You cannot break me,
Your force will not overtake me.
My spirit will not bend,
Its fire will meet no end.
No matter how hard you crack your whip,
No matter how tight you squeeze your grip,
I will not crumble under your domination,
Will not allow it to limit my powers of creation.
I’ve always loved horses. As a child, my walls were plastered with posters of them, and my shelves were filled with Breyer horses and My Little Ponies. They were these magical animals I wanted to ride. But growing up in Queens, New York made regular access to horses difficult, so I spent my teens and twenties away from horses. When I relocated to South Florida in 2016, my love of horses resurfaced, but as a woman, my relationship with them changed.
Horses became my sanctuary—a refuge from a world rife with expectations for women. A reprieve from guilt, shame, and self-doubt. When I was around horses, I felt whole and more at peace with myself. How I looked no longer mattered. How much I weighed no longer mattered. Whether I was behaving like a “lady” no longer mattered. Later I learned that a horse’s heart emits low-frequency heart waves that help create this sense of peace.
When I first encountered wild horses, my world changed. The wild woman in me recognized and appreciated the wild in them. Wild horses embodied all that the wild woman inside me was and wanted to be—strong-willed, fiercely independent, and not ruled by anyone.
They were free. Unbroken. Living life on their terms. Not conforming to society’s idea of what a horse should be or do. I had this desire to run alongside them and feel that same freedom. Free of society’s idea of what a woman should be or do. This sense of freedom and the constraints that keep us from it are a large part of my writing.
Throughout our patriarchal history, women and horses have both been objectified, dominated, and abused.
You’ve probably heard the term “breaking” a horse, which is a type of training that denotes:
Some of the old “cowboy” methods of breaking a horse have included depriving it of food and water, beating the horse, and tying the horse’s head to its tail. These methods were meant to dominate, instill fear in the horse, and overpower it until it bent to their will.
The patriarchy has attempted to break women in similar ways. But we will not be broken. Through my writing, I hope to help women heal themselves and inspire them to keep fighting for the wild women inside us.
Though we have made progress regarding both women and horses, there is still a long way to go. I see wild horses as our kindred spirits and partners on this journey.
Just as the overturning of Roe v. Wade stripped women of autonomy over their bodies, wild horses are also struggling to retain their autonomy. Each year, the government rounds up more and more wild horses, stripping them of their freedom.
Horses can’t fight back. But we can fight for them as we fight for ourselves. For more information on the battle wild horses are facing, visit my advocacy page.
