Dear Cowgirl...

Is she you?

I know this beautiful woman.

She’s first and foremost at this point in her life, a mom, and someone that you recognize at first glance as knowing their way around horses and cattle.

She’s stop-you-in-your-tracks-beautiful….and that’s just on the inside.

She doesn’t wear make-up day to day, and her nails are infrequently polished.

But she makes such nice horses.

Sometimes she might braid a little rawhide too, but never shares the creations online for fear of keyboard warriors.

She still has 3 or 4 pairs of the original straight leg Cruel Girl jeans in the back of her closet.

You know the ones? When denim still felt like working material and didn’t cost $250 a pair.

She holds onto the jeans, because even though the sizes would never work now—maybe she’ll get em’ starched and show that horse she bred in town one day.

One day.

Maybe.

She scrolls social media.

People are fighting again.

They’re from all corners of the world, connected by the threads of internet and data flowing through country that used to be covered with sage and no cell phone service.

They go back and forth until they’re blue in the face, and the animals still need to be fed.

She never told anyone how different it felt after her first baby.

The body she didn’t recognize, the woman inside, someone she didn’t know.

A woman who still longed and wanted and needed and dreamed and hoped and wished, and never missed a feeding time. The woman who was supposed to have it all together, make everything look effortless and never need alone time or a word of thanks. The woman who was supposed to stay a size 4, but eat like a man. The woman who was supposed to have babies, but never quit riding up until the last minute, pregnant belly tucked behind that little slick worn horn she’s stacked so many dallies on.

She is supposed to be both a legend and a lady.

She is supposed to be both feminine and capable, unnervingly handy and otherworldly soft-spoken.

She is supposed to look to God always, but God seems to think she can handle more than she is equipped to carry these days.

She is tired.

She might be you.

She might be pieces of you, or parts or nothing at all like the woman reading this.

But she is every woman.

She is young. She is middle aged and she is old, with sun-worn wrinkles at the edges of her eyes from long days in God’s country and smiling at His creation.

She is a new mom. Terrified at the body and brain she doesn’t recognize and the feeling that somehow, the “cool-girl” club has forgotten the word kindness.

She is sending her babies off to school. Encouraging them to make the world a better place, to fight for the industry and world their family loves so much. She is alone. Throwing hay to backyard ponies that are tired just like her these days, especially when the kids are too busy on phones to stop by and flip through photo albums.

She is tired.

I’ve sat with her. Talked to her over coffee and met her in truck stops where we park dirty rigs next to each other and order spicy chicken sandwiches after the roping. I’ve ridden by her, seen the look flash in her eyes, replaced by the calm, confident stare. I’ve shook her hand at concerts, always smiling and boasting calluses that would make a grown man blush. And I’ve talked to her while escaping the pain, the hurt and choosing herself and her animals. Choosing a better world and writing a safer story for her, her babies and the dream of something more.

I’ve met her. Written songs about her. Sometimes I’ve been her. But I’ve always known her.

She is a cowgirl.

And she may be known by many labels, by many folks, in many places.

But first and foremost, I call her “friend.”