Changed by a Horse

Usually I avoid looking through old pictures because they tend to be an emotional landmine for me. But hey. Poor life choices happen sometimes.

Regardless, as I looked through things I hadn't thought about in years, I realized that my adult re-rider status can be divided into three very clear phases. 

PHASE ONE: Izzy

This is my first horse. She's a TB/Oldenburg mare that I was given and of course I thought I would have her forever. I was optimistic and naive. She was beautiful but hard to deal with. 

And yet. Even when things were bad, there were days I could get on her bareback and/or bitless and toodle around. Yeah, she was toxic for me and yeah the problems she gave me, I still deal with to this day.

But hey. It wasn't always like that. Back before she scared the shit out of me, we had a lot of fun. Sometimes I kinda miss that self.

PHASE TWO: Cuna

Cuna was the horse that carried me through some of the hardest horsey things. Learning to let go of Izzy, learning to function in the competitive horse world, learning what the inner workings of that world are like, and learning how to navigate what I really wanted out of all this. 

Cuna kept me from walking away from horses and Cuna made sense of all the tangled emotions. That horse, guys. <3

Cheese factor high here, but that horse really shaped the person I am today.

PHASE THREE: Courage

I say Cuna gave Courage to me and I 100% realize how sappy and over-the-top that sounds.

I stand by that. Cuna carried me through the hard horsey things, but now Courage carries me through the hard life things. What we learn in the horse world is really just a microcosmic version of the macrocosm we live in.

With Courage, I'm wiser and stronger than I ever was before. I can take the long view of a situation and decide what I am and am not ok with. It's not that I know how to do everything. It's that I know what I want and what I'm willing to put in to get it. Courage is my grown-up (ish) horse.