During the Christmas holidays my friends and I visited a donkey farm in Montenegro and spent the day grooming and walking a pair of them. Memories of December 19, 2016, when a stray donkey appeared in the driveway of my family farm came flooding back. This is an updated and heavily edited post about the stray donkey written a decade ago. However this time I’m able to reveal the things I hid so well then. So much of my life has changed due to my willingness to face some serious pain that I had been burying at the time. Here is a new version with the benefit of hindsight. During that time I’d been searching for the source of buried feelings of frustration, anxiousness and suspicion. I’d often looked to symbolic meanings of the animals I’d encountered for help in navigating what was happening beneath the surface.
That morning the dogs were barking like crazy in the driveway. I was married then and my husband-at-the-time and I went outside with our coffee cups in hand to see what was causing such a ruckus. There stood a gray donkey with his nose in the air looking completely unbothered by the dogs circling his ankles and the humans gawking at him. I’d had horseback riding lessons under supervision and a pony when I was a kid, but neither of us had had real experience with a donkey other than the miniature burrows giving children rides at birthday parties.
He was huge with fuzzy, silvery fur and a brown cross on his back. He was quite dug into his position and did not move. We had no idea what to do but we were fascinated by him and dying to touch him. My original post was entitled 10 days without touching. The following is an edited version of that post.
Naturally we wanted to keep him. At the time only the garden and the backyard for the dogs was fenced. The barn housed sprayers, chippers, mowers, blowers, and tillers and had never been used for farm animals.
I assessed how long it would take me to remove from the barn the thousands of things that may be harmful to a donkey. Tiny star-shaped bits of rusted chicken wire, bolts, screws, lumber, fencing and the farm equipment. I calculated how much new fence posts would cost to build a 2 acre donkey pen.
My original post said “Five days before Christmas and a donkey arrives. Is this some sort of comment from the universe? Donkeys symbolize humility and wisdom. That sounds serious. Not sure how many more lessons in humility and wisdom building opportunities I can handle.” (Reflecting on this paragraph, I realize how I made light of my feelings. This was mostly for the comfort of others. Others who were/are not willing to take responsibility for how their actions may have been affecting me; the truth-teller. I joked and normalized and stayed silent not only for the comfort of the perpetrator but because I was terrified to even think of the abandonment that I’d have to face should I decide to confront them with my unmet needs.)
Now, I will no longer abandon myself, my needs, my emotions. Now, I validate my emotions and am, after 6 years of being alone in the world, facing this terrifying abandonment and doing the necessary deep inner work, owning my story.
“As I moved piles of lumber from the barn floor up to what should be a hayloft, I thought of humility. The song “Radiant beams from they holy face, with the dawn of redeeming grace, Jesus, Lord at thy birth” escaped from my body without my control.” (In this paragraph I refused to address how my religious upbringing was still in my subconscious. I left out how my observations of the so-called Christians that I knew revealed what liars, manipulators and hypocrites they are. Now that they have collectively revealed themselves on the world stage, I am willing to speak up about what I witnessed growing up and how accurate my suspicions were. I’m ready to give weight to the accuracy of my intuition and let it alone be the proof I kept searching for.)
The Catalan spelling of Catalonia (the part of Spain we’d lived for a year and a half in the late 90’s) was decided upon for his name-Catalunya. The symbol of Catalonia is the donkey.
He’d seemed comfortable under the large oak near the potting shed and readying the barn was going to take time. So, his warm bucket of water was placed under the oak. It was 18F degrees outside so I placed it inside a tire and smushed blue foam board pieces around it for insulation to keep the water warm.
The man at the farmer’s co-op said Bermuda hay bales and sweet corn was good for all livestock. So I placed them near the bucket. My donkey research revealed that sweet corn could cause health problems. But, he moved towards us if I shook the bowl and I needed the bribe temporarily as there was no touching him much less moving him anywhere except where he’d chosen to go. I calculated vet bills and it seemed donkeys were pretty affordable.
I created a cozy manger of straw with a tarp overhang from lattice that we’d used for bean trellises. He allowed us near when he was eating and he loved his water. But if we approached otherwise he bucked and turned his rear to us. Bad weather threatened and I anxiously created this temporary shelter while while we reworked the barn. We’d just have to trust him stay overnight by choice. He did.
I moved his water and hay from under his tree to under his new tarp lean-to in order to allow him to get used to a shelter before the arrival of more predicted thunderstorms. Thankfully they’d never materialize in our neck of the woods.
We bought a curry comb, salt lick, cattle gate and hoof pick from the hardware store, and talked to the old vet in town. That afternoon I was taking a walk with our rottweiler/birddog mix rescue, Zippy. Catalunya came stomping up the driveway trumpeting bloody murder as if to run us down. My legs felt weak at the thought of him kicking Zip’s head in. We’d just spent $3,000 on a surgery to remove some nasty tumors from his head. Zippy and I had managed to scramble up onto the porch just in time.
