My best friend died on the 21st of July 2025. Winter solstice in South Africa and summer solstice here in the UK. The winter solstice heralds the beginning of the light returning, a sign that the harshness of winter is slowly easing. The contrary for us here in the UK, slowly the light will fade and winter will bring the necessary rest to the earth, a time for reflection and contemplating the future.
What struck me the most about the news from her family, was the disproportionate level of grief that flooded my system. Loss is something I have been accustomed too over the past years. I lost a marriage, both parents, immigration to a new country and the death of my ex-husband early this year. This death struck at a level that I was unaccustomed to, she had a brain tumor, and we had over the years discussed life and death, with honestly and with candor.
Our friendship had evolved from a love of horses, both grew up with the idea of having a horse. I was fortunate to have a horse as a teenager, my equine became my trusted confidant but he had perfected many ways to unseat me along the way. I believe teenage angst must have been too much to bear.
Those horse years faded with leaving school, working and a young family. With a young family, she had persuaded her husband to purchase a farm in the Kwa Zulu Natal midlands. As one does on a farm, one acquires horses. Within a short while, she was thrown, run away with, and discovered the innumerable way horses avoid us.
With a young daughter, I found her a retired Welsh pony and naturally he needed a companion, so I took on a retired thoroughbred mare. The first time I strode out, bridle in hand, my mare fixed me with a look that made me rapidly decide that today would not be the day I would ride. There were frequent days like this and I did not have the guts to confess to my husband that there was a deep, life preserving fear!
Ray Hunt said, “You are not working on your horse, you are working on yourself.“, this was the path of Natural Horsemanship, becoming the person your horse needed you to be, in order to have the conversations that build a relationship. My mare and I became companions, she refined the lessons I had learnt and taught me about, gentleness with meaning, listening and being. I am still practicing those lessons now.
The day I went to the farm to look at a youngster to buy, I was greeted by a woman with presence, a deep abiding belief in the journey she was living and a herd of Friesian horses, which thundered down the hill to greet us.
It was in those recollections of memories while I sat with my grief, that I realised that her death did not signal the end of the journey. Her words and experience have vitality and meaning, moreover the community she created on those hillsides has wisdom to impart. A chapter had come to a conclusion, but the story continues.
Pretty October………….the mare with the stare