Hello Everyone,
I hope that everyone has been having a good week. Anyways I have decided that I will share a couple of my chapters from my memoir Finding My True Happiness: Life, Love & Everything In Between over the next couple of weeks. I will share the first couple of pages from some of the chapters. For those of you that have already purchased my memoir thank you all so much it means the world to me to be able to share my story with all of you. One thing I need you all to do is please rate and review my book. Reviews are so important to authors because the more reviews we get the more people will want to read and purchase the book. So here’s the first chapter that I am going to share with all of you. Valley Therapeutic Equestrian Association. Please enjoy!
Everyone has that one thing or special place that means everything to them. Well, mine is extremely important and life changing. This place has always been my second home ever since I was a child. Valley Therapeutic Equestrian Association was founded in 1983 and is a non-profit volunteer-based charity. This amazing organization is for all kinds of people with disabilities, young and old.
When I first started at this organization it was for the therapeutic horseback riding. Working with a registered physiotherapist that is also a riding instructor. My parents had told me later in life that my balance was so bad that I would instantly fall off a chair and that I had to be strapped. The therapeutic horseback riding helped me with my balance and my core because I would use different muscles to stay up on the horse. I started out with side walkers
and a leader to help me with my balance and motor skills. As my balance improved, I did not need as much help, but I still had people who were side walking with me, just in case. Valley would put on horse shows every year before summer break. I would participate and even get to dress up in different costumes. We even got ribbons for every class.
Sometimes I didn’t want to go horseback riding because I would get all worked up. In that case that’s not good for the horses to have children screaming or making lots of noise. There was one time when I was seven years old. I was riding in the arena during one of my riding lessons. I had some side walkers with me while my instructor was ahead, watching to see if I was in the middle and balanced. There was another lesson going on in the arena at the same time. I still remember being on Flicka. She was one of the first horses that rode back in the day. I cannot really remember what I was doing, but I can recall that there was
something going on. My instructor stopped what we were doing and looked over at the other end of the arena. Well, it turned out that the other horse, Hawkeye, had just lost one of his shoes off his hoof. They had asked me if I wanted to keep the horseshoe and said yes. It was all busted up on one end and it still had a few nails in it. I still have that horseshoe today.
That was one time before I decided to take a break from horseback riding. I took a break for about five or six years. I tried dance for a year, I did jazz, but I was not really into that. So, I decided to try ballet, I did that for a year. It was okay but dance wasn’t really my thing. Then I thought I would try baseball and again I wasn’t happy with it, but I stuck it out for about a year. Then I tried gymnastics, and I really loved it. I did gymnastics for the next three years and really fell in love with it. My favorite thing there was the trampoline. I loved it so much that I saved up my money to buy one. I would spend hours on it. There were so many times that my parents
would have to call me in for dinner. I would go on it before and after school. I would practice everything on the trampoline that I had been learning from going to gymnastics each week.
~Crystal~
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