Reaching for Beautiful

A weekly newsletter designed to inspire finding beauty in the midst of loss.

This was Christopher’s horse Emma at In Balance Ranch Academy. He went from hating horses and the desert to adoring “his” horse whom he learned to care for and ride with confidence. The Ranch is a therapeutic boarding school where we sent our firstborn to get clean and sober and finish high school. It was 2010 and he was sixteen. Fast forward fourteen years. Chris has been in Heaven for eight years. When we made the sacrifice to send him away to save his life as so many parents must, it was a leap of faith, at great financial and emotional expense. But I would do it again.

Returning to Arizona this past weekend was, at times, haunting and the ache in my heart returned. The few times I have been there since Chris died are the ones when I haven’t been able to fend off the unwelcome self-pity that creeps into my consciousness when other parents talk about their thriving sons. Don’t get me wrong, I want their sons to be clean, alive, and proud - just as Chris was.

In order to move beyond my sadness and self-pity and what could have been relentless self-criticism for feeling sorry for myself in the first place, I sought out the light that is always there if I look for it. One of the young men currently at the Ranch told me Emma was still around but I wondered if he was just telling me what I wanted to hear. I dragged my husband Joe to help me look. We trudged through the dust and exhausted three attempts to make other paints be her but their spots didn’t match her orange designs overlaid on white. Just as we thought we’d run out of options, we located a side pasture where the old girl stood, looking up at us with her one faded blue eye. Reaching out for her, I felt Chris’s strong presence, as if he was resting his head on her shoulder with mine. I pictured his typical contented grin and I was back.