A Story of Tough Love

[00:00:00] Hey, dear ones, we are in part two of a four part series where I am sharing inspirational stories and the inspiration behind this series. Tomorrow is my birthday and I’m taking charge of my birthday this year to really do the things I wanna do, experience the things I wanna experience. In past years, I’ve just been sort of ho hum.

[00:00:25] I don’t care about my birthday, I don’t celebrate. And that’s really, you know, bullshit actually, if I can use that word. , and then at the end of each birthday, in the past I’ve always been a little bit disappointed that more didn’t happen. Because I think on a subconscious level, I was hoping somebody would just come forth and organize it all for me, and I realized that I am the only person who knows exactly what I want.

[00:00:53] So I either need to tell people who I have a good idea will follow through on my requests and I need to get things going for myself. And I had a batch of podcast episodes due this week, and I thought, what would bring me the most joy? I. To record on and to be honest, I am a bit of a storyteller.

[00:01:17] I love telling stories, and of course I love telling inspirational stories, so let’s get to it. In today’s episode, I reveal the second inspirational story of the series, which takes place on my family farm in South Dakota. I will end on an invitation that will have you recognizing and appreciating some of the tough love moments in your life and how those moments indeed have made you stronger.

[00:01:48] So please stay with me until the end. 

[00:02:27] Hey, we’re creating a global community of soul guided leaders, coaches, healers, and entrepreneurs called The Soul Guide Circle and the Soul Guide Circle. We’re inviting in our spiritual gifts to get our clients even more results and transformation so they can create massive referral buzz. Find the link to join our close Facebook group@alysonscammell.com or in the show notes.

[00:02:51] Today I’m sharing one of the best stories from my childhood on a family farm in South Dakota. I’m a fourth generation family farm girl. And let me tell you guys, growing up on a farm was the best. Sometimes I get sad. When I wonder, when I ask myself if Frey’s childhood isn’t unfolding as happily as minded, , we’re immigrants, , to this country.

[00:03:25] We don’t have grandma and grandpa around. We don’t have cousins. You know, we don’t have all the things that kids just love to have. You know, kids just love having their grandparents around and their nieces and nephews and their aunts and uncles, and I mean, I love all that too, but I chose this lifestyle for a reason because I love living abroad and, and, and I, I love where we live, but I chose this place, Freya didn’t, and yes, on a soul level, of course she chose to be here too.

[00:03:56] But I get sad thinking about whether or not. Her childhood is gonna be as happy as mine was because I have this belief that my kids’ childhood should be happier than mine. Right? I think that’s sort of a belief that comes from the collective, and whilst I think that there’s light in that, that we should all be striving to make things better for the next generation than what we had it.

[00:04:28] I actually don’t think that that. Limiting belief, which which is what it really is, is true, right? We all choose our lifetimes. We all choose the human suits that we incarnate into, and we choose those challenges. We choose that ancestral lineage. Lineage because those are the things we needed on a soul level.

[00:04:52] And Freya chose me and Pete because she needed a childhood. You know, as an immigrant on a soul level, she needed all the things she’s experienced on a soul level. So it’s really not a good use of my time to sit there and wonder whose childhood was happier. But I’m sharing all that because I had a really happy childhood. 

[00:05:16] And let me tell you, it wasn’t an easy childhood if, you yourself grew up in a farm, you know that, , you work at a young age, like especially for a family farm, you help out. I remember just being three, four years old and doing like real labor on the farm, to help out. So, you know, it’s interesting to think about what makes a person happy.

[00:05:42] It’s not just laying around on a Saturday and Sunday. Being fan and fed grapes. ’cause I certainly never had that experience. I was doing really sort of bag breaking work in a lot of regards from a pretty darn young age. So with that in mind, we had cattle. I grew up on a cattle ranch and we had horses and we, we’d use our horses to chase the cattle.

[00:06:06] And my brother Lon, who’s two years older than me, , he and I would often. Be, on the horses chasing the cattle to a new pasture or to a new water source or to wherever our father told them, told us to chase them. And one day we were on our horses and I was on my beloved horse Tia, who at the time had a fo so she had a baby.

