Totally different personal experience on this topic but, as so many others have said, so grateful to read everyone’s stories.
I burned out for the first time when I was 12. Had a lot of stuff going on at home. The barn I was at at the time was the situation we needed financially, for me to keep riding and to progress, but not the situation I needed to be in mentally. I was crying in the car, going home every night. I was scared sh*tless of the fancy free lease my trainer found (an ammy before my time). Felt guilty and ungrateful but I quit. That lasted a month.
The second time I quit, I was in college. I went into school thinking I was going to do “this” professionally and my degree was a backup plan. Things went to #@%* at my barn and it lost a lot of clients. I was simultaneously going through some freshman year growing pains, maturity-wise, and also starting to have some differences of opinion with my trainer concerning horse.
I packed up horse, moved to a pleasure barn for what was supposed to be a brief intermission. And also where, for the first time ever, I wasn’t in a program or under a pro’s supervision. On the upside, I learned to trust my own judgement more and realized that I could function independently.
The third time I quit was after horse and I faded into retirement. My (non-horsey) career hadn’t gone the way it was supposed to (big dramatic air quotes). I was in over my head financially with a pasture puff I couldn’t afford. A trusted connection was willing to take the puff, whom I had at that point come to terms with putting down. Which is a whole other story and a whole other regret – the upshot of which is, was, I thought I was done. Done, done, done. For a few years, I couldn’t even look at a horse. I certainly didn’t think I deserved to ride again or be around them because I felt like I let my retiree down.
It took a decade, maybe, before that old craving started up again. It took another few years before I felt like I was in a place to lesson. Now I’m in a good place financially and I can dare to map out a future, ideally with a project down the road, that I would do a lot of things differently by.
I lucked out. Found a fabulous barn with a trainer who’s not just a great horseperson but a great teacher as well. Took me - I don’t know - how long to learn that a good trainer isn’t necessarily a good teacher (and realize that what I thought were my own failings as a kid, maybe weren’t all mine … I’m still learning to cut myself some slack and untangling what are healthy and unhealthy environments and situations - though 30+ years on is a thick filter to look back through).
The good trainer is a relief I wish on all of you. In my case because the strangeness of being a re-rider is enough of a weird trip on its own. More often than not, I remember to be happy I’m here. And that’s enough. Some days I’m just amused and bemused by the disconnect between what I know and what I seem to be physically capable of doing
Other days I could cry because feel like I don’t know myself in the tack.
On the best days, I feel like I was meant my whole life for this, to be an adult ammy.
I was never the bravest to begin with and know, as an adult, there are some things I don’t have the mental or physical energy for: unsafe situations, which includes unsafe people. That’s why it took another couple years, after deciding I did want to do this again, to pull the trigger and schedule a lesson. I must’ve cyber-stalked every barn within an hour’s drive during that time, trying to suss out if they were “safe.” Look, many of you struggle with the “Big A program or what?” dilemma. Where I’m at, “crazy or not?”
And while, again, my story isn’t all that relevant to your situation, my heart absolutely breaks for all the people whose love and appetite for this world is undermined, eroded or flat out ruined by trainers putting them in a tough spot with a horse that isn’t a good match. As a kid, I watched more than one totally happy and comfortable ammy sell their rockstar packer and trade up for something “fancier” that was too green or too nuts. Listen to your heart on that @#$&.