10. Cowgirl up
INTRO
Louise Hay said the body loves you.
It maps where the hurt is buried.
Daddy always said, "It's in your head."
He was right — just not the way he meant.
I know they loved me, but their love was tough.
Cowgirl up.
VERSE
The hardest part isn't the past.
It's watching Mom and Dad decline in real time —
Sickness is the only intimacy they have left.
I blocked them in therapy.
Unblocked when the strip turned pink.
I wanted them to know their grandson.
Momma used to tell me: “Lie in the bed you made.”
Now they won't leave the house.
Momma could read the Bible at five, knew every verse.
Now she can barely look me in the eye — skin covered in tattoos.
She told me, "It feels like you're defacing my mother —
you looked so much like her."
Fenced herself in. I stopped hoping.
She buried her life's rage in her joints —
now her hips hold the score.
A lifetime of swallowed screams.
They came out as COPD.
PRE-CHORUS
They don't talk about feelings, just about weather and the past.
Every ache Momma had was an excuse not to see me.
Sad daughter, watching them decline — I still can't get closer.
Now the bed they made is where they fade.
CHORUS
Cowgirl up, they said.
But the body keeps the score.
Every "it's in your head" came back as something more.
They taught me to be a rock. They became sand.
Daughter of the Unreachable. Broken reins in a trembling hand.
Cowgirl up. Cowgirl up.
VERSE 2
Daddy called Mom a hypochondriac for years —
then a bee sting put him down for a week.
His abscess is the family emergency, but our pain? He couldn't see.
"Don't be a victim," he preached, then spent decades telling his aches to anyone who'd listen.
Every conversation's a pre‑existing condition.
Daddy forgave the man who beat him. Ignores the daughter who needed him.
He survived the belt. Then his spine gave out.
His stomach ate itself — ulcers, kidney stones.
His mouth full of what he lost.
The northers are a crisis. The dust is a diagnosis.
Their kids are strangers. Their sickness is a sentence.
I'm not in it.
PRE-CHORUS
They don't talk about feelings, just about weather and the past.
Every ache Momma had was an excuse not to see me.
Sad daughter, watching them decline — I still can't get closer.
Now the bed they made is where they fade.
[long pause]
CHORUS
Cowgirl up, they said.
But the body keeps the score.
Every "it's in your head" came back as something more.
They taught me to be a rock. They became sand.
Daughter of the Unreachable. Broken reins in a trembling hand.
Cowgirl up. Cowgirl up.
BRIDGE
The body doesn't forget. It just stores what we couldn't feel.
Their bodies wrote the memoir they never could —
etched into illness and autoimmune prayers.
Every diagnosis is a locked door between us.
As they lie in the bed they made, wondering where everybody went.
CHORUS
Cowgirl up, they said.
But the body keeps the score.
Every "it's in your head" came back as something more.
They taught me to be a rock. They became sand.
Daughter of the Unreachable. Broken reins in a trembling hand.
Cowgirl up. Cowgirl up.
OUTRO
Toughness without tenderness is just a slower way to break.
They wanted me to be tough. I am.
I'm tough enough to admit I needed them.
And tough enough to live without them.
I love them from here.
