What an extraordinary week! We had Ayodele Moore officiate our sacred office blessing, at the new uptown Palace in Harlem, yesterday, followed by an extraordinary Womanly Arts Unplugged Q and A Call with nearly 1,000 women registered! And today, I stand, closet spilling everywhere, trying to decide what this courtesan will wear to the opening session of The Creation Course on Friday night. My secret delight is knowing there are women all over the country, all over the world, heading to NYC this weekend, with a similarly delicious dilemma.

All of this creation has inspired me to talk about passion with you, today. 

I sat on my first horse when I was 2, and I never fully recovered.

Sometimes we have experiences of things that we know are our nature. We can feel that these are encounters that draw us closer and closer to the divine creature that we are, closer still to the woman we were born to become.

I love everything about horses. The way they smell. Their unpredictability. The fact that they let us sit on their backs and ride them.

They are filled with contradiction:
Wild/Collaborative. Powerful/Gentle. Dangerous/Responsive.
I am desperately attracted to contradiction.

And all my life, I wanted to become one of those horsewomen who rides as naturally as she walks, who jumps over fences, and gallops over the countryside.

Growing up in the middle class suburbs of Philadelphia, I never had the opportunity to surrender to my passion. I read books about horses. Played with horse dolls. And told everyone I would be a cowgirl when I grew up.

And up I grew, having close brushes with horses now and then, but never really living my expensive out-of-reach longing. Fortunately, and wonderfully, passions don’t go away. They can’t go away – they are who we are. We can bury them. Banish them. Run from them. When we do that, nothing but suffering ensues.

But, if we are willing to yearn, perfectly, allowing the desire to burn inside of us, feeding it with the joy of simply being a human being, conscious of holding and having a passion – then the gift of that passion will light every corner of our unfolding storylines.

Sometimes this can be frustrating. Hurtful. Sad.
A girl can wonder if her train is ever coming in.
If she will ever get her spin on the dance floor.
If she will ever be the one in the saddle, rather than the spectator.

For many years, I lived on 88th Street, too broke to ever ride the horses that rode in the park on 89th Street. But I loved the sound of their hooves on the pavement. That sound would transport me to another time, another place, a part of me that was poetry and history and privilege and opportunity.
Horseless years passed. Decades, actually.

Then, a few years ago, my goddaughter, Coco, invited me to come with her to the barn, where she rode. I loved watching her. She was fearless on horseback. One day, she talked me into taking a lesson. Then, another. And another. Soon, we were going together, every weekend. We went from one teacher to another. One barn to another. One horse to another. I began to learn how to ride, and to jump, not so high or as fearlessly as she did, but I was doing it – I was finally the rider, not the spectator. The next summer, I went to visit her in England, and she took me galloping across the countryside, me hanging on for dear life, as she gracefully soared. It was amazing.

The more I rode, the more I wanted to ride. On the back of a horse, I was no one’s mother, no one’s teacher, I was Regena, raw, wild, free, child of nature.

Learning how to take control of a 1,500-pound animal, learning to steady him, calm him, and collaborate with him, changed me in ways I could not have predicted. My parenting improved – I was more willing to steer, to guide, to hold a frame, to create specific expectations. I became even more decisive and intuitive as a business owner. I could not just go with the flow- I learned to trust myself to lead, because when I was on horseback, I saw, I felt with my whole being that that was what my horse wanted and needed from me. When I was solid, he could relax. When I left it up to him, we were both lost.

If I had learned to ride one second earlier, I would have never had such valuable insights. Desires are realized in perfect timing. Trust it. {Tweet this!}

This past summer I leased a gorgeous horse called Bellagio. I love this animal. He brings his “A Game,” no matter what. He is all heart, pure love, pure service. I had the summer of my life, getting to ride him every day.

Just for fun, here’s a quick video of the two of us:

Is it embarrassing to be the oldest barn rat at the barn? Kind of. Most of the horse crazy girls are over it by the time they are out of high school. I am just getting started.

But, last week, my teacher told me something I have been longing to hear my whole life. He told me I was ready to show in a horse show.
Do you know what that means?
He thinks I am a good enough rider. To compete with other good enough riders. He thinks I have gained mastery of a sport that I have longed to become accomplished at for 5 decades.
He thinks I have a shot. Whoa. What a feeling. I am so overwhelmed and proud that I have been walking around telling everybody.
All of those years of longing, all of those years of taking the jitney to the barn to take lesson after lesson, and now I realize I can do this.

And now I have to decide if I am going to say yes and actually do it. I have to decide if I can manage the demands of showing a horse – amidst the demands of motherhood, teaching, running a company.
I have to decide if I can step over the line and actually live the fulfillment of this part of my dream, and see what the experience of actually competing in a horse show brings me.

I am on a precipice.
Which is where so many of us find ourselves, in relationship to a desire.
Is it possible to actually take our dream, and live it?
Even when it seems impossible?
Do we have the courage to step over the line?
And go for it, no matter what our age, or our ability, or our inexperience?
Will we allow our yearning to remake us into the women we were born to become?

In the comments below, let me know where you are in the unfolding adventure of your desires.

Have you held a deep unfulfilled longing inside for one, two, five or more decades, like I did?
Are you on the precipice of a part of your own greatness that you could not have ever imagined?
Are you stuck?
Do you feel like your ship will never ever come in?
Or worse – have you given up on a dream?
Do you feel like you are being pressed to go higher?
Have you navigated a similar knothole successfully?

xo,

p.s. I had an absolute blast taking your Q’s LIVE last night, in our culmination celebration of The Womanly Arts Unplugged. We covered a lot of ground – from men, to orgasm, to unfulfilled desires . . . all over the map and back again. We’ll be sending out the recording later today, and if you didn’t RSVP, you can still get access to the recording, right here.