Interesting Horse Tale

Gipsy gold does not chink and glitter.  It gleams in the sun and neighs in the dark.
   ~Attributed to the Claddaugh Gypsies of Galway

Twenty years ago, not too long after I'd met my wife (then girlfriend), we went out to her mom's place about an hour north of Wilkes-Barre. Wendi's cousin Brenda, who lived nearby, offered to take us out horse riding. I don't know about my wife, but I'd only been on a horse a few times. I'm pretty sure that, each time, I'd fallen or been thrown. But hey, I was adventurous and said what the hell... So, we went out riding.

 

Each of us had an incident that day. For Wendi, it was more serious. Her horse became tangled up in some barbed wire and, somehow, Wendi was thrown. She landed pretty hard, square on her right shoulder. Hurt like hell, she said.

  

In fact, for years afterward, she experienced awful pain in that shoulder from time to time. Then it pretty much went away for a good while after Wendi changed her diet a few years back. That's great news, right?  No more pain!

 

Then just the other day, it returned. She wondered if anything could be done about it and began asking around on the internet. One woman suggested that there could be some emotional issue there, and said maybe Wendi should think back and see if she can figure out if that's the case.

 

So, she apparently took some time and thought back to the incident, examining it from all sorts of angles. I mean, hell, it was 20 years ago... What important, new detail could anyone remember about something like that, you know!?  But it turns out she DID remember an important detail: she didn't cry.  She said she recalled not crying about it because her cousin was there, and she'd have felt rather weak or ashamed to cry in front of her cousin. (Brenda was a rather tough country girl. So, this is understandable.)

 

So, she became absolutely present in that moment some two decades past, and began feeling that pain anew. She felt it so strongly that she actually began to cry!  And then, guess what?... Her shoulder pain disappeared!

 

Well, that alone is an incredibly interesting story, right?!  Twenty years of pain, and maybe all she ever needed to do was release the emotion properly!  It's amazingly awe-inspiring, and thought provoking.  But, after she told me this, I began to laugh to myself rather hysterically.

 

"What's so funny?" she asked me.

 

"Well," I said, "You just needed to cry all those years.  But remember that horse *I* was riding? I had a little incident that day, too, when the damn thing started galloping out of control. ... That horse damn near scared the shit outta me that day! So, I wonder what that means *I* need to do?!!"