Editor’s note: This article describes suicidal ideation.

A little more than two decades ago, Emily Williams was at the top of her game. She had jumped her first grand prix by 14. In 1999, her last junior year, she was named the Chronicle’s Hunter Horseman of the Year after becoming the 11^th rider to win both the Eisers & Pessoa/AHSA Medal Final (Pennsylvania) and the NHSF/ASPCA Maclay Championship (New York) in the same season, and winning team gold in the FEI North American Young Riders Championship (Illinois) earlier same year.  

As a young professional she won the $100,000 AHJF Hunter Classic Spectacular of Palm Beach with the Lindner family’s Strapless in 2001, ’02 and ’03, starting when she was 20.

Then things got complicated.

Williams spent about 21 years away from the top of the sport, but she made a big splash when she rode Damas De Tannerre to the top of the $25,000 USHJA International Hunter Derby on Jan. 31, during Week 4 of the Winter Equestrian Festival (Florida).

“I’ve ridden a lot of horses in my lifetime, and he’s in the top five favorite horses I’ve ever ridden,” Williams said of Autumn Janesky’s 12-year-old Selle Français (Scareface De Mars—Pin Up Basters). “He’s so fun to gallop and jump on; I just trust him so much. In the handies I talk to him as we’re going around, and you can just tell he’s like, ‘Yeah! Yeah! Let’s turn! Let’s do it. Give me a bigger, scarier jump. I can do it.’ ”

Williams, 43, started catch-riding “Dan” a year ago, and she started working for Janesky and her mom, Wendy Janesky, full-time a few months ago. Dan’s main job is showing with Autumn, and Williams is careful to balance any showing she does on him with his regular routine with his owner. 

“He literally came down from doing the adult amateurs with Autumn [where he was champion], went back to his derby stall, got an oil change and came up to the ring 30 minutes later, jumped that derby with me and won,” Williams said.

Because she was training Autumn and Dan in the adult ring, she had to bolt to get to the derby course and didn’t even have time to walk the course properly. She had four horses total in the class, and with Dan she showed off some tight turns in the handy part of the class—it was a hunt-and-go format—which helped boost her to the win.

“When they start announcing, and they tell you the scores, and say, ‘We have a change at the top…’ ” Williams said, choking back tears. “I’ve been second in a lot of international derbies, and I’ve won some national derbies, but as much as I won in all those night classes, it’s been a long time. That’s my first international derby win, and his too, so it was a big deal.

“[Coming back to the top of the sport] has been just so humbling and such an honor,” she continued. “People like Liza [Boyd] have been so sweet. She was leading that class, and I beat her. She came up to me before we went in for the presentation, and she grabbed my hand. She was like ‘Congratulations, Em, I’m so proud of you. You’re back.’ ”

Watch their winning round, courtesy of ShowGroundsLive.com:

‘Not Real Chic‘

In September 2001, early in Emily’s professional career, her mother, Lynne Williams, died. Emily struggled in the aftermath, and she started abusing drugs.

“I was always the goody two-shoes,” she said. “I always had a good head on my shoulders and was very disciplined. My friends partied, and I really didn’t. I sort of started to party a little bit. Then when my mother passed away, it took me 10 or 15 years of realizing that the reason I was doing half the stuff I was doing was that I was escaping stuff I hadn’t dealt with. By the time I came to that realization, I hated myself so much for what I had become that it was a vicious cycle.”

Emily met a man she thought she would marry and gave up on the career she was trying to rebuild.

“I thought he was my soulmate, and that was going to be it,” she said. “We both ended up getting on drugs, and though we did have something special initially, it became incredibly toxic. It finally got so bad that I thought if the drugs didn’t kill us, he would kill me. I don’t blame him; I chose to stay.

“I knew I wanted to be off the drugs, I really did,” she continued. “I’d thrown the drugs away a couple weeks before I went to treatment. But I was in such psychosis and mental breakdown, I didn’t know the difference between what was real and what wasn’t real.”

By then she’d “put [her] dad [Cody Williams] through the wringer” and didn’t want to call and ask for money for rehab.

“By the end when I was using, I didn’t want to be a prisoner of it; I was longing to be done,” she said. “I didn’t feel like I deserved to reach out and ask for help. How do you tell your dad, ‘OK, It’s not just coke. I’ve been doing meth for two years.’ That’s not real chic, you know?”

Getting Help

In the fall of 2022 Emily spent a week in a psychiatric hospital then went to a rehabilitation center in Northern Kentucky. After her 30 days in rehab, she arranged to go to a sober living facility in Texas near her father, wanting to be sure she put some space between herself and her then ex-boyfriend. She considered living with her father rather than going to a sober living facility but decided not to.

“Rehab is a great starting point, those 30 days, but you’re in a bubble,” she said. “You’re being drug tested. You’re in a safe zone. … I chose to do the sober living thing, and it was the best choice I ever made in my life. They taught me how to live, how to apply everything you learn in rehab, and the 12 steps.”