I’d taken to carrying a mop handle on my daily dog walks through the trails on the back 50 acres. The woman two ranches over had recently shot and killed a mountain lion in broad daylight and an older gentleman who’d stopped by my farmer’s market booth had shown me a photo of five mountain lions moving through his property. He lives near Wildcat Mountain which edges the back end of our 75 acres. The local word for mountain lion is wildcat.
Walking our paths with the dogs, I had pretended that my mop handle was a machete and that I was Michonne from THE WALKING DEAD. I’d whack at small trees for practice at whacking a mountain lion. But this screaming, unbridled, rogue donkey holding us all hostage in our own backyard was making me feel less safe than the threat of the wildcats roaming the area.
I researched the symbolism of donkeys. They symbolize humility, hard work, resilience and wisdom. Not stubbornness, as popular culture says. The fact that they remain steadfast rather than fleeing a difficult situation; the fact that they make and trust their own decisions in spite of whatever pressure is applied by outside influences, makes them appear stubborn. But they are brilliant observers, learners, and exhibit high amounts of integrity of action.
Early in the day I’d noticed Catalunya pressing his big Shrek butt against the fence in the clearing beyond the well-house trying to get next to the cows on the other side. He was sulking and stomping and complaining like a toddler. I realized then that he’d been obsessing on the cows possibly because he had been accustomed to being with cows as a watchdog I’d figured. I’d read that donkeys prefer company and can bond for life with other equine but were often placed to guard cattle, sheep and goats.
A few days had passed since he’d arrived and still there had been no petting, no touching, much less bridling and containing. He’d stretch his neck and nostrils as long as they would go without making contact, always maintaining what must have felt like a safe distance for him. I’d worry all night about what he was stepping on or eating that might kill him as he freely stalked the perimeter of the property.
More bad weather was predicted for Christmas day. I’d have a few days to ready one side of the barn before it was to arrive. It was a large and roomy barn so I sectioned it off down the middle and moved the farm machinery to one side. I’d raked the entire corral yard inch by inch; gone over every inch with a magnet on a stick, hauled buckets of sand and spread it down, added a thick carpet of straw in the paddock and stall area and out into the corral and under the big cedar tree. I’d moved the bucket from under the oak to the barn hoping to lure him in before the predicted storm.
On Christmas Day, around 7am when I began pulling back curtains looking for him, I realized that he’d looked for but did not find his sweet corn and Bermuda hay in the temporary corral by the oak tree and I’d watched him pout off. He would eventually go back to the barn and get accustomed to the new location.
We’d started on the corral fence from the barn wall to the dog fence at 8 am. Alan pounded the stakes into the ground, stretched the hog-wire with a come-along, and set the gate posts in concrete. Beginning around 10am we’d heard the cows bellowing and gunshots scattering through the morning. Still no donkey. We’d put down tools and walked to the fence twice worried that he’d jumped the wrong rancher’s fence and had been shot. I worried about the story the mailman had told me of pulling his donkey off of a new baby calf. I’d seen a Youtube video that explained that the donkey must be introduced to the new calves. Otherwise the donkey may interpret the new member as not one of its familiar herd members and treat it as a threat. Catalunya had followed his mail truck up the driveway hee-hawing loudly.
The winds gusted all day and the weather felt like that scene in The Wizard of Oz just as Dorothy leaves the wooden caravan having had her future told by the future wizard.
“In a blizzard he was lost. She ran calling Wildfire, she ran calling Wiiiildfire, she ran calling Wihihihihildfire” ran through my head. It was 67F degrees outside. He was lost and a storm was coming. Hot and cold air masses were colliding from blizzards on both coasts and I couldn’t control what songs came into my head.
Around 4 pm I’d picked up some boutonniere-sized mistletoe pieces from the soon-to-be corral area. “Merry Christmas, honey.” I held the mistletoe over our heads and we kissed. Looking back on this I realize how I initiated every tender moment. My ex played along and at the time I couldn’t imagine someone would pretend to still love me when they didn’t. Catalunya would teach me a great deal about interpreting the actions of others and what to do about it in the coming year.
I looked at the mistletoe again and wondered out loud if it was poisonous for donkeys. I Googled it and, of course, it is. Reflecting on this moment reminds me of how I would allow my attention to feelings that were rising in my body to be hijacked by quickly focusing on something else.
In those days I didn’t know how to sit with and process my feelings. I’d quickly moved to worrying about the donkey rather than facing the suspicious feelings I’d get when I’d notice that my ex had not made any attempts to celebrate Christmas with me. The entire emotional load of any special moment rested in my hands and I had allowed that. I’d been shaped by my toxic family to discount, eat, bury and dishonor my valid emotions. If I brought up an injustice I was marginalized as dramatic, hysterical, difficult and always causing problems.
