Lost Girls

first published by joell on November 5, 2007

This is a story about my school-age friend we will call “Randi.”

I’ve thought a lot about Randi in the 30+ years since we were best friends. Thought about what motivated her, about what drove her to do the things she did and why we were friends. She was the only girl in my class with horses at her house and that certainly made a huge difference for me, horses are what connected us. But today on FuglyBlog.com, the discussion was about whether horses can save bad kids. Hmmmmm. What do you think?

Maybe Randi was lashing out because her parents were really hard on her and the nuns blamed her (usually correctly) for any misbehavior. Nonetheless, Randi beat the heck out of me regularly. She pulled my hair, punched me in the shoulder, she knuckled me in the thigh to give me a charley-horse. Her favorite trick was to grab my wrist during the quiet part of mass and start pulling. As soon as I tugged back she let go causing my pointy little elbow to hit the wood pews and make a terrible loud BANG. I was mortified every time.

Randi was literally, a red-headed stepchild. She was big and clumsy and had zits. Her body matured too soon. She had “female issues” before the rest of us knew what they were. She was a maverick and spoke her mind to the nuns at school, to the boys in the class and to me.

I adored her. I followed her everywhere, stayed at her house, found some way to get the nuns to let us sit together; the bad girl with the quiet, studious one. I was small, skinny, boyish and awkward. I never spoke my mind and I almost always did what I was told.

I was Randi’s constant companion for three years. From age 9 to about 11 we were inseparable. Other girls would ask me why I put up with her being so mean to me and I didn’t know how to answer. Finally, about age 11 I’d had enough and started to hang around another crowd. She befriended the new girl in school who was even smaller and sweeter than I was and we drifted apart.

I remember when we were 13 years old and everybody knew that Randi was into all kinds of trouble. We were all stretching our limits, but as usual, Randi was audacious. Everybody knew that Randi’s parents were strict and that there were all kinds of terrible consequences to her actions. Her house was right across the street from the school. When the nuns would call her mom we winced to see her angry face as she strode across the street, over the playground and up to the office where Randi was waiting in Sr. Dorothea’s cold office.

I can’t remember if Randi and I went to the same high school. I think we did. We had grown completely apart by then. I didn’t think about her, except fleetingly for a long time. I saw her parents around town from time to time and when I would ask her mother would just roll her eyes and say “you know Randi”  and leave it at that.

Probably five years after high school, I got a letter, sent to my parents’ house from Randi. She wrote me from the women’s penitentiary. She was doing time for passing bad checks. She was passing bad checks to fund her heroin addiction. She was humble and sweet and her handwriting still looked like I remembered it in grade school. I was shaken and shocked. We were girls in a white, California suburb in Catholic School. I wasn’t supposed to know anyone in prison!

Three weeks after getting the letter, I made arrangements to go and visit . She made no attempt to hide the tracks on her arms and I couldn’t help but stare at them. She didn’t make any excuses about what she had made with her life nor did she seem very surprised. She was resigned, tired (at 23) and hardened. We chatted, we giggled. We talked about our shared passion for horses. We had nothing else in common. We hugged, I left and drove silently the two hours home.

I never heard from her again. No letters, no more invites to visit her in prison. She’s not the kind of old acquaintance that you can Google and find out what Alumni Association she’s part of or what PTA’s she might be running. You can’t expect to find her on Facebook.

I, like anyone at the battered end of an abusive relationship, remember Randi as generous, funny and bold. I remember how badly I felt about the way her parents treated her compared to her younger brother and sister. I remember thinking that the nuns blamed her for all kinds of things until she just didn’t care anymore.

I don’t remember Randi being good at anything. She wasn’t a good student or a good athlete or talented at sewing or art. She was good at shocking people and that’s how she drew the attention she must have needed. Randi’s way of having some control over her life was to shock people into paying attention. That was how she got her feeling of accomplishment.

What could have helped? What kind of adult mentor would have helped flesh out Randi’s talents and given her something to be proud of? Who made Randi feel special? Who loved her?

Would Square Pegs have been able to help ? Or would her behaviors frustrated the instructors, her weight make us unlikely to put her on a horse? I’d like to think that we could have given her a space to be helpful, to reward her generosity and her outspokenness.

It’s important to note that, even by today’s standards, Randi wouldn’t have qualified for any special classes except some counseling – maybe. She didn’t have a learning disability, she wasn’t poor, wouldn’t have been considered at risk until after her second arrest. Nobody would write us a grant to help the Randi’s of the world. But she had a heart that was unloved and unappreciated. And society got what it had coming from her.

