The Boundary is the Lesson
You can't ride every story home, and that's not a failure
I See You
“I’ve always been drawn to their eyes,” a new client said as we got to know each other before a session this week. “The horse’s eyes speak to me.”
Much of my work centers around women who have always loved horses and are finally creating time, now that their careers are settled and their kids are moving away, to explore horses for the first time — or to come back to horses after some time away.
For many, it’s the culmination of a childhood dream. In the decades between the first spark to spending time with a horse in person, the horse itself becomes more than an animal, more than an enriching pastime.
The horse becomes a symbol — of EVERYTHING.
I thought I was immune to the mythical power of a horse’s gaze, but as I looked into the clever eyes of my client, a busy thread inside of me stilled. Her anticipation of soon being inside a horse’s gaze infected me.
I remembered.
As the day went on, eyes were the theme. Horses, cats, dogs, humans — all of us peering out into our worlds, seeing our own versions of the world through our multi-faceted perceptions.
Horses, more so than cats and dogs — that difference between prey and predator — don’t flinch away when a human becomes unraveled. Horses don’t try to tidy our grief. They just stay — and in that staying, our perception is invited to shift.
In the watchful presence of a horse there isn’t any room for our ego or the old stories we lug around with us like a battered trunk filled with cement. It’s not about praise or permission, they just simply say: I see you.
Not everyone is ready for that kind of attendance. Most people flinch or fight or flee after the initial polish has worn away and they’re left with the dirty, aching, hard work of sorting through the cement crumbles spilling out from our life trunks.
Past the brutal reckoning of it, there is a peace that begins to descend. A peace that starts inside of us, a tiny seed that’s been buried in our mess. It’s a peace that lives in our body — and one that most kids arrive with, still intact and ready to experience the details they’re receiving rather than the projection of how they wish it would be.
The Horse Made of Feeling
We have monthly kids’ clubs at the farm — the brainchild of the talented Michelle Higdon. Bramble Buddies is for kids just beginning to explore horses. Bramble Besties is for experienced, older kids, who have applied themselves to learning the foundations of handling.
These clubs all take place on the ground beside the horses and in honor of this June being the first anniversary of Buddies and Besties, Michelle planned parties with water games, snacks, barn time, and crafting hobby horses from pool noodles.
There is a little girl who is an absolute delight when she joins us for club events. When she first met our big, grey mare, Penny, the little girl described her as “warm.” This fascinated me, and the girl’s mother, who pressed her to describe what she meant by warm.
“She’s just warm,” the little girl said.
When she constructed her pool noodle horse, all googly eyes and felt mane, the girl immediately named her Penny and later that night, her mother found her asleep with the pool noodle in her bed. Her mom thought about moving the barn dirty smeared toy but ended up leaving it in bed with her.
This girl didn’t rest with her pretend horse because her ride that day was magical. She didn’t even ride. But the bond that she felt with the horse was magical. She wanted to be near the pool noodle horse because of what she recognized in Penny — the warmth.
She made a horse. She gave it life. And then she carried that feeling home with her.
That’s what the horses teach us, even in effigy. We learn that being near something is more important than controlling it. We see that love doesn’t have to look a certain way or perform in a prescribed fashion, to matter. We understand that we don’t have to be holding a set of reins to feel closeness.
This little girl met a horse named Penny and said, without hesitation, “She’s warm.”
She didn’t name the color of Penny’s coat or the way her mane fell. She didn’t talk about what Penny could do or how she moved. She just felt her. She called her warm and then wanted to keep that warmth with her.
She felt something true and she named it.
Then she gave it a place to stay.
The Mirror Before the Mount
At my farm, the root system we build from teaches a way of being with the horses on the ground before we move on to riding. But so often, people arrive thinking the goal is the saddle and that everything else is just a stepping stone.
I didn’t build this program to be a ladder.
I built it to be a field.
In that field, you can wander or rest or touch the earth with your bare hands before asking a horse to carry your weight.
I’m not against riding — I love riding — but I want us to ride from a different place, one rooted in connection and not commands. I want us to strip away our assumptions so we can re-discover our awareness.
I want us to work from our breath, not from blame.
It’s easy to think that groundwork with a horse is a fallback, to believe that if you’re not riding, you’re behind. But groundwork is often the bravest choice and one that lets the horse know that you’re willing to meet them in their space before asking for anything more.
What so many humans aren’t willing to admit is that it’s rarely the horse that isn’t ready. Most of the time, it’s YOU.
And that’s where boundaries come in — often mistaken for punishment or a barrier when in fact, boundaries are a form of clarity.
A boundary says: I’m responsible for what I bring. And I trust you enough to stay in this with me.
A barricade says: You made me feel something I didn’t want to feel — so now you’re dangerous.
One creates room for repair, and the other replaces truth with distance and calls it safety. Horses don’t process conflict with words, but they do try to solve rifts in the herd. Rupture is biologically dangerous for a creature made to find safety inside the group.
The horse wants to work with you. They want to feel safe in your presence. To do that, we have to learn how to tell the difference between what’s yours, what’s theirs, and what’s rising in the space between us.
And more often than not, you’re going to find this magic working on the ground with the horse before you ever set foot in the saddle.
As usual, what happens in the barn can be applied to life. The other day, I drank too much wine with my friend
and 2010 Kim rose up — because I was tired and hungry and worried about so many other things — and I raged and slammed a door.My actions were totally not about her.
Our friendship held together after my uprising because we talked and I apologized and she and I told the truth. We both stay present long enough to sort through the moment without it digressing into judgment.
When boundaries aren’t used as weapons, repair can be possible. And when repair is possible, projections dissolve and make way for presence.