Now I know that this is gaslighting. The abuser doesn’t want to be held accountable so they minimize your experience and expect you to acquiesce for their comfort. It had been such a familiar part of my family system that I’d continued to remain silent when it occurred in my marriage.
That Christmas I’d asked Alan to cut a little pine from the woods, he did. Otherwise we’d have had no Christmas tree as he made no attempts to acknowledge the holiday. I’d asked him to drive into town to look at the Christmas lights. He did. He didn’t speak to me the entire time. I remember looking at the lights and just making myself happy as I’d always done. He wasn’t interested in the lights or doing anything special for Christmas. He was not investing in me or our 27 year long relationship with any measurable action. But he was pretending that everything was normal and still telling me the minimum things he thought I needed to hear to maintain the relationship. I couldn’t understand why anyone would do such a thing. It was so confusing. So, I got drunk on wine in the garden alone each evening and ate my feelings and focused on Catalunya.
After the morning corral work I’d tried to nap and not to cry over the new donkey being possibly dead. He’d been gone since 7ish that morning. I searched Wikipedia for paintings of The Nativity. The only one I found where a donkey appears was in the Botticelli. The others show oxen and lambs. I thought about Mary from Nazareth and Joseph from Bethlehem riding out on the donkey’s back with the baby Jesus fleeing Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents to Egypt just hours after his birth. I thought about the mature Jesus riding on his back on Palm Sunday, choosing a peaceful path to his crucifixion and showing humility by riding a donkey in contrast to a war horse. I knew that Catalunya’s arrival was some sort of cosmic or spiritual sign. Something inside me was shifting. I kept trying to figure out what it was.
I rose from my crying jag to find he’d returned and found the warm manger in the barn. Over the prior four days I had recovered 57 iron fence stakes, 18 aluminum posts, 14 wooden fence posts, 3 rolls of hog wire, 2 rolls of barbed wire, and hired some qualified and reasonably priced fence builders. Alan set one of the gates and the remaining side wall fencing which took Catalunya a half a day to accept and yet he nimbly stepped straight through the 6 slat tall cattle gate lying on the ground like he could have won a round of Chinese jump-rope.
He followed me around his new corral with both gates still wide open, around the front yard where his favorite Bermuda grass was turning brown for the winter, down past the chink log cabin, down our path I’d named Pinecone Alley, and back to the path that goes out by the burn barrel. I sang as we walked. He seemed to like it. This was one of the few times that I’d be in an open and unprotected space with him.
It would take 10 days from his arrival before he would allow me to touch him. And then it had to be done with a long broom handle and a sweater placed over my hand. He was afraid of hands and I hated to imagine why. The idea of hiding my hands and using a long stick had come from watching a professional trainer manage abused donkeys.
My grandmother’s words of wisdom when dealing with men came to mind “feed him with a long-handled spoon.” Meaning place enough distance between yourself and the man to keep you safe.
The realization that this would parallel the lack of touch and care that I was receiving and had normalized would come in the years to follow. I’d have to sell my farm and divorce my husband and put enough distance between myself and him and my toxic family to be able to uncover the ways in which a person should be treated by those who say they love you. My subconscious knew that what was happening was wrong and my nervous system knew something was terribly askew, but I couldn’t then bring it to consciousness. I didn’t even really have the vocabulary to speak about it. I’d even normalized that we’d been sleeping in separate rooms for maybe a year. We told ourselves it was because of the dogs. Zippy and Dolores is one bed and little Brucie in the other. I’d normalized years of bread crumbing and the gaslighting that follows when one speaks up and says hey, I deserve better than this. Everything looked normal on the outside. But my insides were screaming a different story.
Over the coming year, Catalunya would show me the one behavior that I’d not seen from my husband. The one instinctive characteristic that should be present when one loves another. Integrity. We defend those who matter to us. We do not throw them under the bus or leave them unattended when they are being attacked.
But over the coming year, with the guidance of a wise donkey who had also suffered abuse at the hands of those charged with caring for him-I’d slowly and eventually wake up. He was my guide and he proved worthy.
On New Year’s Eve, as I carried warm water to the barn at midnight and the man stayed in bed in his room and read a book, I searched for some words of wisdom to post on Facebook. I found an Irish proverb. At that time I’d never been to Ireland. The proverb stated:
“Blow out the false, blow in the true, blow out the old, blow in the new.” A foreshadowing of things to come. By the following New Year’s Eve I’d told him that I would divorce him. He shrugged. Proving my suspicion. Thank God I finally acted on my intuition rather than waiting for him to be honest. By Thanksgiving he’d moved out and I was alone in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of dogs and goats and Catalunya.
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