The Journey Behind EquiZen

Sometimes the lives we set out to save become the very ones that give us a reason to keep going.

My connection with horses began long before EquiZen Sanctuary had a name.

As a little girl, horses were part of my world through my father. Some of my earliest memories and experiences with them were woven into those childhood years.

As life changed and family relationships became complicated, horses remained something deeply meaningful to me. Around the age of fourteen, my mother gave me my first horse, whom I boarded in Prescott, Arizona.

I spent much of that time going to the boarding facility on my own, finding connection and a sense of independence in something that belonged entirely to me.

By sixteen, that chapter had come to an end. Life moved forward, and for more than twenty years, horses were no longer part of my everyday world.

Then, in 2018, I found my way back.

What began as a return to something I had loved since childhood gradually became something far greater than I could have imagined.

As I built my career and businesses in behavioral health, I was fortunate to have the resources to rescue horses and provide sanctuary for those in need.

But through my own seasons of uncertainty, personal challenges, and profound change, the horses became an anchor in my life.

They gave me purpose when I struggled to find direction, a reason to show up during some of my most difficult moments, and a connection that didn’t require me to have everything figured out.

Over time, I began to understand that the relationships we form with horses can teach us something profound about presence, trust, boundaries, vulnerability, and ourselves.

I thought I was giving them a place to belong. In so many ways, they were helping me find my own.

That understanding became the foundation of EquiZen Sanctuary.