Part Two: The Horses Who Called Me Home- The moment of return to my true self

My return to horses didn’t begin with a plan. It began with an ache.
Not loud.
Not urgent.
Just something I could no longer ignore.

It had been years since horses were part of my daily life.
Decades since those long days at the barn as a child.

In that time, I had built a life.
Marriage.
Motherhood.
Responsibility.
All the things that, from the outside, look like stability.

But something in me had been waiting. Quietly. Patiently.
Like an ember that never fully went out.

In early 2020, just before the world changed, I began leasing a horse named Melody. She was a gentle giant. And something in me lit up the moment I was near her. I didn’t realize how much I had been holding… until I felt what it was like to soften again.

But just as quickly as that connection returned- it disappeared. The barn closed during the pandemic and  only owners were allowed in. And once again, horses slipped out of my life. At the time, it felt like loss.

A few weeks later, something small happened. The kind of moment you might overlook if you didn’t know what to look for.

An old neighbor invited me to a birthday gathering. Her new partner had horses. It was mentioned casually. I didn’t think much of it- until I walked into the house. Everyone else gathered in the kitchen and out on the deck. And there I was standing in the living room, unable to pull myself away from three saddles leaning against the wall. I ran my hand along the leather. The smell. The texture. And something inside me opened.

Not memory in the way we usually think of it. Something deeper. My body remembered before my mind did.

The barns of my childhood.
The horses who had held me.
The version of me that had known, without question, where she belonged.

That moment didn’t ask me to decide anything. It simply… stirred something awake.

A few days later, I was invited to visit the ranch in Squamish. It was a 90-minute drive. I didn’t know what I was going for. Only that something in me said yes. And so I drove.

Those ninety minutes felt different than any drive I had taken before.
Not rushed.
Not distracted.

It felt like I was following something.
Something I couldn’t see.
But I could feel.

When I arrived and passed through the gates, everything in me went still.

There were horses everywhere.
Not contained.
Not separated.

They were moving freely across the land.
It wasn’t just what I saw.
It was what I felt.

Something in my body recognized this place before I had time to think about it.
I’m supposed to be here.

The trainer showed me a few horses available for lease. They were all suitable. Beautiful. But I felt nothing. No pull. No connection. And for a moment, I wondered if I had been wrong.

Then he said: “Let’s go into this other paddock. Just see what happens.”

There were many horses there. But I noticed one. A uniquely grey and golden coloured mare standing at the hay feeder. I registered her. And then I looked away. But she didn’t look away from me. She lifted her head. And then she began to walk toward me.

Slow at first.

Then with a kind of quiet certainty.
There was no hesitation in her.
No questioning.
Just a steady, deliberate movement.

And when she reached me, she pressed her muzzle firmly into the center of my chest. Not lightly. Not in passing. She stayed there. The sensation moved through me like something breaking open. It wasn’t emotional in the way I expected. It was deeper than that.  I felt a recognition. As if something that had been dormant in me was being touched back into life.

Her name was Skye.

But in that moment, she wasn’t a horse I was meeting. She was something I was remembering.

I didn’t choose her. She chose me.
And everything in my life began to reorganize from that point forward.

Looking back now, I can see what I couldn’t see then. That nothing leading up to that moment was random.
Not Melody.
Not the closed barn.
Not the saddles in the living room.
Not the drive.

Each moment was a thread. And something, whether you call it life, soul, or something else entirely, was gently, persistently guiding me back. Back to the place where my body knew how to rest. Back to the part of me that had never truly left.

Because this is what I understand now:

We don’t return to what we love.
We return to who we were when we were there.
And sometimes… something meets us at that threshold.
Not to give us something new.
But to remind us of what has always been waiting.

For me, that was Skye.

And that moment, standing in a paddock, with a horse’s breath against my chest- was where the return became real.

A Gentle Reflection

If you’re reading this and something in you feels stirred, not dramatically, but quietly, I invite you to notice that.
What has been calling you, even softly?
What have you felt drawn toward, without fully understanding why?

You don’t have to answer it all at once. Sometimes the first step is simply to follow the feeling. Because the path back to yourself rarely begins with certainty. It begins with something that feels like a quiet yes.

If something in you is stirring as you read this-if you feel that quiet pull toward something you can’t quite name-you don’t have to follow it alone. This is the work I hold space for.