Riding Into the Sunset

Dear Sweet Subscribers,

The time has come for us to move!

Change can be hard + scary. But fear not. Change invites growth.

And so you can find us here, at our new home >>> http://www.animaldelatierra.com

Stop by on your travels. Rest your feet and take a deep breath. There are many more stories to be shared!

In Everlasting Gratitude for Your Curiosity in What We Do,

An animal, for animals

*Que exit music*

 

Dharma

roughly translates to mean:

protection.

   We practice dharma in holding that all animals are sacred, and our work is to protect them. It is said understood in buddhist teachings as the act of learning to cherish others at least as much as we cherish ourselves. In doing so, we learn the sacredness of the lives of all other beings, and naturally develop good intentions towards them.

   Those animals that have undergone the process of domestication with us will forever be our responsibility. As it is said in The Little Prince, “you become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.” 

   Wild animals hold a special place on the earth, and are very vital to our communities. They are responsible for the health of the soil, the integrity of the rivers and the sustainability of future generations, because their existence depends on it. They remind us of our innate freedoms that we all have rights to. Leading by example of how to live on this planet, they don’t take ownership. They embody the ancient saying…

That said…

Excerpt from Local: The New Face of Food and Farming in America                       by Douglas Gayeton

Go ahead. Tell me words aren’t powerful. Or that words, by themselves, won’t change anything. Tell me no one reads anymore. Tell me we’re impatient, visually literate but crippled by short attention spans. Tell me you can’t actually transform the world because the power elite have jury rigged the system, that they control the levers and direct the machinery.

Tell me you’re powerless. That it’s all too complicated. That nothing matters. Tell me that you have neither time nor money. That you’re tired. All the time. That you don’t have the energy to do the things you want…

Tell me you no longer remember the “Good Ol’ Days,” the last time you smelled a flower, walked barefoot on dew-kissed grass, picked apples from a tree, or felt the warming glow of sunlight on your face.

Tell me you simply don’t care, because why should you?

   …And I’ll tell you the story of a woman called Wild Horse Annie.

   “On a usual day driving to work, a truck hauling horses cut in front of Annie’s car. She noticed a stream of blood dripping from the truck. Shocked by the trail of blood, Annie followed the truck to a rendering plant. This day would forever change her life. Hiding behind a bush, Annie noted a yearling, tucked between two stallions, down in the truck. The yearling was being trampled to death by horses packed like sardines awaiting their eventual demise in the rendering plant. She was outraged by this act of cruelty and set out to change the course of America’s history preventing the eradication of wild horses from public lands.

   Annie’s crusade began in 1950 and would end in 1977 upon her death. Annie wrote, ‘Although I had heard that airplanes were being used to capture mustangs, like so many of us do when something doesn’t touch our lives directly, I pretended it didn’t concern me. But one morning in the year 1950, my own apathetic attitude was jarred into acute awareness. What had now touched my life was to reach into the lives of many others as time went on.’

   Annie touched people from all walks of lives as she writes, “As the publicity has become more widespread, and the iniquitous story was revealed in all its brutality and greed, letters began pouring in, and for nearly two years, now, no day has passed with its quota of mustang letters. I have answered every one, and have followed up with material and instructions as to how to support Congressman Baring. Offers to help have come from every state, and people in all walks of life have joined the fight – ministers, housewives, students, teachers, sportsmen, the nuns in a convent in the East, a blind man who had read the story in Braille, men in the Armed Forces in far-away places, lawyers, doctors- and people from all ages – the youngest a potential Miss America of six, and the eldest a one-time cowpoke in his eighties, who could well remember the wild ones he’d ‘broke and rode.’ As the story filtered into foreign countries, letters bearing exotic postage stamps began to arrive: From Portugal and Spain, the Belgian Congo, Brazil, Porto Rico, the Philippines, Yugoslavia, England, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Cyprus and from our newest state Alaska. A journalist and photographer from a large news agency in Europe came to our ranch to get the story. At least my efforts have accomplished this much: mustang fever is raging!”

   The brave crusade of one woman, Velma Bronn, called ‘Wild Horse Annie’ by one of her bitterest opponents, adopted the new name to serve as a constant reminder of what she cherished more than her own life.

