Kristine E. Brickey

Life is not fair. There are always going to be people who figure out how to work the system, find the loopholes, win without actually earning the win.  This makes me a little crazy...and not in my normal, okay if people don't appreciate my crazy, crazy.  I work really hard to achieve my goals. When I do my best, when I know I have done all I could do, and then get beat to the finish, I am okay with the result. It pushes me further in future attempts. However, when I do my best but get beat at the finish because of loopholes, rules being set aside, trickery if you will...it gnaws at me, burns a hole in my calm, wakes me as I mentally twist and turn with the unfairness of it all. Turn the other cheek. Forgive and forget. Let it go. It's what the loophole seekers, the rule benders, the tricksters are hoping for in order to continue their methods, in order to keep nudging out the ones who play by the rules, who ignore bad behavior by others, who take the infamous high road. Seeming

The idea of being still. The Universe has been none too subtle in sending me this message. Stillness, not in the sense of being frozen. Quite the opposite actually. Finding peace in stillness, in not moving, allowing my heart and mind to settle, to feel, to process the feels...whoooof!  Can you do this? Truly be still, assess your mind set, and acknowledge stressors? Anyone feeling that queasiness, the need to move, to avoid?  After Robbie died, my mantra was 'Tamp it down, tamp it down, wayyyy down!' But that was then. I needed to stay busy. I needed to survive. Recovery, finding life (credit to Salman Rushdie for putting it so perfectly in his memoir, Knife) means DEALING WITH THE ISSUES I had been keeping outside my bubble.  Yikes, right? Last week, I headed to Spin to Win Horsemanship, Naomi Rutter's lovely farm in Chatham, Michigan. Cinder and I were participating in a Balance Through Movement Method clinic led by Stacia Strong. The focus (in a nutshell) was helping ea