My best friend and I frequently joke about our shared trauma. I’ll be venting about something, and often I end up saying, “I think everyone would benefit from being here for a bit”, referring to the barn. It was the place where I experienced the most high-pressure and chaotic environment. My time grooming in college was some of the best and worst moments. Even though on paper I am under much more pressure now, I have so much more tolerance than before. It doesn’t make me freeze. I trust myself to navigate through challenges. The only way I was able to learn how to work through the discomfort was, unfortunately, to live it.
I struggled to find myself for a while. Growing up feeling excluded and unable to fit in. I have so many memories of both of these, beginning at such an early age; I honestly can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel that way. Before my life revolved around horses, I spent many of my summers bored, with some stages of depression thrown into the mix. I was medicated in middle school for a brief period of time following a depression diagnosis. I look back on that period now and feel so grateful it didn’t persist. There were weeks, months where I would wake up, do nothing all day, sleep, and do it all again. Then I became a working student. And I was helpful. I made friends. I was able to do the thing I loved the most: ride. And I felt like I was good at it. I wasn’t the best, but it came naturally to me.
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The horse industry is a tough place to grow up in. I didn’t realize I was surrounded by snakes. There were many challenging dynamics and relationships I had to navigate from a young age. From noticing how certain people treated others, drug and alcohol abuse, verbal abuse, language barriers, narcissists, and pathological liars. While I don’t think it brings out the best in anyone to be in those types of environments, I was too sheltered to even realize who I was surrounded by. People I put on a pedestal would soon become my peers, and then I’d see the skeletons in their closets. I received a lot of validation from finally finding people I related to, plus they wanted me around. And the more I became useful, the more that became true.
All I ever wanted to do was ride. That statement is still something I identify with to this day. I sacrificed my free time, money, energy, relationships, mental health, etc. It’s almost as if there was a day the industry started taking from me, and it never stopped. There was a point where I committed fully, and my focus was locked on putting all energy into making it as far as possible. That meant somehow landing at the nicest facilities in the area with an accomplished and knowledgeable trainer. I couldn’t believe that I even had proximity to someone at that level of the sport. And I had the opportunity to learn from him and the other people working there, so all I wanted to do was work. I voluntarily would work 7 days a week because I simply loved it. This eventually led to a nasty cycle of burning myself out. That, coupled with the emotional highs and lows of riding, wore me down. It’s a sport that can be really challenging at times. Sometimes you can’t get your body to do what you need; other times you’re scared; sometimes it’s difficulty with the horse. I experienced it all, incredibly intensely, because that’s who I am, or that’s a deeper pattern from trauma we have yet to explore!
I ended up almost quitting. Many times. I don’t even know if almost is the right word. I did quit. Then something pulled me back in. The first time was after I had sold my first sales horse, Levi. I fell off him so many times. While it sounds like an exaggeration, almost every time I got on during the winter resulted in me hitting the ground. He was a very sensitive horse, and I didn’t have enough feel, body control, or even knowledge/experience. There was one week I fell off, landed on my knees, ripped my favorite pants, and then the horse kneed me in the face a few days later when I was clipping his legs, giving me a black eye. I ended up becoming terrified of him, and the day he was sold was one of the best days. Then I took Mars to the EAP; he was incredible. One of my favorite horses of all time. Mars was sold shortly after, so I leased Tia, and we had a hard time. I lost all of my confidence and ability to even ride. I would always go in the ring and just freeze. She was a very sweet horse, but we really weren’t an ideal match. So after that summer, I was done trying to force owning and showing. I bought Colby - I’ll tell that story another time - who ended up having a chronic suspensory injury. Learn from my experience: don’t buy a horse without a trainer as a college kid, and if you do - use a real vet. However, Colby ended up being the best decision I ever made. But 2 years into an unsuccessful rehab following the suspensory diagnosis, I just wanted to let him be retired in a field. This was another time I thought I quit. The universe had other plans. He came back to work way better than I had ever imagined he could. We ended up showing in the 1.10s (not successfully; the 1.00s were our thing). From rehabbing him to horse shows - it was a journey that went through many iterations of ‘I might quit’.
