editor's note: names have been changed

I am writing this essay in honor of the hardest working woman I know, her name is Laura. To start off I met Laura when I was seven years old, my friend had told me about this really fun horse camp that she had gone to over summer break. The following summer I went with her to this camp. Going to this camp I had no knowlege of horses, let alone riding them. I remember the day I met Laura so well, she was the person who ran the camp. I remember turning into the drive way with the cow mailbox, and I remember my first steps into a barn, and best of all I remember the first moment I meet Laura. I remember her walking us all around to see all of her horses, she had more than twenty, I remember everything so clearly, like it was just yesterday.


Since that first ever time I met Laura, I have gone up every summer faithfuly for horse camp. But I did not go up each summer for only the horses but also to see Laura. I was always so excited to see and learn what new had happend in her life. I would count the minutes before I would be standing at tha barn with her, I would beg to go up more weeks, when the camp was over. I can also thank her for introducing me to my best friend ever. She was also going to the horse camp when I was and we became best friends right away and are still best friends to this day, even though she lives in a different state we stay in contact.


To let you know about how rough Laura's life has been as a child, a teenager and as an adult, there is no real way for me to get you to understand how hard it has been, without letting you see with your own eyes but i am going to tell you and let you use your thoughts to picture this long hard life she has had. As a child growing up with four siblings, an alcoholic abusive father and a mother who was to scared to leave him, Laura pretty much knew life was not a dream like in fairytales, since a very yound age. At the age of four years old, she lived in a trailer park and was playing hide and seek with her brothers and sisters, and was hiding behing this trash can, but she didn't know that someone had just thrown burning coals there and she got stuck up to her knee's in hot coals, and it burned the bottom of both of her feet, but since her parents were not in good enough financial state they didn't have medical insurence and both of her feet are permenitly damaged because of this accident. This is just one of the sad stories of Laura's child hood. Along with dealing with her mother having seven misscarriges becuase of being beaten by her husband so badly, and as a teen growing up and having all of her siblings grow up to be drug users and alcoholics. Yet Laura stayed clean, bu unfortanatly at the age of eighteen she found out that she was pregant with her first child. Months before having her first child she found out that her mother and father had also had another child, and dumped him off to live with Laura, becuase her mother was very ill and her father just left them. So being the great-hearted woman that she is she took in her little brother and raised him like he was her child.


Five years later, Laura got married and had given birth to two more kids of her own, now she had a total of four kids running around her household, and dealing with all of that stress her mother also passed away, and had left her property to be split between all of her sibilings. But luckily Laura's siblings let her live on the property. There was a downfall though, the property had been turned into basically a dumping ground and there was trash everywhere. Yet Laura didn't let that stop her from her dream in life and her dream was to be a rancher, she wanted to give riding lessons to people, train horses, and board them. Once she got alot of the property cleaned up and right when her life was getting on track, she found out her husband was having an affair, and she got divorced.


Finally settling down again, and had all of her twenty horses at a lady down the steets barn, she started teaching camp, and that was when I met her. She was doing pretty well for a few more years, and then the lady who owned the barn raised the board fee, for each horse and that was to much for Laura to afford, so she had to take all of her horse and keep them at her house, but she doesnt have much room for all of the horses, but she still managed. Now there is another problem, she had lost alot of her clients because her home and property was so dirty. But that didn't stop me from comming up every summer.


Laura now is living paycheck to pay check, feeding her horses before eating herself even, and getting on and off jobs throughout the years. Now she has a little bit less problems because her two oldest kids moved out to start their own lives and her second youngest went to live with his father. But her youngest daughter stayed with her. She met a really nice man and after a few years of dating they got married. Now she is building a riding arena behind her home, and paying for now thirty horses, and five dogs. Laura has very bad financial problems, but yet she always makes sure her animals and children are okay. I go up there every week and work for exchange of riding lessons. Being around her so much, I really do not understand how any person could live and do as much work as she does, but she manages. Not only is she tough mentally but also physically. About one week ago Laura was unloading a horse from her horse trailer and the horse spun around and flung her twenty feet and she broke three ribs, and she is still taking care of all of her horses. Carrying loads of hay, and riding and lifting and everything.


To me Laura is a person to look up to and to get advise from, I trust her one-hundred percent, and would do anything to help her. I thank her for introducing me to my best friend, and showing me how amazing horses can be, and for teaching me how much heart one person could have. Someday I hope that I will grow to be even half as great of a person as she is.