Who do you Turn to???

Having owned horses for a long time I have always been such an independent person, not that I have ever wanted to, but I have chosen to. All throughout my childhood I always played on my own never with friends, even when friends at school wanted to come and see the horses, my answer would always be sorry we are busy.

As I got older, I had to mould myself into letting people into my life not fully as I am wary even now but to see how far I could push myself as an individual. As the years have gone by, I have on numerous times questioned myself in certain aspects of either my professional career or with the horses if I am doing the right thing. I also asked the question why I do this who I can turn to and how do I stop isolating myself.

There are many people in my life now I try to turn to, so in the horse world it is my trainer Pauline, we met through the horses and within the NHS. Over the 18 years she has trained me not to be a better horsewoman but a better judgement on the whole horse world. The confidence she has tried to install into me, and I say try as I am still not overly confident, has been invaluable and I honestly wish I could bottle it up and open it up when I need it. I remember long time ago when Boy was younger, and we was just getting him up and running, the injuries he caused me it would make any horse person not want to carry on, Pauline sat me down one day and said “you get back on and show him you are not afraid or let him believe he is in control” I know I kept saying to her... he won't change he will still be a loose cannon, well she proved me wrong so in these times I turned to her as my elder horsewoman and took on the advice she gave me, the rest is history as they say.

Even now, these past 5 years I have called her over the slightest smallest thing in her eyes but major in my eyes when it came to my herd, and the same thing she always says is “you always answer your own question Sally” under this guidance of her installing the minuscule of words she is the one I turn to if I have a problem.

In my professional career well that’s a different story as I tend to question my ability if I can do things, over the 21 years of being in the NHS I have found it difficult to relate to my peers. It wasn’t until 2016 that I started to come out of my shell and turn to one colleague for advice and support and encouragement.  Having met and formed a friendship as well as working with each other, we both had the experience between us and knew technically how to help each other, this woman was exactly like me, kept herself to herself, self-esteem pretty rubbish and never turned to no one for advice. As time went on, we learned to turn to each other if we were unsure of work-related problems as well as in our personal lives too. I didn’t feel isolated anymore in my career she could relate to how I was feeling, and we encouraged each other to speak up or say what was wrong even if we were unsure and felt like we were in the wrong. This woman Lisa is now my best friend, whom I go to professionally and personally in my life, she may not always give me the answers I am looking for, but the advice is there whether I choose to take it or not and vice versa.

Part of human psychology is to get relief from our stressors and speak to someone. Most of the time we do this by leaning on others that we know, plus we get the added comfort of getting advice back, but at least we have turned to someone. Not every human being needs to be alone and have no one to turn to, there is always someone to turn to in this world, I am thankful I have Pauline and Lisa in my life that I can turn to,and I thank them….so who do you turn to???

Sally Turner

@boy_prince_diamond