[00:06:30] So whenever a horse has a baby, the baby just follows the mama wherever the mama goes. So it’s no big deal. But the mama will get agitated and jumpy if the baby gets too far away from her. Okay. And so my brother was on another horse, I believe that horse’s name was Tez. So we had Tez and t, I don’t even remember the name of the FO anymore, sadly.

[00:06:56] But so we had Tia and baby and we were chasing, a herd of our cattle home to the farm, and we were about, I, I know exactly where we were. I can go walk to it today to the exact point where this incident takes place that I’m about to share. And I think this incident, we were about, , let’s say three quarters of a mile from home, from the farm.

[00:07:25] And so a group of cattle started to veer off and go in the wrong way. So my brother took off after them to chase them back to the herd and the direction we wanted them to go. But I was staying with the main herd, so they continued to go in the right direction. Well, my horse’s baby. Got confused because Tez and Tia looked a lot alike.

[00:07:52] They were the exact same color, and she took off after Lawn’s horse, so my horse . Tia started to get a little agitated. The baby was getting a little too far away.

[00:08:04] Well then my cattle, my little herd of cattle, ended up joining Lawn’s, herd of cattle, and then they all started going in the right direction towards home. So what I needed to do was catch up with my brother and he was quite far ahead and the baby was with LAN’s Horse. And so I got Tia into Gear I, and I said, all right, Tia, let’s catch up with Lon.

[00:08:29] And we took off and she was going full tilt through this pasture because she wanted to catch up with her baby and she was a little bit agitated. So we were going literally about as fast as that horse could go. And I loved going fast on horses when I was a kid. I still do. So for me it was a, okay, I needed to catch up anyway.

[00:08:52] Well before we could catch up. TIA trips in a badger hole, a big badger hole. And as I said, I could pinpoint the location of this hole. She trips and I go flying in the air. I literally remember. And oh, by the way, important point of this story was I was about 12 years old, I believe. It was the summer between my fifth and sixth grade, so maybe I would’ve been.

[00:09:26] 11 actually, yes. I would’ve just, I would’ve recently turned 11 and my brother-in-law would’ve been 13. So, TIA trips. I remember being airborne like for a long period of time because that’s how, I mean, I was a very tiny child and this fall just like catapulted me into the air. So then when I fell, I put my hands down in front of me to, , help with the fall and.

[00:10:00] It was extremely painful. I was in a load of pain when I eventually hit the ground. And my brother didn’t see what had happened and thankfully, and really miraculously, Tia was unscathed absolutely unscathed. Normally when something happens like that, the horse breaks her leg and when a horse breaks her leg or his leg, she has to be get put down.

[00:10:33] So thankfully the horse angels were watching over us. And she was fine. And I have this vivid memory of her eating grass right by me. She stayed right by me. Good girl. She was such a good girl. She was eating grass right by me, and I am rolling around in that grass, screaming in pain. Eventually the baby rejoins us and so Tia is happy as a clam.

[00:11:00] She’s eating grass. The baby’s with her and she’s just. Hanging tight. My brother has no idea what has just happened, and now the cows are starting to go the wrong way again. And I remember him saying, Allison, what are you doing? Are you goofing off over there? And so I wasn’t goofing off. And so he came over to see what the heck was going on, and he very soon could see that I was in an incredible amount of pain.

[00:11:26] Well, this was way before the invention of the cell phone, and so we had no phones, we had no walkie-talkies. We had no way to communicate back to home base of the family farm that we were in a bit of a pickle. And then this question soon became, how are we gonna get Allison back to the farm? There’s walking.

[00:11:49] So again, we’re about three quarters, quarters of a mile away. What is that in kilometers? Um, that is about a kilometer. Yeah, we were about a kilometer away from the farm. That’s about exactly right. And, um, so of course I could have walked, but it was extremely painful to walk. Lon could have left me there alone, rode his horse back to the farm, got my dad who could have came and got me in a pickup.

[00:12:20] But I kind of remember my father wasn’t home. He was out in the field like. You know, combining or, or he was doing something out in a field so he was like quite far away. So all of that would’ve taken quite some time by the time my dad got home and got the pickup and got to me and there was a sense of urgency to get me back ’cause I was in so much pain.

