Sometimes life really does take off like a bolting horse, and you find yourself pulling the reins with no real control. 

Years ago, when I was a kid in one of my early riding lessons in an open field, the gelding I was on bolted. The instructor kept yelling “half-halt, half-halt!” I finally was able to circle him and gradually stop. Later, I asked why she wasn’t hollering at me to stop all the way. 

There was no way, she said, I was going to get him stopped from the gallop. But if I could get him under control and listening and unlock his jaw—she taught the half-halt as through the outside rein—then I could get him stopped. And that is basically what happened.  

Since then, I have been taught a number of different ways to do a half-halt. All of them involve, on some level, a driving aid, the legs for example, and a restraining aid. For as strong as my mare Cairo was in her cross-country days, just a tightening of my core and settling back in my seat was often enough to rebalance her before a big prelim fence. 

A couple of months ago, when my world came crashing down around me, the half-halt became a more palatable metaphor for life than “complete freaking disaster.” 

I am the editor of the Eugene Weekly, a weekly newspaper in Oregon. I write and edit during my days, and I spend my evenings and weekends at the barn riding and coaching. I don’t make a lot of money, but I’ve been pretty lucky to follow my passions in my day job and my horse life. Last fall, after the struggle it was to get Cairo pregnant, I was watching and dreaming—every day I could see her belly grow toward her early April due date was a gift.

Just before Christmas, we discovered the newspaper had been embezzled by a fellow employee I had considered a friend. Not only was money missing, but money was mismanaged. We were thousands upon thousands in debt with no funds in the bank to pay the bills. The family who owns the paper was looking at a mountain of debt—unpaid taxes, unpaid retirement accounts, at least $90,000 just gone. 

Three days before Christmas, I lost my job of 17 years and had to fire my writers, people who were like a family to me. A time that was supposed to be filled with so much hope—the holidays and Cairo’s pregnancy—was now utter devastation. 

For six weeks I was unemployed and broke, and wondering what the way forward would be. I kept going to the office; I kept putting out a paper online, because we could not afford to print. My writers and interns kept showing up. We weren’t willing to give up.

I tried to tell myself, it’s a half-halt. A transition. A pause in forward motion that makes the next movement better. 

Because people are amazing and love a good little weekly newspaper, the paper was profiled everywhere from The New York Times to the Associated Press. Not how I expected to show up in the NYT and The Washington Post, for sure. The joke around the office was that my obituary was going to read “Camilla Mortensen: She loved horses, and her newspaper got embezzled.”

And no, I have still not watched the documentary, “All The Queen’s Horses,” about the woman who embezzled millions to build a quarter horse breeding empire. 

People in the community and across the country pitched in to save the paper. Some of the folks were Chronicle readers, who had never read my alt weekly here in Oregon but who recognized my name from Cairo blogs. I cried when I saw the notes come in. There were people I’d never met who cared about my little newspaper in Oregon, or about my little horse in Oregon, and how she and I were getting through it. 

I’m not gonna lie. I cried a lot. I was finally within months of my heart horse having a baby, and the support meant the world to me. 

Every night, after long hours trying to publish stories while I was technically unemployed, after trying to do whatever I could to save the newspaper, I would go to the barn and walk and ride Cairo. I cried into her mane; I told her what I couldn’t tell the media, about how betrayed I felt by someone I trusted. How betrayed I felt that someone who knew how much the prospect of Cairo’s baby means to me, and who knew I live on a tight budget, would still do this. How stupid I felt. I am the editor; I’m supposed to handle the content, not the money, but still, I didn’t see it coming. 

I can’t control other people’s demons. Half the time I can’t control my own life. But I can sit up and engage my core and see this as a half-halt that sets me up for the next movement or the next fence.

In February, when Cairo was 10 months pregnant, we started printing again. In early March, one of the students I coach came out and did a maternity shoot of Cairo. Later that month the folks at work who have been trying so hard to save the paper with me had a baby shower for me. Then my barn family, who love Cairo so much, had one too. And trust me, nothing says I love and understand you like a gift certificate to the feed store. 

It’s now the start of April, and Cairo is days away from her due date. I’m working too much; I’m not sleeping enough. I am staring at Cairo on camera at night, starting at Cairo’s teats, learning things like how to test her milk for changes that indicate birth is imminent. I’m getting ready to start sleeping at the barn. I’m telling myself it will all work out.

Forward motion, a hint of a pause, and we continue. Cairo, we’ve got this.

Camilla Mortensen is an amateur eventer from Eugene, Oregon, who started blogging for the Chronicle when she made the trek to compete in the novice three-day at Rebecca Farm in Montana. She works as a newspaper editor by day.