08/25/2026
I waited a long time for this little piece of paper to make its way here from Canada.
Funny, because I think I've been waiting most of my life for what it represents. ❤️
When I was little and people asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer always involved horses.
I just didn't know what that was supposed to look like.
For years, I thought maybe it meant training horses. I taught riding lessons. I worked in barns. I even went to college for AODA counseling because somewhere in me, I already knew I wanted to help people through horses. I volunteered with a therapeutic riding program. I explored different paths and tried to make different versions of this dream fit.
None of them quite did.
Eventually, I walked away from working with horses altogether.
And strangely enough, I think that's when they started teaching me what I was actually supposed to do.
For several years, horses weren't a job. They weren't something I had to train, teach with, sell, accomplish something with, or turn into a career.
They were just mine again.
They were sitting in the woodshed and listening to them breathe. Smelling their necks. Watching them graze. Climbing on Athena ba****ck and running through the hills, jumping logs and laughing like I was a kid again.
During some of the hardest years of my life, they were somewhere I could go where nothing was expected of me.
They didn't need an explanation.
They didn't care what kind of day I'd had, what mistakes I'd made, what someone had said about me, or whether I had my life figured out.
They just met me exactly where I was.
And somewhere along the way, horses stopped being something I wanted to do something with and became something I understood differently.
I started realizing that maybe my calling wasn't simply helping people with horses.
Maybe it was creating space for horses to help people.
Then I found Equine Connection - The Academy of Equine Assisted Learning Inc
I'd watched them for a while. I kept circling back, wondering whether this might finally be the thing I'd been trying to put words to for years.
On July 16, 2025, I applied for their Pay-It-Forward scholarship.
Two days later, I broke my back.
Six days after applying, while my entire life suddenly looked very different than I'd planned, I found out I'd been chosen for the scholarship.
You really can't make this stuff up. 😂
At the time, I probably would have preferred God's timing to involve slightly fewer fractured vertebrae.
Looking back, though, I can see how much that season taught me about surrender, receiving help, slowing down, listening, rebuilding and trusting a path I couldn't see yet.
It took me longer than I originally thought it would.
And it took exactly as long as it was supposed to.
Today, I'm officially holding my Equine Assisted Learning Facilitator certification. ❤️🐴
And this certificate means so much more to me than completing a program.
It represents every wrong turn that taught me something.
Every barn.
Every horse.
Every job.
Every person who encouraged me.
Every person who doubted me.
Every season when horses were simply the place I went to breathe.
Every time I wondered whether I needed to give up this ridiculous idea that somehow I could build a life around horses AND helping people.
And every little nudge from God that kept saying,
Not yet. Keep going.
Now I get to stand beside these incredible animals and watch them do for other people pieces of what they've spent my whole life doing for me.
And THAT has been one of the most humbling parts.
I've already watched participants recognize things about themselves they couldn't see before. I've watched horses bring conversations to the surface that I never could have planned. I've watched people discover confidence, boundaries, communication, trust, intuition and connection through something as seemingly simple as interacting with a horse.
And I'm learning my horses all over again, too.
I'm beginning to recognize their individual teaching styles—the things one horse will challenge, another will soften, the person one gravitates toward, the moment another chooses to walk away.
I facilitate.
They teach.
And boy, were these horses made for this work. ❤️
I don't know exactly where God is taking Crossroads Connection.
I have dreams. Big ones. Probably slightly unreasonable ones. 😂 Although if theres one thing I've learned from this Journey, theres no such thing as "Unreasonable" or "Unattainable".
But I know what I hope to leave behind.
I hope this work creates little lights everywhere it goes.
I hope someone walks away understanding themselves differently, and that changes how they love their child, their husband, them selves.
I hope someone learns what a healthy boundary feels like and carries it into their relationships.
I hope someone who's spent years believing they aren't enough discovers that they don't have to perform to be worthy of connection.
I hope one person finds their light and carries it home, and somehow that light reaches another person, and another, and another.
I hope someday, when my work here is finished and I'm looking down from Heaven, I can see all those little places where God allowed me to leave a mark.
Not because everyone remembers my name.
But because something changed.
Maybe that's why this past month has hit me so deeply.
Millions of people watched a little dun mare carry me up a hill toward my husband.
They didn't know Athena.
They didn't know our almost 15 years together.
They didn't know everything she had carried me through.
And yet, over and over, strangers told me:
“I could feel it.”
They felt the love.
They felt the trust.
They felt the connection.
Through a screen.
And I don't think that's an accident.
Because connection is bigger than words. Sometimes another living being lets us experience something our minds haven't figured out how to explain yet.
Horses have done that for me my entire life.
Now I get to dedicate my work to giving them the space to do it for others.
So yes, technically this is a picture of me holding my certification in Crocs, after another evening spent building this crazy, incredible dream, with two of the horses I get to build it alongside. 🤣❤️
But to me?
This is a little girl who always knew she was supposed to work with horses finally understanding why.
This is Crossroads Connection.
Horses helping humans find their path.
And I have a feeling God is only getting started. ❤️🐴
