By Aimee Towell
I’ll never forget being 13 years old at the state fair. My leased OTTB mare put in a foot perfect equitation pattern class with me in the irons. We halted to salute, the starting bell rang at the adjoining racetrack, and she backed out of the show ring in a panic. I was disqualified in front of everyone at the largest show of the year—the one I worked all year to get to.
Later, I watched a more privileged kid ride a trained show horse they actually owned win that blue ribbon. I thought that one day, I’d make it. One day, I’d belong.
My story looks like a lot of millennial horse-crazy girls. I wanted horses more than anything in the world, but I wasn’t born on a farm, and my lower-middle-class family wouldn’t even have had a dog if it wasn’t for me. There was never any option to own a horse. I parlayed my passion for horses into trading stall cleaning for weekly lessons with a kind local trainer.
I rode anything anyone would let me, did 4H on a series of questionably appropriate borrowed and leased horses, and loved every one of them fiercely. If I wasn’t on a horse, I was reading about them, drawing them, dreaming of them, and talking about them. My first heartbreak was my favorite horse passing. My fondest memories of Christmas morning were my (begrudging) parents taking me to the barn to clean stalls. After all, I got to see HORSES and that’s all I wanted.
I found other girls with the same interests. We grew up together, talking about the farms we would have, the ribbons we would win.
And then we went to college.
One by one, I watched them leave horses behind for studies, for boys, for jobs. When mom and dad stopped paying the bills and farms were hard to come by, horses didn’t always fit anymore.
Not me, though. I was going to make it. I was given my first horse at the age of 20. I worked two jobs on top of going to school full time. I picked my degree program for something that would both let me afford a horse and give me time to ride it. I got married, bought a house, lived through a recession, and started full-time as a barn manager.
I traveled to big shows and saw competitions on a level I could never have imagined as a horse crazy kid in 4H. I met incredible people, rode horses far nicer than I deserved, and realized that I could never afford to make it in that world on a barn manager’s salary. The people who belonged there had family money or big careers, not a resume of stall cleaning and dreaming.
So, I made the switch. I left barn managing and put my professional skills to work in another industry. I put my horse in training, took lessons, and signed up for shows.
I’ve never had less fun in my life. My horse loudly told me that he had no interest in the show ring, not even if I changed disciplines and barns for him (which I tried). I found him an appropriate home, just in time to bring home my dream horse—all 16 hands of purpose-bred black mare, built to be athletic and kinder than I deserved. I put her in training, signed up for clinics, ordered custom tack, and prepared to take the local show scene by storm. No starting bell would derail me this time.
Instead, my life fell apart. The white picket fence and 2.5 kids I planned on turned into splitting assets and losing friends as I took I high intensity travel job to afford life as a single person.
The dream horse carried me through my darkest moments as an adult. Instead of lessons and clinics, I sat on her bareback under the stars and let the rhythm of her breathing ground me. As I rebuilt my life, I realized that I wasn’t the same person anymore.
I own the best horse I’ve ever had. She has a lovely dressage foundation, is a bold jumper, is brave on the trails, hauls quietly, and is unbothered in new places. She was born to be a show horse.
But.
She isn’t a means to an end to me anymore. She’s my friend, a piece of me that makes everything else make sense. My time with her isn’t about goals. It lights me up to find ways to teach her new concepts. It’s meditative to me to reflect on how my every move is mirrored in her way of going and then use that information to be kind, clear, and calm with her. I give her the love and stability I never had, and it heals the deepest parts of me.
I still go to shows occasionally. I love to watch my friends compete. I check out the newest tack trends and admire the gleaming horses. I smile and remember when it was me in the irons, the drive that I had to learn, improve, and be the best version of myself. To prove to everyone that the poor kid from the city finally belonged.
Then I go back to the barn, and my horse whinnies at me. She canters up to me in the pasture, and I know, without a doubt, that the little girl in 4H cleaning stalls in trade for lessons finally belongs.
It wasn’t about polished boots and satin ribbons.
It’s udder scratches. It’s braiding flowers in her mane and cantering bareback through the pasture, and yes, sitting on her under the stars, letting her breathing ground me.
Maybe one day, showing will find me again. Until then, belonging is peaceful afternoons with the best horse I’ve ever known. This is what making it feels like.