[00:12:44] So my brother, big brother, 13 years old, made the choice that I would ride Tia home. Because that was gonna be the fastest and most painless way for me to get home. So I’m rolling around screaming in pain, and he says to me, get back on the horse. And I say to him, no way away. And then he gets really stern with me.

[00:13:17] Like he never really did play the role of the protective big brother. And I think it’s always, ’cause I was very scrappy and could kind of just take care of myself, but he had one of those rare moments of I’m the big brother and you’re gonna listen to me right now. And you, my friend are getting back up on that horse.

[00:13:39] So I took a deep breath and I knew he was right. I knew it was the best way home. It wasn’t a painless way, but of out of all the very limited options we had in that moment, it was the best. So he got off Tez and he helped me back up because I was in a lot of pain and he helped me back up on. Tia and he took Tia’s reins and he wa he was on Tez and he had Tia’s reins and he walked me home so I didn’t have to use my hands, didn’t have to use my arms, and he walked me with Tez.

[00:14:22] And Tia and the baby, I don’t know what the heck. We were just like, cattle, go back out to the pasture. We’re gonna chase you home another day. They had enough food, they had enough water, so we kind of abandoned our mission and he walked me home. We get home and my mother, bless her, gets out her first aid book, which was always the book that she consulted whenever there was some sort of.

[00:14:50] Calamity going on the nearest hospital was like 25 miles away, right? So there was a lot of, , homeopathy and self-treatment we had to do on the farm to patch up all the crazy things that would happen to us. So she flips to the chapter on broken limbs, reads it, and of course this was way before one could consult md. So she concludes that I have no broken limbs and instructs me to take a nap. And at that point I was like so tired.

[00:15:24] , I, and I was a little out of it. I think, you know, I might have had a little bit of a concussion, so I was like, gladly. So I go to my bed and I remember I slept for like three hours. I wake up and my arms are these two giant red puffs because they had gotten really, , inflamed. I come back out to the kitchen and I say, mom, something’s wrong with my arms.

[00:15:51] So that’s when she knows it’s time to load up the car and head to the emergency room. So we get there and they x-ray both my arms, and then the doctor comes in and says. I’m sorry, Allison. And by the way, this is at the very beginning of summer vacation. I’m 11 years old. I’m looking forward to swimming and actually, you know, riding horse and doing all the things that I did in the summer.

[00:16:16] And he informs me that I have a really bad broken left arm that has to be reset. So like the bone, it wasn’t compound, the bone wasn’t sticking out of the skin, but almost like the bone was like. Sticking up in the air essentially, so it had to be reset. And I remember that that was really painful. So they reset my, my bone, put the cast on, and for me that I would have to wear a sling and that it was a really bad break.

[00:16:46] And it, we, the cast would be on for a while with a sling. And then I was getting ready to go and I was so bummed. I have this broken arm, it sucks. And then all of a sudden. The doctor comes back in, he sits down, he sighs, and he says, Allison, I’m so sorry, I only looked at the top x-ray of your left arm. I didn’t look at the x-ray of your right arm, and I regret to inform you that.

[00:17:18] They’re both broken.

[00:17:22] So then, but the right arm wasn’t nearly as bad of a break, so that one just needed to be, it didn’t need to be reset, it just needed to be put in a cast. So there I was for the summer of my 11th year of life in two casts with two broken arms. And I remember at first. Everything I did was very painful because my arms were very tender, but in no time the pain subsided or I got used to it and I was just doing, other than going swimming, I didn’t get them wet.

[00:17:55] I don’t know what the state of play is of casts in 2025. I hope. I don’t know. Freya broke her leg when she was like two, and I know at that time you, you couldn’t get the cast wet and I’m assuming. The technology hasn’t arrived that you can get them wet. I don’t know. You could tell me if you or a kid has broken your arm recently or a limb, but certainly at that time you couldn’t get them wet, so I couldn’t go swimming, but literally I did almost everything else a kid could do.

