How horses, grief, and Equine Gestalt helped me realize how much caregiving had changed me
There are moments in life when you don’t realize how much something has changed you until you finally have space to look back.
For me, that realization came a few months after Mike died.
A friend and I were talking, and somewhere in the conversation, I found myself reflecting on the years leading up to his death—the doctor appointments, uncertainty, travel, advocacy, exhaustion, and all the things that quietly become normal when you are caring for someone you love. And then it hit me.
I hadn’t realized how much caregiving had changed me.
Not in dramatic, obvious ways. Quietly. Slowly. In ways I couldn’t see while I was living it.
When Everything Changed
Photo by Jessica Dittemore
In August of 2012, life shifted.
What we thought was a sinus infection turned into something much bigger. Mike wasn’t getting better. Instead, symptoms kept escalating, and answers felt hard to come by. Eventually, he was diagnosed with relapsing polychondritis, a rare autoimmune disease that attacks cartilage throughout the body.
At one point, the nurse practitioner referred him to Hays. I remember going to pick him up, not fully realizing he was being admitted to the hospital. Like so many moments in caregiving, I was simply focused on the next thing that needed to happen.
You don’t think about how quickly life can change until it does. One day, you are making plans. The next, your life begins revolving around specialists, medications, appointments, and uncertainty. Somewhere in the middle of it all, without consciously deciding to, you become a caregiver.
And caregiving changes everything.
The Invisible Ways Caregiving Changes You
Mike in his garden.
People often see the obvious parts of caregiving—the driving, scheduling, research, medications, medical conversations, and logistics. What they don’t always see is what happens to the caregiver.
Your world slowly gets smaller. You stop thinking about what you need because there is always something more urgent, someone else who needs attention, another appointment to make, another problem to solve. You become the one holding things together, functioning while exhausted and pushing your own emotions aside because there simply isn’t time for them.
Caregiving asks a lot of a person, especially when you love deeply. And when the hard season stretches from months into years, you stop noticing what you have set down—or even who you have stopped being.
I don’t think I realized how much of myself I had quietly put aside until much later.
Something That Was Mine
Photo by Kim Beer.
Horses had always been part of my life. Long before caregiving. Long before diagnoses and hospital visits. They had always been a source of grounding, connection, and peace.
During the last two and a half years of Mike’s life, I enrolled in the Equine Gestalt Coaching Method® program. At the time, part of me simply wanted something for myself.
That can feel strange to admit as a caregiver.
Caregivers become so accustomed to putting themselves last that choosing something for themselves can feel unfamiliar—even uncomfortable. Yet looking back, I can see it wasn’t selfish. It was necessary.
I didn’t realize then how much I needed a space where emotions could exist without needing to be fixed. A place where grief, fear, exhaustion, frustration, and uncertainty didn’t have to be tucked away so I could keep functioning.
The horses had a way of meeting me honestly. Not with judgment or advice, but with presence. They responded to what was real, not what I was trying to hold together. Somewhere in that process, I began reconnecting with parts of myself that had gotten buried beneath responsibility and survival.
What I Understand Now
A few months after Mike’s death, I finally began to understand something I couldn’t fully see while I was in the middle of caregiving:
Caregiving changes us.
Even when it is done with love. Even when we would do it all over again.
There are emotions we carry long after the appointments stop and the crisis passes. Grief. Exhaustion. Identity shifts. Questions about who we are now. Sometimes, even guilt for wanting something for ourselves again.
I see this now not only through my own story, but through the people I work with. So many caregivers spend years caring for everyone else and never stop to ask themselves: How has this changed me? What do I need? Where do I put everything I’ve been carrying?
You Don’t Have to Figure It Out Alone
If you are a caregiver—or someone carrying grief, burnout, overwhelm, or the emotional weight of a hard season—you don’t have to navigate it alone.
Equine Gestalt creates space to slow down and process what life has asked of you. You don’t need horse experience, and you don’t need to have the perfect words. You simply need a willingness to show up for yourself.
If this story resonates with you, I invite you to schedule a Zoom conversation with me to explore whether Equine Gestalt might be a fit for where you are right now. Sometimes the first step is simply giving yourself permission to be supported, too.
Every story needs a soundtrack.
This is the one I’ve chosen for this post—sometimes because of the title, sometimes the lyrics, sometimes simply the feeling it stirs in me.
