It’s Birthday SZN at Stable Grounds Sanctuary 🥳🤑
Above your can see young Nicole at a show in her early years of riding ❤️ and mand my buddy Spunky at the old Yale Polo & Equestrian Center in New Haven (and yes, my shirt has horses on it).
It’s July 1 and that means it’s Birthday Season here at Stable Grounds Sanctuary!!! In honor of me and Nicole’s next turn around the sun, we are launching our Annual Birthday Fundraiser to infuse more energy into our efforts (online only this year 💻— but read to the end for a little treat 🤩).
July is our month to CELEBRATE 🥳
On the fundraiser page, we have identified 4 things that will boost our capacity to fulfill our mission.
Your gifts will get us there!
Check out our Birthday Fundraiser to send us a little Bday Love and help us reach out goal ❤️
On a personal note, I also want to speak to how awesome it has been to have Mandy this year. I am one who tends to reflect a lot around the time of my birthday and I am sitting with the fact that it was a reaallllly big deal to finally get “my own” horse this past year.
As a child, I used to spend hours reading about horses, drawing them, sculpting them with clay, and even writing my own stories about them. When on long car rides, I used to imagine what it would be like if I were riding a horse alongside the highway at that speed. I wanted to spend every free moment I had working at the barn and riding. I was obsessed.
I also made friends at the barn– some of whom I am fortunate to still be in touch with today. And my riding instructors, who took me under their wings, also continue to be important people in my life.
And… I will also note that my experiences with horses weren’t without some hardship as well. Something I don’t mention often is that I was bullied during middle school for my love of horses. I was the odd-one-out at an urban public school as one of the only people who spent their time outside of school with horses (and always wanted to talk about it 🤓).
I also had a few traumatic experiences with horses at a young age– witnessing several of the beloved horses at the barn experience grave injuries or illnesses and die.
I don’t mean to put a damper on our whole birthday celebration kick off, but I find that in order to show up to do this work in embodied authenticity, and to truly be able to connect the dots as to why we do what we do here, I need to give you a broader picture and talk about the tough stuff too.
My experiences with horses have included quite a bit of pain.
Being able to address the underlying systemic causes of many of those painful experiences perhaps is an ongoing part of my own healing. You see, none of that existed in a bubble.
Kids still bully each other and need places to feel included and heal (the bullied, the bullies, the people in the circles around them). Horses are still pushed past their limits, provided with insufficient care, and are subsequently harmed.
So each step we take on this journey of creating the sanctuary allows me to actively participate in reciprocal healing.
And this is made possible only in community with you. Little Rebecca who spent ALL of her childhood dreaming of having her own horse could not have imagined that it would take creating a nonprofit to make it possible.
But as my dreams grew and changed over time, I knew there was no other way than in partnership with others. I feel so fortunate to be in community with you and to care for Mandy in a way that is intended to share her and our future equine residents with you.
So, here’s to another year of growth together 🐴
Over the course of this month we will be sharing more stories and more of our personal reasons for why the formation of Stable Grounds Sanctuary has been so important to us.
All Our Love,
Rebecca and the Stable Grounds Sanctuary Team