   “During the early years of Velma’s campaign, her life was often in danger. When strangers knocked, Velma answered the door with a gun behind her back. After all, they were living in the times of the Wild West! One of Annie’s strongest ranching opponents said he would like to see Annie in a case of dog food. (Over 30 million pounds of wild horsemeat was processed into food for dogs, cats and chickens during the 30’s alone.)”

   The power of learning to cherish others and letting go of our own importance can create a lasting legacy like that which Wild Horse Annie left behind. Her crusade to save wild horses from losing their freedom to become the profit of rendering plants has resulted in the founding of protective organizations and sanctuaries who cherish the wild horses as much as their own lives.

   There are many things that you, as a reader, advocate, animal-lover, or dharma-practitioner can do. One: learn about the laws passed to protect wild horses and burros under the management of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Two: find where their protection is lacking, and see how they are vulnerable and in need of help. Three: get connected with grassroots movements working to protect their legacy out of pure selfless love for their wildness.

   A good place to start is here, with The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign. And from there, go to have a look at Return to Freedom Wild Horse Sanctuary and their protection practices. And if you acknowledge that there is so much more for you to cherish, then I’d nudge you in the direction of The Lexicon of Sustainability; a project to share in the language of being local, and many cherished practices of sustainability in action.

   What we truly need now is action. If you’ve read this far, you can admit to knowing what dharma is. And maybe now you want to share it with someone. Just remember, the greatest action that you can do now to make a difference, is to share this with somebody else who you cherish. You know who they are. Oh, and there is one last thing that you can do. And believe me, this is the easy part. You may be driving down the road on your way to work one day, and the BAM! There it is.

Go on and find your dharma.

My Wild Love Went Riding

Some stories don’t require a translation. Some tales can satisfy your curiosity in the imagery itself. The story I am about to tell however, is one that asks that you be patient, and allow yourself to hang on every word:

The year was 1994 when Guenter Wamser, a German Equestrian Explorer embarked on an incredible journey crossing the Americas, from South Patagonia to Alaska, entirely on horseback. 

As the story goes, the trip began with a motorcycle trip between North Africa and the North Cape. (Note: forgive the translation, all of these quotes were translated loosely from German, which is not my native tongue). Guenter Wamser explains that his horseback trek across the Americas was inspired by what he felt on his “Motorradodyssee”: “Disappointed about the impossibility of being able to capture a country in four weeks, grew in me the desire to someday take a journey of at least one year in duration. In 1986, I took leave of family and friends, from the regular salary of a secure existence. This was the beginning of a four-year Motorradodyssee in North and Central America.”

With that odyssey, Wamser discovered what it felt like to travel from a different perspective. He became fascinated by slow travel as he said, “It enabled me not only an eye for the spectacular scenery, but it opened me a different view of the magnificent details. I could now feel the country feel, grasp and comprehend.”

Guenter’s route through South America lasted five years, from 1994 to 1999. He trekked through Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. A companion, Barbara Kohmanns joined Guenter on the journey from Ecuador to Mexico. Throughout the South American route, the team was Guenter and Barbara, the dog Liesl and the horses: Rebelde, Gaucho, Maxie, Samurai and Pumuckl.

The route through Central America took the team of Guenter, Barbara, dog Liesl and horses through Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico. This part of the journey stretched from 2001 to 2005.

Guenter wrote in his travel logs, “After 11 years and 20,000 km we finally reached Mexico. Each country smells different. But nowhere this impression was so strong as in Mexico. Mexico smelled like chili and fire, spirited life, like music. Mexico showed his picture book page: men with bright, wide-brimmed cowboy hats and trousers with oversized belt buckles. Mexico was the objective of the common journey of Barbara and me.”

Crossing the border, the route across the United States was taken following the Continental Divide Trail, the CDC, which runs from the Mexican to the Canadian border. This trail is the dividing line of the tributaries of the Pacific Ocean in the west and the Atlantic Ocean in the east.

“In June 2007, the journey on the 5000 km long hiking trail along the Rocky Mountains began. In summer 2009, we reached the Canadian border. Why it took so long? Because intervening unique, beautiful landscapes are waiting to be discovered. The journey is the destination, the slowness is the beauty of traveling.

