Horses a Calling

When I was a kid, I had a horse who carried a lot of fear. He was my heart horse but our relationship was not without challenge.

His name was Spectacle (aka Red). He was a beautiful chestnut appendix quarter as shinny as a copper penny. But he, like many of us had lived many lives and had come with a colored past. He had experienced trauma, isolation, and uncertainty before I took him home and I quickly learned (as a middle schooler) that force wouldn’t work. Red had a honest disposition, loved human affection, but was always living on edge in a state of heightened reactivity. If I wanted a trusting relationship with him, I had to learn to communicate in a different way. I had to learn how to listen, how to be patient, and how to non-verbally speak in a way that was honest and consistent. I had to learn to be more like a horse. I didn’t have the language for it then, but what I was learning was integrity.

Martha Beck describes integrity as being undivided—when what you think, feel, and do are in alignment. Horses live in that state naturally. They respond to congruence, and they reflect it back to us without judgment. That early experience stayed with me.

Years later, as I moved through my own career transition and became an ICF-certified coach, I began to see how those same skills—communication, awareness, persistence—were not just horse skills. They were human skills. Life skills.

And then life shifted again.

In a single day, I lost both my father and my grandmother within hours of each other.

That kind of loss has a way of stopping everything. It asks you to pause, to re-evaluate, and to sit in the space between what was and what comes next. There was no controlling the moment, only anguish and surrender, but I wasn’t hopeless. Living all facets of this experience deepened my understanding of transition in a way nothing else could.

Now, my work is the integration of my years of education, lived experiences, and life lessons. It is sharing what horses have taught me since age 6.

I coach people who find themselves in that in-between space—when something has ended, something is changing, or something no longer fits—and help them reconnect with their own sense of direction.

Not by giving you answers but by showing you glimmers of a path forward. One of clarity, integity, alignment.

I am your guide, and the animals are your teachers.