While I wouldn’t say I quit during my most recent break, I did stop riding for a pretty extended period of time. It started at the end of March 2025, while we were still in Florida. The stress had gotten to me, and I felt like I had no energy. There was none left to give, and especially none for myself. It was the crash that followed the most severe expression of my pattern of overextension. I wasn’t sleeping much. Never took time to relax. I stopped taking care of myself. My finances spiraled out of control. I was struggling the most mentally. There I was, owning the nicest horse, and I couldn’t even bring myself to get on him. It was the result of months of me trying to please others, to be valuable to them. All my thoughts were related to “how can I benefit ‘my investor’” (he was really simply a lender), “I hope it works out for us all”, “How can I provide value for everyone.” “How can I make everyone money?” “How can I support?” It was like a constant extraction of energy for months. I didn’t understand where it all went. Why did the floor just go out from under me? None of it made any sense. I thought I was doing the work. Yet everything I was manifesting fell apart!
This came with some incredibly powerful realizations. Not right away. And I’m sure they would have been there if I were able to pull myself out of my perception. But I was stuck in such a tunnel; it’s like I was strapped to a rocket ship. I pushed the launch button, then just had to ride it out. I think it was perfectly described in the summary of my voice memos highlighting some different energetic exchanges:
give enough -> appreciation
prove enough -> trusted
accommodate enough -> chosen
carry enough -> feel secure
The big realization for me was when I asked myself, “Why am I doing all of this?” Things got pretty intense in the end. The purchase of horses was somehow my fault, even though I was hesitant to sign the contract. It was my fault the trading algo had losses, even though ‘my investor’ had made me promise to only work on a new algo, leaving the existing one alone. This was something I agreed to but didn’t have high conviction in. And to this day, I think if I had kept my focus on the original strategy, things likely would have unfolded very differently in terms of PnL. He incentivized me to work on this new algo with more trading capital more quickly. A similar pattern to the offer of the second loan. While I may not have always made the best decisions, I was always honest with pure intention. When I sit with that now, I feel quite sad, reflecting on how much I was trying to look out for everyone. Yet I ended up the villain; nothing I was doing was enough. I started to question why even try? Nothing I could do felt right, so I just did nothing. And that was where I found the escape and comfort I was looking for - just letting it all crash. It’s kind of funny how that is ‘where I found my peace.’
I find myself in similar positions in my career now, making me really need to confront myself. While I think the prior situations were toxic, I am now lucky to be in a place where I am surrounded by amazing people. The pattern of sacrifice is still incredibly dense. I have given up my sleep, time with family, and even riding for my job at times. While it’s all been voluntary, that doesn’t make it any less challenging. There have been moments where I can definitely see those patterns of searching for the energetic exchange. I think the biggest one for me is feeling secure.
The job search was much harder than I had imagined it would be. The prior times I had been on the hunt, I received multiple offers pretty quickly. I started the process in April by going to everyone I knew, but didn’t have much luck with their connections. At the time, I had a big ego and thought I’d get a really high salary, but also kind of needed it to dig myself out of the hole. At first I didn’t get discouraged; it was normally slow in the beginning. But the old tactics didn’t really work. It wasn’t as easy as “reach out to the recruiter” or the other tricks I had used. The barrier between AI or other filters and my resume felt too large. If I did make it into an interview, I cracked when grilled on probability. That’s the one thing that bites me in the ass from my lack of pre-college education. Probability was never something I really got, but I don’t really remember being taught it either. I had a final interview at one firm; I stayed up all night to work on the project, my choice for some reason, just for them to tell me my salary ask was too high. They didn’t even counter with something else; it was a plain rejection. I felt like I wouldn’t find a job and even questioned my career path. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to be a software engineer. I could always go back to grooming, or figure out something else. And even at the lowest points, I had faith it would all work itself out. I just didn’t know why I had to be dragged in the mud in the process. The end of this story is a good one, though, landing the job of my dreams. I truly feel so lucky to get to show up and do what I do every day. I get to work on the coolest problems with some really awesome people. It feels good to be surrounded by people who strive to do better themselves, and also motivate you to be better.
I wish I had a deeper understanding of my motivation to execute at such a high standard. I find myself always chasing the best. This comes up the most for me when I sit with the horses. Why do I still pour so much energy into this? Then in my job, I wonder why I feel the need to show up so intensely, consistently. But I think there is something so rewarding about the work. About getting to show up each day trying to be a little better. Falling in love with the mundane, the day-to-day. And I think I have the grit to be a top performer in both of those areas of my life, even though it seems like a crazy feat. I used to chase security through self-abandonment. There has been a transition; you could even say I jumped to a new timeline, where the security I’m looking for I find through showing up as the best version of myself. A key learning there is that it doesn’t mean full intensity all of the time, like my pattern in Florida. It means cycles, giving and taking, balance. And it’s been incredibly tricky for me to even start to grasp, but there has been some good progress so far. Particularly in riding. It feels like the day-to-day is really paying off. Both of my horses have been going incredibly well.
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