Louise

I was doing my business when my eyes fell to the book on top of the toilet.

You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay.

I asked her what exactly she needed to heal and who exactly Louise Hay was, and she told me I probably wouldn’t be into the book and to forget about the author.

So I did.

Until I got a letter from Louise Hay about six months later, welcoming me to her publishing house as part of the Hay House author family.

I’d self-published a book called Four The Sender: Four Letters, Twelve Songs, One Story, which had fallen into the hands of Dr. Wayne Dyer, who was a New York Times bestselling author for Hay House and a legendary motivational speaker.

Wayne had encouraged Reid Tracy, president of Hay House, to sign me to a three-book deal. Hay House re-released my first book and immediately sent me off to speak and play at a convention center full of people, where I met Louise and started to understand the tremendous impact she’d had through her own books and those she published.

The company she founded gave me new opportunities to share my words and songs, including publishing three of my books and albums, putting me on stage in front of thousands of people, and featuring me on a PBS special. But maybe most importantly, I developed one of the great friendships of my life with Wayne.

Wayne passed away two years ago yesterday.

And today, Louise Hay left us.

We still have her books and those of the authors she championed. Her legacy will live longer than any of us.

And I still have that letter she sent me.

RIP, Louise.

Thank you for the light you brought to so many.

Around The Bend

The three moose trudged across the valley floor, stopping for occasional swipes at the late summer underbrush still clinging to life with dry roots. I ate my breakfast at the barn apartment table and watched their lumbering progress from the second floor window overlooking the expanse.

The horses below stomped occasional pleas for more of their own morning meal. I made a mental note to turn them out later into the bigger pasture on these 60 acres, where they could spend the day grazing.

This pending satisfaction didn’t stop their impatient demands. Who of us ever truly knows what is waiting around the bend.

About four years ago, a massive wildfire turned the corner toward our little valley and forced the evacuation of both humans and horses. At the time I only had one horse, Annie, who found safe haven about 15 miles south at Swiftsure Ranch.

Annie waited out the fire threat in a stall labeled with my last name and phone number, until we were allowed back into the blackened, barren moonscape of what used to be a vibrant valley green with pine trees and tall grasses.

I thought I’d already told that story in a book.

But sometimes the story isn’t over yet.

Who of us ever truly knows what is waiting around the bend.

Earlier this summer, a new horse came into my life. He was born here in the valley, before being passed across homes from California to Florida. He’s only 4 years old and still growing at 17 hands, which means he’s big, and already weighs almost twice as much as Annie.

He’s a very special horse with a gentle demeanor, quiet mind, and shades of pink on his sunburned, light-colored muzzle.

I was noticing those same shades of pink in some random photo somebody had taken of him as a foal about four years ago, when something on the stall door caught my eye.

It couldn’t be.

But it was.

And I experienced one of those moments that steal your breath, one of those moments that make you wonder if there’s something out there pulling the strings.

Because in this photo, four years before he’d come into my life, four years before he’d traverse the continent with different homes, that young foal with the shades of pink on his muzzle wasn’t just in any stall in any barn.

He was in a stall that had just held a horse evacuated from a fire.

A stall still labeled with a last name and phone number.

Mine.

Who of us ever truly knows what is waiting around the bend.