My friend. My family. My companion.

The sweet fragrance of oat grass told me I was almost there.

A newly-minted driver of 16, I drove the winding back roads of Saratoga, California to see my horse Ludo every afternoon.

He whinnied as my tires crunched across the gravel, ran to his stall door, and poked his head out to greet me with flared nostrils and a bobbing head that said:

My friend, my family, my companion. Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you.

Ludo was a tall, heavyset Dutch Warmblood, eight years old with a wild, black mane and a tail so long I had to trim it every few weeks so it wouldn’t sweep the ground.

Between his deep brown eyes was a small patch of white nestled amidst his bay coat, which was nearly black in winter and a light dappled milk chocolate color in the summer.

Riding my horse Ludo

He’d been a gift from my parents after the 2002 World Equestrian Games, where I competed in vaulting.

No one else liked Ludo. No one trusted him. He tended to bite. But he never nipped me.

I was his family, and he was mine.

Our afternoons together always began with neck scratches. He nuzzled my face, then stretched his nose out as far as he could, head cocked to one side, and lower lip drooped in bliss. “Don’t stop,” that lip seemed to say.

We found solace wandering the surrounding trails, and life’s worries melted away. With that freedom and solitude, I focused on nothing more than being that beautiful creature’s companion.

Ludo and I did this dance in near silence for almost a decade.

It’s what I miss the most about Ludo. We didn’t need words—only emotion.

He nuzzled my face until the day he died. Until I made the unthinkable decision to let the vet inject him with a lethal dose of poison, only a month after finishing the chemotherapy injections that had allowed me to live.

His life for mine—at least that’s how it felt.

His colic had come out of nowhere. After five days in the equine ICU, his pain had escalated with no hope of recovery. I asked the vet for a few minutes alone.

“Are you sure,” she said. “He’s been trying to bite us.”

“I’m sure,” I said.

As the heavy steel door closed behind me, Ludo raised his eyes to mine and let out a deep sigh that said:

My friend, my family, my companion. Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you.

Never forgotten…

I buried my face in his coat and sobbed, scratching his neck until his lower lip drooped. I whispered, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I kissed his velvet nose, then led him outside to the patch of dirt where horses stood to die. I stroked the small patch of white hair between his eyes until the poison reached his heart, and he collapsed onto the ground.

My friend was gone.

I walked back to my car in a haze, clutching his dusty, blue halter. I sat there for what felt like an eternity—sobbing and unable to drive away. Ludo lay in the dirt 50 feet away, lifeless and alone. I couldn’t leave him.

He was gone, and my sense of home was gone with him.

You would have thought my heart would’ve broken long before that day.

I had spent the previous year enduring chemo, radiation, and a slew of surgeries. But it was the loss of Ludo that did it.

Before, no matter how bad things got, I could retreat to Ludo’s paddock, feel his nose gently nuzzle my face, and forget that I was bald, missing a breast, and more aware of death than any 25-year-old should be.

I lived without horses for the next six years. The connection with friends’ horses was superficial at best, and the memories of Ludo were too painful. Instead, I threw myself into yoga and finished a yoga teacher-training course seven months after completing chemo.

I found a slice of peace on my yoga mat that I had only ever felt on Ludo’s back.

Then, in 2014, three weeks after my wedding, we learned that my cancer had spread to my bones and distant lymph nodes.

Now, as a stage 4 metastatic breast cancer (MBC) patient, I returned to treatment. I did remarkably well and forged ahead with my yoga goals. I even started my own business, Santa Cruz Nature Yoga, and taught free classes for women battling cancer.

In November of 2016, I got a headache that never went away.

A week later, I lay in a hospital bed signing consent forms for an emergency craniotomy to remove one of three brain tumors. A month later, I lay strapped down to a table for brain radiation.

Recovery was a beast, and I was forced to endure the biggest challenge of my life without my core coping mechanisms.

I was too weak for yoga; too scared to be around horses. What if I lost my balance and spooked the horse, or had a seizure while riding? I knew I could regain the strength for yoga over time, but I forced myself to accept that horses were a part of my past.

They fell into the category of “cancer-related losses that I can’t talk about because if I do, I’ll start crying and never stop.”

Six months later, I arrived at the Cowgirls vs. Cancer retreat and touched the soft nose of a dark bay named Java. And I wept.

The tears fell fast and unexpectedly as I heard Ludo whisper:

My friend, my family, my companion. Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you.

The grief that I had held onto for so long surfaced and floated away into that big beautiful Montana sky.

My time with horses wasn’t over after all.

Of all the fears I have, of all the losses that have shred my heart to pieces, this was one I could finally let go.

Java and I during the Cowgirls vs. Cancer retreat (Photo credit: Larry Stanley)

As if that revelation wasn’t enough, the retreat led me from this moment to a candlelit yoga space inside a restored barn. I returned to my mat and found that I could once again stretch my body in ways I had deeply missed.

I was given back my beloved horses. I was brought back to my mat.

Upon returning home, I knew I needed to purposefully infuse more joy into my life. Fewer appointments; more horse nuzzles. Less worrying; more sun salutations.

I started spending more time splashing in the pool with my nieces. I unrolled my yoga mat. I researched local barns. I threw myself into stage 4 MBC advocacy work and into the creation of bare, a short film about my experience shaving my head before my first chemotherapy.

As the film gained publicity, I realized how many people I could help just by sharing my story. I found a new sense of purpose in life that had been missing for far too long.

As a stage 4 patient, cancer will always be a part of my life. But, as long as I can keep layering joy on top of all the pain, I’ll be ok.

MBC has a way of overshadowing everything. Yet, the moment Java rested his nose in my hands, the sweetness of life became every bit as all consuming as my cancer.

These are the moments to live for. In honor of Ludo and all those I love, I won’t stop.

Check out the short film I co-wrote below or visit bareshortfilm.com.