There was a bridge on the ranch that swung when you walked on it, and Julie hated it. Moving cattle was just part of the day back then, something the family did together without much discussion, and the bridge was part of the route. Saying out loud that she was scared of it felt harder than crossing it.

In this episode Julie talks about what that fear taught her. That admitting you're frightened of something isn't the end of the story, it's the start of finding another way over. That the people around you can hold the gate, walk with you, or go first, and none of that makes you weak. And that some of the bravest things you do look nothing like charging ahead. They look like saying "I can't do it that way, so I'll do it this way."

If there's a bridge in your life you've been quietly avoiding, this one is for you.

Julie is the fifth generation on a homesteaded ranch in Colorado, and not one generation before her had an easy road. She's had hard seasons come at her from every direction, and somewhere in the middle of them she had to make a decision about what all of it was going to turn her into.

In this first episode she talks about the wall we build when life gets brutal, and the thing nobody warns you about it. She also draws a line under something people get wrong constantly, which is the difference between being soft and being gullible.

Plus a story from the tack room called Every Saddle Has a Story, and the honest reason she's decided to stop being invisible.

Come and sit with her for ten minutes.