This past weekend was different than my usual weekends spent at the barn. It was all about getting together with friends, exploring new places, and finding time to recharge. And, do you know what? It was the perfect weekend. Despite the gloomy weather on Saturday, my morning began by jumping in the car and heading an hour-and-a-half west to Park Slope, Brooklyn, to meet a follower-turned-friend. I had wanted to try Blue Bottle Coffee for a while, so I was thrilled when she suggested we meet there. For more than an hour, we forgot about the rainy weather outside as we sipped our warm cappuccin ..read more

Every week, I try to carve out a little time for self-care. While I love working at home for myself, there are days when I realize at 5 pm that I haven’t moved all day and barely ate or drank anything (aside from my morning coffee). In an effort to be more mindful of my schedule, I’ve started incorporating “break time” into my days. The other thing that I do is make Monday a calibration day. Sometimes I use it to regroup after a busy weekend, while other times I use the morning to set myself up for the week. This week, however, I took the whole day to recalibrate and went to the barn to ride ..read more

When I started blogging in 2014, my goal was to create a supportive community of like-minded individuals in the cancer space. I was a recent thyroid cancer survivor at the time who was looking for a creative outlet and a way to share my story and inspire other young patients and survivors. Fast forward almost a decade, and I’m now a thyroid cancer survivor, caregiver, board-certified patient advocate, and new entrepreneur. But there was one thing that I didn’t talk much about in the past—my equestrian roots. When I started blogging, I was in the midst of a long hiatus from the sport post-coll ..read more

When was the last time you dated in the DM’s? No, I don’t mean sliding into someone’s DM’s for an actual date. But rather reaching out to say hello and to engage with your social media followers one-on-one. In full disclosure, I didn’t coin this term. It’s something that my business coach, Diana Davis, often talked about in Camp Clarity, and as a newly minted business owner, I’ve had success with.  Just the other day, I met a local follower for coffee. Months earlier, I had spotted her profile on Instagram and noticed that she not only lived on Long Island but was also going out on her o ..read more

We’ve all been told at one time or another not to wish our lives away. Or that when we turn 21, it feels like life moves faster. But nobody ever mentioned how easy it is to lose track of time when we hit a certain age. Just recently, I was reflecting and thought of someone that I used to know way back when. After a quick Google search, I found her email and decided to reach out. As I drafted an email, I thought about what to write after so many years. Yet, I never actually calculated how many years had gone by. Ever since my thyroid cancer diagnosis in 2013, I’ve felt almost like time stopped ..read more

When was the last time you thought about how much something costs? Probably pretty recently, right? Maybe it was your last trip to the grocery store or this morning when you got your coffee. For me, it was over the weekend when I went to my local tack shop, a place familiar to equestrians as where we go to get everything we need for ourselves and our equine partners. For most equestrians, a trip to the tack store is like a trip to insert-your-favorite-store-here. It’s our paradise. Our very over-priced paradise. A point that was driven home for me this weekend when I made my trip to the tack ..read more

This past week marked International Women’s Day, a global day to celebrate gender equality. It also made me think of the more than 50 million family caregivers (75 percent of whom are women) and the sacrifices that caregivers often make when it comes to their own care. Just this week, AARP shared some interesting data—millions of unpaid family caregivers provide 36 billion hours of care annually valued at $600 billion. Again, many of these caregivers are women who have left the workforce or reduced their hours due to their caregiving duties. According to the Family Caregiver Alliance, women l ..read more

It’s been a week…and it’s only Wednesday. So far, everything that I have tried to do has taken me about ten times as long as I had budgeted to do it, and there don’t seem to be enough hours in the day. Even simple things like running to pick up my thyroid medication at the pharmacy required three separate trips before I was successful. Is anyone else having one of those weeks?  But there are a few things that are making me happy as I slowly drag myself through this week: My viral Reel is still going strong: Last night, I hit 100K views—a massive milestone by my standards! The video has ..read more

This weekend was filled with two things that are very important to me—time at the barn and time with my grandmother. Yesterday was my grandmother’s 95th birthday. While birthdays have never been meaningful to her, this one held a special place in my heart. For the past two years, I’ve spent every night with my grandmother, and recently, I have been watching as she’s been declining. As her caregiver and her granddaughter, it’s been hard, but there’s been no greater honor than sharing memories with her, even if I’m the only one who will remember them. While I love to celebrate birthdays, this on ..read more

Did you see it? I had a little viral moment on Instagram this week (well, viral for me)…and it was wild to watch as my notifications blew up!  Like most people on social media, I’ve been trying to grow my follower count. Not for vanity reasons, but to have a robust and engaged community. At times, that’s been easier than others. But mostly, I’ve felt frustrated, as I was doing all of the right things. I was creating great content, engaging with my audience, and trying to build community through engaging with other people’s content…and, crickets. Nothing is more frustrating as a content c ..read more