Relatively Stable

In this week’s episode, Kim reads her newest Stable Roots essay, We’re Still Standing — a piece shaped by loss, loyalty, and the beauty of still being here. This is a story about this year where everything shifted: the exits that cracked the foundation, the people who stayed and held the beams in place, and the web of horses, history, and human hands that keeps rebuilding Bramblewood Stables, thre...

From Desperation to Thanksgiving: All That Talk of Harvests Isn’t Just Poetry In this week’s episode, Kim reflects on what it means to move from desperation into gratitude—through fence lines, fallen seasons, and the lessons of the herd. From the haunted stillness of a fallow field to the calm after a lost horse is found, this piece traces how forwardness doesn’t come from pushing harder, but from...

Stable Roots : Don’t Look Too Far Into the Woods: Notes from a haunted year at the edge of the trees This week’s episode moves through fear and faith, fences and timing, and the lessons that live at the edge of the pasture. After a year marked by loss, transition, and rebuilding, Kim reflects on how the land at Lavender Hill continues to reveal its magic through the neighbor who calls at just the...

In this episode, Kim Carter reads her latest essay from Stable Roots —a meditation on land, belonging, and what it means to build something that lasts in a culture obsessed with moving on. As she reflects on the pressure to relocate her horse farm, the rise of rugged individualism, and the quiet wisdom of living beside a herd, Kim traces how our collective disconnection from land mirrors our growi...

Even the Ordinary Days are Holy : What the move, the herd, and the sink at Lavender Hill are teaching me about rest In this episode, I explore how the rhythms of work, loss, and renewal intertwine at the new farm — and how tending to the ordinary can become a kind of prayer. From Sheba’s legacy to the clatter of feed scoops and the quiet companionship of chickens, this story circles back to what i...

In this episode, I read my latest Stable Roots piece, The Ghosts of This Farm Speak to Me — a story about loss, land, and what it means to finally arrive. It begins with Sheba, the brave black mare who didn’t survive the move to our new farm, and unfolds into what she left behind: a lesson in trust, belonging, and the ways the land holds us when we let it. This episode isn’t just about grief. It’s...

Every day the farmhouse is emptier as the storage containers are packed. What does it mean to move something that feels fixed? What does it mean to move a whole herd, to pack stories like boxes, and to listen for what the new land will say back? This piece traces the weeks leading into our first wedding anniversary, the closing on Lavender Hill, and the beginning of Bramblewood’s move. It holds an...

If you’ve been following our journey, you know Bramblewood Stables is in the middle of a once-in-a-lifetime move to Lavender Hill farm after losing our lease of 20 years. Keeping this herd and this mission intact is not possible without collective effort. This week’s episode is a voiceover of my latest piece, moving through four sections: The Herd, The Land, The Work, and The Hope. It’s about what...

Hearing Our Ghosts: Walking the Threshold from Grief to Hope This episode is a voiceover essay on living at the edge of loss and still choosing to move forward. From my mother’s kitchen therapy sessions, to memories of my grandfather, to the community angels helping Bramblewood find a forever home — it’s about how grief can open the way toward action, clarity, and hope. In the coming weeks, I’ll b...

🎙️ Relatively Stable — Special Voiceover Episode This episode is different. It’s not an interview or a roundtable conversation. It’s a voiceover—me, in the quiet of the barn, speaking from the middle of a transition that has turned my world upside down. Three weeks ago, I learned that Bramblewood, the farm we’ve called home for twenty years, would no longer be ours to lease. In that moment, it fel...

A Last Chance to Save Bramblewood Stables The land we stand on is being sold to the highest bidder — and the highest bidder will almost certainly be a developer. For 20 years, Bramblewood Stables has been my home, my work, and my community. Before me, this place served the public as a riding stable for more than 50 years. Before that, it was farmland. Now, it’s at risk of disappearing forever. In...

Caring in a Carefree World : A week of colic, caretaking, and unexpected grace This week in Relatively Stable, I’m reading the latest installment from Stable Roots—a piece that started as a reflection on a colicking pony and turned into something much bigger. It’s about what happens when the boundaries between caregiving and daily life dissolve. When the barn becomes both a hospice and a sanctuary...

Instinct is a Language: Reading storms, following cats, and finding safety in our skins This week’s essay moves through thorny fields, shifting weather, and how we come back into contact with what our bodies already know. It’s about Gideon—my nine-month-old Siberian cat—and how his instinct kicked in before I even knew I needed help. It’s about late summer, the edge of camp, and Indigo, the new ki...