Today, Square Pegs is loving our way toward changing the way people see themselves.

This one’s for you Randi, where ever you are.

Square Peg Foundation has teamed up with the
Horse Park Polo Club and the Polo Training Foundation and the Stanford Polo Club
to bring you an opportunity that can’t be missed!

Intro to Polo Clinic
October, 17 & 18, 2009

COST: This is a fundraiser for Square Peg Foundation
a $250 donation is suggested (discounts for Pony Club and 4H)

WHEN: Saturday and Sunday October 17 and 18, 2009. Classes will run from 9am until approximately 5pm

WHERE: The Horse Park Polo Arena, The HorsePark at Woodside
3674 Sand Hill Road, Woodside, CA

KIDS ( AGE 10 AND OLDER) AND ADULTS ARE BOTH WELCOME

SPACE IS LIMITED REGISTER EARLY VIA EMAIL  joell@squarepegfoundation.org
TO RESERVE YOUR SPOT

Bring your horse or learn on ours

** A LIMITED NUMBER OF HORSES WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR USE. CONTACT SQUARE PEG FOUNDATION FOR AVAILABILITY AND COSTS.

Stella continues to eat and thrive.  She’s made close friends with Fran who never leaves her side.  Friends, students and volunteers are amazed at how she is improving in her skin tone, her attitude and her weight.

Standing with a friend looking at her yesterday, we started to chat about the funny way that she is gaining weight.  It all seems to be accumulating in her lower abdomen.  While looking at her from the front, we noticed that she is significantly bigger on one side of her abdomen than on the other.

Folks, we will wait to hear back from the veterinarian.  But I would put money on the fact that Stella is quite pregnant.  It boggles the mind.  To think that she’s been starved, tripped and either bred or left to fend for herself and her food with a stallion in the pen.  Just how irresponsible can somebody be?  I can’t afford to be shocked anymore, we just have to do our best to get her the proper feed and medical attention that she will need.  And then see what nature brings us.

*Sigh*

Half Moon Bay Feed & Fuel has agreed to add a flyer and a collection box at the store for shoppers to donate to help us help this mare.  They will also work with us to offer us discounts on feed and supplements.  We are so grateful for our local community.

Stay tuned.

Stella

Stella arrived yesterday at Square Peg Ranch in a gold colored trailer.

The barn was buzzing with activity. Dr. Kari DeLeeuw was treating Super Bob the Wonder Pony with acupuncture, there was a lesson going on and two hardy volunteers were tacking up to take a couple horses out for some exercise. Greg was awaiting the farrier with his list in hand of horses needing services.

In rolls Georgie and Jenny Hartman, stalwart hauling volunteers for the nearly famous Joe Shelton of Thoroughbred Friends. Joe had left me a phone message telling me that he’s sending a lame but cute paint gelding that was a lesson horse and also a very hungry black mare who he thought was “a sweetie.”

The gelding unloaded and indeed has very sore feet. Dr. DeLeeuw grabbed her hoof testers and went right to work advising and appraising how we might make this adorable gelding more comfortable. The kids have named him LeRoy and he has settled in like a champ. More on LeRoy this week.

Then she emerged from the trailer.  Those eyes. With her pitiful, gaunt haunches poking through cracked and scarred skin, her tail eaten by other starving horses, her legs caked with filth. Her withers protruded from her shoulders like a shark’s dorsal fin, her hooves strangely, are recently trimmed. She looked around, curious, confused and, as Joe put it “hungry.”

I was holding LeRoy for the vet and so I instructed the kids to put her in the empty stall where there was already 12 pounds of feed waiting for her. I turned my attention back to the sore gelding and tried to block her out of my mind. “She’s eating.” I reminded myself “And that’s the best thing we can do for her right now.” I sighed and turned my attention back to the vet and to the sweet people who needed to use the bathroom after a long drive. Later I gave them a tour of the farm, introduced them to the horses, the goats and the dogs. They hugged me when they left and I found myself making an excuse to go to my office.

Once in my office, I tried to make myself busy. I returned a call and several emails. I didn’t want to go outside and see that mare. I wasn’t ready. The kids soon found me and had questions about the new horses. They had brushed the gelding and discussed who might ride him first after he gets new shoes. “Whadda we gonna do about that poor skinny mare?” They wanted to know. “Did you see the scars on her legs and the whip marks on her side?” “How old do you think she is?”

