Respect

One of the more surprising aspects of my healing process was when I went to a retreat on a ranch. One of the exercises we did was to interact with horses. I don’t know if you have ever read about how horses are used as part of therapy, but the connection between horses and humans is quite extraordinary. They say that you can tell a lot about what is going on with someone by how they interact with the horses.

And boy, were they right!

I was asked to stand in the middle of a horse ring with a large 2,000 lb horse. All they said to me was that they wanted me to get the horse to go around in a circle, walk, trot and run simply using my voice. Um, excuse me?

So, there I stood in the middle of the ring trying to get this horse to move. And he didn’t budge. So I got angry. I tried walking over to him closer, nothing worked. I got so worked up that I started to yell at the horse, “MOVE”!! And still he completely ignored me.

Well, that’s when I (and everyone else there) discovered what was really going on with me. You see, I had been treated disrespectfully for so long that when I felt that I was being disrespected, my immediate reaction was anger. Most of the time, the anger would either stay stuffed inside of me, or it would come out as me complaining to my husband or friends (as they were safe places for me to express it).

But it didn’t stay stuffed in that day. The facilitator also knew in that moment that it was time to step in and help. He came out to the circle and told me that the horse wasn’t moving because I didn’t respect myself. That a horse is very in tune with whomever is leading it, and because I didn’t respect myself, the horse wasn’t respecting me either. Respect he said, needs to come from within you.

You first need to respect yourself before the horse is going to respect you.

So, he gave me a horse wand to aid me a bit, and then I stood there in the middle of the ring until I could get to a place where the commands I was giving the horse came from a place of confidence; not wavering fear or insecurity. Sure enough, the horse began to move. He tested me a little at first, but once he knew I was serious in my conviction, he began to respect me. As a result, he began to walk, then trot, run, and even stop using only my voice. As he ran around the ring, I was told to encourage him for his obedience, and I remember yelling out at one point out of pure admiration and joy, “You’re beautiful!”

In the end, the last step was to simply hold out my hand….and when I did, the horse stopped running and came directly to me and touched his nose to my hand for his final act of respect. I then just stood in the ring and cried. It was such an emotional moment. In just 30 minutes with a horse, I learned so much about myself, and my connection with disrespect and anger. And how if this dynamic was going to change in my life, then it had to come from within.

I needed to respect myself before other people would respect me.