Kerry Masterman: Stepping Stones or Stumbling Blocks?

Late in 2020 I had an idea I wanted to profile 100 Proud Women. I asked them to share photo showing their proud attitude, a quote and/or some words of wisdom.

One of those Proud Women is Kerry Masterman; here is her story and quote:

I’ve been mulling it over and I keep going back to something a very dear friend said to me about 30 years ago and it’s become a little bit of a mantra.

That same dear friend lost her fight earlier this year with a genetic disorder that caused strokes from the time she was in her mid 40’s, and it killed both of her brothers very young. Then I lost mum after three and a half very challenging years here, and I’ve been getting some help with accepting that our sacrifices in coming down here were never acknowledged and in letting that go.

I keep thinking of that piece of advice given to me in my 20’s, and that I’ve always tried to act on it. I’ve been struggling with coming to terms with mum’s quite sudden death and her misconstrued versions of what was happening here due to what we now know was the onset of dementia.

Just to add to the stress my pacemaker went into standby mode, and I had to go in for my third pacemaker generator in September and spent six weeks on restricted activity while everything healed again.

My sinus node is failing and because I have the pacer for another condition it can’t deal with both issues at the same time. One or the other. Because the other is A-systole (I flat line, convulse yada yada) I am not sure what the future holds there either and plan on enjoying the horses for as long as I can cope with the exercise.

I had lunch with two past pupils of mum’s a couple of weeks after her funeral and they both told me how proud she was of me, my riding and my family. She never told me that and it brought me to tears when I heard.

So... “Stepping stones or stumbling blocks, the choice is yours”.

Seems apt, no?