When the Dust Settles: Stories They Tried to Silence.

Part I: A Rodeo, a Graduation, and a Birthday I Wouldn’t Miss

Two years ago, I stood with one boot in the red clay of a rodeo arena and the other in the fragile, often invisible space of motherhood. It was the first weekend in June. While others celebrated the start of summer, I was celebrating something far more personal: my son’s eleventh birthday — and my own college graduation, just days earlier. A freshly minted bachelor’s degree, earned not with ease or entitlement, but through years of single parenting, sleepless nights, and a steady string of internships, freelance work, and assignments that came with out-of-pocket costs I was never reimbursed for.

At the time, I was working for a news station that expected me to shoulder the costs of travel, gear, and reporting — expenses that would’ve reasonably been covered in any equitable newsroom. But they weren’t. And I paid the price, literally and emotionally, while still managing to deliver work that often outshone my more resourced peers. I hustled through story deadlines while battling stress-induced illness, nutrition deficiency, vehicle breakdowns, and the crushing weight of being both reporter and provider — in the field, on-air, and at home.

But this wasn’t just another assignment. It was a return. A homecoming, of sorts.

I didn’t just grow up around rodeo — I grew up in it. The dust, the muscle, the risk — it was never a novelty to me. It was normal. My dad bought me my first solo horse when I was eleven — a green-broke mare with more stubbornness than training. She wasn’t bombproof. She wasn’t gentle. And she didn’t come with a manual. But I saddled her anyway. And I fell hard — flat on my back, gasping for air, the wind knocked clean out of me on my first ride. My chest burned, my pride stung, but I got back up. Because that’s what you do.

By the end of that childhood year, my mare and I were riding bareback through the forest, jumping over logs just for the thrill of it. We weren’t polished, but we had rhythm. Trust. A kind of language that doesn’t get spoken in words.

By thirteen, I had already seen bull riders hauled off on stretchers, limbs twisted and faces ghost-white under wide-brimmed hats. I understood what was at stake every time the chute cracked open — the split-second timing, the gamble, the gut-wrenching silence when someone didn’t get up right away.

My grandmother and other close relatives, all ran working cattle ranches, and I — the skinny track star with state medals weighing down my bedroom wall — was the one she sent sprinting after cattle when someone left the gate unlatched. I could chase down a steer in a pair of borrowed boots before most adults even realized one had gotten loose. And I did — more times than I can count.

My youngest sister still shows at the Denver Stock Show every year. She’s the real deal — cattle rancher, horsewoman, business owner. We may have taken different paths, but the stock runs in our blood.

My sister, Abbi, taking a nap on a cow. Circa 2107. Photo courtesy: my mom.

Later, to make ends meet, I worked as a stable hand for a hunter-jumper barn, mucking stalls before sunrise and exercising horses worth more than most houses. I have handled Dutch Warmbloods and Fresians, Fjords and Appaloosas. I cleaned hooves on Percherons and galloped futurity champions in the scorching western sun. I even trained on a high-strung descendant of Seattle Slew, her legs like coiled wire, all muscle and legacy. I’ve held the reins of millions of dollars’ worth of horsepower — literally. And every second of it built the spine I now carry into every assignment.

Rodeo wasn’t a curiosity for me. It was a calling. It taught me discipline, danger, and reverence — and that when you fall, you get back on. No one had to tell me what that arena dust meant. I had breathed it in long before I ever pointed a camera toward it.

Rodeo wasn’t just my assignment. It was my territory, and someone else was trying to step on it. It was blood-deep.

So when the Carney Roundup Rodeo rolled into Menominee County, Michigan, I knew I had to cover it. Not as filler. Not as color. As the living, breathing narrative it truly was. This story was mine. Cowboys and cowgirls from Texas and Oklahoma stood shoulder to shoulder with Michigan locals. The Rodeo City Riders performed with patriotic flair. The anthem echoed across the dust as the crowd stood, hands on hearts. And I? I lifted my phone, FaceTimed my son, and we bowed our heads in prayer while the arena roared around us.

My son and I built our own sacred moment. 1,300 miles apart. But still together.

What most people didn’t know is that I almost had that story taken from me. After months of planning, just days before the rodeo, the station tried to reassign it — to someone who hadn’t built a news bureau in their living room out of thin air, someone who hadn’t juggled parenting and deadlines, or covered hundreds of miles - and untracked labor hours - without ever being reimbursed. Someone who hadn’t grown up eating arena dust or training high-strung horses descended from greatness.

They tried to hand it off to someone who hadn’t been slammed into a gate by a barrel racing champion. Someone who hadn’t exercised national futurity contenders at dawn, or calmed a Thoroughbred bred from Seattle Slew in the cold morning light. Someone who didn’t grow up chasing cattle through broken fences at her grandmother’s ranch because she was the fastest runner in the family. Someone who hadn’t seen bull riders carted off on stretchers by age thirteen, or earned their scars in the dirt long before picking up a camera.

They didn’t know I had once survived an attempted murder by a ranch hand who claimed to love God — but carried evil in his hands. Or that I’d spent my life wrestling the kind of truth you don’t print unless you’ve lived it.

So no — they couldn’t take that story from me. Not that one. Not ever. Because it wasn’t just a rodeo. It was a return. A reckoning. A story only I could tell.

My spirit was revolted that they’d never made any effort to know my talent enough to know that this was mine. 

“No,” I said, and although I am not a fan of conflict, my generally peppy tone didn’t leave even a hint of room for negotiation when they tried to hand it off. “I’m covering that event.” And I did — not from a safe distance, but from within the dirt itself.

My sis, Abbi at a local cattle show. Circa 2017. Photo courtesy: my mom

My two nieces, watching the arena from a safe distance. Circa 2017. Photo Courtesy: my mom.