My seven year-old self was obsessed with drawing, horses, and being outside; to this day, those core pillars remain the same.
They say that your seven year-old self is the truest essence of your being, that the things that lit you up at that age are embedded in your soul.
on relearning what it means to be free...
I am a dreamer but a doer
A traveler and a homebody
An introvert and an extravert
I can connect with many, but
not many people know my depths
I am from Wisconsin, and although that’s where I was planted and grew strong roots, I knew I wouldn't stay. After college, where I got my Bachelor’s in Graphic Design, I booked a one-way ticket to New Zealand, which was the first of many countries I traveled over the years. I met my Scottish now-husband there, and now his homeland is where I reside today, along the windy west coast, acclimating to the mild and wet winters and the mild and wet summers. This land holds me in the unfurling of the next chapter.
...to connection with energies that I am still trying to understand. My body is the vessel in which I am blessed to experience this life in, and it carries me to far away places, to connect with people, cultures, and landscapes that I can store in a bank of sweet memories and senses.
My imagination carries me to lands far away...
I still have the vision of connecting people with nature and horses, but the ways in which I do that have drastically shifted over the years, and I have opened up to a whole new way of being because of it.
When I began to see what is wrong with the industry, with what we normalize doing with and to horses, I couldn’t unsee it. It felt like someone slowly tearing pieces of my heart away in small chunks at a time, one revelation after the next...
My journey with horses has been one from a distance for most of my life, but after being a trail guide in different places, wanting to share the special connection of being on a horse in nature with others, my perspectives shifted thanks to my catalyst, Merlin.
I took their symbolism of freedom as my own, using their bodies to carry me to liberation, through forests, over mountains, across beaches.
A ride of a lifetime,
Yes,
But now it’s time to slow down,
Walk beside them,
And relearn from the ground up
What it means to be free,
truly free.
For how I loved horses,
Was not love at all.
