We start by walking to a bench with a view of beautiful rock formations to try to come back down from the stress I arrived with. I do alternate nostril breathing. Someone remarks, taking in the view, about realizing this beauty, this peace has been here all along. It’s always here. We begin to head toward the llamas after the therapist asks how I’m doing and I say I’m still stressed but I’m in touch with the fact that this is all I have to do right now.

The llama handler talks about how llamas are very good about asserting boundaries, how we have to follow their lead and cues, how they will sense our energy. I’m excited but also understand I am here to respect their needs.

On first sight of the llamas I am overwhelmed and want to cry, I love them so much already. A tall, dark, handsome, goofy guy is standing at the ready curious to meet me. The other three are lounging, eating hay, not bothered by my presence but not interested, either. My new friend’s name is Z. His prominent crooked bottom teeth give him the silly allure of an alpaca.

I’m able to hand feed all four of them grain and flowers. I feel their rough lips rub on my hand, their gentle but eager tongues, occasionally a little nibble between bottom teeth and top gum. Z and C gulp up the food. P is daintier, taking just a taste. I, who the handler suspects is pregnant, is somewhere in between, a bit temperamental. I’m able to rub matriarch C’s neck and chin. She seems cautious but accepting. The handler says they’re comfortable around me, and they are not always comfortable around new people like this.

We walk with Z and P. P is a teen and wants to follow behind Z. Z wants to stop and eat all the grass and flowers. I let him, but sometimes I gently tug him along. Someone observes from llamas we can learn both how to simply be, how to keep on walking, but also that there’s no rush.

We are headed to a tree they like for uncertain reasons. When we get there he eats the tree and uses it to scratch his body.

The therapist checks in several times with me, helping me notice I feel joy and feel more present than usual. That I’m not thinking about work like when I arrived. He tells me to remember this feeling.

I learn that the handler was in a lawsuit for ten years. She lost but then won on appeal. It is comforting to be around someone who has actually been through similar. That permanent isolating feeling subsides a little bit. She is convinced of my strength, and coming from her it feels different. I believe she understands what kind of strength it is when she says it. I ask her how long ago her lawsuit ended, and she can’t remember. She’s trying to but I stop her. I look forward to a day I no longer know right off the top of my head how long it’s been. To see someone else who’s had a life consumed by it for long enough to learn that is the norm be past it in that way is a kind of hope I’ve never been able to see before.

She also tells me her son is a cancer survivor, that when he was in the hospital they wrote a song to express some of their feelings. It was called Let It Be. I let out a groan. The therapist asks why. I say because I know that’s what I need but it’s so hard. She continues that her son added at the end of the song “walk it off” and she really liked that. I do, too. It resonates deeply. It’s like the in between of simply letting it be and trying to do something to change it. It feels a little more attainable. Especially as I both am present on a walk with my new best llama friend in a beautiful place, and also in touch with the trauma I am stuck in. Especially with how triathlon has helped me, but while recognizing that getting back in touch with how yoga helped me is important. Somewhere in between let it be and find a way to make it better is walk it off.

We return to the llamas’ home. We are going to do some art on rocks. P is happy to return to the area of the enclosure where the rest of the pack is. Z chooses to stay next to me.

The therapist says to think of the rock as grounding, and try to draw on it some of the joyful feelings I felt today. I draw Z. He seems to be posing for me. And then I write “walk it off”. Z doesn’t leave my side. The therapist asks what I think of that. I say I think he senses I need him. The therapist points out that Z seems to sense I need protection. He is being my personal guard llama. The therapist asks how that feels to be protected. I say unfamiliar. But it hits harder than that. They are intuitive. He feels I need him. I feel protected. I feel safety from him – a word I do not use lightly. A feeling I do not have often.

At some point on the walk I had taken a selfie with Z. The therapist laughed and said how many people can take a selfie like that? I feel immense gratitude for all the ways this program is available to me and that I’m here doing it. I think, if this is what healing is like, maybe it’s not so bad to wonder if I’ll ever be done doing it. But then I think, healing won’t always look like this. But then I think, but my life can look however I want. There is space left behind by no longer fighting. That space is currently dark, filled with anger, sticky and uninviting. But I remember yoga and how the discomfort goes away in time if you stay with it and I see this moment where the absolute forefront of my mind is my llama friend Z and gratitude and I am walking with someone whose life is not defined by her own ten year lawsuit and I feel belief that someday that space will be refilled.

That deep dark hole was formed by someone else’s choices. And then I filled it with the choices I made. That’s what filled it before. Now I’m simultaneously giving it time to drain, while employing help excavating it, while already shoveling into it new and better things. So maybe I’ll spend the rest of my life not healed but healing, and maybe my healing won’t always include llamas and massages, but these experiences are the result of the choices I’m making for my life. I never thought these were experiences I’d be having or choices I could make. I get to make choices now I didn’t know I could before.

I don’t want to fight anymore. I want to walk with llamas. I don’t want to choose justice anymore. I want to choose joy.

If these wounds can heal, I think I am doing the best I can to help them. And I know it takes time. The good news is, even after all this time, time is still something I have. I can’t reclaim what I’ve given but I can reclaim what remains.

(Later that day)

I spent a decade trying to create consequences for the person who abused me through the channels that were meant to hold him accountable, and over and over and over again I saw that the price of one consequence for him was two consequences for me. I am grappling with so much in the aftermath of pursuing justice, from the initial abuse to the systemic failures I was a casualty of right up to the very end. Now that the fight is over, I’m just trying to heal.

I’m on a roller coaster where I’m swinging between unfathomable pain and unfathomable support and gratitude. I’m enrolled in a trauma program that already is soothing my soul. This program is a consequence of the pain and trauma. Maybe not all consequences are bad. Would I choose any of this to have the experiences I’m beginning to have through healing? Fuck no. But since these are the cards I’ve been dealt, I’ll take more consequences like this. And what’s more, he doesn’t get these; they are just for me.