Making Friends with the Wasps The long, slow work of mending -- From the Stable Roots series | Read-aloud edition This week’s episode walks gently into the tangled spaces of repair: of family, of land, of self. As my father’s health declines and life asks more questions than it answers, I return—again and again—to the daily work of mending. From the myths we build around our parents to the pencil...

🎙️ Relatively Stable – New EpisodeNot a Mirror, Nor a Mystic Inside the Unspoken Dynamics of Healing, Projection, and Power in Equine-Assisted Services 🧠 In this episode, I explore what happens when we ask horses to fix us—and what they’re forced to carry in the name of human healing. This is a reckoning with transference, containment, and the subtle violence that can live inside even the most we...

🎧 Slow Horsemanship, Rooted Systems, Living Work An ancient rhythm, a living system, and a slow return to what matters. In this episode, Kim shares the living framework behind her work at Bramblewood Stables—a system shaped by horses, held by land, and rooted in authorship rather than performance. This isn’t a how-to. It’s a manifesto. A map. A reclamation of rhythm and relationship in a world th...

The Boundary is the Lesson: You can't ride every story home, and that's not a failure. What if the bravest thing you could do with a horse is stand still beside it? In this week's episode, I explore what happens when we stop trying to perform our way into belonging — with horses, with others, with ourselves — and start listening instead. You'll hear stories from the farm: a child who built a horse...

Episode Title: Where the Wild Roses Grow (Voiceover) Show Notes: This week, I’m sharing something different, a eulogy in remembrance of a woman who mothered a whole generation of strays. After attending the funeral of Brenda Boozer—my lifelong friend Leland Todd Boozer’s mother and a woman who helped raise more of us than I can count—I couldn’t stop writing. I didn’t speak at her funeral, but the...

Episode 7: Tending the Roots with Caitlee Greene of Greene Roots LLC What if healing isn't something we chase, but something we come home to? In this episode of Relatively Stable , Kim is joined by Caitlee Greene of Greene Roots LLC , an equine bodyworker, land steward, and quiet revolutionary whose work reaches far beyond traditional care. Caitlee's approach draws on nervous system awareness, reg...

The Fountain of Youth : A Praise Song for Water, Horses, and Coming Home This week’s VoiceOver is a meditation on the most sacred and overlooked element: water. Kim shares reflections from the foothills of South Carolina, where the horses at Bramblewood drink deeply from ancient wells, and where healing begins with quiet instead of complexity. In this audio essay, you’ll travel from moss-covered f...

When the Bough Breaks (The Devil You Didn't See Coming) The sound of a tree limb breaking high overhead has always made me run. This episode is about what happens when you can’t -- or when the things that you prepare for, obsesses over, and worry about endlessly aren't the problems that actually occur. It's the other stuff, the in-between stuff, that gets us. This week, I'm telling a story of stor...

🎙️ Leaving the Arena A horsewoman’s exit from the culture of mastery and the wisdom that followed 🪶 Description: In this week’s essay from Stable Roots , I’m tracing the long arc of why I don't ride horses anymore, but will always consider myself a riding instructor and owner of a public riding stable. My story about flipping the script on what mastery looks like. It's about draw reins and side s...

RIDING WAS NEVER THE GOAL: A Life Spent Dismounting the Old Story, One Ride at a Time Not every lesson happens in the saddle. This week in Stable Roots , I’m sharing the latest in a series of pieces about Max — the little red horse who has shaped everything I believe about teaching, riding, and staying. We talk about broken reins, riderless horses, trail ride chaos, and the revolution that begins...

Max turned 30 this month, and it's hard to encapsulate all that he’s carried. This week’s piece isn’t about ribbons or milestones. It’s about the years we spent on the edges of tradition, moving between polished arenas and dusty fields, between what I thought I had to earn and what was already mine. There’s a cost to chasing legitimacy. I didn’t know I was paying it until I started asking differen...

🎙️ Weekly Essay from Stable Roots Episode Title: Don't Skip the Money: The Spiritual Economy of Care Description: This week's voiceover is a tribute to Max — my steady red horse who just turned 30 — and a reflection on what it means to build a life in the wake of storms. As we mark 200 days since Hurricane Helene changed the landscape of the Blue Ridge Mountains, I'm sharing the story of how Max c...