Come on in, stay awhile.

My heart drops deep to reside in my gut, my legs feel weightless, my arms tingle.

He was down again. Lying in the straw, but I intuitively knew this wasn't a rest. Like invisible energy tentacles reaching out to my soul and begging for help.

My poor boy had been struggling with his health for a while, vets unable to pinpoint what was the cause.

I fall to my knees beside his curled body, and he greets me with a small nuzzle. I place my ear onto his belly, hoping to hear gut noises, I do. As if on cue, he passes gas to reaffirm it likely isn't colic, but more of this unknown source of pain.

I quietly sit beside him, petting, stroking, and loving him all the while. A voice in my mind says, " Help him."

"I don't know how, show me."

Without thought, I place my hands on his warm, fuzzy body and open myself up-- as if I resided inside an invisible cocoon and I slowly unzip exposing myself.

A stream of energy rises from deep within the earth and slowly fills my being, simultaneously flowing out of my hands and into his body. He sighs in relief.

We sit together a little longer, his breath relaxing, my hands moving on their own accord to different areas of his body.

As he perks up, I slowly pull away, and he rises to his feet. He extends his neck high and forward while reaching back with an incredible stretch of his back leg and finishes with a yawn. His eyes are softer, happier. He nuzzles me again as if to thank me before wandering off to eat.

I move away slightly to sit back in the straw to monitor him, and I am dumbfounded by what happened.

I had heard of energy healing before… but never witnessed it. But is that just what happened?

That was the start of my awakening, realizing I was meant to be a healer.

Would you say you’ve experienced trauma in your life? Most people would say no. 

If I were to ask those who said yes what those traumatic experiences were, they would most likely share things like a car accident, serious illness, near-death incident, war, losing a spouse or child, becoming an orphan, or being sexually or physically abused. 

But what if trauma wasn't only these notable dramatic moments in time? 

The more I learn about trauma, the more I’ve come to understand that experiencing trauma isn’t about a dramatic event but about how you feel about an event. 

So what does this mean? If there have been moments in your life when you have ever felt abandoned, terrified, never heard, never valued, worthless, waste of time, then you have experienced trauma. 

When we experience trauma, we go into fight, flight, or freeze/shut down. We aren’t safe to express ourselves, or worse, told not to. When our nervous system enters this sympathetic state without being able to complete the cycle - process emotionally and mentally what’s happening and it is met with empathy and validation from another human - then those emotions become trapped inside our nervous system. 

For those of us who perhaps didn't realize what trauma included, we would most likely have thoughts like: “Oh jeez, my childhood was great! I really don’t have anything to complain about,” or “sure, I was bullied, but it wasn’t that bad, they were just kids and didn’t know what they were doing after all.” This denial is a safety mechanism to keep that trauma locked away deep inside us to protect us from the pain. 

When we start learning what trauma is, we can begin to free ourselves from it. If, for your entire life, you were trying to tell yourself that what you went through wasn’t a big deal and to get over it, those painful emotions stay trapped. What you felt was real! What you felt was painful and traumatic. 

Learning how to overcome my trauma has been the gateway to understanding myself. Trauma is the root of anger, frustration, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, suicide, self-harm, and more. All of a sudden, I’m not “messed up.” I’m emotionally and mentally wounded, and I need to heal. 

If you relate to this, I want to personally invite you into my Facebook community. Inside the guide section, I have a free 30-day transformation - Chomping at the Bit: Transition from Guilt to Freedom. This will help you get started on your healing journey. Click HERE to connect with others who want happiness, hope and freedom. 

Learning to heal has transformed my life to find happiness, hope, and freedom! Becoming more whole has helped my anxiety and depression; it helps me be a better mom and prevent passing my trauma down; it’s immensely helping my marriage. 

Let’s be honest! You love the fact that you have children; you love your children! But then, on the other hand, you're also missing who you were before your kids. You're missing what you used to be able to do. You're missing the amount of time you'd used to spend with your horses. You're missing freedom. You're missing almost everything about your life pre-kids, and you don't know how to navigate all of those big, ugly emotions, and then the guilt that follows them, right, because the guilt is going to follow. I know that because I went through all of this.

Yesterday I hauled Ace and our new horse Greg to the arena. It was barrel practice night, and this was the first time going for all three of us. 

Ace has been really learning to let go of his anxiety and fears during rope nights with my hubby's help, so I personally hadn’t ridden him the last few times he was hauled. On the drive, I mentally prepared myself to be a relaxed and confident leader for Ace while listening to a podcast. (The Journey On Podcast with Warwick Schiller interviewing Jane Pike)

This podcast really explained things in a way I had never thought of before, and it helped a lot! I want to share a few of those with you now summarized in my words. 

