Heather Compton: “I started riding in my 30s and it changed the entire trajectory of my life”
By Heather Compton | Jan 28, 2026
I have a photo of the day I couldn’t go on the trail ride. I booked it on a ranch in Texas for me, my nephew and my oldest son, who was seven at the time. The night before, I googled: am I too big to ride this horse? And Google said I was.
That was February 2018. We had just started a six month, family RV trip and our first stop was that ranch, for that trail ride. And it was for me.
It was my childhood dream.
As a little girl I use to put the couch cushion on the coffee table, swing my leg over and saddle up to watch TV. I just knew that I loved horses even though I didn’t have access to them. Growing up in South St. Louis City, Missouri, it’s like the urban jungle. There wasn’t a horse to be seen anywhere and my parents didn’t have the means for any sports, definitely not equine sports.
So here I am in my 30s at that ranch in Texas. I’ve waited my whole life to get here. I’ve finally made it to the horses. We have enough means—and I couldn’t do it.
It was devastating. Just absolutely devastating.
And then I had to turn around and tell my husband. I tried to like play it off, like, “Hey, why don’t you just take the kids?”
He said, “I don’t even like horses. What are you talking about? We’re here for you.”
We went back and forth for a bit and I’m trying not to tell him, right? I do not want to have to say this out loud. But eventually I blurt out: “I can’t go, I googled it. I’m too heavy. You’re going to have to take the kids. I don’t want to take it away from them.”
I vowed to myself in that moment that I would lose enough weight to be able to ride the horses.
“I vowed to myself in that moment that I would lose enough weight to be able to ride the horses.”
****
When I look back now, I can see all the reasons that I had gained all that weight—postpartum depression, trauma, all of the things, right?
After I had my second son, I stepped back from work to be a stay-at-home mom. My husband and I both worked in retail as store managers and the schedule is not conducive to family life. There are a lot of hours and travel. So, we decided I would stay home with the kids.
What I found very quickly is that motherhood is lonely. I was no longer in proximity to other people at work and my only interests at that point were keeping these kids alive, so my community disintegrated very rapidly and my husband traveled, so he was away a lot. I felt so lonely and isolated.
And I gained weight. And then I had third child and gained more and never really lost it.
At that point, we were on one income, which is a challenge, so horses didn’t seem like an option. But I still clung to the hope. I recently found these vision journals from that time where I would write down my dreams and it said “lease a horse and ride it three times a week.” So even though I didn’t believe I could, it was clearly on my “one day” list.
Then tragedy struck our family and “one day” was that day in Texas.
Three months before, in November 2017, my father-in-law took his own life. It was a massive shock. He was a huge part of our life and our children’s lives. He was my husband’s best friend.
And it was such a traumatic moment.
In the months after, we tried to pretend we could just go on like it was before. My husband was trying to make it through his days at work, and he just couldn’t do it anymore. The trauma of losing his dad was so heavy. There were many times he was locked in the bathroom with a bottle of whiskey, and we were not functional as a family.
So, we knew we had to do something big, something very disruptive to our day-to-day life, and really reconnect as a family and decide what our new life looks like because our old life isn’t available anymore. And we love traveling. So let’s go take some time to figure that out away from our old life.
The question then was how can we make that sustainable? I’m a stay-at-home mom with a little jewelry business. It’s not like we were making a bajillion dollars on this jewelry. But we’re pretty scrappy. We thought, well, campsites aren’t that expensive. We can travel to these jewelry shows and make a bit of money as we go.
My husband quit his job and we got a camper. In February 2018, three months after my father-in-law died, we packed up our three kids and my 20-year-old nephew, who lived with us at the time, into a 32-foot camper and we left.
The first place we went was that horse ranch because in my mind, it was, well, if we’re going to do this, let’s get to some horses somewhere. The ranch was gorgeous. I would take long walks with my little stroller and my baby and spend all day with these horses.
And then I didn’t go on the trail ride.
There were a lot more times that my weight was a problem on our travels. I couldn’t go on the little rollercoasters with my kids. I would get tired walking through the amusement parks. I was definitely not fully enjoying my life. I knew I needed to make some really serious changes, or I might not be here. Coming out of the trauma of losing someone who’s so close to you, it was man, I really don’t want to be wasting my life—it’s very short.
****
You gain a lot of clarity when you have a loss of that magnitude. You get very clear about what actually matters, and time with our children in that camper was very simple living. It was so small. Your life gets distilled down to only what is necessary and we had to find very creative ways to entertain ourselves.
Being outside and in nature was a must. We spent time in connection, either with ourselves or each other. I look back on that time so fondly. It’s my favorite period because it was so freeing and it was so simple, but that’s so beautiful.
We traveled for six months, and when we got back home we bought a farm because we weren’t willing to give up all the peaceful things that we had discovered living in an RV. And then I got really serious about getting fit.
I joined an online fitness group called Grit. It was a crazy bootcamp kind of deal where you had to record yourself and write a self-reflective prompt every day. If you didn’t, you got kicked out for the rest of the month and couldn’t start again until the next month.
