It's Not The Mountain We Conquer

What a year 2018 has been. I had grand plans to write a new post every few weeks, and here we are, several months after my last one.

This year has been filled with a lot of peaks and many valleys. About a month after the barn fire at my parents farm, we lost our dog Sirius. He was active until the end and when his body decided it was time, we were able to help him peacefully cross to the other side - but it has been one of the greatest losses I have experienced. That same week our older horse Oliver had a few very strange days where we thought we would be losing him as well, but thankfully he pulled through and got back to fighting form.

This spring took its toll on me, but I also learned how to pick myself up and find the necessary balance to thrive. The past few years have felt very much like survival as I tried to manage the changes that come with leaving home and school to enter the workforce and become a “real adult.” During the stress of the fire, moving my horses to Northern VA, and losing Sirius, I became both physically and mentally unwell. I lost 10 pounds over the course of two weeks from not eating properly and stress, wasn’t working out, and was beyond exhausted all the time. One day I realized I was not on a sustainable path, and it was time to pick myself up and find some balance. So I did, and I hope sharing what I found to work will help those of you also working to find balance between your career, passions, and well-being.

Finding the right farm for my horses and myself was the first big change. All three of them have found the perfect home at Cabin Branch Farm. Their happiness and my ability to have the facilities to keep them in work with my schedule, in addition to the peace of mind of great care, is a huge stress reliever. It takes an hour for me to get out to the barn, but I enjoy being out there so much that the drive doesn’t bother me and has become an opportunity to catch up on podcasts (and eventually learn French when I get my CDs open). For the first time since I graduated, I feel that I have found the right location for my horses and as well as for myself in Arlington, which has made the commute to work practically obsolete.

My biggest advice to anyone who is struggling to find the balance between working full time and riding is to take the time to find the ideal location to make balancing everything as manageable as possible.

I’ve also really prioritized my own health. Taking the time to meal prep has been huge – I go to the barn right after work, so having something I can bring with me for dinner has been instrumental in keeping my energy up. I’m also a strange person that genuinely likes the gym and running, so making sure to fit the time in for that as many days a week as possible has helped me get my strength back, reduce my stress level, and help me clear my head.

Most importantly though, I’ve matured in my perspective on life. For the first time since I was probably 11 years old, I don’t have any true competition plans, and I’ve come to peace with that. My competitive goals haven’t changed, but I want to make sure my horses and I are in the best position to succeed before we get back out on course. After two great events with Cedric, his “startbox anxiety” (my new term for it) came back at our last event stronger than it’s been all year, and with all of the moving, pushing to compete him this month doesn’t make sense. We’re going to focus on getting his fitness back and attending a few schooling shows, then I’ll make some plans as to his competitive future from there. Chandler has a top-notch team working on his funky thoroughbred hooves, and is starting to get back in work, but we are taking it slow so we don’t diminish any of the progress we’ve made the past two months. No point to rushing him back to competing until he’s more than ready.

Interestingly, Roy has become the A team, and he is absolutely thriving. We’ve conquered indoors, started hacking and riding in fields, and are getting back to lateral work and jumping. He is still for sale, and I can’t wait to see what he does as someone’s primary prospect – he’s definitely a cool dude. If I could figure out making 3 horses work, he'd be staying with me.

I was thinking about all of this yesterday when I was hacking out on Cedric, my last ride of the day. I may not be regularly competing right now, but I have the opportunity to sit on three amazing horses every day. When I’m not on them, I’m working for a company in a space that is having an impact on our country. And in those few hours a week where I’m not doing either of those things, I have a wonderful, supportive group of friends and family to spend time with.

When the going gets tough, give yourself a short amount of time to wallow in it, and then pick yourself up, make a plan, and actively work to turn it around. While you may not always have control over everything in life, you do have control over how you handle it and the perspective you take. So, in the words of Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to summit Everest:

“It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”

And with that, it’s back to another work week, and a renewed determination to not wait two more months before writing another blog.

Cedric has become very good at posing for photos - thinking his second career may be modeling.