Important questions that need to be answered. I took a deep breath and we all went to the barn together. There she was, head down in her feeder munching away. But not with the satisfying munching of a healthy horse, it was a desperate munching, always looking side to side to see who or what might take her away from food at any moment. The scars on her back and hips showed that she had fought for food a lot.

I went in her stall and she looked at me briefly and went back to eating. She didn’t seem to mind me touching her sides or running my hands down her legs to feel the scars from the lasso. Her legs looked pretty clean, and a step back to see the whole picture showed me a somewhat nicely built, fairly young mare. I pushed away the urge to look in her mouth to see her teeth or to look for a tattoo that might give us some clue as to who she is, how old she is and what her story may be. No, today is just about eating and resting. Tomorrow we will take her temperature, look for a racing tattoo and complete an intake sheet to chart her progress at the ranch.

I had the girls turn her out in the arena. I knew that Joe had been feeding this mare for the last ten days or so and I explained to the girls that the initial period of worrying about founder and colic had already been taken care of by Joe. When a horse has been severely starved, the first days of feeding have to be careful and measured out over time. A starving horse will eat like crazy and his gut often times is not ready for the rich food and the results can be disastrous or worse. But this mare, as long as we took her out for short walks several times a day, could eat to her heart’s content, the hay pellets that we feed at the ranch. I should tell you now that this mare was rescued from a string of horses used in a rodeo event called “horse tripping.” I won’t post videos of the event here. If you are curious, you can search the internet and find it yourself. I can’t view another clip of the “sport.” It seems that the stock contractor had also run onto hard times and there was not enough money to feed the animals that he used.

While the kids turned her out and took photos and brushed her, I was overwhelmed with sadness. Tears welled up in my eyes as I watched the mare search the perimeter of the arena for something to eat. She trotted around (amazingly sound) and nickered a few times. I know in my heart that the world has many problems, but something knocked by breath out to see this animal who was bred by someone with dreams of a great race horse who had been thrown away, abused, chased, tripped and starved and was ultimately headed for death by slaughter if starvation hadn’t claimed her first. She had no voice in her fate, no vote. If it weren’t for Joe Shelton rescuing 31 of these animals, she would be a carcass right now. Senseless cruelty.

And then she saw the girls with the halter at the gate and she went to them trusting that they would be kind. That kind of trust, in the face of what this mare had been through took all the air out of my body.

Horses have so much to teach us.

Stella’s road back to health will be long. But if she is strong enough to trust us, we have to do all we can.

And now I have to ask you for money. Because she will need feed, dental, farrier and veterinary care. We have no guarantees of what she will be able to be as a school or a saddle horse – but she needs our help.

Some of you have already joined in. Last night, before I even asked, we received $100 towards her feed from Mary Burns and Chris Wilson. If you are a shopper, there are three days left on our on-line auction – lots of great deals on neat items.  Or you can donate here.

I promise to keep you updated on her progress.

Stella

Arianna Huffington was the morning Keynote Speaker at the Craigslist Foundation Boot Camp for Non-Profit, Saturday in Berkeley, CA. I was looking forward to her speech. I enjoy Arianna on KCRW’s Left, Right, and Center and usually agree with her editorials in The Huffington Post. I knew it would be a good speech – an inspiring and thought-provoking speech. It was a lot more.

“Tell your Story, so others can be inspired to action”

- Arianna Huffington

photo by Darius Dunlap CC-BY

In a time when everyone seems to be focusing on the financial effects of the current problems, Arianna instead emphasized caring, love, compassion, and meaning. She told us to think beyond the services we provide, the food, shelter, counseling, and money. We need to think instead about the people, how our services effect their lives, how compassion and and love make a difference.

While we grow physically by what we get, we grow spiritually by what we give.

- Arianna Huffington

As a business strategy for non-profits, this is also an important point. An organization that attends to the core meaning of their work will be better positioned for growth when the economic climate improves. They’ll also do a better job if facing tough decisions about their programs and services, staffing, or future direction.

If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito

- Arianna Huffington

Photo by Darius Dunlap CC-BY

We also need to share our stories. By telling our stories, we might inspire others to action. By telling our stories, we remind ourselves why we do what we do and what it was that made us make this commitment.

Even in a room full of people who are doing good and meaningful work, it was an excellent reminder. Thanks, Arianna!

