Do you hear the whisper?
(The Whisper of your life calling to you.)
I Answered His Call
The soft, warm, white nose nuzzled into my shoulder. I leaned in, craving the warmth, the sweet scent of hay, of horse. I’d just met Whisper. He’d hung his head over the fence, and I couldn’t resist his big brown eyes as they beckoned me over. I reached through the fence and under his mane and gave him a scritch. His eyes closed in the morning sun. I felt his breath on my cheek and turned to him. His soft nose to mine, he breathed in my breath and I breathed in his sweet hay, horsey breath. A moment of intimacy that I felt honored to be part of.
Whisper, being safe in this field, is the result of one woman’s dream – the dream that became Rosemary Farm Sanctuary.
Whisper is a BLM Mustang
That’s code for the Bureau of Land Management using helicopters to get wild mustangs off of public land so they can use it for cattle because cattle make money. Mustangs don’t. The mustangs end up in holding pens for years. Or worse. Whisper is one of the lucky ones. He was rescued and now lives as wildly as a wild mustang can in captivity. He lives, in his herd, in a huge field at Rosemary Farm Sanctuary in the Catskills in upper New York State.
Rosemary Farm Sanctuary
I was fortunate enough to get a private tour with Dawn who is the head honcho at Rosemary Farm. I wanted to tell her story because it’s the beautiful story of an unfolding dream. I know for me, I have many dreams swirling around in my head, but taking that first step is a tough one. That’s because we want to know how things will turn out, otherwise, why would we take the risk? Ironically, we can’t know unless we actually try.
Our Dreams
The thing is that, leaving dreams in our heads, is paralyzing. The swirl around in there for days, months, years. And then we wonder why we’re depressed or anxious. Something is calling to us, but we don’t ever answer the call. Dreaming is wonderful, but without a first step, without action, that dream can become painful.
A Dream that Began with a Whisper
Here’s Dawn’s story. She first went from Brooklyn to the Catskills with the idea of creating an artist retreat. She bought a farm and invited artists to the country. On her first retreat, on New Year’s Eve, the house went cold, the pipes froze, the dinner got ruined and had to be thrown out. This, among other things, made her realize that the dream she’d been heading towards probably wouldn’t come true. The house she’d bought simply didn’t work. Even artists needed some level of comfort.
Then, being out in the country, she received her first horse. Getting that horse opened her eyes to a different world. A world where horses weren’t treated very well. She began to open her farm to the neediest of them. Being new to horses and rescue, she learned about people dumping horses in the cruelest of ways, with the sickest and most unwanted walking off trucks and into her care.
It’s been ten years since that small start, and the thriving sanctuary now has over 80 horses. They’ve bought new land, built new barns, welcomed and adopted more horses. She told me that she’s in the flow. She’s where she’s meant to be.
Answering the Call
But, how could she have known without answering the call of an artist retreat? Maybe the dream of horses was always alive in her, but the leap was too great. She started where she could, and things evolved from there.
Our lives give us signals by way of desires and passions. They whisper to us. What’s calling you? Is there something that you want that makes no sense?
One Step
What’s a step you could take? Can you google something? Reach out to someone? What’s one step you could take right now? Do it while you’re inspired by Dawn’s story and by Whisper. Just one step. Trust me, you’ll feel so much better if you do that one thing.
Who do you want to help? Who do you want to serve?
All you can really do is take that first step, and see what happens, then take the next step and the next, right into your destiny. You don’t need to know your destiny to begin. But maybe, you can hear the first whisper. Maybe you can help a Whisper.