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I have been waiting for the Horse all my life.
I didn’t know I was waiting.
I knew I wanted one.
That is different.
My first horse was an Ardenner.
I was six years old when my grandfather let me ride this enormous animal. To a six-year-old, he was a giant—immense, solid, powerful, and somehow completely trustworthy.
And then I rode.
Something got into me that day.
I was infested with freedom.
I have been on a quest for that feeling ever since.
I didn’t have words for it then. I only knew that something had happened to me. The world had become larger. There was movement beneath me, power beneath me, and suddenly I wasn’t simply a child standing on the ground.
I was going somewhere.
Perhaps that is what the Horse first gave me.
Not speed.
Not competition.
Not even adventure.
Possibility.
There were horses in my childhood after that. A big, broad, brown, velvety toy horse that I stole from my sister and made my own. It had a saddle and a bridle and wheels underneath so I could put a doll on its back and make it gallop across the floor.
I brushed it.
I loved it.
There were other horses too, plastic horses, and the books—girls, stables, mysteries, secrets, adventures, the feeling that something extraordinary might be waiting just beyond the stable door.
Nancy Drew.
Horses.
The two belonged together in my imagination.
The Horse was already woven into me long before I knew that one day I would call it freedom.
Then I rode for real.
As a teenager, I became good enough at riding that I was encouraged towards jumping and competition.
And I did it.
I jumped.
I pushed myself.
I was even jumping without reins, without a saddle.
It was supposed to be impressive.
It was not freedom.
It hurt.
Eventually, I walked away from competitive riding.
But the Horse didn’t leave.
My rebound from all that intensity materialised in the form of a steady Fjord horse.
She took me back into the forests.
And there we simply walked.
No competition.
No performance.
No proving anything.
Just trees, a horse beneath me, and the steady rhythm of being carried through the world.
She gave me back another kind of freedom.
A quieter one.
The freedom to go nowhere in particular.
The freedom not to perform.
The freedom to let the world move at its own pace.
And then, years later, I stood in a field with Arabian horses.
They were being called in.
And they came.
At full gallop.
Long manes flying in the wind.
Muscular bodies.
Arched necks.
Sunlight on their backs.
Power moving across the pasture like a living storm.
They came straight towards me.
I stood still.
Closer.
Closer.
Until they were only the width of my palm away.
I thought they were going to run straight through me.
Then they swept past.
And I was left standing there, heart somewhere up around my throat, completely and utterly enchanted.
I wanted an Arabian horse from that day onwards.
I still do.
Because there is something about a horse that refuses to apologise for its power.
They weren’t asking whether they were too much.
They weren’t making themselves smaller.
They weren’t wondering whether the person standing in their path was ready for them.
They were simply alive.
Fully.
Magnificently.
Terrifyingly alive.
And perhaps that is what I have been looking for all these years.
Not a horse.
That feeling.
The feeling I discovered when I was six.
The feeling I rediscovered in the woods.
The feeling that almost knocked me over in a sunlit pasture.
Freedom.
Wildness.
Movement.
The knowledge that there is something in us that cannot be domesticated without consequence.
And now the Horse has returned.
Not just any horse.
Sixty years after the last Fire Horse year, it has come around again.
And this time, I notice.
This time I recognise it.
Because the Horse has been following me all my life.
I simply didn’t know what I was looking at.
The Sun will disappear behind the Moon.
For a few extraordinary minutes, daylight will become something else.
The familiar sky will darken.
The world will pause.
And I keep thinking about the things we hide.
The things we cover.
The parts of ourselves we put behind a veil because they are too wild, too loud, too ambitious, too inconvenient, too alive.
How much of ourselves do we spend making acceptable?
How much power do we fold away because somebody else might be frightened by it?
How much life do we postpone while we wait to become the person we think we’re supposed to be?
I don’t want to do that anymore.
Take off the veil.
Stop asking permission.
Stop waiting to be chosen.
Stop making yourself smaller so that other people can remain comfortable.
There is a particular kind of freedom that arrives when something inside you stops asking permission.
The old weight falls away.
The body remembers what it knows.
And suddenly you are no longer standing at the edge of your own life, wondering whether you are allowed to enter.
You stop asking permission.
You run.
You run with the horses.
You run into the wind.
You run because something in you has remembered its own strength.
And perhaps that is what empowerment really is.
Not becoming powerful.
Remembering that you already are.
Not inventing a new self.
Releasing the one you’ve been holding back.
Not waiting for permission.
Moving.
There is a horse inside us that knows things the careful mind does not.
It knows when the ground is ready.
It knows when to stop.
It knows when to run.
It knows when to carry.
It knows when to stand absolutely still while something enormous comes thundering towards it.
And it knows the difference between being controlled and being free.
I have known that Horse since I was six years old.
I have ridden it.
I have been carried by it.
I have been frightened by it.
I have wanted it.
I have lost it.
I have found it again.
And now, sixty years later, it has come around once more.
The eclipse.
The darkening sky.
The wild heart.
The open road.
The life that is still waiting.
And suddenly I understand something.
Perhaps the Horse hasn’t been waiting for me.
Perhaps I have been waiting for the Horse.
Perhaps the thing I have been searching for all these years was already inside me when I was six years old.
Perhaps freedom doesn’t arrive.
Perhaps it awakens.
Perhaps it waits underneath everything we have been taught to be.
And perhaps there comes a point when we stop negotiating with ourselves.
When we stop explaining.
When we stop apologising.
When we stop asking whether we are allowed to want more.
When we finally understand that wanting a bigger life is not greed.
That being powerful is not the same as overpowering somebody else.
That being wild is not the same as being reckless.
That freedom is not the absence of responsibility.
Freedom is the ability to become fully yourself.
The dog days are over.
Not because somebody promised me they would be.
Because sometimes a song arrives and gives a name to something that has been living inside you for years.
Something that was already there.
Something that already knew.
Run wild.
The words feel like recognition.
Not instruction.
Not permission.
Recognition.
Because I have been running towards that feeling since I was six.
And now the Horse is back.
So here is my invitation:
Find the thing that makes your blood move.
Find the thing that makes you stand up straighter.
Find the thing that makes you forget to be sensible for a moment.
Find the thing you loved before you understood whether it was useful.
Find the thing that keeps returning.
The thing that has survived every version of you.
The thing you thought you had outgrown.
The thing that still makes some deep, unreasonable part of you whisper:
One day.
Listen to it.
Perhaps that is not foolishness.
Perhaps that is memory.
Perhaps some part of you remembers exactly who you were before you learned to hide.
And when you find it—
don’t stand on the roadside watching.
Don’t wait for somebody to tell you it is your turn.
Don’t wait until you have the perfect plan.
Don’t wait until the fear disappears.
Run.
Run with the horses.
Run into the wind.
Run towards the life that makes you feel more alive.
Run until the old weight falls away.
Run until the veil is gone.
Run until you can hear nothing but your own breath and the thunder of hooves.
And when you look up and see the sky go dark, remember:
The Sun hasn’t disappeared.
It is still there.
It is simply hidden for a moment.
So are you.
Until you choose to step out from behind the veil.
Until you remember.
Until you run.
The Horse has returned.
The Fire is here.
The old days are over.
And somewhere beyond the edge of the familiar, something wild is already running towards you.
Go meet it.
~
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