Motherhood changes everything. Your routines, your rhythms, and sometimes even your favorite season. For professional dressage trainer Lucy Courchaine, it also reshaped her sense of purpose. What began as a heartfelt article written during early motherhood grew into Equestrian Mama, a platform and podcast created to support riders through pregnancy, postpartum, and parenthood. Lucy’s story is one of passion, perseverance, and community. It is a reminder that true balance may not exist, but a beautiful and honest blend absolutely can.
Here I am again, having just celebrated my first daughter’s fourth(!!) birthday and my second daughter’s first birthday, sharing another piece of my heart on this topic that I’ve become so zealous about. Truly, it has become so central to who I am. I feel more veteran now, but still learn something new every day. That curiosity is what inspired me to take the idea of sharing stories with other moms in the equestrian world and create the Equestrian Mama podcast, along with a growing collection of resources designed to fill a real gap I saw in the horse industry.
Balancing horses and children is a bit of a mirage. In fact, I’ve tried to stop using the word “balance” at all. Because as any mom knows, there’s really no such thing. Whatever you’re focused on in one moment means something else has to wait. You can’t be rocking a baby to sleep and out competing your horse. You can’t give your full attention to a student in a riding lesson and help your toddler through a meltdown. I can multitask with the best of them, but I’ve learned there’s no shame in surrendering to this simple truth: you can’t be in two places at once. And that’s totally fine. You don’t necessarily have to give anything up, you just have to find your life’s own unique blend.
For me, the blend changes month over month, sometimes week over week. Right now, it looks like a mix of childcare that keeps my baby with me all the time and my older daughter in daycare two days a week for learning and socializing (and immune system building for the whole family, of course). When the girls are at the barn, I have a wonderful babysitter who helps me trade horses for kids and kids for horses, using teamwork to cover all the needs. I’ve been known to wear my baby in a backpack for some lessons and my older daughter loves to help me with turnout. Breastfeeding and pumping when both girls were little babies taught me how to actually build breaks into my riding and teaching schedule, a healthy habit that has served me well (despite my resistance at the beginning). Having my kids in the barn with me in their smallest years has been the biggest challenge in both my life and career, but I wouldn’t change one single thing about it. I’ve become a better horsewoman from my experiences in motherhood and a better mom because of my horses. Raising kids and working with horses (especially young horses) actually has a lot more similarities that one might expect!
Through simply sharing my own journey on social media, I’ve found a community that’s lifted me up through new motherhood and beyond. These stories resonate deeply, and I love hearing other women add their own voices to this conversation. I truly believe that the more we share both sides of the coin - the struggles and the joy, the questions and the examples, the concerns and the confidence that we all have - the more we all rise together."
Lucy Courchaine is a professional dressage trainer, mom of two, and founder of Equestrian Mama, a platform and podcast supporting riders through pregnancy, postpartum, and parenthood. Find her at @lucyintheskywithsapphires and www.equestrianmama.com.
