05/23/2026
Ten years ago, my life looked very different.
I realized looking back on these memories on my personal account that not a lot of people who follow this page knew me back then, and 2016 was such a formative year for me as a horsewoman that it feels wrong to have never talked about it here.
In 2016, I completed my senior thesis work for my bachelor of arts degree. The show I created was called Release, and it featured drawings of horses I knew and loved from the place where I learned to ride when I was ten, and where I worked and continued to learn in college.
Light Horse Farm, owned at the time by Leslie Sebers, was a haven. It was my peace while I was balancing all of the work and stress of my senior year of college. I learned so much during my time there, and I was excited for a future with horses. Leslie was schooling me in dressage, jumping, barn management, and anything she could think of. She was my mentor, my teacher, and my friend.
At the beginning of 2016, in the deepest and coldest part of winter, Leslie unexpectedly passed away. During that time, I found myself on autopilot, doing what needed to be done - and there was so, so much to be done. The horses needed attention. The stalls still needed to be cleaned, the horses fed, pickups organized. Boarders had to arrange new situations; Leslie's beloved lesson ponies needed homes. Day by day, the tack room emptied. There were fewer stalls to clean, fewer horses to feed. People picked up their horses and said tearful goodbyes. Leslie's animals, from her dog to her Andalusian gelding to her little spotted lesson pony, left the farm.
And then one day, there was just me, standing in a silent barn.
That was the worst day. I pushed her old four wheeler into the barn when it refused to start in the cold. I closed the doors, turned off the lights, and locked the gate for the last time.
When I got back to school for my final semester, I informed my professors I would be changing my entire thesis from what I'd been working on; I would now be drawing horses.
The show gave me a space to grieve and to say goodbye to the horses, to Leslie, to Light Horse, after it was all over. "Release" was an acknowledgement of what I'd lost, but more than that, it was a regular part of Leslie's vocabulary. She said it in this sort of sing-song voice during lessons as a reminder to release tension from her students, reminding us to give our horses a place to stretch. I hear it even now when I'm holding my reins too tightly, when I don't realize I've been holding my breath while I'm riding.
I miss Leslie often, and I think about what she'd say when I'm working with horses now. She would want me to long line horses much more often than I do. She would be appalled at the amount of dust gathering on my dressage saddle. But I think she'd be proud. She believed in the potential of everyone; every student, every horse. I'm grateful she believed in me.
