Dark Horse Wisdom...a personal story
From the Archive
This piece was written around 2015 during a particularly reflective period in my life. It is not about horses or horsemanship, but about the inner work that often sits quietly behind how we show up in the world.
I have kept it here because self awareness and personal responsibility remain central themes in both my life and the work I now share through Her WildLife.
A personal reflection
There I was, lying flat on my back in the middle of the day, staring at the ceiling fan spinning slowly above me.
Listening to its steady mechanical rhythm.
Feeling alone, defeated and completely lost in my own darkness. I had allowed myself to spiral once again into that familiar place of hopelessness where it seemed impossible to imagine feeling light again.
That was the day I became tired of listening to my own internal noise. Tired of wrestling with the same thoughts and emotions. Tired of feeling trapped inside my own head.
Something in me finally said, enough.
It was time to stop running from this part of myself and begin learning how to live with it.
I realised that if I wanted to become more authentic and grounded in myself, I would need to learn the language of what I began to think of as my dark horse.
I would have to learn the difference between destructive impulses and the quieter pieces of wisdom hidden underneath them.
So I started looking inward more honestly.
That meant facing aspects of myself I would have preferred to ignore. My fears. My weaknesses. Old patterns of thinking. Parts of my personality that were uncomfortable to acknowledge.
It was confronting.
But the alternative was continuing to be thrown around by something I refused to understand. Like being repeatedly bucked off a powerful horse I had never taken the time to learn from.
And I had no interest in taking that ride again.
Learning to sit with my dark horse was not easy. It took time and patience. At times it felt uncomfortable and unfamiliar.
But something interesting began to happen when I stopped resisting.
Instead of fighting those darker emotions, I allowed them space. I sat quietly with them and tried to understand what they were trying to show me.
Slowly I began to realise that this is simply part of being human.
By acknowledging that darker side of myself rather than trying to suppress it, I allowed it to move through me rather than control me.
Light and darkness exist together.
One cannot exist without the other.
We often talk about seeking the light, happiness, positivity, growth. All valuable aspirations. But without acknowledging the darker aspects of our nature we cannot fully understand ourselves.
Ignoring the shadow does not remove it. It simply pushes it further out of awareness where it continues to influence us quietly.
For many people, particularly women, there is often pressure to appear endlessly positive, calm or composed. Difficult emotions such as anger, sadness, jealousy or frustration can be seen as something shameful or undesirable.
Yet these emotions are simply signals.
They are messengers asking us to pay attention.
When we refuse to listen they tend to become louder.
When we allow ourselves to acknowledge them honestly, they often soften.
Over time I began to see these darker feelings less as enemies and more as teachers. They contained information about where I needed to grow, where I needed clearer boundaries, or where old stories about myself were no longer serving me.
The key was learning not to become lost in them.
Mindfulness helped.
When difficult thoughts appeared I practised observing them rather than immediately reacting. When emotions arose I tried to feel them fully without allowing them to spiral into something larger.
Emotions rise, and they fall again.
They rarely last forever unless we keep feeding them.
What initially appears as darkness can often become the very place where growth begins. Much like a lotus flower rising from the mud, transformation often emerges from places we would rather avoid.
Nothing in life remains static.
Winter eventually gives way to spring. Night gradually turns into morning.
Facing our own inner darkness is rarely comfortable, but it can be deeply instructive.
When we take responsibility for the whole of ourselves, not just the parts we like, we begin to live with greater honesty and balance.
The dark horse may be wild and unpredictable at times, but within it lies an enormous amount of untapped insight.
The real work is not trying to eliminate that horse, but learning how to ride it with awareness.
Because healing rarely comes from light or darkness alone.
It emerges in the place where the two finally meet.