For most of my life I tried to control outcomes. A fall from the horse reminded me that the deeper work is learning to stay present, when life surprises you.
Two weeks ago, I made a split-second decision that broke six ribs, my clavicle, and punctured my lung in two places.
A branch from an old tree skimmed the top of my head while I was riding. For a brief moment I was disoriented. Instead of staying on the horse and trusting him — and trusting myself — I jumped.
The strange thing is, I’ve done this before.
Years ago, when I was 38 and living in Washington, D.C., I was taking dressage lessons, near the end of a marriage I didn’t yet know was ending. Toward the end of one lesson, my horse spooked while we were cantering.
Instead of riding through it, I jumped.
Not because I was thrown.
Not because I wasn’t capable.
I jumped because I didn’t trust myself.
I didn’t trust that I could stay steady inside uncertainty.
The fall left me with a concussion, and I stopped riding for years.
Around that same time — about a year before I left my husband — a woman entered my life who worked with traumatized horses. She was one of the most centred people I had ever met.
There was nothing flashy about her. She didn’t pretend to be an expert or speak with authority simply to impress.
She showed up with presence.
She listened.
She breathed.
She noticed.
And she taught me something, I didn’t yet understand.
You cannot regulate a horse until you regulate yourself.
At the time, I didn’t even know what that meant.
I had never learned how to listen to my body. I had never learned how to feel my feelings. I knew how to project competence. I knew how to work hard and show up as the capable one in the room.
But inhabiting my own body was something entirely different.
It has taken years to understand what she was quietly modelling.
Regulation is not control.
Presence is not performance.
Confidence is not dominance.
And learning to stay inside your body is a lifelong practice.
Two weeks ago, at 55, I fell off a horse at the small ranch down the road from my house in Mexico, where I’d been riding regularly since moving here last year.
I had ridden that trail many times. I knew the old tree was there. I knew certain branches hung low.
But I was in a state that only horses have ever given me.
When I gallop and share breath with a horse, something extraordinary happens. My breath becomes loud. The horse’s breath becomes loud. Our bodies begin moving in the same rhythm.
Movement stops feeling like effort and becomes cohesive/starts feeling like connection.
It is difficult to describe.
But it feels like freedom.
Not adrenaline.
Not escape.
Unity.
For someone whose nervous system has spent a lifetime oscillating between hyper-vigilance and intense focus — shaped by trauma, pattern recognition, and a brain that processes the world a little differently — that kind of embodied presence is rare.
When I am truly with a horse, I am completely in my body.
That day I was in that state.
And I didn’t see the branch.
It skimmed my head and startled me. For a moment I lost my orientation. Instead of breathing through it and trusting the connection between the horse and myself, I reacted.
I jumped.
Six broken ribs.
A shattered clavicle.
A punctured lung.
Lying in the hospital afterward, I couldn’t stop thinking about the pattern.
The first time I jumped, I didn’t trust myself enough to stay.
This time, I trusted the feeling so much that I lost awareness of what was around me.
Both moments revealed something about the way my nervous system moves through the world.
For most of my life, I survived by controlling outcomes.
I hustled.
I anticipated.
I worked harder than everyone else.
I tried to sound intelligent, capable, impressive.
Control helped me survive chaos.
It helped me navigate complicated family dynamics, build a career, leave relationships that weren’t right, and move through rooms where I often felt different from everyone else.
But control also tightens the body.
It narrows perception.
It creates urgency where curiosity could live.
It convinces you that if you stop controlling everything — relationships, opportunities, perceptions — something will fall apart.
In the years since my diagnosis and after decades of therapy, recovery work, meditation, and reconnecting with nature, I am beginning to see things differently.
I am learning neutrality.
Not detachment.
Not passivity.
But steadiness.
The ability to watch instead of control.
To remain curious instead of forcing outcomes.
To trust what unfolds instead of hustling life into place.
A few weeks before the accident, I created an experience at the ranch for eight girls, living in a safe house for girls who had been trafficked by their families.
One girl remained seated, while the others approached the mare we had brought into the arena. She wasn’t disruptive. She simply watched quietly from her chair.
While the others were petting or brushing the horse, the mare slowly turned her head and placed it directly in the girl’s lap.
I asked softly, “Would you be open to accepting this invitation?”
She stood.
Together we placed our hands on the horse and began breathing.
Tears streamed down her face.
The mare let out a long, audible sigh.
And I stepped away.
That moment required nothing impressive.
No credentials.
No performance.
No proving.
It required presence.
Watching that girl, I recognized something familiar.
I wasn’t trafficked by my family, but I know what it feels like to grow up unsure of who you are allowed to be.
I know what it’s like to feel that you must perform a version of yourself just to belong.
To anticipate the room.
To read every signal.
To become what you think people need.
For much of my life I have tried to be the ‘right’ version of myself.
The impressive one.
The capable one.
The one who could hold everything together.
But something has shifted in recent years.
As I have come to understand my own wiring — the trauma, the pattern recognition, the intensity, the ways my brain processes the world differently — I have become far more comfortable in my own skin.
I know I’m not everyone’s cup of tea.
And I’m finally okay with that.
The people who are meant to be in my life are already here.
And they are extraordinary.
The accident revealed that clearly too.
When you’re lying in a hospital bed with broken ribs, a broken clavicle and a punctured lung, everyday noise disappears.
A few people showed up immediately. Their care was steady and generous.
Others, who I assumed would be there, were not.
At first, I noticed the absence.
But what stayed with me more was the clarity.
Support doesn’t always come from where we expect it.
And the people who truly see you rarely require explanation.
At 55, so many pieces of my life are beginning to make sense.
I understand my impulses better.
I understand my sensitivities.
I understand why I spent so many years trying to control outcomes.
For the first time, I feel truly comfortable in my own body.
Not perfect.
Not finished.
But integrated.
I am learning to remain centered.
To stay neutral and curious.
To watch how things unfold instead of trying to force them into place.
Because when we really know who we are, we can do hard things.
We can stay when uncertainty brushes past our heads.
We can trust ourselves.
And we can pay attention to the quiet signals life sends us — about where support truly lives and where it doesn’t.
The younger version of me believed safety came from controlling everything.
The woman I’m becoming understands something different: safety comes from staying.
From knowing yourself well enough, to remain steady when life surprises you.
From trusting that the people who truly see you will stand beside you.
And from realizing you don’t have to be perfect — or liked by everyone — to live a meaningful life.
Sometimes you simply must stay in the saddle long enough, to discover that you were capable all along.
