My legs refuse to work properly. My arms and shirt are grimed in a mixture of sweat and dirt. Something sticky is down my back. And my cheeks have what will probably be a five alarm sunburn. But I couldn’t be happier.

I went horseback riding today.

In a previous post about resolutions, I explored the ambiguity I experienced as I watched horses I would not ride.

After over a year of caring solo for both my young child and cancer-battling mother, I grew to expect crisis. I often felt a sense of impending doom, a feeling that something dark and awful lurked nearby. I wasn’t being paranoid. Something often was. My mother endured a series of medical emergencies, including the most recent that landed her in surgery. And, now, my father has found out that he has lung cancer. He goes in for surgery tomorrow, about the same time as my youngest sister faces a possible induction because the baby she is carrying isn’t on the same schedule as her doctor.

These reflections of the chaos of the universe usually kept me hovering close to home, trying through my caring efforts to build up a levee of protection around my family—thinking somehow, if I was just vigilant enough, I could keep the rising water out.

Today, I changed that. I went riding.

I revised this blog post into an essay you can now find in A Cup of Comfort for Single Mothers.