Folded In

All these years of traveling to clinics and workshops and week-long intensives, I thought I was studying to be good at riding and working horses.

Only in retrospect do I see that I was never just seeking knowledge-

I wade now through memories: laughing around a table with strangers who became fast friends in a matter of days; tears carving clean lines through dust on my face as I struggle in a pen with a horse who mirrors my own life at that moment; sitting quietly under the guidance of a long-time teacher who makes me want to be better—without ever making me ashamed of how I am.

What I was really doing was carving out a place in the world where I belong. Finding a corner where who I am is not merely tolerated, but useful, beneficial even. Where I can be shaped—by effort, by humility, by attention—into the fullest version of myself.

After years of evenings spent at long tables with old friends and new, after days of showing my most unsteady vulnerabilities in the pen to complete strangers, in the eyes of God, and in the unblinking honesty of the horse; after years of struggle followed by release, watched curiously by magpies, ravens, and meadowlarks—I have come to understand something essential.

It is in being deeply accepted, in being folded into competent hands and held beneath a generous sky, that a person becomes capable-

Capable of presence,

Capable of responsibility.

Capable of giving.

Telling people what to do does not change them. Impressing them with what you know does not either. Knowledge alone has never transformed a life.

Change happens only when someone is folded in—into work that matters, into a communal giving, into a steady and honest set of standards - into a space where their effort counts and their humanity is safe.

That's how people grow -

That's how we gain something real to offer. And when we are filled up to the brim, it spills out to others around us, folding them in, too.