Thanks to you it will be done, for you to me are the only one

So it’s Thanksgiving in the United States today, according to my Facebook feed. Obviously this is not a holiday that we celebrate in New Zealand, and admittedly I know very little about it and its history, but what I have gleaned from my many American friends on Facebook is that it is a time to stop and look around and be thankful for what we have.

So I want to take this moment to mention a few things that I’m thankful for.

I’m thankful for my family, who support and encourage me through thick and thin. I feel incredibly blessed to be part of such a wonderful, creative, intelligent, close-knit family – not just my parents and siblings but my half-siblings and their families, my aunties and uncles and cousins, my grandmother and my distant relations.

I’m thankful for the wonderful people in my life who I’m not related to, but who choose to spend their time and energy on me. Friends are a blessing in everyone’s life and I am so fortunate to have so many incredible friends who impress and inspire me every day. Whether they’re going out of their way to help the under-privileged or just treating those around them with the utmost respect and love, I admire each and every one of them. Scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed never fails to bring a smile to my face.

I’m thankful for the horses who have come through my life, from the delightful creature that I have now, to the horses I’ve known in the past. There are so many special horses, whether they are still a part of it or not, who I look back on with fond memories, not least of all the following: Bittersweet, Alice, Scooter, Jolie, Oliver, Katama, Happ, Ides, Rainier and countless other gorgeous horses that I had the privilege of knowing and riding during my summers at Road’s End Farm in NH, USA; Barnacle and Biscuit, my two best boys at Ashford in Co. Mayo, Ireland; Kaneel, Spritzer and Pepe in Epsom, UK; Honey, Major and Cheyenne, the dream team of lesson ponies that I had the privilege of working with at both Ferndale and Peka Peka Road – amongst them they taught countless young riders the basics. And I want to thank the ponies I was lucky enough to own as a child and teenager – Whisper, Tess, Minnie and Caddie, who all taught me so much and gave me so much back; the special ponies who have never belonged to me but who I’ve loved all the same – Breeze, Misty, Jezebel and Willow; and the ponies that I learned to ride on, back when having my own pony was a far-off dream – Cinter, Teddy, Geronimo, and Brandy. Wonderful teachers and good kids all.

Finally, I’m thankful for the internet, for Amazon, for everything that makes it possible for me to write and share my books with the outside world.

And so in order to say thank you to everyone out there, I have made Dare to Dream available on Kindle absolutely FREE for the next three days. I was hoping that a freebie would get a few more people interested in my books, and that the average number of daily downloads might double – even triple – during this time. I didn’t expect the downloads to increase a hundredfold in less than 24 hours, but that’s exactly what they’ve done – far exceeding my wildest expectations!

So now, I’m thankful for that too.

And so today, my world it smiles, your hand in mine, we walk the miles,
Thanks to you it will be done, for you to me are the only one.
Happiness, no more be sad, happiness….I’m glad.
If the sun refused to shine, I would still be loving you.
When mountains crumble to the sea, there will still be you and me.