[00:18:24] That summer, I was riding my bike. With two broken arms. I remember, we had gone to the, our county fair and I brought my bike. I was riding around the fair with these broken arms and people were like, look, mama, look at that girl. She’s riding her bike with broken arms. I rode horse, you better believe I rode horse with these broken arms.

[00:18:45] And that kind of gets us nicely to the moral of this story, which is ultimately about tough love. My brother displayed a really courageous and inspiring amount of tough love for me that day. He rightly concluded the best, fastest, most painless way for me to get from that pasture field. A kilometer away from our house to the house was back on the horse.

[00:19:19] He told me to get on the horse and I stead vastly refused, but he didn’t give up. He gave me this really loving but stern dose of tough love, and I don’t ride horse much as an adult, which makes me really sad because riding horse was. The greatest is, is the single happiest memory of my childhood. I love it so much, and this episode is inspiring me to find ways.

[00:19:55] I’m an adult. I turn 49 years old tomorrow, and just because I’m not a little kid anymore, living on a family farm doesn’t mean I don’t get to ride horse. So I’m really inspired to think about ways. Yes. , my, I I, my parents still live on this family farm and , we have one horse who never gets ridden and it’s half wild.

[00:20:17] So of course I could ride the wild horse, but that when, when I, when I was a kid, riding a wild horse seemed really fun. Now, as a 49-year-old woman, it feels a little less fun, but I can find ways to ride horse as an adult, and I set the intention to do that today. Because I just love it so much, and if my brother hadn’t forced me to get right back up on the horse in that moment, I think I would’ve been scared.

[00:20:48] I think had he found a different way to get me back, I really think I would’ve been too scared after the fact, after my arms had healed. To get back on the horse, literally get back on the , literal horse. And he gave me such a gift because I continued to ride. I continued to ride with broken arms, I continued to ride after those broken arms.

[00:21:20] And it’s something that gives me like truly the greatest amount of joy. And I’m just so. Happy in this moment talking about it because I realize how badly I want to reincorporate, a real relationship with a horse in my life. And there’s no reason why I shouldn’t, just because I live in a city.

[00:21:41] There’s always a way, there’s, there’s always a way to make it work. And certainly my father and my sister and my niece, they know people. And so the next time I go home to the farm, I’m gonna see if there’s a horse I could borrow to ride. Because I’m realizing just how much joy that that brings me. So my invitation for you this week is to reflect on.

[00:22:08] A time in your life where you received a heavy dose of tough love and how maybe at the time it was difficult and maybe you’re still a little upset. Maybe your tough love was a bit more painful. Maybe it was emotionally painful, maybe it was given to you by someone who’s not that loving and who didn’t always treat you so well.

[00:22:29] And if there’s healing to be done, I invite you. To carve out some time to do some healing around that. And then after you’ve done the healing, released, any heavy energy around it, feel the feels, breathe, release, as I like to say. See if you can go in and identify the beautiful gifts and growth and expansion that you received from that tough love.

[00:23:03] And not only did that moment of tough love that my brother gave me, help me to get back on the literal horse. I believe it helped me to get back up on all the metaphorical times and my life. I’ve fallen off the horse and I’ve always been able. To climb right back on because if I can do it with two broken arms and ride a kilometer home with two broken arms, 

[00:23:32] Then heck, I can get back on any metaphorical horse that I may fall off of. Alright, my dear ones, that is a wrap for this week. If you would like to give me a birthday present, I would love to receive from you a rating and review of Soul Guide Radio.

[00:23:51] Head on over to wherever it is you listen. Find the link for rating and reviews. Hit subscribe and let me know specifically what you received from a particular episode or what you generally receive from this. It really helps me to curate content for you. And also of course, I will read your beautiful birthday present on the air.

[00:24:17] And as always, until next time, may your soul guide the way.

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00:00 Introduction

00:11 Reflecting on Birthdays and Taking Charge

02:30 The Soul Guide Circle Community

02:54 Childhood Memories on the Family Farm

06:00 The Horse Incident: A Tale of Tough Love

14:50 The Aftermath and Lessons Learned

22:15 Invitation