The Ones Nobody Wanted
Candice Ensign is a coach, speaker, entrepreneur, published author, and Certified Equine Gestalt Practitioner. As the CEO of Live Your Crazy Ltd. and a senior contributor to Brainz Magazine, she inspires and equips top leaders nationwide to realize their purpose, find their voice, and unlock their unlimited potential.
I was the girl who found the horses nobody else wanted, though I didn’t know it at the time. I just noticed them. The cloudy-eyed ones, the stiff ones, the horses whose injuries changed the way they moved, and the ones whose fear, reactivity, or shutdown had been turned into a character flaw because nobody wanted to look any closer. People walked past them when they couldn’t do what a horse was expected to do, and somehow, I never could. They couldn’t be ridden, compete, or go back to work the way people wanted. Some were old. Some were injured. Some were shut down. Some were simply too complicated for the appetite of the humans around them, which usually meant they had become inconvenient. By then, somebody had often already decided that whatever made them valuable was gone.
Horses have been part of my life since I was three, probably earlier. They were the steady thing in a childhood where I was still trying to understand where I belonged. I was adopted as an infant and raised by my grandparents as their daughter. Their love for me was unconditional, and I never questioned that. The wound came from somewhere else. The people around our family never completely accepted me as the daughter I was. I was forever the outsider, even when I was standing right there. I learned early that being good, helpful, or useful did not necessarily bring grace. It did not make people choose me. It did not make them see me differently. An invisible distance always separated me from the belonging I wanted.
The horses had no interest in that distance. They didn’t need an explanation from me. They weren’t waiting for paperwork about where I came from or whether I had earned my place. They were just there, ears flicking, tails swatting flies, breathing in the dust and wind of whatever day it was. Around them, something in me could settle. For a long time, I thought the obsession was simply about horses, but another question lay beneath it, one I could not have named then. What happens when a life changes? What happens when the thing that once made someone valuable is no longer available? When the performance is over, and there is still a living being standing there, what then?
The horses started finding me in ways I couldn’t ignore, and they were never only the old ones or the injured ones. Some couldn’t be ridden. Some had been passed from place to place until there was nowhere left to send them. Some were headed toward euthanasia or slaughter. Others had been labeled difficult, dangerous, unusable, or beyond help when so much of what they were carrying had been shaped by humans first, by fear, force, misunderstanding, or dominance, and then punished when they resisted. By the time many of them reached me, they had already been reduced to a decision.
In 2015, I founded Journey with Equus because I kept seeing horses whose futures had become frighteningly uncertain. Some were being given away and were at risk of ending up at auction. Some were already standing in auction pens. Others were already caught in the slaughter pipeline. They were all at risk, just at different points along the road. What had lived in me for years finally took form as rescue, advocacy, and a fight to prove the value of horses beyond the saddle.
That fight eventually brought me to Raison d’Être Ranch in Elizabeth, Colorado. Raison d’Être means reason for being, and I still can’t fully explain why that name hits me the way it does. Today the sanctuary cares for roughly 100 equines, including more than 30 off-track Thoroughbreds, along with horses, donkeys, and mules.
There is a very practical reality to caring for that many animals. It smells like hay and wet dirt, like the barn aisle after weather has blown through and everything suddenly needs attention at once. Veterinary care, farrier care, shelter, fencing, feed, ice, mud, heat, wind, and a thousand ordinary responsibilities stay ordinary no matter how meaningful the reason behind them is. Some days the need outruns the money, the time, or my own bandwidth, and I find myself standing in the middle of it, wondering how much one person, one organization, and one community can hold. I never said it was easy. I did say it was worth it.
What I have come to understand is that a horse does not become worthy because it recovers enough to be ridden again. It does not have to become easier, younger, prettier, or more useful before it is allowed to belong. Worth is not waiting at the end of rehabilitation, and it is not dependent on some future version of that animal. They are worthy because they are alive. It sounds simple when I write it that way. Living it, especially when I turn the same truth back on myself, has been another matter entirely. We hand other people the power to determine our worth again and again, letting their rejection, judgment, or inability to see us become evidence about who we are. Sometimes what they are looking through has far more to do with their own insecurities, fears, or wounds than it ever did with us, and yet we carry it as if it were the truth.
In 2019, I became a Certified Equine Gestalt Practitioner, and my work with horses expanded to include working with people alongside them. That work asked me to look more honestly at what I believed about worth and belonging, and at all the quiet bargains I had made around both. Being with horses changes something in us. I know what happens in my own body when I walk into a pasture or stand quietly beside one. My breathing changes. My attention comes back to the moment. The noise gets quieter. Horses do not arrive with a story about who you should be or what you are worth. They respond to what is in front of them, and if you are carrying something you have not named, they often respond to it before you do.
