Have you ever had a life chang­ing moment? Not the obvi­ous mile­stones like get­ting mar­ried, hav­ing a baby, going to col­lege or some hor­ri­ble spa expe­ri­ence where you real­ize you are not cut out for leg waxing?

No– I mean those out of the blue moments that all your life’s sub­con­scious sup­pressed thoughts, hopes and dreams take con­trol and you make the absolute deci­sion to make it hap­pen? Of course, we all have had many. But, there is usu­ally one that we hold dear. Mine is my horse, Beau.

I had been liv­ing in New York for about 12 years. Went to school, found a job and had just bought a duplex con­do­minium on the Upper West Side. Liv­ing my dream or so I wanted to believe.

I had really always dreamed of hav­ing my own horse. I knew there were horses in the park but I could never fig­ure out where they came from. I would look and then some impor­tant trip or project would come up and it would fleet out of my mind. This was B.G. — Before Google. Wow, that was such a LONG time ago. So, find­ing out about stuff was not imme­di­ately at your keyboard.

Well, the first cou­ple of days after mov­ing into my new neigh­bor­hood, I found Clare­mont Rid­ing Acad­emy on Colum­bus and 89th. It was the old­est oper­at­ing rid­ing sta­ble in the United States. It closed a cou­ple years ago. I imme­di­ately booked a les­son. They only taught Eng­lish Rid­ing, which was fine with me.

The next day I took my first les­son. I was exhil­a­rated and ran home to call my mother and tell her I was sell­ing my condo, mov­ing home and buy­ing a horse. It took a few months and some tears to actu­ally get the guts to do just that– but I did.

Luck­ily, things worked out, but not with­out heartache and worry. I found free­lance work, sold my condo after 9 months on a glut­ted mar­ket and found a place to live in Atlanta that I could afford, with my new min­i­mal income. Dur­ing that time, I trav­eled back and forth to Atlanta and took Sad­dle Seat Rid­ing, which is a form of Eng­lish. I loved it.

I hap­pened to be at the train­ing barn, Vicki Humphries Train­ing Cen­ter, when they were unload­ing some new brood mares they had pur­chased for breed­ing. Behind one mare, a lit­tle colt trot­ted out. Since he was so young, he was sold with his mom. I was in love. I bought him on the spot. His name was Beau’s River­cross King,  an Amer­i­can Sad­dle­bred. I just call him Beau.

I have to come to find out from my horse friends, how truly lucky I am. Beau is my first horse and I am his first (only) owner. That doesn’t hap­pen much. And he is worth his weight in gold. Beau­ti­ful, proud, sweet, spir­ited, funny and smart.

Yes, I wanted to move home to be with my fam­ily and sis­ters. Yes, I was grow­ing weary of the back-biting, rat race in New York. Yes, I was begin­ing to lose myself and who I wanted to be. But, that didn’t make me move home.

Out of the blue, I took a rid­ing les­son on a spring day. It made me take a leap of faith in myself.

That was 12 years ago. It saved me.