One Life

I recently had the great fortune to spend four days at Vista Verde Ranch in Clark, CO, ten miles south of the Wyoming border and forty minutes northwest of Steamboat Springs, CO. On my last morning there, the sun was barely above the ridgeline when I woke early to watch their herd of 115 horses be run from the pasture behind our cabin up to the barn one last time. Quarter horses, paints, Percherons—all were standing alert in the back half of the pasture, rising in the crisp mountain air to start another day of duty, companionship, and service. There was a stillness that morning that someone who has lived with horses regularly might have recognized immediately, the kind that holds its breath before it tells you something you don’t want to hear.

A beautiful black Percheron named Gilbert, the lead black horse in the header photo, had fallen overnight into the irrigation ditch that ran the length of the pasture. I would soon learn that the soft, rumbling ‘growl’ I had heard in the dark the night before, a sound I attributed to the easy snore of a creature at peace, was really his struggle. His gentle alarm was such that even the herd did not react.

KP, the Director of the ranch’s Horse Program, swiftly came to his aid once alerted, and Gilbert was soon surrounded by care. Gentle, calm voices urged him to rise while steady hands warmed his cold body. I hopped the pasture fence to offer a wool blanket from our cabin, knowing how far the wranglers needed to go to find horse blankets, hoping it could bring this magnificent animal warmth while my guilt for not recognizing his snore as a call for help offered neither of us anything. I wanted to do more. But with time and distance from our final morning, I’ve come to realize that maybe what Gilbert was there to teach me was that sometimes bearing witness is doing more—that presence, not fixing, is its own kind of love. This is at the core of Please See Me: bearing witness to our health-related experiences and offering a place to be seen and heard.

Sadly, Gilbert did not live through the day. And yet, he did what horses—and often humans—are born to do if we work hard to stay present: he reminded all of us that life is both fragile and full of grace.

I’ve mentioned Maria Popova’s The Marginalian in past editor’s letters. When I went to write this issue’s letter, I found I had saved her July newsletter Necessary Losses: The Life-Shaping Art of Letting Go. Her overarching theme is the importance of reframing our losses as not only inevitable but necessary in order to become the person we are meant to be. Popova highlights Judith Viorst’s New York Times bestseller, Necessary Losses, in which Viorst writes:

“…we lose not only through death, but also by leaving and being left, by changing and letting go and moving on. And our losses include not only our separations and departures from those we love, but our conscious and unconscious losses of romantic dreams, impossible expectations, illusions of freedom and power, illusions of safety — and the loss of our own younger self, the self that thought it always would be unwrinkled and invulnerable and immortal.”

We grow by giving up—every heartbreak, every ache, every goodbye shapes us, whether we like it or not; whether we steel ourselves to endure loss or embrace loss as a stepping stone to a stronger version of ourselves and a pathway to honor what has been lost.

At Vista Verde, surrounded by horses, horse lovers, and new friends who love and live fiercely despite their own health issues, caregiving and career obligations, and losses of jobs, loved ones, and opportunity, I experienced a window to true freedom by surrendering myself to the gift and growth and pain that come from loss in a conscious way. I arrived in Colorado as I always do—with joy, awe, and bittersweet sadness for what was and is no longer. For the first time I’m feeling the limits of time and my body working against me to achieve what once came easily. I’m learning to accept that freedom isn’t living without boundaries. It’s meeting the truth of what is—with courage, humility, heart, grit, and a sense of humor.

Seventeen issues in, I remain in awe of this community—the writers, poets, and artists who sit down with their pain and their hope and choose to turn it into art. The caregivers, survivors, and seekers who offer their humanity on the page. It takes real courage to write what hurts, about grief and about loss. It takes love to send it into the world even if it’s not always pretty. Please See Me has always been a platform offered to everyone with a health-related story to shape and share with our editorial team. We offer a place to share self-love, love for those lost, and a love for humanity so that others find touchstones that help build their own foundation of strength as well as weather grief.

Everyone in this issue, and in our previous sixteen issues, reminds me of those horses each morning at the ranch—aching, imperfect, magnificent—still getting up, still running with the herd. You move forward. You keep showing up. That choice is true freedom. Sending a special congratulations to our winners of the 6^th Annual Mental Health Awareness Writing Contest as well as to all who value and continue to support our mission to normalize mental health in the world.

The intention I share in this editor’s letter is encouragement to all our readers that they live for today, because tomorrow isn’t guaranteed—another hard lesson reframed as a gift that Vista Verde and Gilbert gave me this past month. I intend to carry Gilbert’s strength in my soul until I am called to do more somewhere else, this same courage and strength that every person who has ever shared their story with Please See Me offers to our audience again and again. As you read this issue, may you find pieces of yourself reflected in these pages. May you remember that your story matters and fearlessly offer it wherever, however you feel it needs to be heard. And may you, like Gilbert, like every voice in our Please See Me community, live every day like it’s your last.

With gratitude,
Tracy Granzyk

Tracy Granzyk is the editor in chief of Please See Me.