I spent my days with those horses.

Not just feeding them or watching them from the other side of a fence. I played with them. Loved on them. Sat with them. I learned their personalities, their moods, their boundaries.

I slept in the field with those babies.

I would lay right there in the grass while they wandered around me, despite every warning my dad gave me about what they were capable of doing.

And he wasn't wrong.

I knew exactly what they were capable of.

I knew I was lying beside a thousand-plus pounds of muscle and instinct. I knew one wrong kick could seriously hurt me. If push came to shove, their power could kill me in an instant.

I never disrespected that.

I respected the hell out of it.

But there is a difference between respect and fear.

I couldn't ask something that powerful to trust me while I stood there terrified of it.

Trust couldn't only travel in one direction.

If I wanted them to believe my hands were safe, I had to trust them, too.

So I learned them.

I learned when to approach and when to stay still.

I learned when they wanted affection and when they wanted space.

I learned that sometimes the most loving thing you can do is give something enough room to decide for itself that it wants to come closer.

And then there was that little filly.

She was hurt.

Scared to death.

She needed medicine, but she didn't understand that the people coming toward her were trying to help.

My dad had already tried.

She tried to kick him.

So when I started toward the stall, he told me not to go in.

He warned me that she was scared. She was hurting. She had already shown exactly what she was willing to do if someone got too close.

And her momma was standing right there with her.

A protective mare.

A frightened baby.

And one little girl walking into their stall.

I wasn't trying to prove anything.

I didn't think I was invincible.

I didn't believe for one second that those horses couldn't hurt me.

I knew they could.

I just understood why that baby had kicked.

She was hurting.

She was scared.

Of course she was fighting.

So I walked in calm and cool.

I didn't rush her.

I didn't corner her.

I didn't walk in trying to prove that I was in charge.

Her momma watched me.

That little filly watched me.

And nobody moved.

I walked over and gave that baby the medicine she needed.

No kicking.

No charging.

No fight.

Then her momma lowered her head toward me and let me pet her.

And that scared little baby relaxed.

I remember looking back at my dad.

He was astonished.

"How did you do that?"

I giggled.

Because even then, the answer seemed obvious to me.

"They already knew I wasn't going to hurt them."

I didn't have the words for it then that I have now.

I just knew.

My mind told them they were safe.

My body told them they were safe.

My heart was with them long before I ever walked through that door.

I didn't know it then, but I think part of who I would eventually become was born in that stall.

Years later, I became a Registered Behavior Technician.

And I want to be very clear: I am not comparing children with disabilities to animals.

I'm talking about something much more human than that.

Because I've stood in a different version of that stall more times than I can count.

A child with a wild little heart who doesn't understand what is happening around them.

A child overwhelmed by a world they don't always have the words to explain.

A child screaming, hitting, kicking, running, refusing, shutting down or doing whatever their body has learned to do when everything becomes too much.

And standing nearby is a parent who loves that baby more than life itself.

They're trying.

God, they're trying.

But love doesn't automatically hand you the tools.

My dad wasn't trying to hurt that filly.

He was trying to give her medicine.

He was trying to help her.

But she didn't understand his intention.

She only understood what her entire body was screaming:

I'm hurt.

I'm scared.

Get away from me.

And maybe that's why that moment stayed buried somewhere inside me all these years.

Because when I walk into a room with a child whose behavior has everyone exhausted, frustrated or completely out of ideas, I don't immediately see a difficult child.

I see the wild heart underneath it.

And I see the parent, too.

The one who would move heaven and earth for their baby but has reached the point where they simply don't know what else to do.

They don't need judgment.

They need tools.

They need support.

Sometimes they just need someone willing to stand beside them and say,

Let's figure out what your baby is trying to tell us.

Maybe that's why I've always chosen the wildcards.

Give me the kid the world has already decided is "difficult."

Give me the one screaming at the top of their lungs and challenging everything and everyone around them.

Give me the one who refuses.

Give me the jerk.

Give me the punk.

Give me the one cussing you every other word.

Give me the teenager with an attitude and a reputation that enters the room before they do.

Give me the adult with walls ten feet high who makes damn sure you understand they don't need you.

First pick.

Last pick.

Doesn't matter.

I'll choose them.

Because I've never been particularly interested in making wild hearts smaller.

I want to understand them.

When everyone else is focused on the kicking, I want to know what hurt.

When everyone else hears screaming, I wonder what they're desperately trying to say.

When someone builds a wall high enough to keep the entire world out, I'm not offended that they won't immediately tear it down for me.

And when someone the world calls difficult finally trusts me?

I know it's real.

When the kid who fights everyone realizes they don't have to fight me, it means something.

When the guarded adult finally lets me see behind the walls, it means something.

And when someone who doesn't hand out affection easily tells me they love me?

I believe them.

Every damn word.

Maybe some part of me has been doing this since long before I ever knew there was a name for it.

I don't walk into the room asking,

How do we make this child stop?

I want to know:

What are they telling us?

What do they need?

What are we missing?

How can I show them they're safe with me?

Because you cannot demand trust.

You cannot force safety.

And you cannot ask someone to hand you their defenses simply because your intentions are good.

Trust has to travel both ways.

I learned that lying in fields surrounded by horses powerful enough to kill me.

I learned it standing in a stall with a frightened little filly.

And I've carried it into every room I've walked into since.

Respect the power.

Look beyond the behavior.

Don't demand trust you haven't earned.

Teach without trying to break the spirit underneath it.

And never confuse someone's inability to communicate with an absence of something worth hearing.

The shore doesn't scream at the ocean to be less.

It doesn't demand that the waves become smaller before it agrees to meet them.

It respects their power.

It learns their tides.

It holds the line when they come crashing in.

And it allows the ocean to remain its beautiful, disastrous self.

Maybe that's what I've always wanted to be for the wild ones.

Not someone who tames them.

Not someone who fixes them.

Not someone who teaches them how to become easier for the rest of the world to handle.

Just the shore.

Steady enough that they don't have to stop being the ocean to know they're safe with me.

Maybe I've spent my whole life learning how to be that shore.

And maybe it started with one scared little filly, one protective momma, one bewildered dad—

and a little girl who walked into a stall with her heart already on their side.