Burning Beneath

Yesterday I stepped into something new.

A meditation circle honouring the Year of the Fire Horse.

I have never been one to follow different calendars. January 1 comes and goes. The Hijri year comes and goes. To me they were always just another page turning, another day deducted from this lifetime. Nothing ceremonial. Nothing mystical. Just time moving forward.

But this… this felt different.

There were about fourteen of us, mostly women, and one man who ended up seated beside me after the guide adjusted placements. I noticed the tension in my body immediately. A quiet alarm.

I do not easily trust men. Trauma teaches the body to remember even when the mind tries to move on. For a moment I considered asking to change seats. Instead, I told myself: Focus on your own existence. Stay within yourself.

And I did.

As the meditation deepened, I stopped feeling anyone around me. There were only soft breaths in the room and the steady voice guiding us.

We were at White Feather Holistic Arts, Tracey’s space. A place filled with stones, incense, quiet energy. Tracey has walked her own hard road. I do not know every chapter of her story, but I know enough to respect the way she transformed struggle into purpose. That kind of strength speaks without words.

She explained the Fire Horse year. She spoke of the heavy Snake years that required shedding, releasing, stripping away old skins. The past years have been hard. That part resonated deeply.

Then she described the Fire Horse as movement. Speed. Power. Forward motion. A year of ignition.

It aligned so precisely with where I am that it startled me.

I have spent years untangling trauma. Sitting with anxiety. Wrestling depression. Learning to accept what was done to me, what was imposed on my body, my mind, my heart. Accepting scars as proof of survival, not shame. Each scar, internal or external, reminds me that I endured.

When she guided us to imagine a warm flame in our midsection, I saw it clearly. A steady glow. Growing stronger. Expanding.

And then the Fire Horse emerged.

Mine was fierce. Red, orange, yellow flames bursting outward. It was not standing still. It was running in circles around the flame like a living tornado, circling through my body, penetrating every cell. Before she instructed us to merge with it, I felt it already entering me. My legs were its legs. My arms its power. It rose into my brain.

It shattered chains.

Chains of stagnation. Of self doubt. Of standing still in time.

It felt like something breaking open inside me and declaring, You can. You are able. Nothing ahead of you is stronger than what you have already survived.

Was it imagination? Is that what meditation is? I do not know.

I only know it was real to me.

When she asked us to slowly reduce the flame, to let the horse dissolve into smoke and return to a small steady light, I could not let mine disappear. Instead, the horse transformed. The power condensed into a smaller flame and traveled upward into my heart.

That is where it stayed.

Not in my stomach. Not fading. In my heart.

And I loved that.

When it was time to share gratitude, the first words that came to me were: Thank you to my body.

Thank you for breaking down when it needed to. Thank you for forcing me to pause. Thank you for carrying me through everything, even when I was not kind to it. I always thank my body. It has been my silent warrior.

And then something unexpected happened.

The man beside me stood up after the circle ended. He told me my words spoke to him. That they expressed feelings he could not form himself. Then he hugged me.

And I did not pull away.

I did not freeze.

I did not feel fear.

I did not see him as a threat. I saw him as a soul.

For someone who has lived with distrust woven into her nervous system, that moment was enormous. Quiet, but enormous.

Healing does not always arrive in dramatic declarations. Sometimes it arrives in the absence of resistance.

We parted with him saying, “I hope I can see you again.”

Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.

What matters is this:

The Fire Horse is not outside of me. It is not a horoscope prediction. It is not superstition. It is a symbol of the power I already carry.

The flame is in my heart now.

And I am ready to ride it forward.