A horse can make visible what a person has spent years explaining away. One will walk right up and stand nose to chest. Another will leave the second the energy changes. Another will turn a shoulder and ask for more room than most of us are used to giving. They don't hand out connection as a prize for getting everything right, and they don’t pretend. I have learned a lot from that. There are still days when I miss what is happening until the horse says it first with its body.
I have spent most of my adult life in work that required me to understand people, decisions, and responsibility. I have been licensed in real estate since 1989, and I am still in the field today. I have been leading since 2010. Those things matter. They are part of my story, but they are not proof of my worth. I am still learning how easily achievement, usefulness, and being needed can become tangled up with belonging.
For years, I fought to prove the value of horses that had been written off. I fought for their right to remain when they had no profitable use. I fought for the simple truth that a horse could have a meaningful life beyond carrying a rider. Somewhere inside all of that, without any clean revelation or dramatic turning point, I began to understand that I had also been fighting for my own value. It wasn’t neat or inspirational. I didn’t suddenly solve the whole story and move forward without doubt. I still circle back to old questions. I still catch myself waiting for permission, approval, or some sign that I have finally earned my place. The difference now is that I can hear the question underneath the question.
When a life changes, worth does not evaporate. A horse who can’t be ridden does not become less deserving of care. A woman does not become less herself because the role changes, the work changes, the body changes, or because the people who once knew how to place her no longer know what to do with her. Worth was never tied to usefulness in the first place, even though so much in this world would like us to believe otherwise. That sentence is easier to write than it is to live. I am not writing it from some polished place where everything has clicked into alignment. I am writing it from inside the remembering, from years of looking at horses other people had dismissed and slowly realizing why I recognized them, and from knowing there are still places in me that would rather perform than simply be seen.
The horses nobody else wanted were never asking me to rescue them from being imperfect. What they kept putting in front of me was harder than that. They were asking me to stop confusing usefulness with value. Being needed is not the same thing as being loved, and being chosen for what you can do is not the same thing as being welcomed for who you are. There is a difference between being handed another opportunity to perform and being given a place where performance is not required. Horses have shown me that repeatedly, usually without much ceremony.
I think about the little girl on the horse, long before I knew anything about rescue, advocacy, or Equine Gestalt. Back then, I had no idea horses would become the through line of my life. I didn’t know they would lead me to a ranch named for a reason for being, or that I would spend decades learning that the thing I loved most was also trying to show me the way back to myself. I only knew that when I was with a horse, something in me could settle. The horses did not erase the wound of being an outsider, and they could not change the people who refused to accept me. What they gave me was somewhere else to stand while I learned that their refusal was never a measurement of my worth.
That may be what I want most for the horses who come to Journey with Equus and for the people who encounter them there. I am not looking for a polished second act, and I am not interested in pretending the past never happened. I want a place where the story can continue without anyone having to become useful again to earn the right to stay. A place where we can remember that we had value before we proved anything.
That belief has shaped nearly everything I do now, including SoulFire, the 90-day coaching immersion I created for women who know there is something more in them than the life they are currently living. The first SoulFire group begins October 25 and is limited to 15 women, with early enrollment closing October 4. The work is different from rescue, of course, but the question underneath it is not so different after all.
What if the real work is not becoming more worthy? What if it is finally remembering we never had to earn it in the first place?
Read more from Candice Ensign
Candice Ensign, Speaker, Thought Leader & Passionate Purpose Hacker
Candice Ensign is a coach, speaker, entrepreneur, published author, and Certified Equine Gestalt Practitioner. As the CEO of Live Your Crazy Ltd. and a senior contributor to Brainz Magazine, she inspires and equips top leaders nationwide to realize their purpose, find their voice, and unlock their unlimited potential. In a world where conformity reigns, Candice is a trailblazer for those looking to rediscover themselves and embrace their truth. Candice has a deep love and respect for horses and is passionate about raising awareness of the gifts they offer beyond being ridden. In 2015, she founded the nonprofit Journey with Equus, which rescues horses that would otherwise be euthanized or slaughtered. These incredible animals are rehabilitated and partnered with humans to help them heal trauma, grow in leadership, and rediscover themselves through equine-facilitated wellness programs. With over 30 years of experience in the real estate industry as a producer, leader, coach, and speaker, Candice is passionate about sharing her life experiences so that others may step into their purpose and live authentically. She knows the importance of continual self-development and leads by example, even through challenges, showing what is possible with faith, determination, and action. When she's not speaking, writing, or coaching, Candice can be found loving life on her ranch in Elizabeth, Colorado, with her partner and their animals, or spending quality time with her son.