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold, service was joy.”
- Rabindranath Tagore

I got a call this morning that our neighbor’s horse died.  I see this horse every day, all day as he lived in the pasture adjoining ours.  I do recall seeing him yesterday, belly deep in grass while his longtime companion horse flirted over the fence with our geldings.  So I was in a funk driving to the barn today to help my neighbor make the arrangements to render his old friend and to discuss what to do with his remaining horse who was upset and lonely.  It would also be my job to try and figure out if this horse’s death might be caused by something enviromental that could affect the Square Peg herd.

Needless to say, I wasn’t in the best of moods driving to the ranch.  The weather today is forecasted to possibly include thunderstorms and to be quite warm.  Funky weather.  The drive from my house to the ranch includes 12 miles on Hwy 1 straight up the coast.  The view of the ocean is world class and I so often forget to look.  But today, the sun peeked through heavy clouds and turned the Pescadero coast a brilliant deep blue and I was transfixed.  As I continued north, my eye was caught by motion in the water and I turned to see a pod of dolphins playing in the surf not far from the shore.

I jerked my car across the highway into the north parking lot for the Pescadero State Beach.  I parked and hopped out to watch the undulating play of the dolphins.  I was exhilarated and calmed in exactly the same breath.  I laughed out loud.  For about five minutes, I didn’t think about anything but the ocean and the waves and the spectacular scene unfolding in front of me.

When I got back into the car, I had a different outlook on the world.  I was focused on beauty and lovely surprises and the vastness of the life that is under the waves all the time, whether or not I choose to acknowledge it.  I felt like the planet smiled gently on me and I did my best to receive her gift with gratitude and humility.

It was a great way to start the day.

If you have a minute, do what you can to help keep the State Parks open.

With Square Peg’s first Day at the Races fundraiser coming up this weekend at Golden Gate Fields, I’ve had some strange and conflicting emotions floating around my head.

Namely:

1. You can’t go back.  I worked in racing for many years.  Essentially, I raised my son at the track.  I worked in the marketing department of Golden Gate Fields for years as the Special Events manager.  It was a great job to have in your 20’s.  Now I’m going back to the track and all the memories, good and bad after 10 years and a whole lot of life changes. I know I’m different,  I wonder how it will make me feel. (I am however, sincerely looking forward to seeing some wonderful people who still work there.)

2. Conflicted to be watching racing after spending so much time and love knitting ex racehorses back together.  How will I explain to people (yikes, the  kids) at the event if a horse should fatally break down?

While musing over these feelings, I searched friend Tom Ferrall’s recent press releases from Golden Gate Fields to find this:  An odd pairing of racing and Autism Awareness.  A story in a story about a horse that overcomes huge odds to win.

Ah racing.  It never ceases to surprise me.  I wonder what surprises are in store for me on Saturday?

Join me.

Wow.

Hmmmm.

Uh, actually; yes.
Strangely enough, I’m where I want and need to be.  Each day, I wrestle out how to continue my tiny little life’s work.  Sure, there are days when I phone it in, I whine or snivel about how hard it is, how many hours I put in. Or I pine about our families financial implications as a result of me not bringing home any bacon and even investing more time and money into what it is we do.  Truth is, I don’t bring home a paycheck.  I’m a full time plus volunteer.  Right now, I have no health insurance.  Yeah, I know, that’s insane.  My friend Jim is rolling in his grave at the notion. And yet, it’s honestly the mountain I want to die on.  Shuffling up rocky slopes with an unreachable peak, clawing my way hand over hand not to teach horsemanship, but teaching joy and trust.  Yup, that’s what we do.

There is an article in Teacher Magazine (here) about whether or not teachers are empowered.  It poses the question that children can’t learn empowerment from people who are so badly paid and who are in the school system where they are repeatedly stripped of power.

Bullshit.  And several teachers in the article call it.  One of the teachers, the mentor of the article’s author, points out that the students watch everything you do, a very small portion of which happens to be your subject matter.  They watch who you are and how you react.  When you take up the teaching mantle, you are on the stage, stripped of a persona and your students see you for exactly who you are.  Get over it and start modeling the best of what you’ve got.

Who thinks that showing a kid how to clean a horse’s hoof doesn’t make a bit of difference in the suffering of the world?  Oh yeah, that’s me, late at night when I’m trying to figure out how to pay the ranch lease or the horse shoer.  That’s me when I’m honored by a volunteer’s gift of her time and her heart.