1. My body and mind are amazing. It created defence mechanisms to protect myself during stressful/scary/traumatizing situations when I literally couldn’t process it. I am thankful my body has this ability -- but I am now aware it's time to release these defence methods as they are no longer serving me. 

2. When I feel anxiety, stress or fear, it's like internal energy becoming bigger than my body that I cannot hold it in anymore. I am learning to tune into what my body is telling me and respond before my emotions become bigger than my body, creating a fight/flight/freeze. This is my body trying to protect myself from danger - which again is a beautiful thing! Accepting that nothing is wrong with me is extremely important. 

3. When I start to feel anxious, an easy method to help refocus my brain is to move my body: wiggle my toes in my boots, tap my thumb against each fingertip. Yesterday I also became aware of how I wanted my body to feel to Ace while riding. I envisioned my body being connected to him through my seat and thighs, like in Avatar minus the ponytail hehe. I wanted to feel soft, relaxed, gentle and curious about his own movements. This helped me ride so much softer I was shocked!

4. Everything I learned about myself is exactly the same as my horse. When Ace reacts anxiously or fearfully, this is his natural response to keep him safe and protected. I don’t want this to disappear, or if a bear ever came for a visit, then he would be in trouble! I want to show him he can trust me and that I’ll keep him safe.

   1.  His anxiety can feel so big it's pouring out of his body, putting him into fight/flight/freeze; it is up to me to recognize when his cup of anxiety is getting too high and help him empty it before it overwhelms him. 

   2. Asking him for simple body movements can help him come back inside his body, getting his mind off his stress, but it's important to keep things very simple and basic, so it doesn’t become an additional stress source. 

There is nothing wrong with feeling fear or anxiety or stress, for either you or your horse! This is an instinct meant to keep us safe from harm. Learning to accept this is the first step to understanding and moving past our fears. Invite your fear to sit at a table beside yourself; what would you say to it? Invite your horse's fear to sit at your table; what would you tell it? Loving ourselves through these feelings is so important. 

Thank you, Jane, for the amazing reminder.

How come talking about the loneliness, guilt, resentment, anger and shame that comes with motherhood isn’t a thing?

How come when we try and reach out for help, we are told, “Yes, being a mom is hard, isn’t it,” or, “It’s just your hormones dear, it will all level out soon enough,” or my ultimate favourite, “don’t worry about that stuff, your babies are only babies once, sit back and soak it all in and just cheer up.” How isolating is that? We have just confessed we feel like we are drowning, and we are told to swim better.

Once, I was a fierce, independent, strong-willed, stubborn horse-crazy woman.

Then I had kids. I felt like my world shifted so much I wasn’t recognizable. 

I was so proud to be a mom; I dearly and deeply love my daughters, but I also felt resentment, confusion, frustration, and anger within my life. As a result, I felt painful shame. The kind that made me too scared to reach out to anyone. What would they think of me? I felt like I was isolated and alone with these feelings; there was something wrong with me. No one else thinks like this! 

I was depressed, anxious, lost, alone, exhausted, with the endless knawing in my gut making me feel nauseous continuously. I was so angry with myself I literally pulled out some of my hair. It’s postpartum depression, I was told, but that was just part of it.

Then, one chilly spring day our greenbroke colt Ace eventually had enough of my overwhelming negative emotions and chaotic energy and tried to escape by rearing straight up and then bolting, dragging me through the arena sand. After my temper finally cooled down, all I felt was guilt and shame that he felt he had to escape me that badly. 

I decided I needed help knowing what to do to fix my horse. I soon found Warwick Schiller, and much to my surprise, I found I didn’t have a horse problem; I had a “me problem”. I learned that I had to heal myself first to be the leader my horse needed me to be.

For the first time, I saw a glimpse of peace. It was down this road of self-discovery if I was brave enough to take the journey. I was. I learned how to understand and navigate all the anger, resentment, anxiety, frustrations that I was drowning in. I started to feel lighter. To see the opportunity for hope; hope that I could be a wonderful mother and horsewoman. Hope that I could feel happy and fulfilled. Hope that I could be close with my husband. Hope that I would finally know who I was meant to be.

If this resonated with you, please know you’re not alone. My experiences brought me here. This is why I am doing what I do, because I know what all that feels like. I want to show you how I made it through. If you’re interested, please join me and other like-minded souls here.

