Grassfires

I always miss the connection when the people go home, the banners come off the wall and the barns empty out.

I wrote that back in June.

I was answering some questions about the last few years of my life and trying to get real about who I am and who I want to be—not just in this season of my life, but who and what I want to be from now on.

Somewhere in all of that, I admitted something that probably wasn’t very flattering.

Maybe we weren’t really connected.

We weren’t friends. We were acquaintances.

For years, I knew people at horse shows. Lots of people. I could walk through the barns and say hello all day long. But I didn’t dig deeper and cultivate the connection. I didn’t learn what their hobbies were and follow up on what concert they went to or what book they read.

I love to read, yet I didn’t even know when a horse show friend did too.

Truthfully, I didn’t know how to have a conversation.

Seriously. I can sit in comfortable silence way longer than I can converse.

I wrote that I was trying to learn how to TALK. How to ask good questions. How to learn more about a person AND be interested when they tell me.

And then I started The Trainer’s Wife.

I gave myself a hobby that required me to ask women questions.

And then shut up. And listen to the answers.

I wasn’t just seeing the trainer’s wife across the arena anymore.

I was hearing about the woman inside the life.

I heard about marriages and families and horses and businesses. Wins and losses. Sacrifices and mistakes. The things they were proud of and the things that had nearly broken them.

And I liked knowing them that way.

Maybe that was part of what I’d been missing.

I didn’t just want to know people because we happened to be at the same horse show. I wanted to know them beyond the arena.

And maybe I wanted them to know me too.

Somewhere in all of that listening and talking and trying to figure out what I wanted my own life to look like, Finding Center began to take shape.

Not because I had some grand revelation one day that women needed retreats.

It was an idea that built over time.

And by June, when I sat down and tried to put into words why I was doing it, Finding Center was already real. Women were already signing up for our first retreat.

What I wrote wasn’t the idea for Finding Center.

It was me beginning to understand why I’d created it.

Ultimately, I want to give the women of the western equine and ranching world a place to go play and talk and laugh and cry and just let down. I want them to ask hard questions and hear a variety of answers, then shape their own.

I want them to build a community with each other and know that when the retreat is over, they can reach out when they need another hard question answered or even just to breathe for a minute and be quiet with someone.

A place to exhale and build lasting relationships.

And then I wrote the part that’s harder to say out loud:

It’s something I’ve never really had and I want to create it for others so they don’t feel alone when the hard things happen.

When the idea came late in 2025, I had absolutely no idea if I could actually do it.

I knew I could plan a retreat.

I can make a schedule. Find a beautiful place. Order food. Plan activities. Buy gifts. Put women in a room together.

But you can’t put connection on an itinerary.

You can’t schedule 3:00–4:00 PM: Become important to each other.

You can create the opportunity.

What happens after that is up to them.

Then yesterday, September 12th, 2026, one of the women from the first Finding Center Retreat sent a picture to our group text.

She wrote:

“I just love this photo of us.”

Someone else chimed in.

Then another.

“The best group ever!!”

“Those few days and the emotions & experience with all you ladies is so special to me.”

And several hours later:

“I think about that weekend often!”

I loved the exchange when I saw it.

But this morning, I realized what I was looking at.

The retreat ended.

The community didn’t.

Nobody scheduled that conversation.

Nobody was facilitating a Center Circle.

Nobody asked a thoughtful question or announced that it was time for everyone to connect.

One woman simply sent a picture because she loved it.

And the others showed up.

For a woman who wrote three months ago that she didn’t know how to cultivate connection, that feels like something.

Maybe that’s part of what it means to do something that matters.

Not necessarily to create something huge.

Maybe just to create something worth tending.

Which brings me to something else I wrote on that June page.

I was talking about ideas.

About how easy it is to see somebody else doing something similar and think you missed your chance.

I’ve done that.

I’ve seen other Trainer’s Wife articles or videos and felt like I missed the boat. I’ve seen other retreats. Other writers. Other people doing some version of a thing I had quietly imagined doing myself.

And I thought I’d missed my chance.

I hadn’t.

And neither had they.

We all have a different way to present and tell a story.

Nobody will do mine exactly the way I will because they aren’t me. And they may not connect with the people who are drawn to me.

So, I wrote:

Maybe the goal isn’t a grassfire.

Maybe the goal is to tend the flame.

I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking I needed to figure out the big thing.

What am I supposed to do? Where is all of this going?

Maybe, I don’t have to know yet.

Maybe, I just keep shaping the things that matter to me.

Give them a little grass.

Give them some air.

Protect the flame.

And pay attention to who gathers around it.

Because that’s the part I didn’t understand when I wrote those words in June.

I thought I was trying to create a place where women could connect.

Yesterday, I got to watch those women choose each other.

Maybe this little flame is already doing exactly what I hoped it would do.