One of Emily’s first tasks was to get a job, which turned out to be a major culture shock. She’d always run in elite circles and worked riding horses, and now she had to figure out how to use public transport and knock on doors of businesses asking if they would hire someone with no relevant experience on her resume. And, oh, she would tell them, by the way, she’s in recovery.

She got job at Jason’s Deli, getting paid $11 an hour to tend the salad bar. Seeing how she was blonde and well-spoken, they tried to get her to work the register, thinking she’d be a better fit in a “bougier” role, but that panicked Emily, and she begged to stay in charge of the salad.

“I’m like, I dated a man who owned a restaurant for six years, but I don’t know anything about it except that he had good food,” she said. “I don’t know how to work those machines or anything like that.”

She was thrilled to have the job, which she said taught her a lot about herself.

“You would come in and clock in, and I had to make these little muffins in the morning,” she recalled. “I would have a meltdown because I had no idea what I was doing. All these other people, even the other girls in recovery with me, are getting jobs, and they’ve all worked at fast food joints. This is literally Swahili to me. I became good at being the salad bar girl. I would get so mad because I’d have it all clean, and some [expletive] would come in and spill ranch dressing everywhere.”

That $11 an hour was useful for paying her rent at the sober living facility, which was $250 a week. She caught a break when the program managers asked her to be a house manager, which would reduce her rent to $100 a week.

Eventually she started working part time at Brawley Farms for Bob and Morgan Brawley near Flower Mound, Texas, as well as at the deli. When the Brawleys went to Florida for the winter, she moved into their house and spent the winter working at their barn. While she was grateful for the opportunity, she longed to be back in Florida for the circuit.

“I swore that if I made it through that winter in Texas, I would never spend another winter not in Florida,” she said. “It was a good lesson. It makes you appreciate everything so much, and reminds you that everything isn’t a ‘have to’ it’s a ‘get to.’ ”

The Accident

On April 30, 2023, things went sideways again. Emily was schooling a horse for an amateur at Texas Shoot-Out—her second show back after getting sober and her first show back after getting her drivers license again. As she galloped to one final jump, she realized that the placing rail was in the wrong place, set at two and a half strides from the jump rather than three.  

“[The horse] leaves solid and catches the rail,” she recalled. “I was hoping he would stairway to heaven it, and I could sit back, Conor Swail-style, and let the reins go through my fingers. Luckily I had a brand new Kask helmet on because he caught the pole, and I flipped over. I landed straight on my head and cracked my helmet.”

Emily broke her C1 (“The doctor literally said I survived a lightning strike”) and severed the ligament that goes down in front of the spinal cord, which remained intact. The doctors told her that only 2% of patients with this injury survived, and those survivors are generally using wheelchairs for the rest of their lives.

She also broke her nose badly, which she couldn’t get fixed because she risked paralysis or worse if they put a tube down her nose to fix the problem, given her other injuries.

“I looked like I got in a fight with Ronda Rousey,” Emily said with a laugh. “My dad walked into my bedroom, and he looked at me and said, ‘Holy shit!’ I looked rough, but my neck hurt so bad I didn’t even notice I’d completely broken my nose. I had two black eyes and looked like I’d gotten the shit kicked out of me for about a month. I’d go to lunch with my dad, and he got death glares [like it was his fault].”

By the time Emily was stable enough to get her nose fixed, her neck—which had been in a brace 24/7 since the injury—was almost stable enough for her to start riding, so she opted to let it be rather than take another six weeks off riding.

Once she progressed from bedrest to walking on the treadmill, it wasn’t long before doctors cleared her to teach lessons, though she wasn’t allowed to lift anything. She recounted how Margie Engle yelled at Emily’s co-workers for letting her move poles. Engle, who has also broken her nose, pointed out that Emily’s looks better.

“I really got to throw myself into the teaching side of it, and I was trying to be a better instructor,” Emily said. “If that hadn’t happened, I never would have had that opportunity.”

Getting On Her Feet

She spent the 2024 circuit catch-riding at the Winter Equestrian Festival, then found herself without somewhere to go. It was hot, and Wellington had largely emptied out as equestrians retreated to cooler parts of the county. Kim Farrington, Kent Farrington’s sister, suggested Emily move in with their mother, Linda Farrington, in Wellington.

“I had $800 in my bank account,” she recalled. “I didn’t know what the heck I was going to do. I barely had the money to chip in and buy the salmon she would cook for dinner for us.”

Eventually she was able to find a few freelance gigs and teach some lessons, and she rode for Archie Cox for a few weeks, first in California and then at the Traverse City circuit in Michigan. After that she went to Fairfield (Connecticut) to ride for the Janeskys before moving into an apartment on her friend Georgina Bloomberg’s farm in North Salem, New York.

