My friend Pamela’s face is poem, canvas of feeling and emotion. I have to confess that I love Pamela, so does Maria – they are sisters in a powerful way. They each understand where the other comes from. Sometimes I wish Pamela felt less than she does, in her face, her eyes, her mouth, her bearing, her hands is every intense emotion in the spectrum.

She has suffered almost unendurable pain and loss and cruelty, her life a shattered mosaic of change and challenge. She has been driven to the edge of madness and back again, she has lost none of her radiance and powerful and heart. Sometimes it takes my breath away to be around her.

She is devoting her life to saving the big horses, the draft horses that built our world and are being forgotten by a greedy and disconnected society. We talked today about the many women who have been burned alive by men in recent centuries for being witches. You surely would have been one of them, I told her, and she smiled, she said yes, I think I would have been burned alive.

She put up a new blog, a new voice, today.

In our culture, we don’t burn women like that to death, we marginalize them, drive them to the edge, keep them off of television and away from big-paying corporations, far from political office, we harass them for their beliefs and demand again and again that they recommit themselves work that is almost impossible.

Pamela grew up in the third world, she understands what it means to be an outsider, to stand outside of the tent. But that radiant smile is never far away, as are the tears of loss and disappointment. I think sometimes that being alive means to feel, and that makes Pamela a person who has shown up for life in the most basic way. I am so happy to know her, to see her launch her own new blog, to hear her commit to moving ahead with life after the shattering death of her husband and my friend Paul.

The horses are her guides, her partners, her inspiration. She will never abandon them.

Pamela has many good reasons to be disappointed in the good faith of human beings, she is more committed than ever to loving people and animals and helping to save the earth.