I was afraid I might not make new friends when I moved to New Mexico a year and a half ago. I was afraid that maybe I would leave everybody and everything behind and wonder, once I got down here, what was I thinking. But I knew I needed to make the move. I needed to leave the big, dark old house on Pillsbury Avenue in Minneapolis behind and find light. Trust became my watchword.

I am grateful for the good New Mexico women who have appeared before me almost by magic. One day while scrolling through one of my horse groups on Facebook, I noticed that Pat, an equine assisted therapist, lived in a stone’s throw away from where I now live. One day I messaged her suggesting we connect in person. We talked a bit on the phone and ......

Patience was never my forte. My fuse shortened even more after I had two daughters who were ten months apart. It seemed that there was never enough time and there was always something spilling, or someone was spitting up, screaming or both were running in different directions. What happened moment to moment was rarely in the schedule I had set up in my head. Stopping to wipe erp off the shoulder of my navy-blue pantsuit before going to work really slowed me down, not to mention made the glam factor impossible.

It’s true, though, that people can change. I had done a seminar that revealed to me in a profound way this fact of life: no matter how I think things should be, whatever is going on is what is going on. Though so ......

There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger.

The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.

- L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Traditionally when we think of courage, we think of a warrior’s courage – bold, fearless, and bigger than life. It’s the James Bond kind of courage, the bungee jumper flinging himself off a bridge, or the kind of courage I mustered when I led a horse packing and storytelling trip in the Wyoming Rockies with seasoned guides Val the Singing Cowboy and his wife Cindy. I had gathered ten participants, and with a total of nineteen horses packing over narrow trails with 5,000-foot drops, we were about as far from civilization as you could get.

You need ......