On Women, Horses, and Power, (Part 2)

My adolescent self reached for the unity of spirit I now know is possible.

SO much has transpired in the last three months, that I needed to edit some of what I originally said. The #MeToo movement has absolutely exploded, curbing my original skepticism. In Part B  of “Women, Horses and Power,” in addition to talking about my personal experience, I also offer my ideas on the next stage of the Women’s Movement. I invite you to skip to the end, if you’re tired of hearing “#MeToo,” but here is my story.

#MeToo

This photo of me (second from left), was originally published in the May 14, 1971 issue of "Life" magazine.

When I hit adolescence, navigating social rules and personal power became particularly problematic. Not only had I been raised to "question authority" and believe that “rules were made to be broken,” I had no idea how to handle myself when confronted with someone who knew all the rules but bent them to their own profit.  My first encounter with this was when I was thirteen. My mother was part of a Woman’s Consciousness Raising group with her neighbors on the street. One of her fellow-feminists had an eighteen-year-old son who invited me to visit him after meeting him at a party I shouldn’t have been at. I was thrilled. ​

When I arrived at his house after school, his mother escorted me to his attic room.  I knocked and waited at the base of the steps. Eventually the door opened but the person who answered wasn’t the one I remembered meeting.  He looked the same but this one was silent and cold. Without so much as a hello, he turned and walked up the stairs.  Confused, I followed.   When I reached the top of the stairs, I was swallowed up in a maze of bead curtains, Indian wall hangings and a blinding cloud of Patchouli incense.  When I finally found him, he was sitting half-clothed and cross-legged on a bare mattress.

This was the backdrop of my first sexual assault.  I didn’t scream for help.  I didn’t run down the stairs out of his house. I didn’t know what to do. I just froze.  Froze until “it” was over and I could find my way home where I calmly told my mother that I thought I might be pregnant.  Hearing this, my mother applauded my precociousness and suggested I get fitted for a diaphragm.   The words for “rape,” “abuse” or “trauma” never came up.  We just didn’t have the vocabulary of such things. But after that, I was determined to learn all the rules so no one would ever take advantage of me like that again.  

It’s hard to rebel against someone with no rules. A liberal East Coast intellectual feminist is hard to surprise. Unless you somehow find a Midwestern Bible -Thumper who rides a Harley Davidson and declares he has the answers to 95% of life’s questions “or your money back.”  What could be more alluring to a traumatized fourteen-year-old?  Enter Captain, Team B. But by the time I realized that “The Doctor” believed that women were on earth to sexually “meet the needs” of “Men of God” and were to be subject to their husbands even if they’re whipped within an inch of their lives, what had started as a refuge became an inescapable prison.  On the other hand, this same “Doctor” (who was not a doctor) supported women’s rights to bear arms and he made sure you got your own gun license and went to the firing range alongside your men every chance you could and when he sold pro-Hitler, Holocaust-denying literature alongside his Bible literature, you turned the other way because your mind was so scrambled from being kicked up and down that soccer field, that was the only safe thing left to do. ( In May, 1971, “Life Magazine” ran an article called “The Groovy Christians of Rye, New York” about the early days of The Way in my hometown.  A close-up of my rapturous entrancement is featured on the first two pages. Click here to view.)

So, when it comes time to knit that hat with the cat ears, all you can hear is the laughter of the men behind those closed oak doors, telling dirty little jokes and high-fiving each other when one of them gets released on a million dollars bail because they’re just that lawless, not above the Law (though they might think they are) but utterly without it. And you honestly can’t believe that any of the concerns about sexual harassment and abuse of all those thousands and thousands of women marching in hand-knit hats will be taken seriously. But they are.  They exercised their rights as citizens and were “powerful.”

Thankfully, I was wrong.  I had seen the patriarchy "in power" for so long, it seemed to me that only an Act of God would change it. As it turns out it seems to have been an "Act of the Goddess, " kicked off with the Women's March and Pussyhat Project. And, there I sat in that cold January of 2018, smug by my fireplace, shaking my head at my idealistic sisters.  But I had underestimated the power of the Light Side.  There's no telling now what the collective power of the Divine Feminine can and will do.  Shatter glass ceilings.  Crumble bastions of sexism.  Sail on the wings of equality and love in relationship.         

What Now?  After #MeToo

And what about the Power of One?  How do I find my personal power as a woman? How do I connect with the Divine Feminine in me? I may not be evolved enough to find the Goddess staring back at me in the mirror but I can definitely find Her on the back of a horse.  The unity and connection I feel with that one-ton animal is pretty profound and confidence-building. 

For many years, I washed my hands of the Divine Anything, determined to learn to “take care of myself” before I went about trying to change the world.  My experience in the cult filled me with enough Complex PTSD to scare a horse. But now I realize, that a vital relationship with the Divine Feminine, both in me and without me, is the foundation of self-care…and making a difference in the world.  I cannot have one without the other.  

For me, the pain in my relationship with biological mother is being healed by a more powerful mother- Mother Nature. Whether I find her in the form of a “spirited” animal like the horse or the swaying green branches of a tree, I am learning to trust again – trust myself and trust the universe, trust some people, even men. When I left the cult, I remember sprawling face down on the ground and digging my hands and toes into the ground as though it was the only thing I could hold on to, the only thing I could rely on. on. The bedrock of earth is something I can always rely it.  It is as steady as the waves of the ocean flow in and out, consistent and sure as my breath.  It’s no coincidence that the breath is often key to meditation which helps develop a connection with oneself.  

So, there you go. Spirituality and self-care go hand-in-hand. My power doesn’t only lie in “speaking my truth” as an abused and oppressed victim.  It’s a start and a very important one. “Speaking truth to power” is empowering and liberating.  I experienced those feeling when I told my story of the cult in 2008. ("Losing the Way: A Memoir of Spiritual Longing, Manipulation, Abuse and Escape" published by Bay Tree Publishing, and soon to be Print-on-Demand through Amazon.) The #MeToo movement is a critical step in asserting our equality and humanity.  But it can’t stop there. ​

After we bravely exercise our right to use our voices and be heard, where do we go? I believe that healing the self and the earth are next stage of empowerment. They are not mutually exclusive. These two practices form the foundation of self-reliance that no man can take away. We can never undo the injustices and abuse of the past but we can learn to thrive in the present, and look to the future with hope. Too often so-called psychotherapy keeps us stuck in the past, on our wounds and not on healing. Equine-Based Psychotherapy is so effective because the horse demands that the rider be totally focused in the present.

The horse is a catalyst for healing encounters with Mother Nature.

I don’t expect everyone to take up horseback riding. But, nurturing a vital relationship with the world around me is filling the void that was left by an unreliable relationship with a frustrated biological mother.  Now that I’ve taken my place among the #MeToo’s  (too many to remember, actually), I am moving onto a more fulfilling life nurtured by a new mother.  I am finding that my power lies both in how I nurture myself and how I allow Mother Nature to touch me.  I’m serious.  I've found my power and it's in my Mother. Earth Mother. Mother Nature. And Mother Nature is everywhere.  Just look into a horse's eyes…. or in the mirror and you'll see Her. 

Be true to the woman inside. The one you see in the mirror.

© 2018 Kristen Skedgill. All rights reserved.
​Photo from "Life" Magazine is used for educational purposes only.
Photomontages of Kristen Skedgell by Verneda Lights, E-graphX Omnimedia