The CDT led us through the high plains of New Mexico, and the Land of Enchantment (Tierra de Encanto), passing the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, through the lonely plains of Wyoming to the natural wonders of Yellowstone National Park and up into the rugged mountains of Montana.

Our four Mustangs we adopted from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) . These wild horses were trained as part of a social project, the Colorado Wild Horse Inmate Program . In the course of this project the inmates get vocational training in the taming of horses and can be easily integrated back into society after their release.

Since 1971, wild mustangs in the United States are legally protected (Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971) and its stock is controlled by the BLM… Each year a portion of the wild horses captured by the BLM and given up for adoption.”

During this part of the trip, a new team member joined and another departed. Barbara Kohmanns discontinued and Sonja Endlweber embarked on the route with Guenter. The team that crossed the Rocky Mountain route was made up of Guenter, Sonja and animals: the dog Leni and four Mustangs Rusty, Dino, Lightfoot and Azabache.

This part of the trip lasted from June 2007 to September 2009.

The last leg of the transcontinental horseback ride for Guenter and Sonja was started in the Spring of 2013 from the United States- Canada border to Alaska. Even after their epic trip on horseback is finished, Sonja, Guenter and Barbara continue to travel around Europe giving lectures and doing showings on their amazing adventure.

Getting a glimpse at their journey and the route they followed in crossing over continents with their horses, I feel a deep stirring in my soul. Something in me is waking up, stretching, and saying more loudly each day, your dreams are possible. You may be told you’re crazy, and that your dreams are unrealistic, but if crossing two continents on horseback in the span of twenty years is a reality for those who dared follow their dreams and do the work necessary to make it happen, then why on earth do we dare not live ours?

Click here to read more of the story of the transcontinental ride from South Patagonia to Alaska 

See the Resemblance

I first heard the term Nomadic Pastoralist in a book about horse behavior and their herd dynamics. The book was called, Power of the Herd by Linda Kohanov. In so few words, Kohanov gave me the most serious case of Deja Vu I’ve ever had. And every time I would open the book to continue reading, coincidentally, (or not!) the book fell open to the exact same page in which she introduces the nomadic pastoralists. Reading about their culture is like reliving a dream I once had. Ever since learning of their existence, I’ve devoured every shred of research I can find which relates to them as if I’m reminiscing my very distant family. In an interview in The Sun Magazine by Leath Tonino, Jack Turner said of his past,

In the mid-1970s I was an assistant philosophy professor at the University of Illinois. I was about thirty years old. I was very unhappy. One day I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo to sneak some meat to the snow leopards, as I did on occasion. It was a crappy day, cloudy and dim and snowing, and I thought to myself: I’m as trapped as these wild cats. I decided that I didn’t want to live my life working indoors. Since then, I’ve worked inside — a forty-hour-a-week, punch-the-time-clock type of job — for only two and a half years total. The rest of the time I’ve been working outside or writing in my cabin.

Turner began living the dream once he changed course and lived in a way that would fulfill his compass’ direction, that was always guiding him outside towards mountains and wilderness, and always guiding him inside to his cabin and his spirit.

We are all connected to the same hub of very ancient culture like the individual spokes on a wheel. Philip Shepherd said, “If you go back to the Indo-European roots of the English language, which date from the Neolithic, you find that the word for the hub of a wheel came from the word for navel.” The most tapped in roots of our inherited physical body are still joined with a very ancient culture of humans who we can strongly relate to in our guts even if we don’t see any resemblance.   To learn about ancient cultures is to brush off the dust on the mirror that reflects the deepest part of our ourselves. As the Buddhists say: “What happens upstream floats downstream.” In The Power of the Herd, Linda Kohanov explains in amazing detail, the history of a culture we have long forgotten about; a culture that embodied the sacred connection between humans and animals:

Nomadic Pastoralism, contrary to popular belief, was not a primitive condition. It was a specialization that developed out of settled farming communities requiring horses and skillful riding techniques. It required the wheel to allow populations to migrate with their herds by cart and wagon, leaders able to make quick decisions in an emergency, and a variety of craftsmen and specialists, far more than family subsistence farming did. The early horse tribes even managed to raise crops without becoming enslaved by them. They simply planted wheat in patches of fertile soil and returned to reap the benefits during seasonal migrations.

