Relatively Stable

🎙️ 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...

Episode 6: The Art of Listening with Sue Lomenzo of True Nature Equine Bodywork & Wellness What does it mean to help a horse feel safe in its own body? What shifts when we stop working on them (and ourselves) and begin working with them (and ourselves?) instead? In this episode, I sit down with equine bodyworker Sue Lomenzo, whose approach to healing blends science, intuition, and an unshakable be...

🎙️ A Weekly Reading from Stable Roots : Not a Place but a Presence On building home space, surviving disconnection, and learning how to stay 📝 Show Notes: “Home space isn’t a structure. It’s an agreement that says, you don’t have to explain why you’re quiet today. It says, there’s soup on the stove. It says, I’ll hold your foot.” This week, I'm writing about the unremarkable ways we learn to belo...

Think Like a Raindrop: On fires, healing, and reimagining what the land — and we — are capable of What does it mean to trust the land again after fire, flood, and collapse? What shifts when we stop forcing order and begin listening — to the body, the herd, the impulse that moves like water? This bonus episode, a reading from Stable Roots , is my reflection on recent wildfires, horse evacuations, a...

THE WORLD'S ON FIRE : Let's build fairy houses In this bonus episode from Stable Roots , I'm sharing a personal essay that intertwines fire, folklore, and the search for meaning when the world feels like it’s falling apart. From the charred hillsides of Upstate South Carolina to the quiet creek beds where horses and humans find common language, this story explores how we turn chaos into creation....

Roots and Reckoning: Always Forward, Never Back The horses and the humans, each making their way in a world designed for machines. This week’s recording from my weekly writings on Stable Roots is about: The ongoing process of untangling what keeps us stuck. Learning patience from horses and the wildness within. Finding a way forward, even when the path doesn’t feel straight. The push and pull betw...

Riding Toward Higher Ground: What is inherited and what is learned In this solo episode, Kim reflects on the complex road of legacy, learning, and questions of horses and life. She shares story about a journey through the mountains, the weight of inherited knowledge, and the search for understanding, both in the horses she knows and within herself. From wild rides to slow reckonings, Kim explores...

From Loyola law school to Hurricane Katrina to a cartel scheme in Mexico, Jason Chambers was brought back to life to give us his words through poetry that brings us into a deeper connection with the natural world, inspired by his Lowcountry South Carolina coastal home, and with each other. Today, he tells us his stories. I first discovered Jason Chambers' poetry the way I find a lot of my favorite...

The Day of Liberation: What Breaks, What Holds, and Why It Still Matters If you’ve been here a while, you know that every week, I share a VoiceOver on this feed that is a narration from Stable Roots , my weekly blog where I write about horses, resilience, and the life I’ve built from both. This week’s piece is about March 4th, a date I celebrate as my Day of Liberation. Fifteen years ago, I was le...

In this episode of Relatively Stable , I sit down with US Eventing Team equestrian, mentor, coach, and clinician Kim Walnes for a conversation that goes beyond riding. At its core, this podcast is about resilience. It’s about how we navigate hardship, forge deeper connections, and ultimately heal. Kim’s story embodies that mission in every possible way. * From competing at the highest levels of ev...

What Waits Beneath the Surface: Matilda, Mystery, and the Art of Listening In this week's reading of Stable Roots on Relatively Stable , I share the story of Matilda—a big draft mare with an even bigger presence, whose lessons continue to ripple through Bramblewood Stables and beyond. What began as a dream—a nighttime visit from Matilda galloping through a dark, wooded valley, unfurled into a refl...

THE DAY OF HEARTS AND FLOWERS 💘🌿 Bear with me through the historical destruction as we make our way to love. What does Captain Cook’s ill-fated final voyage have to do with love? Not much, actually, but it serves as a cautionary tale in listening and reading the room. In this episode, I explore the long history of miscommunication—from colonial encounters to the subtle misunderstandings that sha...

The Magic of Waiting: What a sleeping mare teaches me about patience, connection, and the unseen Magic never makes a sound. Not when we hauled her home in a trailer that jerked and jolted like some kind of Morse code warning. Not when she lost Billy, her pasture mate, her constant. Not in the months after, standing alone, holding onto something unseen. And then, this weekend, she slept. Deeply. Un...

In this episode of Relatively Stable , I sit down with my beautiful friend Jane Pike —a writer, artist, creative mentor, and horsewoman from New Zealand—for a conversation that moves beyond her well-known work with horses and into the heart of creativity itself. While many know her for her work through Confident Rider , today we explore the deeper layers of her artistic and creative journey. We ta...

Horse Wisdom: Remembering us back into nature's silence Humans are nesting dolls of possibilities. There’s a rhythm beneath language, a pulse that moves through the world while we sleep, while we fill our days with words and plans and next steps. The briars keep growing. The storm-split oak decays into something new. The horses stand in the space between movement and stillness, asking nothing, exp...