Get back on your dating horse.

They say you should get back on the horse….but when?

Giddy up

Wouldn’t it be lovely to have one of these in your house to practice on?

In March of 2020 I decided to get back on the dating horse. It was the most arbitrary of decisions. One year earlier I had experienced the worst heartbreak of my adult life.

So, a year later, March 13, 2020, to the day, I signed up for online dating, made plans to meet a random guy in the park in my neighborhood, committed to meeting at least ten men, and then…

Yeah. Then lockdown and I spent 2.5 months alone in an apartment in Toulouse with my son. We saw no one except the butcher, the baker and the exhausted Aldi workers.

That dating horse was dead. At least for a while.

If you have suffered heartbreak or the loss of a partner, there is no calendar date that will remove the cruelty of your loss.

There may be no perfect time to start looking for connection.

I can get my tarot cards read, hang out with lovely astrologers, ask all my friends for advice, and still not know if I should stay sprawled on the floor or get back on the horse. That proverbial horse that may be going nowhere.

Recently my dates have been an unpromising mix of ghosting, Santa pictures of their small children, paragraphs of unhinged text ranting, mansplaining Toulouse to me, and invitations to drive 80 miles to smoke a lot of pot (I don’t) and you can imagine the rest.

Sigh.

If Tinder were a dead bird, its intestines would not be auspicious right now.

I could look for more oracles.

But here’s my advice instead for those times when you don’t know if you should start, stop, take a break, give up or get a large animal vet for your allegorical horse.

Go back to your body.

Can you go swimming? Dancing? Get a massage? Ride your bike in the cold dark night? Feel wind in your hair?

Remember, the best thing about a horse is when they cock their little bony knees and lean their heavy weight into you and you can just breathe together. You can feel the dusty warmth of life under their twitching skin and remember your own bones.

I don’t know when you should start dating or when you should stop. You can do all the math in the world and still not find an answer.

So, for now, I would invite you to enjoy all of your physical sensations and celebrate them.

Prairie Creek Redwoods — closed to cars first Saturday of the month until June!

This weekend I took my bike to the Redwoods where the road is closed once a month. I saw a few cyclists and a couple with a stroller but most of the time I was alone with the trees. Oh, the mighty, mighty trees.

And I wondered, do they look forward to this one day a month? Do they delight in the tiny sound of one bike’s tires hissing on the damp pavement? Are they relieved that the noise, weight and smell of cars is simply gone for this one day?

What can you do to give your tree-self a car-free day?

Think of all the little roots wiggling their toes under the ticklishly light passage of just one person on one bicycle.