What Binny Knew

There was a period in my life when I worked part-time at a barn while also working in hospice during the week. It was the perfect balance at that time. Some days were spent with the dying, some with my budding toddler, and some on this absolutely gorgeous private farm. My life seemed to exist somewhere between endings and beginnings.

I reveled in the mindfulness of physical labor and equine care. Some mornings, the golden light over the dew-sparkled fields would stop me in my tracks. Four-leaf clovers seemed to find me everywhere. The smell of hay, the sound of water buckets clinking against stall doors, the familiar rhythm of feeding and mucking and turning horses out… I was transported back to childhood summers spent at the barn from dawn to dusk.

I needed that place as much as I ever needed anything. I was essentially about to embark on a journey back to myself. I just didn’t know that at the time. I mean, do we ever? But whatever forces wove this all together sure knew, because they put me exactly where I needed to be, with the people I needed, and with the perfect horse, too.

Her name was Binny. She was a beautiful bay warmblood, expressive in both her face and her energy. There was never much mystery about how Binny was feeling. And she was deeply, almost comically codependent with her partner, Monty. I could relate. Within the same month, we both found ourselves without our men. Hers was another horse. Mine was the ending of a relationship and a life I had known for a long time. I was beginning again in more ways than one. For a while, Binny and I were just two brokenhearted girls figuring out what came next.

I was also learning something about grief that I would come to understand and witness over and over again: it rarely stays neatly attached to one loss. A new grief has a way of reaching backward, stirring up losses we thought had settled. The ending I was living through seemed to brush up against every ending that had come before it. Grief piles onto grief, and it also intertwines with it.

Binny was… particular. She wasn’t an indiscriminately affectionate horse, and if something wasn’t right, she would let you know. She could tell when I was off, often before I could. I'd walk toward her stall and she'd essentially say, not like this. I’d have to settle myself. Breathe. Get grounded. Eventually, the two of us would settle together.

I didn't have the language for it at the time, but looking back, I guess we were co-regulating. Horses are herd animals, exquisitely attuned to what is happening around them and to one another. That sensitivity is essential to how they navigate the world and to their very survival. Research suggests it extends to us too. Horses can respond to remarkably subtle cues in human body language and emotion. You might be able to convince yourself you’re fine, but good luck convincing a mare like Binny. She made me come back into my body. She made me pay attention to what I was carrying.

In the afternoon, I would sometimes sit and write, and Binny would rest her head over my shoulder and fall asleep. There was nothing I had to explain to her. Animals don’t ask us to make our hurt coherent. They don’t need the story. The one we sometimes can’t even piece together into words ourselves. They don’t tell us it’s time to move on. They don’t become uncomfortable when we cry. They don’t have to search for the right thing to say. They just… stay.

Like my cat, Hector, who let me cry onto him like a pillow after my brother died, his fur becoming matted with the salt from my tears.

Grief also changes the way we notice animals beyond the ones who belong to us. At least it has for me. The ravens that seem to appear at just the right moment. A swarm of dragonflies after the death of a beloved patient who loved them, and who had promised me signs. The cardinals that visit my mom.

I don’t know exactly what any of it means, and I don’t need to. Maybe these encounters really are connection. Maybe grief simply makes us more attuned to a world we once moved through without noticing quite so much. Maybe loss awakens us to things we were once asleep to. I’ve become comfortable leaving room for both. I just know that sometimes, in the enormous space a loss leaves behind, something or someone appears at exactly the right moment. And for just a moment, the distance closes a bit.

And then there are the animals who stay long enough to bear witness to entire eras of our lives. They’re woven into our daily routines and our memories. My Gus, who was there through marriage and divorce, grief and healing, becoming and unbecoming, motherhood, new love, all of it. He knew versions of me that don’t exist anymore, and watched me become versions I never knew were possible. How extraordinary, being known that way. Our animals, the keepers of our history.

Eventually, life led me away from working at the barn. When Binny died, I wished I had been able to be there. By then, that chapter of my life had closed. But Binny had been there.

I think animals have something to teach us about how to accompany someone who is grieving. You don’t always need the right words. You don’t need to fix it. You don’t need to make meaning out of it. Sometimes you just sit beside someone. Sometimes you let them cry. Sometimes you notice they’re not quite themselves before they do. Sometimes you simply stay.

I don’t think anyone except Binny knew how much she held me during those years. But I think Binny knew.

With gratitude to Candlewood Farm, and to the people who shared their beautiful place and their beloved horses with me.