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WellRed
BY WEB EDITOR KARSEN PRICE
Pony Up The Courage And The Time To Fight Your Fears!
Well, it’s no secret — I am a horse lover. I am also lucky enough to work in an industry where every once in a while, I get the opportunity to mix business with pleasure.
In fact, the first feature I wrote for Today’s Charlotte Woman was a look at a woman who was an animal fanatic; Leanne Strauss, who, along with her horse “Big,” was the cover girl for the July 2007 issue.
Horses represent freedom to me. They link me to the physical world, which somehow puts me more in touch with my spirituality, my Higher Power, and all that comes with it. Horses also challenge every inch of me — my brain, my body, my sometimes-fragile sense of what is safe and what is not. Let’s face it: Horses are big animals; they’re not always the smartest; and they definitely qualify as unpredictable. I love horses, but I also have a healthy fear of them — well deserved after a bad accident left me with a shattered wrist in 2002. Riding horses has been noted as being as dangerous as riding motorcycles — and hey, motorcycles have an on/off switch.
When I ride, I find myself tackling a deep fear and coming out on top, living out the advice of that wise old sage (Eleanor Roosevelt, actually) who said, “Do something every day that scares you.”
OK, so it’s more like every week. But still, most of the people in my life can tell when circumstances (like today’s drizzling rain) keep me from indulging in my horseback riding habit. I’m not always the nicest person, sans horse.
That said, I was pretty excited when Strauss, our former cover subject, e-mailed me to let me know about Terri Stemper, a woman who adopts orphaned baby horses and, against the odds, mothers them to health and happy homes. Work was mixing with pleasure again … and I was getting the chance to make a difference in the world with one of my stories. Good stuff, all the way around.
Unlike me, Terri Stemper is not afraid. Of horses, or of taking on a mammoth challenge that many say is darn-near impossible, or of breaking the bank with her passionate decision to save 30 nurse mare foals this spring. (If she is afraid, she never, ever shows it.) Hopefully, Stemper, who received nonprofit status for her brainchild, Dream Equine Therapy Center, right before the May issue of TCW went to press, will be able to raise the money to save more horses than she ever dreamed possible. (Click here for ways to help.)
Call Stemper crazy, if you will … but I prefer to call her courageous. And, for me, at the end of the day, courage is what it’s all about. Courage to live alone for the first time in 16 years … to face the sudden aging of the parent you love … to fight that cancer diagnosis. Courage to let somebody go, and to never look back — ever.
Courage, I have learned over the years, is not the act of never being afraid. Courage is being afraid, and taking action regardless.
Every time I get on a horse, some part of me is afraid. And every time I slide out of the stirrups and my boots are safely on the ground again, I feel what can only be described as a “Rocky Mountain high.”
Now if it would only stop raining …
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