Blog Update

Hello everyone! It is nice to be back to blogging after my temporary hiatus. I cannot believe that it has been over seven months since I have last posted to The Healing Bit! Time sure does fly and I am overjoyed to be back to bringing some content to my loyal readers!

Back on July 18th of this year, I posted a message to you all on our Facebook page alluding to some potential changes to The Healing Bit and the amount of time that I would be putting into writing and posting blogs. For those of you that did not see it or were unaware that we had a Facebook page (which you can feel free to check out), this was what was said:

“I am sorry to have been inactive for so long. Life has gotten crazy and the time has just gotten away from me. I wanted to keep my followers up to date on somethings happening in my life that have directly affected my teaching/blogging. Due to some health "emergencies" in my family and a crazy hectic work schedule at my main job, I am taking a step back from teaching in the therapeutic riding classes that I reference in my blog posts. I plan on keeping my certification up to date so I am able to sub in our program as needed, but I will no longer be keeping any permanent classes. Because of this, posts to this blog will be few and far between, if none existent. I will post when inspiration strikes, but I am unable to give an idea of when that will be. Thank you all for following The Healing Bit in the past year! I hope to be able to bring you new content when my life slows down a bit. Until then my website will continue to stay up and running. Previously posted blogs will remain for your reading pleasure. Thank you all for bearing with me during this crazy time in life!”

I first and foremost want to thank you, my readers, for sticking with me through this crazy season of my life. To be completely honest, these last few months, blogging has been as far away from my mind as possible. There was a time where The Healing Bit was completely in limbo. I was unsure if I would ever come back to it. To create a post, from start to finish, is not a simple process. As almost any writer can tell you, there are many steps to writing the perfect story, article, or blog post and with me being a home trained writer (as in I have no college degrees or formal training. I am just someone that enjoys writing) I have found it extremely difficult at times. I never wanted my website to be something I had to be tied down to. As inspiration struck me, I would sit down and write about it. No scheduled posts or anything of the likes, just if I felt like it would I put a post out to the world.

I choose to, and will continue to, keep in the dark exactly why I choose to step away from teaching. I do want to ensure everyone that I did in fact enjoy the time I spent with my students, their parents, and my volunteers. Through the program I made countless friends that I still hold near and dear to my heart, even though we now only see each other in passing. What I can say though, is that my returning to therapeutic horseback riding classes as an instructor is not completely out of the question for my life. We are once again nearing the time of year that all instructors have to turn in their twenty continuing education hours to hold up their certification and like all; I plan on turning mine in so I can stay current into the 2019 year.

At the moment though, my life is just a little too hectic to take an active role in teaching. The first hurdle came earlier this year when my father was diagnosed for a second time with prostate cancer. In my blog “The Healing Power of Horses”, which was published to the website on March 21st, I talked a little bit about just how difficult the diagnosis had been on our family. There was a period where we did not know exactly what would happen. The doctors assured us that the diagnosis was not a death sentence, that it was caught early and extremely treatable. But as any family members of cancer patients will tell you, it is hard, if not impossible, for your brain to stray there.

As my father began radiation treatments, we began to deal with the diagnosis in a whole new way. I will never be able to fully explain to anyone why this time around was so different than the first. But it was. There were new treatments, new concerns, and new possibilities. Looking back on those months of treatments, I honestly wonder how we ever made it through. In my mind, it was only because of our amazing family and our awesome God that we did.

As of right now, my father has just finished his treatments. Doctors are unable to test his PSA levels for six more months, but we are optimistic that the radiation did what it was supposed to. We hope to never have to journey the cancer road again.

During the time of my father’s treatment, I was trying to juggle working for two different jobs. Teaching the therapeutic riding classes that I have referenced in my blog posts and working for the amazing boarding stable that houses the program. I could be found at the barn for well over forty hours between the two careers and while I loved it, it was difficult. It began to become too hard to find a distinction between when I was on the program’s time and when I was on the barn’s time. There were many sleepless nights spent dreading my five A.M. wake up calls and all the next day would have to hold. Soon one thing became clear: I had to make a decision. Which job did I want to do more?

Ultimately, I choose working for the boarding stable. There are many reasons that I cannot get into as to why teaching was not conducive at the time for me. I will say though that I do at times miss doing it. Maybe I will get back into it one day. The future is limitless.

Now that you’re all up to speed on my life, let’s FINALLY get to the meat and potatoes of what this post is about: the future of The Healing Bit. Over the last few weeks, I have spent a lot of time in thought about exactly how I want to move forward with blogging. I have very much missed producing content, but not much has sparked my creativity these last few months. I never want to feel like I am just throwing together a post. I want to be one hundred percent invested in what I am writing. I personally feel like it always shows when a writer is just producing something because everyone wants them to and when their heart is completely in it. And while neither way of going about it is wrong, for me, I want to always feel invested. That is why I have been inactive for so long. Simply, nothing has caught my attention, even though I spend almost every day surrounded by horses, including the ones that were used in all my classes.

So that being said, here is my plan for moving forward on posting to the blog. My original plan for The Healing Bit was to post about the lessons I learned from my students, volunteers, and horses. It became apparent to me that everyone in a class can learn from each other, not just the students through the instructor’s lessons. With having a mindset like this, I quickly started to realize that there was so much good going on around me, even on the days I felt like my classes were terrible. And I always felt so overwhelmed from these things staying locked in my head and heart. That was how this platform was born, simply me wanting to share these things with the world.

I felt, when I quit teaching at least, that these lessons would cease to exist. But I have discovered something truly amazing: they don’t! Just because I have stepped out of the world of teaching, maybe temporarily or maybe permanently, horses can still teach you very much if you’re willing to open your ears and eyes to them. It’s like a man by the name of Anthony Lothian had to say to one of his students: “Horses teach you a lot. Very little of it actually has to do with horses”.

Because of this, I have decided to shift the original goal of this blog from writing about the lessons I learn in therapeutic riding classes to writing about the lessons I learn from horses in general. I have decided to keep the name “The Healing Bit” because, let’s be honest; horses in general can give us quite a bit of healing in the midst of our day to day lives. I still will only be posting as inspiration strikes, but I hope (please don’t hold me to it though) that I won’t disappear off the face of the planet, in terms of blogging that is, for another seven months. Or at least that isn’t the plan anyway!

Thank you again for sticking with me all these months. I hope to start bringing you more content soon!