I worked out every single day for nine months.
In April 2019, a little over a year after The Trail Ride That Wasn’t, I rewarded myself for the 60 plus pounds I lost with riding lessons at Grit & Grace Ranch, in Hillsboro, MO.
And it felt scary. Very scary. I felt vulnerable. For the first six weeks, I wouldn’t get on the horse because I was still afraid I was too big. By July, my instructor asked, “What are we doing? You come here every week, but you don’t get on. What’s happening?”
I told her I’m afraid I’m too heavy and I’m going to hurt the horse.
She asked, “How much do you weigh?”
“195.”
“Next time you’re getting on the horse,” she said. “We’re done doing this.”
So I did. I got on and the horse didn’t die. The horse didn’t fall out from underneath me, and everything was fine.
I have that photo of that day, too, of my first ride. It was also scary. It was for weeks after. I mean, honestly, I’m still scared sometimes. I just got on and loped a new horse the other day and I felt scared. But I think I actually like that. It grows me every time. Horses build resiliency in a way that I don’t think anything else does.
****
Once I started riding I started doing all kinds of things that I always wanted to do. I wrote a book. I got in the best shape of my adult life, which then helped my riding. I ended up coming to work at the ranch where I rode. Horses truly changed the entire trajectory of my life.
And Grit & Grace Ranch, I mean, God really sent me to the right place at the right time. This job is probably the bravest thing I’ve done. I found my calling. This is life’s-work big.
The job wasn’t even posted. I gave myself the job.
The ranch owner and I had become friends. In January of 2023, she called me for some business advice, knowing my background in management. It was just a riding school at the time. She had teenage girls who would come work in the barn for the Dream Makers program and get lessons for free. She was very passionate about those girls, but it wasn’t a very formal program. It was just something she wanted to do.
I told my husband about our conversation and he said, “You should take that job.”
And I was like, “Okay, you’re crazy. Nobody said anything about a job! She just wanted to know what she should do.”
The next day I came out to the barn to spend time with my favorite horse and I told the owner, “Here’s my proposal. I’m going to come and work for you as your business manager. I can only do part-time. My kids are still young. But I’ll come and help you with your business and I can start tomorrow.”
And she said, “Great, I’ll see you tomorrow.” That’s how I started.
The first thing we had to do was make the business financially sustainable, so we established it as a 501c3—GaitWay to Her Success—and formalized the programs, then I started looking for sponsors.
Very quickly, I said, we need Dream Makers for adults, which we now have, and it’s called Dream Catchers. It took about two years to get it off the ground and for the first six months, we completely flopped it. The original goal was to create a next step for girls aging out of the Dream Makers program. So, we made it a career development program for young women aged 18–24, helping them launch into adulthood.
And very quickly, I realized I got the curriculum wrong—the girls were not happy and everywhere I would go out networking or meeting people in the community, they would ask, “Well, can 43-year olds come?” “Can 52-year olds come?” “I’m 70, I want to go do that.”
Because adult women without children, and this surprised me, are struggling with the exact same thing I struggled with as a young mother. Where do I go to make friends, to find community, if I want something wholesome? If I don’t want to go out drinking?
In June of 2025, we revamped the whole thing. Now it’s 19+ and the only curriculum is come here, hang out, make friends, learn horses. We scoop poop, we feed horses, we do groundwork. I mean, it’s a very simplistic program, but it’s incredibly transformational. We have 20+ women in it currently who all feel like they belong somewhere now.
And it’s a joy to watch adults start with horses. It’s so different from the girls program. They are so happy just to be near them, and are able to translate their horsemanship lessons into their life very quickly.
We have one woman whose husband is in law enforcement, he’s the chief of police. Being the chief’s wife is a very lonely job. There’s a lot of stress and pressure that comes with that and she works in aviation, so she’s in a male-dominated industry too.
When she’s at the ranch, she’s not the chief’s wife. She’s just her.
On her third week here, she told me about a meeting with her boss where she advocated for her approach on a project. She told him, “Okay listen, we’re going do it this way and you can either be angry about doing it that way, or you can accept that we’re going to do it that way. So how you feel about it is your choice, but we’re go ahead and do it, this way.” And he agreed. She was ecstatic. She said it’s just like horses—sometimes we have to be firm and clear about the direction we want them to go. She got a performance review shortly after noting how much confidence she’s grown in the last few months and she attributes that all to working with horses.
So we’re making real impact. By literally just doing life together. It’s like my camper—the simplest things are the most impactful things.
At GaitWay to Her Success we give people who don’t have the means for whatever reason access to equines and we impact their lives. I think that is why I’m so passionate about what we do. We don’t care about performance. We don’t care if you win a blue ribbon or if you show. We do care if you practice, that you put in the work to better yourself because it’s such an important mental and emotional part of life.
I look at my life now, and I still don’t own a horse, but we have nine program horses, which as the executive director feel like my horses. And I just can’t believe it. Little Heather would die because Big Heather’s job is to come to a horse ranch and take care of these horses and share them with other people. That’s my actual job. I still can’t believe it.
