We Are A Mosaic of All Our Past, Present and Future Selves

The New Year is a time of year where people post their highlight reels and talk about big personal wins, areas of growth and discuss their future resolutions.

While it can be a good practice for self improvement, I think it is also important for everyone to remember that the mistakes we make — our failures — are the very catalysts leading to the creation of our biggest wins.

Personal growth doesn’t generally happen without some sort of pressure, epiphany or newfound information resulting in our need for change. Our mistakes lead us to such knowledge or create the necessary pressure for us to move into the discomfort of new mindsets and the unknown.

Some of my biggest failures are what led me to the path I am on now, a path where I am learning more and more about horse behaviour and welfare each day, a path where I have vastly improved the way I approach horse training and how I view horses.

A path that has immensely improved the lives of every horse I touch…

Because it led me away from the harmful mindsets and cruel methods that I had grown so comfortable using. Methods that were causing me upset and grief under the surface and damaging my mental health in ways I never could have anticipated until I started to move away from using them.

In learning to approach horses with more patience and empathy, I learned how to be more patient and empathetic towards myself. I learned how to accept past wrongs and forgive myself for things that I had become so ashamed of.

I became more able to learn and grow because I was less frozen by the fear of failing or being wrong.

And thus started a journey of learning that grew and grew, the rate at which I changed and developed becoming faster and faster. I have learned more about myself and about horses in the last 5 years than I did in almost 20 years prior to that… Because my mind became more open to learning and I started to seek out new information to expand my knowledge base.

Openly acknowledging my failures and shortcomings was more empowering than I could have imagined. It unloaded the gun that people would use to fire off criticism and shame, because I could accept parts of myself that they may see, or, I could have enough confidence in my own self perception that their opinion of my flaws wouldn’t wound me so badly.

It was like a superpower, to be honest. For years, I was so paralyzed with fear about the negative opinions of others, even if I didn’t know or respect them and would never go to them for advice, that it damaged my wellbeing to the point of altering the way I showed up in the world. I felt trapped and stagnated and under constant judgment and surveillance, making trying anything new, or merely being perceived in public, feel inherently dangerous.

Letting go of that constant self judgment that I would then project onto strangers around me was like freeing myself from weighted shackles that threatened to drag me underwater and drown me.

Letting go of that baggage allowed me to approach horse training with increased patience because I wasn’t concerned about fulfilling arbitrary goals set by other horse people around me. I could finally just have fun with my horses, even if we were doing “nothing” according to others, perhaps, even especially then.

Suddenly, riding wasn’t of the utmost importance. A horse needing time off wasn’t the end of the world. I could enjoy groundwork and simply being with horses in ways that I never could before due to being so preoccupied with human-centric goals, largely around showing or certain accomplishments I felt I needed to reach in order to be accepted and viewed as successful and valuable by other horse people.

My love for horses was effectively reborn because the love was actually about the horse, not just the act of riding. It allowed me to really show up for my horses in the ways that they needed me to, without being so selfish and self-serving as I had been.

And, in my developing further patience for my horses’ mental, physical and emotional struggles, I learned to have more grace for myself. I explored my own mental health and found new, healthier coping mechanisms. I discovered that I have ADHD and think completely differently than other people, allowing me to finally understand why I felt on a different wavelength my whole life, why I struggled with things others may find easy. The knowledge of this freed me further.

These years of growth have been about freeing myself from an internal prison that I built and shackled myself into. It’s been about learning who I actually am, without the influence of outside opinion. As I dove headfirst into this new territory, I started to discover who I really am. What makes my heart sing, what I’m truly passionate about.

For years, I thought I wanted to be a competitive show rider and I chased that goal at the expense of mine and my horses’ wellbeing. I was frustrated by set backs and took it out on my horses. Little did I know, part of that upset was due to me chasing a dream that wasn’t actually my own.

I’m still in the process of self-discovery and probably will perpetually be in this stage, as I should be. I am a mosaic of a million different versions of myself, all a piece of the whole that is my present self. I will meet and say goodbye to many more versions of myself over the years and that is something quite beautiful.

