🔥 It’s okay to miss what’s gone.

Sadie Speaks is my personal writing — short, honest essays from the deep middle of things. They started as emails to my list, but they’ve become something more: snapshots of truth, power, and self-return, written in real time.

🎧 Listen to me read it — just the way I meant it.

💬 Prefer to read? Here’s the original text.

The unseasonably beautiful weather this fall has made me really miss spending time with horses.

For a long time, horses were my world – a huge part of my identity, a commonality in my communities. As a kid, every afternoon was barn time, and on the weekends we went to shows. In college I rode with the Equestrian Team, taught horsemanship to other undergrads, and earned a degree in Equine Science – then spent nearly a decade working professionally as an outreach educator in the horse community.

This is Apple -- my favorite horse. We met at University of Maryland, where he was part of the teaching herd. We both left there at the same time, and he came to live at home with me. I kept him until I got pregnant with Lucy (my first human child), technically owned him until I was pregnant with Cora (my third), but finally had to sell him when mom-life got too overwhelming and expensive.

I was heartbroken to sell him, because he was so cool. Solid. Straightforward. But ornery as hell (like me, I guess). I still miss him, because he taught me something simple but profound: that I could trust horses if they could trust me.

A couple years ago, in a strange turn of events, I finally got the chance to do a bucket-list ride on the beach, in Massachusetts. I had to buy new riding boots just for the occasion because the pair I'd been wearing since I was 12 were moldy, laces frayed, leather delaminated. But by then, riding horses wasn't the same. The ride was fun, but it didn't light me up the way I thought it would. The magic wasn't there for me anymore.

I've been thinking about nostalgia lately. Sometimes the thing we're missing isn't actually the thing itself -- it's how the thing felt. And that's something we can't really get back.

Horses will always be a part of who I was, but they aren't part of who I am now. The place they once held in my heart has shifted. It's incredibly sad...but also freeing. It's helping me believe that it's okay to miss what's gone without needing it back.

With all my wild heart,

Sadie xo

P.S. If something I said resonated — and you’re craving a space to unpack your own story — get in touch with me. I’d be honored to hold that space for you.