A Riding Accident Severed My Trust in Horses
and taught me to trust my ability to heal
On Friday, October 13th, 2020, I hurried through my barn, engaged in a battle between making it to my lesson on time and keeping my composure in riding boots. I headed straight to the whiteboard for my horse assignment of the day, and then I was mocked.
Lulu — Beau.
Beau and I had a tumultuous relationship. I’d only ridden him once before, and in one hour he had made me question both my horsemanship and my sanity. I saddled him up anyway, and at first, everything went smoothly. But then I was asked to kick him into a canter, to which he responded by lurching forward into a small half-buck. He bent his head towards the ground, forcing me past what Katherine, the assistant trainer at my barn, called “the point of no return,” where a rider’s center of gravity is so thrown that recovering her balance is impossible. I accepted the fall and let myself go. I‘d fallen before and now I’d fall again, and just like before, I would brush myself off, spit out a mouthful of dirt, and go about my day.
SNAP! Wrong.
I sat up as Beau cantered away. I remembered Bear, the horse who skidded right back to put a nose to my face after I fell off him as a little girl. I looked down to see my right arm limp and swaying like wind chimes in a light breeze, and tears came out of fear instead of pain. Katherine walked over to me, my water bottle in hand.
“Something’s really wrong with it,” I said, voice breaking. “I think it’s really fucked up.”
As Katherine called 911, I gave a terrified little boy instructions to call Kiana, my best friend, and tell her to come. She lived only ten minutes from the barn, closer than any of my family. At the hospital, doctors told me I’d need to get a metal plate installed, and for that, I’d need to wait until Monday. I spent the weekend mourning the many months I’d be out of the saddle, while painkillers left me in a numb state of defeat.
My sisters screamed when, a few days after surgery, we unraveled my bandages to reveal an incision from my armpit to my elbow and a line of zip ties bridging the gap. My body then decided that, while she was fine with the gigantic chunk of metal now embedded in her forever, she would not accept the dissolvable, sensitive skin-specific stitches holding my wound together. My clean line of an incision veered off course as my arm ate away at healing skin, forcing out the stitches so meticulously placed to keep it together. Scar tissue built up under the skin and made little hills where flat plains should have been. Two years later, my doctor lifted my sleeve and said unceremoniously, “Well, it’s ugly, but it’s healed.”
When a muscle is cut, the neurological pathway between that muscle and the brain is severed. As my arm healed, I was a baby again, relearning how that limb worked. My physical therapist and I made a list of goals: use a steering wheel, grab a plate off the shelf, lift groceries. I’d struggled with severe OCD in high school, so I was already well-versed in the mindfuck that is struggling with the most basic of human tasks. And, just as I used to break down if forced to touch a countertop, I now broke into tears at the slightest trip or loss of balance, regardless of whether I fell down or not.
Four years later I don’t break down crying anymore, but I still feel that irrational fear. It’s called somatic trauma. When the body sustains an injury like mine, it holds on tight to the memory and replays the adrenaline, fear, and emotion on a loop. At first, I supposed I could heal faster, physically and mentally, if I pushed through and went on with life as usual. I got back in the saddle after four months against my surgeon’s recommendations.
My body didn’t agree with this logic. My arm refused to stop spitting stitches, and my PT marveled at the incision, which took longer to heal than any she’d seen before. I did six months of physical therapy instead of the recommended four, and my mind healed even more slowly than my body.
Horseback riding is an intensely intimate sport. It requires vulnerability and trust in an animal you can never fully control. When a rider is injured, she feels her vulnerability was a mistake, and even if the injury wasn’t her horse’s fault, the trust she has in her horse diminishes a little. The injury is emotional as well as physical, and it requires emotional healing.
I wanted to make positive memories at my barn to mask those of my fall, but my trainer, Deb, made that process difficult. While I was still healing, my mom and I went to visit the horses, and my mom gave Beau a small, harmless tease as if she were chiding a toddler. Deb overheard and yelled at her over and over that “it’s always the rider’s fault.” I knew this, and it hadn’t bothered me before that I’d made a mistake, but now I felt inadequate and punished. Deb was the most horse-savvy trainer I’ve ever had, and my riding improved greatly when I was with her, but she never stopped making me feel small. When I’m sitting atop a 1,500 lb animal who could kill me if it wanted to, small is the last thing I want to feel.
When I first began riding again, I asked to ride only the horse I most trusted until my doctor cleared me. This horse’s name was Herbie, an old draft-quarter cross with endless patience for my fumbling hand. He never spooked, he cantered as steady as a rocking horse, and he loved a good scratch. He was somehow so big and sturdy that it didn’t matter if I felt small. He had me. When I was finally medically cleared to ride, I tried riding another horse, but I broke down just a few minutes into my lesson. I decided I’d continue to ride only Herbie as I healed emotionally.
The toxic trainer-rider relationship that delayed my emotional healing is not unique; in fact, it’s a hallmark of the equestrian community. Our trainers don’t know how to train, they know how to win, and the only reference they have for a winning trainer is their own, who was also toxic. So, when quarantine lifted and I left Deb’s barn to return to university for in-person classes, I decided I wanted to lease a horse to ride on my own. I was through with trainers treating me badly and wanted to reconnect with my passion without them. Maybe without the pressure of a trainer watching me, I’d be able to ride a horse other than Herbie.
