Staying in the saddle means that regardless of how rough the ride, we try to maintain balance.  I am not talking just about riding here.  When our youngest daughter ran away and cut off all communication, dropping out of the college and basically shattering her family and mucking up her life, we all came unseated.  It took me about two months to even find my horse and try to get back on. I am back in the saddle, but there are days when my balance is poor, when I do not want to ride or even get up.

Those days a fewer and farther between.  The universe, curiously, has delivered me two great gifts:  An artist’s fellowship from the state of Connecticut and a fellowship from the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy.  I take those gifts to mean that not only must I ride forward, but I have to be firmly seated in my own life, my own work, moving into the days with a courageous heart.  When Mark Rashid told us to ride with “feel, timing, blending, balance and breath,” I took that as an instruction for living.  His idea is that those elements result in softness – the kind of irresistible Aikido softness that can move mountains.  My horses already feel the difference.  So do I.  My daughter may be lost, but it is that softness, if anything, that will open a way for her to return.