It’s time to re-define teaching.  More importantly, it’s time to re-define learning. Each day, I talk to parents who are battling school systems and IEP’s.  They are wrestling with big decisions about where their child goes to school and what services they need.  All the schools are coming under tremendous budget constraints. I hate to tell you but it’s going to get worse. We will have to do more with less.  Teachers will have less resources and more demands.  That means each teacher and each parent will have to learn to entrust the students to own and care for their own education – teach them how  to value what and how they learn.  Folks, here’s the kicker, the part you don’t want to think about; the academic part is only a small portion of what they learn in school. It’s an important part to be sure, but smaller than you think.

I had breakfast with a young volunteer and her mom last weekend.  She’s 13 and hates school.  Well, she likes the kids, she even likes most of the teachers but she refuses to turn in work.  The school is at the end of their rope.  They suggest upping the ante and forcing this young woman to start producing work.  She’s made it clear to everyone that forcing her is going to create mayhem.  Serious mayhem.  The school tells her parents that it’s a life lesson that she needs to learn.  That life is not all about doing whatever you want all the time.  That she needs to learn this now, or it will be even harder the older she gets.

Stop.

Rewind.

So what the school is trying to get across is that work needs to get done, on time and with best effort.  Fair enough.  However, what the student is learning is the bigger lesson: That if someone doesn’t do what you want them to do, you just up the ante until you force them to.  Gosh guys, I think she already knows that lesson and it’s not such a good one.

It seems to me that what this very bright young woman is desperately trying to establish is a sense of self.  She’s refusing to turn in work not because of laziness or impudence but she’s desperately trying to set boundaries of who she is and how amenable she is going to be about who forces her to do what and when.  For her, caving in and turning in work feels like giving up and of being less of her own person as a result. Of course I’m not advocating that all teachers or schools do away with assignments, deadlines and grades.  It’s been tried, with varying results.  But it’s clear that what’s going on here has a lot less to do with book reports than it does with a developing human’s struggle for self-hood.

Profound?  Maybe.  But this is a typical week at Square Pegs.  For each of these stories, there are scores of others. Kids who don’t fit in, or perhaps even more scary, kids who manage to fit in and fade away. These are opportunities to make a real difference.  To teach compassion and joy.  To let the world experience what’s special and beautiful about a person.

So I’ve answered my own question; this is the mountain I’m willing to die on.

Peace out.
j

Yesterday, we got news that Mary Hobbs, friend and volunteer extraordinaire, had lost her 12 year battle with cancer. Her husband told me that he had designated Square Pegs as the charity of choice for loved ones to donate to in lieu of flowers. Not cancer research, not the Sierra Club, who Mary had volunteered for for years, but our little horse ranch and school in the canyon. I felt so unworthy and I missed my dear friend Mary.  I felt so much pain for her husband who had lost his valiant life partner. I felt weak and not in control of things.

I canceled lessons, shut off my computer and saddled up for a solitary ride in the woods. I wanted to run to feel powerful again. My little horse tired towards the top of the giant hill and I dismounted and started hiking. We panted up the mountain, side by side and I was lost in thought. I remembered the few times that Mary was feeling well enough just to blow off office work and go for a ride. We would talk about her wonderful family and her travels. She had backpacked all over the world, ridden her horse bareback all over Montara Mountain and had recently taken up painting.

I felt a lot of guilt about canceling lessons for the day. We certainly couldn’t afford it. But I knew that neither Greg nor I could attend to our horses and students completely with the grief of losing Mary so close in our minds. Then I thought about the joy that riding and being with horses can bring to our lives.

I’ve lost three friends/students/volunteers in the last two years and I can remember vividly the last time each I took each of them riding. Each time was a happy memory. I thought about how my ride up the mountain made me feel powerful and free and connected and I have to believe that they felt the same way.

My friend Dave reminded me today that we have a choice to have a wonderful memory make us remember the happiness or to grieve the loss and make us sad. He reminded me that the power of choice is ours alone.

Mary knew that she would ultimately lose her battle with cancer. But she volunteered, she painted, she worked as an usher at the ballet so that she could attend as many performances as she wanted to. She lived bravely and humbly and well.  Today, I choose to celebrate that and to actively do my part to help people feel powerful and free and connected, beginning with me. I have Mary to thank for the lesson. Another gift from a dear friend.