I have a confession to make.

I have to share something that feels like a confession. What feels like a fraudulent guise that I have just found peace with… after years of not wanting to acknowledge through fear of rejection. Almost daily….for the last 27 years of my life I have believed I must be a thing, and held myself to it like a threat. The 'frame' you could say that I forced myself into. In doing so, I have set myself the persistent cruelty of expecting myself to meet that expectation. I have spent numerous days, numerous times a day failing myself for not attaining something that I didn’t want. Finding myself wanting. Living in fear of being found a fraud. Damaging my own joy. As a result, I have been unable to meet my reality with the immeasurably heavy expectation of self actualising enjoyment of being a competitor, in equestrian competition. I don’t like being a competitor in equestrian sport. It’s taken me this long to realise this, and it’s actually okay. I don’t like performance with boundaries. I don’t like rules, I like facts. I don’t like the definition of fabricated experience, I like the definition of true nature. I actually have a pathological fear of people looking at me… yeah, truth. This is because what I am trying to achieve with my horses is not what competition results in, for me. It does for others, but not for me. What I am trying to achieve is about the space between stimulus and response from two separate lived experiences in respect. It is about communication, and it is about a dance of experiences. This comes from a place of fluid acknowledgement, acceptance, and persistent reciprocation which I personally have found competitive factors abrasive to. For others, it celebrates their experience. For me, it suffocates it. It’s about horses being horses, me being me, and us working together mutualistically to achieve something that I have decided to achieve, and most importantly with no harm done for the horse. To me, there is a ferocity, and tenacity, and grit that is required in a competitor, in whatever they do. I have felt this, and I know this feeling well. I know it in me, and I feel it in many things I do. But as the years have passed by, the disparity, or space of vacancy with where this ferocity ends, and where my equine experience begins has become glaringly broad. I know ferocity. The first time I felt it was running the 100m sprint. I was 7. I was barefoot, I was in a skirt, I had lungs for everything and I was power. I drove forwards with every step because I wanted to be FAST. As I looked up and saw the faces at the finish line, cheering me on and yelling with joy and disbelief as I stormed past my peers & finished 20 metres in front I found a whole new level of delight in being fast. I won that race by a big margin, my little 7 year old self was a hero for the day in my sports faciton. The big kids all knew who I was, although I didn’t like that bit very much though. The next day, I noticed that I wasn’t a hero anymore. Not that I minded. It was nice to have peace and quiet again…..but I always loved running. I still love running, I love the feeling of self generated agility & power. When I fell in love with horses, there were 3 pivotal moments that made me who I am today. I wasn’t born into an equestrian family, I was born into a nature, science, biology loving family of two scientists - one a Nurse, and the other a Masters in biology holding Science/Math teacher. My first, as a child of approx. 3 years old, was when I told a story about how the horses over the road were in a fire. The ex orchard, a vacant block over the road from our house, caught on fire every year, and usually twice. It was like an unofficial, unplanned burnoff as it was about 10 acres of wild oats at the time it would catch on fire. A couple of tree’s, and an old water hole / spring /dam. Cigarette butts or unsupervised matches usually lit it up, and then the local fire brigade would let the rest happen as they protected our houses, weather permitting convenience of course. These horses, in my mind, and in my story that was recorded on cassette were in the fire. But, as I said, they were okay because there was water, and they went down to it to drink, and ‘because it was in their bodies’ they could stay cool. 3 year old logic. The second time I had horses profoundly come into my life was when I was approximately 4 years old. The Western Australian Swan Brewery team had pulled their team up, out the front, and we're harnessing them for the Annual Christmas Pageant held at the local Shopping centre. I watched, for an unknown period of time, from the front window of our house. When they were just about ready, and it was time for us to head in and watch the pageant, we first went over the road to see them after I asked. I remember vividly standing at the left knee of the verge side clydesdale, looking at the sun glistening off it’s quartz white hair feathers, and then up at it’s eye looking down at me from under the dark brown leather blinkers. I caught & held it’s gaze, and I remember being in intimidated awe, feeling so small next to this huge, still, existing, powerful, breathing, warm animal….but thinking ‘I think I’ll be okay if you are okay.” When I was 6, It was a Saturday afternoon. I was bored. Really bored. The Saturday matinee has just finished on our black & white tv. Something came on that I hadn’t seen before, and I was intrigued. It was like they were talking about sport, but I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. They then showed a picture of what looked like a formal park, and yet they were talking about something, in a really intense way. I was even more intrigued, but also still somewhat bored. Disdain is a good word for it. Then the shot changed, and out of nowhere a long legged what I imagine was a brown horse lept into the air, then galloped off. Then It did it again, over a thing, and then I realised there was a person on this horse's back. Everyone looked like they were having fun….not at all like the horses in movies. It was like they meant to be doing what they were doing. I wasn’t bored anymore. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, that this could happen. That horses would do this kind of a thing, with us sitting on them. How was this possible? I wanted to know more, and I was enthralled. From that moment onwards I took every opportunity I could, to know, hear, see and experience anything to do with horses, and movement with horses. There was so much to them that I didn’t know, and I wanted to know it. It took a few more years for me to have the first opportunity of my ‘own’ horse. Up until this point I rode when I was given the opportunity, and stole any moment to simply exist around them - regardless of if they were in my mind or existed in my physical reality. I had the opportunity to go to Pony Club, to go to competitions with the people whom my parents leased a horse from (for me). At this stage I wasn’t competing, but most of the things that I was told ‘would be really good for me to go to’ were the competitions that they were competing at. The first one I went to was Yarloop Horse Trials, in 1994. It was the most incredible adventure. I had never been so cold, so wet, so foot sore, and so hungry at the same time as being so happy. I walked like I had never walked before. I ran the pre novice cross country course twice, on my own. I remember dressage, and being confused. Then I remember cross country, and suddenly realising what I had seen all those years before. It was so much fun. I thought it was what people did with horses. I had freedom like I had never felt before. Years passed, and I became the competitor. Because it was ‘what was done’. It was how you did, what was fun. But as the years passed, what was fun became recreatable, and achievable aside from that environment of rules, judgement, and tradition. What motivated me to go to competitions was the magic. It was the magic of the atmosphere, the magic of the movement and the magic of the process. We would come to a place, where we would do our beautiful thing, our amazing thing, in a place of opportunity. It was becoming that wonder, of what I saw that Saturday afternoon in black & white. I was experiencing what I saw that afternoon when ABC broadcast a highlights package of the Melbourne International Horse Trials at Werribee Park. When I saw Matt Ryan, and Kibah Tick Tock bursting past the tree’s, through the brush and turning right, against the backdrop of Werribee Mansion. I didn’t want to win, I didn’t want to place. I wanted to participate, I wanted to experience that moment, with horses. It wasn’t really until I saw Gillian Rolton at the Olympics in 1992 that I realised it was a competition. A sport. Up until that moment, sports were Football, Netball, and Athletics, things which we didn’t really do outside of school in our family. I was in disbelief that you could do these things with a horse, horse sports that weren’t racing. There was so much nourishment in this for a curiously fascinated mind. Years have passed now. I have competed in many disciplines, to a reasonable level. Ironically, I always managed to put myself into the position of trainer, groom, or non competitive rider for the horses of those who gave me many opportunities. I have ridden, trained, groomed for and personally cared for Event horses, Dressage horses, Showjumpers, Show horses, Race horses, Endurance Horses, Polocrosse horses. I have also had the opportunity to compete many times, and years gone by in eventing, in Dressage, Show Jumping, & Endurance, Show Horse, breed showing etc So, I grew in the world of horse, in a universe centric to competition. To externalise validation & measure of the equine experience. Unfortunately, I learnt to measure myself as an equestrian in value, from the human perspective of goal attainment, not the horse experience of momentary response in existence - which in itself culminates as movement, and what I really truly felt value in experiencing. I think one of the hardest things to hold onto in what we do, and what we are exposed to is the ‘why’. Once we put ourselves into the world, we become the world's experience of our own. I was shaped in a world that justified the equine experience through competitive value. It really was a juxtaposition of messages in many ways though. We used to tell children, and perhaps remind overzealous parents that “we are not in this for sheep stations' ', yet we would say “a horse is being wasted’ if it wasn’t ‘in work’ …..and yet what did that work mean? Work work? No. Horses were no longer used for working, for income, or agriculture much really, so what was it? Work at creating value for human play, or human validation of what they did through competition. It provided the horse riders/trainers focus, and validated the purpose of their experience. It was taught as an ideally mutualistic experience, and it is for those who make the right choices. Embracing the ideals of equality of experience for equine & human athletes alike. I’m so fortunate for this point in my life to have realised this disparity, between who I am, and who those whom I cheer for, and hope to raise up is. I’m so fortunate to have grown into this strength. I’m so grateful to have found peace in myself, and to find joy in the different perspective of a shared experience. I have a place here that is worthy, but it is not as competitor. I have never felt comfortable with this self truth until now. We all have strengths, and some of us have a strength in self in being driven to meet a measure of attainment to a specific goal, on a specific day, set to the definition of a system. I have this, but it is defined to me as the movement of communication, and the resulting movement of physical change between horse - and human. Or, of just horse alone. My rules are set by science. I now raise that the definition of this for me comes from a place of other moving experiences. Of movement of mind, of creativity, and movement of body through space. I knew this when I was a fortunate 10 year old, when I was required to make a decision to continue with ballet, or continue having horses - as financially it couldn’t be both. At the time, I considered it, and I chose horses. I chose them because I knew that I could dance with horses, but I couldn’t have the wonder of horses in my life if I just chose to be a ballet dancer. So, that is my confession. I am not a competitor, I never really have been. I am a dancer. I am a mover. I am a devotee to the equine in their nature. I know a horse knows how to not be ‘burnt by fire.’ I am a devout follower of the belief that ‘If they are okay, I will be okay.” I am still in awe of what they let us do with them, and what we are privileged to share with them. This drives me in sharing their truth to be understood by others, and in experiencing this delight myself. There is far too much joy in this for me to contain, there is too much value in it to be trimmed to fit just my life. I am compelled to share it like a musician must share the notes in their head, and the dancer must feel the change through space. I LOVE movement, and I am privileged to experience it with horses. There is no competition in this, only existence. So Hi, I’m Nancy. I dance with horses when I can. I’d love to share with you what I know, and how I do it in ways that you can do it also.. any time you want, even when you compete for personal achievement or finishing place success. It would be lovely to meet you in your joy, as always.

#rjequine #equestrian #equitation #equitationscience #horsewelfare #horsebehaviour #equinethology All reactions: 66