Recent archeological findings also suggest that women were equal to men in many of these tribes. Skeletons of warriors at first thought to be young boys later proved to be female. Over time, it was estimated that nearly 25 percent of warrior graves contained women dressed for battle, some of them obviously bowlegged from years spent on the back of a horse. Yet these wild-riding ladies mythologized as Amazons by the Greeks, were no less aware of their femininity. Their graves are filled with mirrors, scent bottles, and cosmetics of various colors. And like many women today, they loved to groom their horses. In burial mounds across Ukraine and Russia, up toward Tuva and the Altai Mountains, human and equine corpses lay side by side among a dazzling array of colorful saddle cloths depicting scenes from daily life. These in turn reveals a culture of decorative mane dressing and fantastic crested horse masks. Four-legged members of the tribe were dressed with as much enthusiasm as their two-legged counterparts…

Most impressive, however, are reports of the nomads’ behavior in battle, descriptions that have little in common with standardized legends of fierce barbarians out to vanquish the sacred innovations of the civilized world. Around 450 BCE, Herodotus, the Greek “father of history,” wrote about a curious, highly frustrating encounter that King Darius I of Persia had with these tribes before deciding to take on a much easier project and invade Greece. Darius was chasing a group of Scythians who’d either attacked or offended him in some way, and he was apparently planning to punish them, for good. Gathering his troops together, he entered Eurasia for the first time in 512 BCE, but when he arrived at the edge of the steppes, none of his officers could figure out how to engage these so-called primitives in combat. Whenever the troops got too close, the Scythians simply dispersed, riding into the grasslands, leading the king’s rigidly disciplined military force farther and farther into the wilderness. The scythians were sleeping on horseback, drinking mare’s milk and playing games along the way, while Darius’s men were growing weak from starvation and exposure. Finally, the Persians were forced to turn around and march home as the Scythians cheered and chuckled in the distance. The horse tribes maintained their culture and their territory by acting like the horses they rode. Choosing flight over fight was not a cowardly act but an obvious, thoroughly natural way to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. The enemy was ultimately irrelevant because there were no cities to defend. Warrior riders of both sexes led the challengers away from women with young children and mares with foals (who were mobile, but undoubtedly slower). It was only when increasingly materialistic members of these tribes began trading profusely with city dwellers that they sacrificed centuries of freedom. The more possessions they craved and acquired, the more their belongings weighed them down, and the more sedentary they became. Greek gold and wine and decorative vases eventually lured the nomads into a gilded cage of cultural amnesia. The ones who refused to forget fled farther into the grasslands until civilizations developing to the east and west expanded and overlapped right over their graves.

The assumption that nomads were more violent than their “civilized” counterparts has begun to evaporate in light of new research. The Danish archaeologist Klavs Randsborg insists it wasn’t marauding hordes of barbarians that led to the fall of the Greco-Roman world. Rather, these societies destroyed their environment and, in desparation, moved out to incorporate the lands and cultures nearby – Celtic, Germanic, Thracian, Scythian – “which until then had led an effective and long-standing existence in harmony with nature.” Citizens of early cities were suffering from anxieties derived from the instability resulting from conspicuous consumption and unchecked population growth. Their only choice was to expand outward, taking over the territories of other peoples and transforming them into the slave labor needed to build new buildings and reap greater harvests. Randsborg and his colleagues insist that, after nearly a millennium of expansion to compensate for repeated economic failure, this process had borught city dwellers to the point at which they had devastated the whole natural and political world around them.

The greatest way to let go of ancient history is to embrace it, in the present. 

 

Ain’t Gonna Lose You

Just a few days ago, three new mustangs arrived from the BLM at Windhorse Ranch. Two of them were born in the wild, a ten year old Carter mare and a two year old gelding. The youngest of the horses, a stunning and curious grey one year-old filly, was born at the short-term holding set up by the BLM for horses who are en route to be adopted out. The yearling was especially curious about humans; that is, at least she wasn’t shaking and terrified anytime they come around like the ten year old mare who was born wild.

