A memoir by Katrina Mintz

For years, I have lived between two worlds, one dressed in power suits and polished language, the other in worn leather cowgirl boots, dust, and truth, telling myself we all must balance work and life. I am successful in my profession because some of those gifts and talents have always been part of my core identity. Yet life’s transitions call forward an internal reckoning: marriage, divorce, motherhood, empty nest, title after title, loss of both parents. Who am I now, God? Long before I could name it, I was living in an authenticity gap, performing competence while longing for congruence.

Chasing achievement was, at times, a “dry lot”; other times, it yielded blue-ribbon outcomes. I joked about the costume change, about my suits-to-boots routine, shifting from university compliance administrator to equine learning facilitator, changing in the bathroom of the covered arena before heading to an Equine Facilitated Learning (EFL)  lesson in a stall with a horse and a child. Children and adults just laughed when I showed up with perfect hair and makeup, then promptly shed it all for jeans, boots, a t-shirt, and a ball cap. The humor made it seem harmless. But the facade that made this routine possible no longer serves me. 

Then one Tuesday afternoon, the truth made itself plain. I was held late in a meeting with the university president and the council of deans, seated at the long conference table, composed in posture if not in mind. The conversation had long since gone unproductive, but no one stopped it. One voice pressed forward in a heated argument about institutional relevance, circling the same ground again and again, while the rest of us watched the momentum stall without intervening. It is a familiar pattern in leadership rooms, authority present, but unclaimed.