End of an Era

As many know, we had a fire in our barn on Thursday. We are incredibly lucky/blessed that it occurred during the day while all of the horses were outside. Our barn cat, Poca, was found in the loft and taken to the vet for smoke inhalation, but she came home Saturday and is doing well. The quick response of the fire department in putting it out contained the visible structural damage, but everything is covered in a layer of soot, and more equipment than originally expected will have to be replaced. Thankfully, the tack room was only effected by smoke, so while my tack currently smells like a bonfire, we did not lose any of it. Oddly enough, while the front of Cedric’s stall is completely destroyed, the pink lead rope we used as his stall guard is untouched. While Cedric will destroy any stall guard by just walking through it when he decides he wants to be out, he completely respects this leadrope and it has survived many years of keeping him in his stall. Despite the request not to touch anything while they’re in the process of assessing the damage, I grabbed that leadrope and it will now live in my trailer as a good-luck charm.

The range of emotions one faces in a situation like this is interesting. When I was in school, unexpectedly being picked up by my parents instantly filled me with dread. It was very likely something had happened to a family member or one of our animals. June 9th, 2009 stands out: that was the day my dad came to pick me up from school because Cedric was on his way to Tufts Veterinary Hospital for colic surgery, and the outcome did not look good (thankfully it was, and 9 years later he’s still leaping sideways 20 feet for no reason at random times during our ride). Now that I’m an adult and working, that dread comes from an unexpected phone call from one of my parents in the middle of the work day (we typically text about non-urgent issues). That was the phone call I received on Thursday from my mom – “Don’t panic, all the horses are fine, but we had a fire in the barn so your dad and I are both headed home.”

I joke that I should have a career in emergency response of some sort, as I tend to be very levelheaded and rational in a crisis. I recognized immediately that I needed to drive up there, but as the animals were safe and healthy, I could take a minute to wrap up anything at work and make sure my meetings for the rest of the day were covered. Great credit is due to the team I work with; everyone was (and continues to be) incredibly supportive and allowed me to push meetings around so that I could focus on helping my family out the past few days.

Thursday evening and Friday were spent sorting out the logistics of where the horses would live, getting the equipment/supplies we needed to replace right away, meeting with insurance inspectors and fire investigators, and moving horses around. The barn is not habitable due to the smoke damage (and the loss of two stalls), so Thursday night we moved all six horses to boarding barn nearby that was gracious enough to take us in. Our three older horses will be staying there, while I moved Cedric and Chandler down to Northern Virginia Friday afternoon, as that was the eventual plan so they could be closer to me. Roy decided to make our Thursday night even longer by taking a piece out of one of his hooves on the trailer ride to the new barn. Thankfully he didn’t damage anything important, and just needs to be on stall rest for the week while it heals before he comes down to Virginia to join my other two. Specific thank you to our farrier, Brandon Amos, our vet Jamie Peddy, and the team at Elixir Farm for being at the barn with us later than I’m sure any of us were happy about to take care of him.

The emotional aspect of what happened started to hit me on Saturday once I had a chance to slow down and process. I have refused to the play the “what-if” game of imagining scenarios where this didn’t happen during the day with the horses out, or the girls we had helping us hadn’t seen the smoke from the house as soon as they did. I’m not sure if this is an unhealthy way to process the event or not, but I don’t see any benefit doing so would provide. My mom and I both came to the realization Friday night on our drive back from dropping the boys in Virginia that this was the end of an era. It is unlikely my family will ever have horses on the property again, as the house has been for sale, and it will take a while for everything to be cleaned up and rebuilt. I spent many of my high school and college years training out of our barn, teaching students, and spending countless hours in it. I really felt this on our way home from dinner Friday night (none of us felt like cooking after the 24 hours we had had). It was cold out, and as I warmed up in my car on the drive home, I instinctively braced for the 10 minutes in the cold that night check would take – before I realized that was no longer something I would be doing. It’s amazing how much I’m going to miss that. At some point, I fully plan to have my own barn again, but for the time being this is a big change.

The positives: everyone is safe and healthy; we were able to find great places to board all of the horses; the barn is insured and will be rebuilt; the loss of hard-to-replace equipment like tack was minimal; I was forced to make a decision on barns and move my horses closer to me; the barn I moved them to is very well suited to get us legged-up for the competition season; and we have amazing people that care about us.

To the friend that drove me to my apartment to get my car, the friends that stayed on the phone with me during the drive up, our veterinary team and farrier, the barns that have opened their doors to us with little notice, the team I work with, and everyone who has reached out to check in on us, thank you. While we were incredibly fortunate compared to many others who have faced barn fires, the logistical stress and the loss of what has been a way of life for the past 9 years has made this a hard event to swallow.