Horses Saved My Life
佚名 / Anonymous
I’m standing in my ranch’s arena, watching 14-year-old Mia ride her horse, Leo. As her trainer, I’m gratified to see the way she connects with the horse, the way she can sense his moods and divine his capabilities. To ride well means to have an inner radar, an ability to understand what the animal feels. I see it with Mia and the other teen girls who ride at my ranch, because I’ve always had a special connection with horses myself. To me, they’re kindred spirits. In fact, discovering this sixth sense within myself did more than help me become an accomplished horsewoman. It saved my life.
I was born in 1961 with a rare facial abnormality. My lower face was totally disfigured. My childhood was difficult, marked by constant surgeries and by the insensitivity of other kids. But at age four my parents put me on a horse to help me with my balance (having only one ear canal led people to believe balance would be a problem for me), and today I see my birth defects as a gift. It forced me to reach into my soul and allowed me to focus on what I love to do more than anything: ride.
From the beginning, I found that being around horses provided my greatest source of solace. At four, my grandfather bought me a little donkey named Sultan. Although Sultan seldom budged, I spent many hours just happily sitting on his back. I began riding horses soon after and at age six I started competing. I joined the Pony Club and took as many lessons as my parents could afford. I became almost obsessive about riding; it was my greatest escape. Around horses, I never felt self-conscious or different.
Meanwhile, school was another story. In kindergarten, often bandaged, I endured lots of ridicule. I remember kids making fun of me and staring. I’d beg my parents not to make me go, but they always stood firm. Caring and amazingly supportive, they didn’t want other people’s meanness to drive me into isolation. Though I’m sure it broke their hearts to see me come home in tears, they always made me feel that they understood my pain.
By third grade my classmates had learned to get beyond my awkward appearance and to accept me, bandages, wires and all. From then on, I don’t think there was one birthday party I wasn’t invited to. After sixth grade, my surgery schedule slowed. My peers saw me as just one of them: I was voted president of my class every year. In ninth grade, after I had my last major reconstructive surgery, doctors still wanted to build up my chin and finish my ear. But by then I felt somewhere between comfortable and indifferent about the way I looked, and I decided against any further procedures. I’d have an obvious asymmetry in my face, but I had determined that it would in no way affect how I’d live my life.
That attitude certainly helped when a new boy, Charlie White, transferred into my school. Charlie claimed that I made him chase me for a year before I’d go out with him, and he said he could feel so comfortable with me because I felt so comfortable with myself—and we stayed together even when he went away to Montana State University on a football scholarship. If it was up to me, my post-graduate plans would have been all about riding, but my parents believed college was crucial. After graduating from the University of California at San Diego with degrees in biology and history, I was offered a graduate fellowship to study history at Georgetown University. But Charlie had other ideas: He suggested that we start a horse ranch on my parents’ land instead.
We opened Diamond Mountain Stables in 1983. I began competing professionally, but also giving lessons and conducting clinics and camps. Almost twenty years later, I still teach and compete, and ten people now work for us full time, as trainers, groomers and administrators. Forty horses, most of which belong to clients, reside in our stables—we joke that Diamond Mountain is like a boarding school, with 40 little kids who are constantly getting sick, getting loose or getting hurt.