BORN AGAIN HORSEWOMAN
So much has happened in the past week! My parents' estate is about to close! FINALLY! Two out of the three lots from the subdividing of Grandma's property have sold, meaning there is enough money to satisfy the terms of the Will. Good news all around. I am about to be FREE.

The stall cleaning is going well. My personal best is 8 stalls in one day. But I overdid it. The day after doing 8 stalls, I consolidated my storage units (from one big and one small down to one big) which included moving (by myself) a rolltop desk, a stove, and a small recliner. Something feels funny—as in, very sore and stiff—in my left shoulder. Yesterday I managed 7 stalls and today I am paying for it. *sigh* Please pass the Tylenol™.

The most exciting news of all: I'M GOING TO A PNH CLINIC IN MAY!!!

I'm SO excited.



The past two and a half years have been tough. Caring for my parents, putting all my horsemanship goals on the backburner, losing my parents, then the year of fog that followed... I've just begun to emerge into life again. But the months since my parents died have been like my "mountaintop". I always wanted to escape to a cabin in the woods on top of a mountain for months in isolation so I could just think, away from the maddening crowds, away from external influences, and really get in touch with ME and with what I want for ME. Living alone in this quiet suburban neighborhood has been that mountaintop. Seriously. I can go days without the phone ringing. It's quiet.

In that time, I've been able to re-examine my goals. I discovered the Law of Attraction and have been studying it seriously since May 2007. All of this has come together to allow my limiting beliefs to surface. I've had a multitude of breakthroughs on a personal level and I understand myself better than I ever did. I am learning to accept myself. I am learning to stand up for my life. I am discovering my principles, my strengths, my talents, my loves, and my own truths. This is the silver lining to the tragedies.

One thing I've realized is that I am not driven by money. My Mother was, but I am not. Our conflicts revolved around my life choices and related to money in many ways. I remember when I was a child, she asked what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I replied enthusiastically, "I'm going to live on a farm and train horses!"

Mother snorted. "Well, you'd better have a really good job somewhere then, because horses take a lot of money!"

Well, then.

Long story short is that I quickly put two and two together, however illogically, and determined that since we (meaning my parents) couldn't afford to buy me a pony (which was what they always told me), and since Dad had a REALLY good job (we lived in an upper-middle-class suburban neighborhood surrounded by fellow professors), I must need to be a millionaire to afford a horse, so I have to do something that will make me millions. I had a good voice, everyone said I was a talented musician, and since all the people who sang on TV (Hee Haw, Lawrence Welk, etc and yes, I realize I'm dating myself) had fur coats, jewelry, lots of houses and limos, they must be rich, so... I'll just become a famous singing star, make my millions but save it rather than "waste" it on fur coats and limos, then I can retire around the ancient age of 40 (remember, I was about 8 at the time) and live on my horse farm THEN.

So I set out on the path to stardom. In my teen years, I discovered rock bands, and the plan morphed into my becoming a rock star. From the age of 15 until my late 30s, I focused on becoming a rock star. NOT on writing great songs and loving the music, mind you—becoming a rock star. Needless to say, my focus was wrong, and because my counter intentions were that I really didn't want to be a rock star, I just wanted the "easy" millions I could get from exploiting my talent so I could go play with horses, the rock star thing never happened.

Yet, here I am, three months shy of 45, and I'm a retired musician who is "training" horses. Interesting.

(The truth about why we didn't get a horse when I was a kid was because we lived in the suburbs, my Dad was the horse person but he was also the main wage earner and housekeeper and Mother was highly allergic to horses, dust, pollen, and hay—therefore it would have been up to Dad to handle the horse activities such as 4H, shows, lessons, and so on... too much for him to do on top of caring for us. It was just easier for them to relate it to money, though they could not afford it on other levels. Couldn't afford to risk Mother's health, couldn't afford wearing out Dad, and so on. Understandable.)

During my stay on the mountaintop, I've come to realize that music is NOT my first love. Horses are, were and always will be. Horses were the reason for my forays into rock superstardom. All I've ever wanted was to live on a farm and be a cowgirl. Train horses. Have that Black Stallion communication and relationship. Jump onto my spotted horse bareback and bridleless like a wild Indian and gallop off into the sunset.

Well, I can DO that.

PNH makes it possible.

PNH has already allowed me to begin to manifest that relationship with my horses.

PNH teaches people to be Instructors and Horse Developers as a profession.

I'm more interested in doing what I love and allowing it to support me than to chase money and hate the hunt (which is what I was doing before). I've come to the realization that when one pursues their passion, they infuse every action and activity with enthusiasm, love and other positive emotions, which transmits positive energy to the Universe—and that activates positive energy into all aspects of their lives which is WHY people who LOVE what they do tend to have the most MONEY. People who hate their jobs do not tend to make a lot of money and they feel like they are underpaid (because no amount of money is enough to make this job worth it). It's rare that someone who hates their job can actually become wealthy through it.

Well, I LOVE TO PLAY WITH HORSES. I love to ride. I love just BEING with them. When the day ends and I'm at the barn, I hate to leave. I don't want to leave. I don't want the day to end. On days "off", I can't figure out what to do with myself. Oh, there are plenty of chores to do around my house—just no motivation. All I want to do is be at the barn with my horses. With ANY horses.

So, I'm going for it.

Parelli Instructorship, here I come. (Actually I'm more interested in developing horses, but both are fine.)

To get there, I need to:

• Pass L2


• Pass L3


• Get accepted into the program


• Do well in the program and follow the requirements

So we'll start with the first step: Pass L2. That means clinics. That means getting Cheerios up and running. There is an Advancing L1/L2 clinic being held in May, right around the corner from my old barn. There was one spot left.

I got it.

Cheerios is going to his first clinic ever.

I'm going to my first clinic since the L2 in Fall 2004. With a "new" horse. Ironically the instructor of the May clinic was a RIDER in the last L2 clinic I went to. In that short amount of time, he passed L2, L3, and made it as an Instructor.

Here's the fun part.

• May 12, 2001: The day Cheerios ejected me on the trail, which lead to my back injury and the fear issues that lead me to PNH.


• May 12, 2002: The day I ordered my L1 kit.


• May 24, 2002: The day the L1 kit arrived—it was waiting for me when I returned home from my last day on the job, having been laid off at 4:30 PM—precisely the time the L1 kit was being delivered to my doorstep.


• May 9-11, 2008: The dates of the first clinic with CHEERIOS, the horse responsible for launching this journey. Almost to the date.

If you'd have told me it would be SEVEN YEARS before we'd be ready to attend a clinic together, let alone to have gotten this far, I would have given up in disgust and sold my horse.

But here we are. And the dream, once thought lost, has been born again.