon my passion; I reimagined it. I drew horses. Daydreamed about them. Wrote about them. Ordered them from the JC Penney Christmas catalog. Devoured Misty of Chincoteague and The Black Stallion books. Treasured overnight stays at Aunt Kathy's where bridles and buckets lay waiting.  

If we aren't careful, and most of us aren't, adulthood will convince us to believe lies about who we are and what we're capable of. Although my life's path has done a bang-up job of taking me away from the little girl who instinctively understood what was worth holding onto, her lessons are still within reach—if I accept what's at the heart of it. 

On a recent workday distraction scroll, I came across this: May you find a love that radically accepts the parts of you that you're still working on. It might mean romantic love or it might mean autogenous love, or it might mean both. It's a morsel of light worth letting in.