And, this is all thanks to some of my greatest failures.

Some of my biggest mistakes.

They helped build the foundation of the person that I’ve become and who I am becoming.

I feel more free, more myself and more at peace than I have ever before.

I hope to continue chasing this feeling, I hope to continue becoming a better and better steward of welfare for horses, both my own and others.

I hope to unabashedly choose myself again and again, even if I' am unpalatable to some. Authenticity is freeing and the pain of people judging my true self stings an awful lot less than living a false version of myself to appeal to others and even then, still not pleasing everyone.

In choosing my true self, I’ve also connected with so many people that are far more aligned with my soul, rather than attracting those who only liked the versions of myself that I showed them, ones that were really masks that I wore in order to feel accepted.

Unmasking and accepting the good, the bad and the ugly of life has brought me more happiness and peace than I could have anticipated. I am well aware of the fact that I’ve become the type of person my past self would look at with anger and contempt, insistent that I’m being inauthentic, too soft and unimpressive when it comes to horse training… Because I’m doing “less” in terms of the value system that is showing, jump heights and more…

But, my past self was projecting the lack of connection to her real being onto other people who’d fully embraced who they were as people. My past self was angry and bitter and felt personally affronted by people demonstrating a level of self-acceptance and freedom that she hopelessly craved but could never grasp.

My past self was lost in the storm of life, finding stability by gripping onto other humans rather than hugging and stabilizing herself.

She was doing the best she could with the skills and understanding she had at the time. She never had malicious intent towards her horses, even when she did undeniably unkind things to them in the name of training. She was misled, led astray and confused about her own being and lashed out accordingly because of that.

And the same can be said about so many people. The unhappy, angry, mean tempered humans we encounter are often lost in a similar way. They lash out at the environment around them, not unlike the aggressive and unpredictable horses that I encounter in training, their needs woefully unmet. They seek outlets for internal turmoil, unhealthy outlets, sure, but the ones that are the easiest and most understandable for them to grasp in the moment.

My hope is for collective healing of the entire earth so that people can find the community that makes them feel loved and comfortable. And so they can learn to love themselves in the way that they deserve. So that they can find true happiness and positivity.

Life does not make finding yourself and achieving happiness easy. There are so many ingrained forms of judgment that encourage us to hate ourselves. There are so many hurdles that make life unfairly difficult. There are so many hardships people can encounter that seem insurmountable.

Wouldn’t it be lovely to engineer an earth that made these things easier for people to accomplish? That encouraged people to find their true selves and helped them through their hardships rather than leaving them alone to climb mountains that may seem impossible to conquer in times of distress?

I dream of that world.

Whether the outside world gets to that point, I hope to create that world in myself.

Sharing my journey as a horse person and my healing journey has been very cathartic for me. I hope to make people feel less alone in doing so. I hope to be a lighthouse to help people find their way in the dark. To be the support that they can lean on in the midst of a storm.

And, I want to be that person for my past self. I want to become the person she deserved all along.

I want to help show people how much more beautiful and bright our lives can be and how much richer our relationships with our horses and others can be if we just start to see things a little differently.

So much judgment, harshness and negativity is promoted in horse training. Naturally, these attitudes get projected onto the humans within the horse world, too. It makes escaping these pressures all the more difficult.

But escape is possible and the more people who find it, the easier it becomes for others to join in without the same fear of judgment and persecution of those who aren’t there yet.

So, here is to a happy new year.

One of failures, mistakes and growth.

Of welcoming many new versions of ourselves and saying goodbye to many old versions.

A perpetual journey of self development that never stops.

Because true authenticity involves inviting all of the new versions of yourself, rather than clinging to an identity that no longer serves you or accurately describes your personhood simply because people have known that version of you for so long. Because you have known that version of yourself for so long.

So, welcome all of the versions of yourself that you encounter.

Change is great. It is beautiful and bright.

Even if those who choose not to change and who cling to comfortable patterns try to make you feel like it is foolish or disingenuous.

Only you know who you really are.

And only you can free your true self.