The Story Behind A Place Along the Way

When people ask how I ended up offering equine connected EMDR intensives, I usually smile because the answer begins long before graduate school, long before EMDR, and even before I knew what trauma therapy was. It starts with a little girl who couldn't stop wishing for a horse.

From the time I was about five years old, every birthday candle I blew out, every shooting star I spotted, and every dandelion I scattered into the wind carried exactly the same wish: Please let me have a horse someday. I wasn't the child who grew out of the horse phase. Every extra dollar was tucked away, every horse book was read until the pages curled, and I spent years imagining the horse who might one day become mine. Somewhere deep down, I always believed she was out there waiting for me.

A horse I loved dearly in 6th grade, named Kody (possibly the most spoiled horse on earth during that time).

She finally arrived when I was twenty seven years old.

For more than two decades, I thought owning a horse was the dream I had been chasing. Looking back now, I realize it was actually the beginning of an entirely different dream.

Around that same time, another lifelong dream was quietly unfolding. Unlike many people who discover their calling later in life, I feel incredibly fortunate that I knew in high school I wanted to become a therapist. That certainty came from having a therapist of my own who became a steady, grounding presence during one of the hardest seasons of my life. She never tried to rescue me or fix me. Instead, she had an incredible way of helping me feel seen, understood, and less alone. She became my North Star, and from that point on, I never really took my eyes off the path she unknowingly helped illuminate.

The years that followed were filled with graduate school, licensure, EMDR training, trauma certifications, Natural Lifemanship, equine professional certification, consultation groups, and thousands of hours sitting with people as they untangled stories their nervous systems had been carrying for years. At the time, becoming a therapist and someday owning a horse felt like two completely separate dreams. I could not have imagined that one day they would become inseparable.

Like many riders, I assumed horse ownership would revolve around showing. I wanted to ride beautifully, earn ribbons, improve my skills, and make my trainer proud. That was the culture I had grown up in, and without realizing it, I had also learned to measure myself that way. Success looked polished. Worth felt connected to achievement. There was always another goal to chase and another standard to meet.

Then, very quietly, Nora began asking me a different question. What if none of that was actually what I was looking for?

Leaving the show world was not one dramatic decision. It happened gradually, and to be honest, it was much harder than I expected. There were moments when I wondered whether I was wasting all those years of training or somehow failing by walking away from something that had defined me for so long. But as our relationship deepened, something unexpected happened. The ribbons mattered less. The opinions of other people mattered less. Instead of focusing on how riding looked from the outside, I became captivated by how it felt from the inside. Somewhere along the way, I stopped riding to prove something and started riding because I genuinely loved the relationship we were building together.

Today, some people tell me I am wasting Nora's potential because she is a Warmblood. Horses like her are traditionally bred to compete, so choosing a quieter life centered around connection instead of competition does not always make sense to people. They do not quite know what to make of the fact that she spends her days helping people regulate their nervous systems, standing quietly with someone who is grieving, wandering trails, and teaching me about relationship. I understand why people see it that way. I just do not. I think she is living her purpose. In many ways, I think I am too.

Nora and me during our first week together (my inner child jumping for joy)!

For example, people are sometimes surprised when I tell them I do not really go to the gym anymore. I do not run miles and miles every day either. Most of my movement comes from mucking stalls, hauling hay, carrying water buckets, fixing fences, hiking fields, and spending long afternoons outside with Nora and the rest of the animals. It is not optimized or tracked by a watch, and no one congratulates me for it. It simply feels like my life. That relationship with movement did not come naturally. It was hard earned through many years of recovery from my own eating disorder. There was a time when exercise felt transactional and driven by fear and compulsion. I believed movement had to earn me something or change my body in order to be worthwhile. Today, movement feels completely different. It has become an expression of caring for the life I have built rather than trying to change myself. I do not move because I hate my body. I move because I love this life, and this life naturally asks me to.

As I look back, I realize I was not just changing the way I rode. I was changing the way I lived. I became less interested in performing, less interested in proving myself through achievement, and less interested in chasing goals simply because they looked impressive. Instead, I found myself asking a much quieter question. Does this actually feel like my life? That question has become one of the greatest gifts Nora has ever given me.

Celebrating certification in Natural Lifemanship, amongst so many other life experiences and growth points together!

Ironically, I think that shift has made me a far better therapist than any certification ever could. Trauma so often teaches us that love, belonging, and safety must be earned through perfection, productivity, people pleasing, or achievement. So many of us spend years trying to become someone worthy of rest, connection, or peace. Horses have never believed that. Nora certainly does not. She has taught me, over and over again, that presence matters more than perfection, that relationship cannot be forced, and that healing begins the moment we stop performing long enough to be fully ourselves.

This September, my fiancée Julie and I are moving to Colorado, where Nora and I will finally get to build a life that reflects everything she has taught me. We will live together on the same property where I will welcome people into trauma healing intensives. Sometimes I still have to pause and let that sentence sink in. The little girl who wished on birthday candles gets to wake up every morning, walk outside to see her horse, and invite people into a space intentionally designed for deep healing. The teenager who dreamed of becoming a therapist because one changed her life gets to do that work every day.

The woman who spent more than twenty years wishing for a horse has discovered something she never could have imagined. Nora was never the finish line. She was the guide leading me toward a life I never knew to wish for.

If you have found yourself here, maybe you are searching for something similar. Not another place to perform or prove yourself, but a place where you can slow down, reconnect with yourself, and remember that healing does not ask you to become someone new. Sometimes it simply asks you to come home to who you have been all along.

Welcome to A Place Along the Way.