Finding freedom feels impossible; independence? What’s that! This child needs me 24/7. Flexibility vanishes and is replaced by structure, nap times, play dates, sports, school and more. It’s exhausting to simply not go crazy and manage everything the family needs. You feel endless guilty for wanting a bit of the “old you” back when the decision to ride or not was entirely up to you, and it didn’t require endless planning and rescheduling to make happen.

My second daughter was born almost two years to the day apart from her older sister. Talk about another colossal shock getting used to being the mom of two. I again struggled with postpartum depression; I was short-tempered, easily frustrated, and felt like I was getting lost in motherhood. 

Come springtime, my daughters would occasionally nap simultaneously; this is when I would try and ride. We are very blessed to have an outdoor arena a hundred feet from our home, and wifi monitors gave me the ability to take advantage when the opportunity arose. Yet again, I felt pressured to start riding our youngster, Ace. I started doing some groundwork with him, and it felt like nothing much had changed in the past year; we still didn’t get along. I was getting increasingly frustrated with him, and I hate to admit I lost my temper numerous times. My fear of getting hurt only fuelled the fire. I had two little kids; I couldn’t afford to get hurt! But I was also stubborn and tried my best to push my fear aside. 

It didn’t take long to realize I just didn’t have the skill required to work with Ace. I was a scared ticking time-bomb, and funny enough, so was he. Combining us was a recipe for disaster. My husband and I decided to send him to a friend who also trained horses. He came unglued with her a time or two; hearing her replay his bucking escapade made me even more apprehensive at the thought of riding him when he got home turning my tummy into a ball of painful knots. 

I knew something had to change for Ace and me to find any resemblance of a partnership. While Ace was at the trainer, I started to look all over the internet for some insight on training methods that would work for him. What I ended up finding, however, was the farthest thing I was looking for. 

I started to see hints that I wasn’t listening to my horse. I would become defensive at this way of thinking; how am I supposed to be the leader if I’m not telling my horse what to do? He will walk all over me if I let him tell me what he wants; it didn’t make sense to me, and honestly, at the start, I thought it was ridiculous. I started to learn about stress indicators from Warwick Schiller, and while I thought it seemed a little crazy to let my horse have such an opinion on things, I was very intrigued with the idea of what he was doing. I kept watching his videos, and pretty soon, my skepticism started to dwindle. 

The more videos I watched, the more articles I read, every bit of evidence started to point to one main problem within our partnership. Me. My attitude, outlook on life, and buried trauma were negatively tainting everything I was touching. Talk about a kick to the ego. For so long, I thought the horse was the one with the problem, and I just had to learn how to train him. The reality was, however, I was the one that needed the training and the healing. 

When Ace returned, I was happy with his progress with my friend and trainer Breann Heatherington. I was still nervous, thinking my skills wouldn’t be adequate to prevent a blow-up or perhaps inadvertently cause one to happen. When we got home, I tried to do a lot of listening. I think Ace was a little shocked at how differently I was approaching our time together. Pretty soon, he started to communicate with me his concerns, worries, and even physical pain, as long as I was paying enough attention to see them. We were creating a deep bond doing everything in baby steps. I wasn’t in a rush anymore. 

A quote of unknown origins that completely changed my perspective was how we all, horses and humans alike, want to feel that we are "being seen, being heard, feeling felt, and getting gotten." When I stopped drowning in my own emotions, negative energies and trauma, I could finally open my eyes to see, hear, feel and get what Ace needed. 

Healing myself has been the most significant step to releasing anxiety, fear, worry and doubt. Without healing, moving forward would have been impossible. I encourage you to do the same. 

Like what you've read? Check out this video where I talk more about this. 

I was that girl who would ride any horse, anywhere. I didn't care if I knew I was likely to get bucked off; I was determined, brave, and thrived on the challenges of a difficult horse. Then, everything started to change...

I can remember it like yesterday. I felt the excitement of pregnancy, all the ideas, visions, and promises I made to myself before I had my first child. I’m not going to stop being me; I’m not going to let my baby needy, so I can’t go anywhere alone. I’m still going to ride a lot, not as much as now, but a few times a week will be easy. Our baby will go everywhere with us so that we don’t have to be isolated, restaurants, play days, coffee dates, travelling to see my parents or for holidays. There’s no way in hell my girl will sleep in our bed, this is my bed, and she will learn to sleep alone right away. We will be a family who still rides and rodeos! I never imagined it would be my last summer to rodeo.

I can’t help but laugh at my naivety. The second my first daughter was born, every preconceived notion I had, every plan, evaporated like the morning mist. Perhaps you can relate? We have this idea in our heads for how life will be like once we become a mother; I can guarantee we were all in for the shock of our lives.