When I was fresh out of high school, I traveled to PEI with a professor from Lakehead University who was going to teach summer session at the University of PEI. We were to live on a tourist farm which was also raising beef and harvesting potatoes, and here I would care for the professor's four children during the day. In the evenings and at the weekends, I ran free on the farm helping wherever I could and in return, I was allowed to ride the two horses. Though I preferred to ride bareback, my equestrian skills were sadly lacking especially at speeds faster than a walk, and I had many a tumble.
I remained friends with the McLeod family, and when sent to army boot camp at Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, I planned to visit on the May long weekend. Shortly before departure, I had a vivid dream in which I was cantering bareback through the fields. Even after waking, I could feel in my hands, knees and back the proper posture required for keeping a good seat on a horse, and I was eager to try my new skills. The first morning home on the island, I swung myself up onto Largos back, gathered the reins in my hand, and unbelievably, I had somehow learned to ride in my sleep.
This memory, still fresh after forty-five years, came to me this morning as I was considering my eating disorder journey. Somehow, by turning and staring it down, naming it for what it is, I have learned to ride the beast. The mastery is not in brute force; restrictive diets, denial and self-shaming, but in rest, acceptance and achieving balance in my life.
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