05/17/2026
THE RETURN OF THE QUEEN
Kazya Johnson Returns to the Fold to Help Build the Place She Once Needed
Kazya Johnson is one of the original sparks returning to the heart of this work.
I first met her when she was around 10 years old and taking lessons at a local stable. Even then, she stood out. She had the kind of natural feel, courage, sensitivity, and hunger to learn that you cannot manufacture.
She was one of those young people you notice immediately—not because everything around her was easy, but because something in her was unmistakably alive and searching for connection.
We sat on a large hay bale one night, waiting for someone to show up for a lesson, and I asked her about her family. She held me with those angelic green eyes and as I heard the wisdom of an impossibly ancient, compassionate soul spill from her mouth, I knew was sunk!
On that night, hearing her explain the complexity of her 11 sibling family with wisdom, love, and clarity, I knew I would love her forever ... and that she was extraordinary.
Kazya’s story has always been connected to access, resilience, and possibility. As a child, she did not have the same financial support or easy pathway that some young riders have. She had to work for opportunities, find her way through complicated circumstances, and keep choosing horses even when life made that difficult.
In many ways, she represents one of the deeper reasons Project New Start exists: to ask what becomes possible when talented, sensitive, determined people are met with support, mentorship, structure, and belief instead of being left to figure everything out alone.
Kazya returns to this project now as both a former student and an emerging professional. She brings lived experience, deep compassion, hard-won resilience, and new training as a Social Service Worker.
She understands, in a very real way, that people do not walk into a barn as blank slates.
They arrive carrying stories, nervous systems, family patterns, grief, trauma, hope, fear, and the longing to belong.
In Project New Start, Kazya holds several roles at once.
✅She is a participant in the one-year reset.
✅She is a mentee, continuing to learn The Magic of Horsecraft™ through a nervous-system-informed, consent-based, relationship-first approach to horses. ✅
✅She is also a mentor, supporting younger women in the program as they learn to understand themselves, their horses, and the patterns they are ready to change.
That combination matters.
This project is not only about training horses. It is about learning how to listen differently. It is about noticing what behaviour is communicating. It is about replacing punishment with curiosity, control with connection, and shame with skill-building.
Kazya will be part of helping us hold that standard with both horses and humans.
As the Project New Start beta program unfolds, Kazya will support the delivery of concepts that reach beyond horsemanship alone. These include nervous system regulation, emotional safety, trauma awareness, boundaries, co-regulation, and the importance of seeing behaviour as communication.
Her role is not to “fix” people. Her role is to help us create a more accountable, compassionate, trauma-informed environment where people are met with dignity and where healing is never forced, performed, or rushed.
Because this is the first year of Project New Start, we are also learning as we go. That means roles must be clear, honest, and flexible. Kazya’s place in the project includes learning, practicing, contributing, receiving mentorship, and offering support within appropriate boundaries. She is not expected to carry the emotional weight of the whole project. She is not here to be responsible for everyone’s healing. She is here as part of a team, developing her gifts in a living, breathing, real-world environment.
In the future, as Project New Start grows into therapeutic and educational programming, Kazya’s social service background will become an important part of the foundation. She will help us stay accountable to the truth that trauma often walks in the door whether people name it or not. She will help us remember that safety is not just physical. It is emotional, relational, and nervous-system based.
Kazya’s return is also an intergenerational repair story.
She came to horses as a child who needed opportunity. She returns now as a woman, a mother, a student, a graduate, a horsewoman, and an emerging advocate who can help build the kind of place she once needed.
That is the heart of Project New Start.
We are not just creating better horse people.
We are creating a safer way to grow.
And Kazya is part of that from the inside out.
Welcome back into the fold, Kazya. I am so proud of your resilience and your integrity. You are a beautiful soul, and the future is yours for the taking.
xoxox
