Grieving Self Confidence

The grief of losing confidence in yourself is indescribable.

When your trust has been so badly broken and your body violated, you doubt your own intuition and capabilities.

When you have broken into so many pieces that you don’t know how you’ll pick them up let alone how to put them back together or what that would even look like if you can.

When you can’t trust your own mind or your body because your nervous system has taken over and you are no longer in the driver seat.

I understand horses because I see myself in them. I see survival. I see a need to be understood. I see a need to always have an escape.

Horses have always been my comfort and my healing, companionship and mirror, my purpose and drive. Living the past two years holding them at a distance has been one of the most painful experiences of my life.

Not because they did anything wrong or because I was afraid of them but because I was afraid of myself.

I did not want to show up to them in my mess. How could I be a reliable leader, someone they could depend on when I couldn’t even rely on myself?

I was so afraid of myself, I did not want to scare them or put them or myself in a situation where we could get hurt so I pushed them away and sank into a deep depression.

Horsemanship was my compass my true north, without it my life has no direction. Loosing something that had been so instrumental in my everyday life and grounded me in a time I needed it most was so hard.

The stress and pressure of life and healing got to be too much and I just couldn’t cope. Not only had I lost all hope but my belief in myself and my ability to do simple things was no existent.

And maybe that’s been the hardest part…
not just losing my way, but losing the part of me that always knew how to find it again.

Because horsemanship was never just something I did.
It was who I was.

And when that disappeared, so did my sense of self.

But somewhere in all of this… beneath the fear, the grief, the shutdown… there is still something there.

A quiet knowing.
A small spark.
A part of me that hasn’t disappeared, just gone quiet while I’ve been trying to survive.

I’m not back to who I was.
I don’t even know if I will be.

But I’m starting to understand that maybe this isn’t about going back.
Maybe it’s about learning how to meet myself here… as I am now.

Slowly. Gently. Without expectation.

And maybe one day, I’ll find my way back to them…
not as the person I was before,
but as someone softer, more aware, and more honest.

Because it still all starts with you.