“I finally followed my heart and prayed that the money would follow and that I would work it out, instead of committing to a job where I knew I would have a job and then resenting that I wasn’t where I wanted to be,” she said. “As soon as I go to New York, it was crazy. Being in North Salem I was like, ‘This is where I’m supposed to be.’ I just knew it. I didn’t always know when the next paycheck was coming. I would make some money showing for a week or two then wouldn’t have anything to show for a month. I just kept trusting.”

Bloomberg proved a loyal friend to Emily, arranging for her to take lessons with her coach, Jimmy Doyle, aboard Bloomberg’s grand prix horse, Crown 5, which built back Emily’s confidence. When she’d have a bad day Bloomberg would let Emily take her dog Clyde for a sleepover. (“We’d joke that now I don’t settle for anything below Crown or Clyde status,” she said.)

Before long the Janeskys asked Emily to come on full time as their trainer and rider, and she headed down to Wellington for this year’s circuit in November.

“I’m so lucky and fortunate, and we all vibe so well,” she said. “We’re all so transparent, and there’s no BS. We love the horses. The showing and all that is a bonus, and winning is a bigger bonus. I love when it all works out, but at the end of the day we’re all here because we love horses, even if we never show at all.”

Gaining Perspective

These days Emily is still working hard at improving herself. She starts her day with a gratitude list that she posts on social media, and often heads to a 12-step meeting before her early morning rides. She’s become a regular gym-goer. She prays—she describes herself as spiritual rather than religious—and journals in the evening, and she tries to talk to other people battling addiction and generally be of service.

“I always thought I was a nice person before, and I think my heart was always good, but, like the crossing guards at the show, every day I try to say hi to them. People treat them like they’re garbage,” she said. “Everyone is working their butt off, and everyone is out here trying to make a living and support their families. You never know what’s going on. You think you’re having a bad day because, ‘Oh my God, my horse spooked, and I wasn’t champion. Poor me.’ ”

To accommodate her neck, she still sleeps sitting straight up (“Everyone says it’s really creepy, but I’m used to it,” she said), and she has some residual numbness in her left hand and fingers. She’s considering getting her nose fixed after circuit ends, but that’s secondary to her other priorities.

She’s living at Wendy’s home in Wellington above the garage with her new English bulldog puppy Tugboat. In addition to the Janeskys, Emily said that her return to the top of the sport has been supported by her father and many good friends in the industry, including Missy Clark; Don and Nancy Stewart; Kent, Linda and Kim Farrington; Tom Wright and Georgina Bloomberg.

She had a cancer scare recently when she went in for her first mammogram.

“I had to go in for a more in-depth scan, and for a month I was freaking out about it because it was in the same breast as my mom, and I’d never gotten a mammogram before. I had just been avoiding anything life-oriented.”

Bloomberg accompanied Emily to her follow-up the Monday of the week of her derby win and gave Emily the confidence to insist upon getting her results immediately.

“They did the more in-depth mammogram and the ultrasound, and they came out and were like, ‘Give us a couple minutes’ and they were like, ‘OK, Miss Williams, you’re good. We’ll see you next year,’ ” she recalled. “And George is pregnant now, and we’re walking out, and she’s like, ‘I feel like we should go get a drink, but I’m pregnant, and you’re sober.’ We laughed our [butts] off.”

Blessed Beyond Blessed

The day after her derby win, Emily showed up a few minutes late to her 12-step meeting, and there was only time left for one more share. Emily stood up and poured her heart out, eager to share her gratitude.

“I don’t want anyone to ever give up on themselves.”

Emily Williams

“There was somebody in there who only had 15 days sobriety, and he seemed like a nice guy. I’m like, ‘Look, if I can do this, you can do this. You’ve already made it through the hardest part,’ ”  she said. “That’s probably when I would say was my biggest rock bottom. I was starting to think that—I’m not a suicidal person. That’s not my thing. It runs in my family; I’m very much against it—but when I started to think it would be better if I wasn’t here, that really scared me. I don’t want anyone to ever give up on themselves.”

Emily is passionate about helping others dealing with addiction and keeping up her own routines to stay at the top of her game.

“It’s crazy how forgiving this sport is,” she said. “I know so many people who are out there suffering in silence, and I want them to know that you can recover. I don’t want to shove it down anyone’s throat. I just want people to not be afraid to ask for help. It takes work. It’s not easy, but it’s not hard. It’s simple, you just do what is suggested, and you can have a life beyond your wildest dreams.”

“I feel lucky to have gone through what I’ve gone through,” she said. “Because of all the crap I experienced—and there were plenty of times that weren’t my shiniest moments and were embarrassing and whatever—without all that I wouldn’t be where I am today. I wouldn’t have the perspective and the gratitude. I have a such a joy for life, and I want to get out of bed in the morning. I can’t wait to go to work. I love it. I love the people I work with. I love the whole team. I love the horses. I love [Wendy]. I love Autumn. I’m so blessed, beyond blessed, beyond blessed.”

If you are in crisis, please call, text or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.