Horses who are born wild have very good reason to shake and quiver whenever humans come around. After being chased for miles by helicopters and then torn from their families in the chaos of transitioning into captivity under rough human hands, they are completely justified to fear the sound of our footsteps. This yearling, in a way, is a lucky one. She has no idea what she is missing having been born in captivity. She doesn’t have to be held captive by the maddening yearning to get back home or return to freedom, right? She should have no reason to wonder, why am I here?  En yet, I’d still understand if she did, because I find myself madly wondering, why are we rounding them up?

With some earnest research into the motives for the BLM roundups of wild horses and burros, I have come to better understand the pain and loss I see in the eyes of newly rounded up horses who arrive at our ranch. The motivation to tear native horses from their homeland and put them into captivity stems from a purely corrupted mentality and approach to tending the public lands, which of course, is money and industry driven. The consequences of this are farther reaching than can be directly seen. However, we can imagine the implications if we only look no farther than history. The settling of the West and the forced displacement of indigenous peoples onto reservations that happened in a larger sense, not so long ago, have caused so many rich and important cultural traditions and knowledge to be lost. Even as activism for indigenous peoples is raising attention to remembering and honoring these rich practices and their way of life, what was torn from them may be irretrievable.

There is no going back. We can learn from the past, but it no longer exists. We can strive for a better day tomorrow, but surely tomorrow never comes. All that we have is this moment to right injustice as we see it. But what justice can be brought when the system that oppresses that which you hold so dear, oppresses you in affect? There is surely a larger root to this problem, but understand that if we do not deal with what debris that is on the surface first, we will have no clear pathway to get to the more deeply seated imbalances.

Sometimes it seems our power has been taken from us. We may feel our freedom has been captivated for long-term holding in a place with our name reserved on it. But who has the power to take that which only we are in control of? No one. We may be subject to fate, destiny, reincarnation, karma and whatever else this crazy world has in store for us, but I believe only we have the power to free ourselves, or lock ourselves away. It makes me weary to see so many wild animals held captive from their freedom, as if they no longer have the choice to pick the road they want to walk. But the perception that we can take away this freedom is an illusion we’d better wake up from. We are fools to think we can take another being’s power. Why should we test this in the first place when it only creates trauma that might not heal in this lifetime, for humans and animals. However fortunately despite all of the trauma that has been inflicted, if wild animals have learned anything from wildlands, they have learned how to persevere.

Photo by Alexandra Valenti

It is a fight, it is vulnerable issue, and wild horses and burros are dependent on us now to reserve their freedom. But they are patient with us, and they can hold unconditional love for you if you learn to work with them with respect and patience. Humans have always been interdependent on animals and wildlife, so what has changed today when we jeopardize the livelihood of wild animals in their native lands, is we are forcing ourselves to look at a very grim reflection of ourselves. Through the history of civilization, we have worked very hard and broken our backs to tame what remains wild in us. We may think we have lost our freedom and wildness, or that we are somehow wholly civilized, but I bet any one of us can testify to knowing of some influential people held in high esteem who are not always so civilized.

I have a proposition for the people of our culture. I invite you to look in your heart to find something you care deeply about. Something you worship or hold in awe. Something you would kill for. Something that makes you passionate about your life. When you find this in your heart, I want you to imagine that somebody walks up to you says, “Tomorrow you will lose all memory of this thing that you love so deeply. However, you can remedy this. If you want to keep your memory of your heart’s dearly beloved, you must take away its freedom of will, so that it can stay in your heart. If you let it’s will remain free, then it will forever be gone from you.” What would you do?

I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying, if you love something, give it away. I can admit, I’ve been dumbfounded by this saying until I have come to understand it in this way: if you love something, you will work to preserve its freedom as if it is your own. It becomes unimportant whether the subject of your love will stay with you or not, because you would rather have it be free to live the life it intends than be tied down by your relationship together. Of course in affect, when the thing you love so much comes to find that you hold the importance of preserving their freedom over the importance of maintaining a relationship with them, they choose to stay in relationship with you. Why?

This kind of love, my friend, creates a relationship that is interdependent rather than codependent. If you study the science of life, you’ll discover the interdependence of humans on animals and animals on plants and plants on the elements and on and on. But I hold that interdependence is the action of freeing, and empowering and holding in reverence both individuals. When you have an interdependent relationship with those individuals you hold close in your heart, you don’t need to lose them to love them. All you need to do is empower them, revere them and remind them that they are wild and free to be who they choose.