Where the Bravest Work Happens
It begins on the ground and that’s where one of our older kids chose to be this weekend when she arrived for a riding lesson. She’s one of our Bramble Besties, and she knows the barn and the whole herd in a deeply perceptive way.
She’s been riding my old professor, Max, and they’ve been working on going faster together by exploring every child’s favorite gait — the canter. Michelle is her teacher and as she planned for the lesson, she had every intention of watching the child saddle up and ride.
But the child asked, “Can I do groundwork with Max today? I love cantering, I do, but I also want to have a connection with Max and I know that I can while riding but I also know there are other important things to do on the ground and connect with him and build a relationship. I don’t want him to think I’m going to make him work and ride every time because there is so much more than riding — even though I like cantering.”
She arrived for her session with the option to ride and everything was set — the weather, the horse, the timing, but she stood next to Max and said something that most adults fumble to articulate: I want to show him love in a different way today.
So she brushed him and she walked with him. She stood long moments in silence with her hand along the top of his neck, offering him a release along a meridian line in his body. She breathed beside him and she didn’t ask for much movement or progress.
She asked for his presence, and he gave it freely.
This child is twelve, but she’s practicing leadership that most of us are still trying to remember, the art of listening first. She didn’t choose what was expected of her. She chose what was true for her that day.
And that’s what the horse remembers.
After a rough week, the honesty of the child’s request felt like a gift to me. She reminded me that reading the room inside of ourselves before we ask anyone, especially a horse, to carry us through it is an art form.
This art doesn’t just belong to the young, but they tend to trust it more easily.
And when they do, the whole field shifts.
Staying Long Enough to Listen
That same afternoon I sat in the shade of the riding arena while two teenagers finished with their lesson. One had chosen groundwork with Bentley, a big, draft cross, and the other rode George, a new-to-her horse that requires his rider to pay attention with every step.
“What should I write about this week?” I asked them. I gave them a list of things I had been considering.
“Can you write something about boundaries?”
The query came from a place inside of them that wasn’t about rehashing conflict. When the girls spoke of boundaries, it came from a place of deep weariness — both of them on the edge of adulthood and trying to hold themselves upright in a world that keeps asking them to shape-shift.
Where does weariness come from when you’re tired of being too much, or not enough? What do you do when we’re trained to make everyone else comfortable while ignoring what we truly need?
I thought about how often we turn that effort outward, how we contort ourselves to manage other people’s emotions, how we stay agreeable until the pressure inside becomes unbearable.
And then we start projecting in defense, not out of malice, but like how we swat a fly on our arm, or the horse jerks a head back to brush their shoulder — a reflex.
When we’re in the arena with the horses, whether we’re on the ground or in the saddle, it’s so easy to blame the horse or the teacher or a friend, because it’s hard to name what actually hurts inside of us. We call it a problem when we’re really just afraid to say no. We say someone made us feel something when the feeling was already there buried beneath our surface.
That’s why the horses matter — showing up with humans and doing the work and never asking us to be palatable. They don’t even know what performance is.
They reward presence.
Sitting in the shade the other day, surrounded by girls on the edge of becoming women, I remembered: This is what the work looks like.
It’s not about fixing or advising, but staying still long enough for the truth to come out.
Enough, As You Are
The deepest work that I do has nothing to do with riding. This doesn’t mean that I’m against riding, but I have lived the work long enough to know that riding a horse is a privilege and not the purpose.
What are we willing to name inside of us — and what are we willing to see and be seen by?
It’s easy to love horses in theory, and it’s easier still to chase the idea of connection, but the real work begins when you stop chasing your goals and you begin noticing what is happening in front of you — what is happening inside of you.
When you look into a horse’s eyes, that’s where the gaze returns.
The eyes of a horse don’t flatter or rescue or rearrange. They just see you.
And if you can meet that gaze — if you can hold your ground long enough to stop explaining yourself — they will reward you with their presence.
They don't care about the story you’re telling, or your effort, or your apology.
They just see You.
And if you're lucky, you'll see something in return: There is nothing wrong with you.
You are just here. And that is enough.
Horses don’t know what to do with the mythical pedestal we’ve placed them on. They want us to meet them as they are, as we are, in the now.
I’ve watched kids build horses from pool noodles and carry them home like sacred objects. I’ve watched twelve-year-olds choose to stand beside a horse instead of ride one. I’ve sat in the shade with teenagers who want to talk about boundaries instead of boys.
And I’ve stood beside so many horses and watched them ask nothing of me other than I arrive as I am: aware of my projections, willing to set our boundaries, and offering up the courage to stay.
This kind of work that reshapes people. It doesn’t happen all at once and it won’t happen in a single session, but slowly on the ground, in the field, in the barn, we begin to sink into our true selves.
And in that place beside the horse, the eyes that meet yours don’t need anything fixed or changed or improved — they just ask to be honored.
In their eyes, you’re not a project — and neither are they.
You don’t have to change yourself.
You just need to return.
Love,
Kim
The work I’ve been building quietly for over two decades is beginning to name itself.
This week, I’ll be sharing the four pillars that hold Bramblewood’s spine—riding, story, respite, and reclamation. You’ll find them taking shape on social media, one at a time, grounded in the same relationship that’s held it all along.
Join me.
Thank you for this lovely echo of my heart and soul. There is as much elegance and grace to be had in pure presence together as there is in a riding relationship.
'Horses don’t know what to do with the mythical pedestal we’ve placed them on." Neither do Indians. Pedestals are lonely places.
This is all so beautiful. Bramblewood needs to be seen as a relicable model. So much heartbreak, for humans and horses, could be avoided if everyone started in a field instead of on a ladder. I love you and I love what you continue to create.