A few months after classes began, while I was still looking for a horse to lease, I drove back home to see my surgeon. When I was done describing the pain and weakness I experienced daily, his response was simple. Because over a year had passed since my surgery, the symptoms I described were most likely permanent, but we could order an Arthrogram to explain where the pain was coming from. My shoulder joint would be inflated with a biomarker, which would hopefully make the following MRI clear enough to see whatever was causing trouble there.
Two months later, I was lying on a table being prepped for my Arthrogram. Doctors numbed my arm before inserting the spinal needle they’d use to pump my joint full of fluid. Numb. Swaying at my side. Beau running off. Call Kiana. I took deep breaths. I answered my doctor’s questions about my schooling, told him I’d been studying abroad in Spain. The biomarker came as a deep, painful, dull ache.
Snap! Always the rider’s fault.
I couldn’t stop a tear from rolling down my face. The MRI that came after wasn’t bad in itself; I love small spaces. But my arm was still numb and the marker was still painful and Beau was still running and Kiana was still coming. I started twitching uncontrollably, and more tears came as I breathed as deep as I could.
I got a wheelchair ride back to the waiting room more out of pity than necessity, then I drove straight to my aunt’s house where I was supposed to meet my mom and sister. I held myself together the best I could on the drive, but the second I saw my mom I started to sob. She sat with me as I explained through tears that my arm felt just like it did when I broke it. I was supposed to drive back to university that afternoon, but I decided to stay another night, and I was in a fog for two weeks after that day. I was vulnerable and afraid and defeated all over again. I called off my horse search. I couldn’t ride on my own. I realized I was nowhere near healed enough.
My dream has always been to study animal behavior in the field, but now I grew angry as my hand refused to grasp my pencil while taking notes, as my arm gave out while trying to play pickleball with my friends, as an ache deep in my bone followed me around for no reason at all. Was this to be my life? I loved animals, but were they too much for me? Was I not up to the task of working with them? Thanks to genetics, I already struggled with knee issues. How was I meant to keep up with my peers in the field if my body kept falling apart? I was only twenty, and I was supposed to have more time. I needed more time.
A few months after returning to university, my school’s equestrian team–of which I was a member for four years–had our first meeting of the year. A teammate’s horse had pulled a muscle, and they’d called out multiple vets who tried everything they could think of to heal him. Nothing worked, my teammate remarked, until he had one acupuncture session–then, he was healed. Inspired by my teammate’s story, I started seeing the acupuncturist my mother had known for years.
Acupuncture rewires the emotional response center of the brain while resetting nerves and calming pain. This makes it a uniquely appropriate response to equestrian injuries, which have deeper emotional ties than other sports injuries. Unlike my surgeon, my acupuncturist validated my pain and was genuinely excited to work to lessen it. She watched me explain my nerve damage with excitement in her eyes, showing me how the “fuzzy” sections I described were perfectly aligned with acupuncture pathways. She encouraged the vulnerability that came with working with my injury, and I began not only to embrace my emotions, but to focus on them.
I visited the gym regularly and played my “sleepytime” playlist to soothe myself as I curled a one-pound weight. I took up rock climbing, and I teared up with pride after my first climb because, while I’d had to make awkward changes to the course to accommodate my right arm, I made it to the top. I allowed the experience to be emotional rather than trying to respond “normally”. For the first time in a long time, my body felt proficient again, and it gave me hope.
Animals did not turn out to be too much for me. Since my rock climbing days, I’ve worked with baboons, elephants, tree kangaroos, and mountain lions, and I just completed my first season of paid biological fieldwork. I lifted and carried equipment every day, and I walked over 500 miles in the three months I spent banding and surveying endangered shorebirds. My legs gained a lot of muscle walking on soft sand, and the knee issues I’ve been dealing with for the past five years are now nearly nonexistent as a result. Four years ago, I never would have imagined myself capable of this kind of work.
I’ve tried to ride again several times over the past few years, and every time it’s left me crying in a cold sweat. The last time I saw Herbie he was 30 years old, and he’s very likely passed on now. I realized last summer that I needed to repair my relationship with horses more gently, so I reached out on Facebook to see if any barns would allow me to do some manual labor in exchange for an hour just visiting their horses. I told my story and was overwhelmed and touched by the encouraging responses I got. I received so many offers, and I ended up choosing a barn that didn’t want me to do any labor at all. They had two elderly horses who could no longer be ridden and whose 80-year-old human was unable to visit, so they were just happy to have someone give them attention. I went to see them every weekend that summer and it was emotionally exhausting, but healing at the same time.
Horses were my first and deepest love, and at the young age of 19, my fall and its aftermath taught me that sometimes we lose the things we love most. But completing this field season proved to me that just because we lose something doesn’t mean we’ll never get it back. My innate reaction to horses has changed from one of fear to one of sadness and longing, and while I hope this is not where it stays, I believe it’s a vast improvement. I believe my longing is an indication that I will ride again.
Thank you for reading!