Resources for more information on the plight of wild horses:

American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign – http://wildhorsepreservation.org/

Return to Freedom Wild Horse Sanctuary – http://www.returntofreedom.org/

Bureau of Land Management Release on Wild Horse Roundups – http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/whbprogram/history_and_facts/myths_and_facts.html

American Mustang the Movie – http://www.americanmustangthemovie.com/

 

Wild and Beautiful Medicine

I like to see magic all around me.

I was born and raised in Sonoma County in Northern California, a very magical place. My family transplanted itself here because my Dad was a Sea Urchin diver, and the market for Sea Urchins was booming in this region. Coming from a picturesque Southern California town, my Mom initially saw the place that would come to be my hometown and said, “I wouldn’t be caught dead living here.” Today, here we are caught dead living in a small bohemian town in Northern California, a short drive from the Ocean, the City and the Mountains; pinch me. Having lived here my whole life, sometimes I see this place as a sleep-inducing field of lotus’ and want so badly to wake up. Traveling to foreign places is surely a wake up call. The things I take for granted in this place are luxuries in other places. If for nothing else, we should travel to remain humble that life is a gift.  Sometimes I drive out to the Ocean and plunge into the cold salty depths nearly naked, and let my whole body become numb and I never feel more alive. And every chance I get I drive out to a horse ranch on top of a great hill where my two horses live and I run and muse about life with them. They are great listeners, but above all they are great communicators. I will share their stories, do not worry.

Animal as Medicine is a seed. It is years old in being dreamed, and still at this time I do not know what it will grow into, (though still, I dream). Looking back, it seems its creation began when my relationship with horses began. My journey with horses began when I was six, and finally at age eleven, I embarked on a deeply connected journey with a sweet mare called Jasmine. At the time my Mom had remarried and my Sisters and I moved to our new home in the country, which had a yard built to house horses. An utter fairytale. My hands have also cared for many wild horses, who have come into my life either as a companion for Jasmine or a teaching project for me, and have set wildfire to my dreams urging me to study in depth the true nature of horses and wild creatures.

I’ve heard a powerful healer say that we can believe what we want to believe, but the truth will always be the truth. Horses are a strong medicine for us; my favorite Ayurvedic herb that I use for regenerating the tissues and strengthen the reproductive system is Ashawaganda, literally meaning Strong like Horse. The incredible healer who taught me all about this herb, DeAnna Batdorff, is the reason why Animal as Medicine was rooted and given life through Ayurveda. I actually learned what Ashawaganda translated to mean at an introduction to Ayurveda class at the dhyana Center in the Summer of 2012. And right then and there, I gave up my plans and scholarship to study Natural Horsemanship at the University of Montana Western, and signed up to study in the Clinical Program in Ayurveda taught at the dhyana Center that Fall.

My life has been blessed with so many healing influences. I feel so deeply connected to the animals I take care of, my wild and beautiful friends and family, and Ayurveda as a lifestyle and a lifelong study, that I can’t honestly draw a line between where their influences end and mine begins. Of course, life is never without it’s trials and tests of character, and I hit walls and run into boundaries at times. Early this morning, my dear friend left a message for me to encourage me through a hard time I am facing and I want to share it with you in hopes that it may medicate your day too. I feel the need to share it not only with you but with all the animals around me. I always want to give them some sort of explanation as to why the whole process of domestication was beneficial to both the human and animal side of the equation, but I also feel they need now more than ever to be given permission to be wild again. It doesn’t mean that we will care for them any less than we do now, but that perhaps we will take better care because they will be in tune with who they truly are: wild beautiful creatures.

My wild and beautiful human friend spoke these words of advice that I love so much because they apply not only to me as she was intending, but to all the magical animals who I call medicine:

“I just want you to know that you can define yourself. It’s so important to support what you have, you’re so lucky to have family. But make sure that you nourish yourself and that you take care of yourself because after all what you’ve got is your own two feet, and your head and your beautiful mind. So don’t let your soul get mangled by what’s going on right now. Just stay grounded and be strong, because you are so much stronger than you might think you are. I know you can do this, I know you can get through it.” – A Wild and Beautiful Creature