“Please, Mom. There’s a pep rally today. I don’t have anyone to sit with. Don’t make me sit alone. Come get me.”

No mom wants a text like that from her kid.

For me, though, texts like that from my 15-year-old daughter have become a heartbreaking routine. 

On top of this daily drama, we recently transitioned our daughter from boarding and leasing at a barn she adored to riding pony projects at our backyard barn. The adjustment? It’s been full of grief for the barn family she left behind.

But when I took my daughter and our pony to a local derby, we got a rare and unexpected break from all that sadness. 

It wasn’t USEF Pony Finals or Devon. But still, when the announcer called her name as the winner, something cracked open in me. I cried. Big, face-crumpling, shoulder-shaking tears. And when I hung that blue ribbon around her pony’s neck, I cried harder.

“We just worked so hard. I’m so proud of her,” I said to my husband, trying to compose myself as he gently patted my back. I buried my face in his shoulder, confused by my tears.

Because standing there, in the grass field with my family, I didn’t understand this hurricane of emotion. It wasn’t until later, in the quiet of the night, that it started to make sense.

The tears weren’t just about a blue ribbon or about pride. My tears were over my feelings for my daughter. Over the difficult months she suffered every single school day. Her teenage world of rumors and hallway whispers. The mean girls I couldn’t stop. The pain I couldn’t help with. 

But horse stuff? I could help with that. I could set jumps. I could encourage tighter turns. I could ride the pony to help keep him fit.

I could hold the space in our backyard for my daughter to find her self-worth again. Her happiness. 

So that’s what I did. 

My daughter and I spent hours in our uneven field, building something together, transforming this out of shape, slightly scruffy pony into something happy and polished.

We dragged straw bales into the field and stacked them into something derby-ish. Rolled a log teeming with ants into the grass, even though we both gagged and squealed. Nearly crashed the Gator—but didn’t—hauling stumps to make a perfect trot jump. 

We were scratched up and sweaty but proud. Our course wasn’t Insta-perfect, but it was ours. And, boy, did we use it.

“Collect him now and extend him down the long side!” I shouted from the edge of the field.

“Balance him going downhill—then leg on!” I called as she approached the jump on the slope.

Week by week, I saw her confidence and spark return. Not just in the saddle—but in herself.

Because behind that blue ribbon is this: My daughter is being bullied at school—relentlessly. It’s been a slow, steady unraveling. She started high school with friends, with hope. Within months, she lost almost all of it.

The friends? Gone. Invitations? Gone. Lunches? Eaten alone. All of this replaced by gossip, dirty looks and sadness.

And as a mom, it’s unbearable.

I can’t sit with her at lunch. I can’t walk the halls whispering “You are so loved. You are so enough.” I can’t chase down every mean girl and make them see her magic. I can’t fix it, no matter how much I want to.

But I can prepare her for a derby.

The night before the derby, we went out to dinner. Just the two of us over greasy nachos, running through our preparation list for the next day. And slowly, she opened up, about all the hurt she had stuffed down deep inside.

The rumors. The isolation. The exhaustion of pretending she was fine.

She told me she’d written vignette about what she was going through in language arts. 

“I’d love to read it,” I said. She nodded. Then we shoveled in some tres leches cake.

That night, she sent her writing to me, and I shattered.

She wrote:

Every time I go to guidance to tell them something new someone said about me or a new rumor made, they promise me it will get better. … But they have been lying to me for the past three months. Things have not been getting better, and the rumors keep getting worse. 

I wake up in the morning every day dreading to go to school to put a smile on my face and pretend what is happening isn’t bothering me. Is it normal for a kid to think, I wonder who’s going to tell me they hate me today?

I read it in bed and couldn’t breathe, my heart broken into jagged pieces. I lay there all night, wondering how I’d compose myself by morning to help her at the show. But I knew I had to. 

So, the next morning, I was preparing the grooming box. Fumbling through tying her stock tie. In the schooling ring telling her to call the vertical. Polishing hooves before her courses. Helping her plan the turns in her handy round. Collecting her blue ribbon. 

That ribbon wasn’t just about a horse show win. Now I see it so clearly. It was about the quiet battle my child had been fighting for months. It was about a spark that needed kindling. It was about rebuilding hope. Rebuilding strength. Through the horses.

Even though I couldn’t undo the pain, even though I couldn’t stop the whispers, I had helped her hold on to joy. I had been there through it all. And so had her pony.

We were her safe space when school wasn’t. Her soft place to land when everything else felt sharp and dangerous.

Anyone who doesn’t believe that horses can heal didn’t see the way she rode that day. Didn’t see her hug her pony afterward, happy tears pricking her eyes. Didn’t see the smile that came from deep inside, the kind you can’t fake. Didn’t see her confidence stitch itself back together, stride by stride, jump by jump.

If you’ve ever watched your child truly struggle, you know how powerless it feels. But what I’m learning, slowly, painfully, is that it’s not about fixing it all.

It’s about being there.

It’s about giving them something that reminds them of who they truly are. 

For my daughter, that something is a bay pony in the backyard. And a mom by her side.

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Jamie Sindell has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arizona and has ridden and owned hunters on and off throughout her life. She is a mom of five kids, ages 4 to 15. She and her family reside at Wish List Farm, where her horse-crazy girls play with their pony and her son and husband play with the tractor.