The woman who hurt me, and the women (and horse) who healed

The first morphine dose didn't touch the pain shooting through my face. Neither did the second. Writhing and sobbing in NYU Langone's post-anesthesia recovery unit, I felt a nurse grab my hand. "We're giving you fentanyl," she said. The agony vanished and I slipped into merciful nothingness.

I'm an intensely private person. I don't have a Facebook account. I've never made a "Some personal news:" post on Twitter. Today, though, is different. It's exactly two years after craniofacial reconstruction to address the damage from a beating inflicted by a stranger, a 25-year-old Trenton woman in the throes of severe mental illness. She scarred me physically and emotionally. And unwittingly, she led me back to horses, my first love as a child. Later, in high school, when I was bullied for a facial birth defect, they were my salvation. Into adulthood, they were my partners in competition. Then I bought an old house whose restoration and upkeep left no time or money for horses, and my tack trunks stayed tucked in the basement.

It was in my own historic neighborhood where my attacker set upon me. Armed with a handled and metal-lidded Mason jar drinking glass, she sliced my forehead, tore my lip, broke my nose, crushed my sinuses and fractured my cheekbones and eye sockets. I suffered a concussion so severe that it took months of rehab to stop the dizziness and nausea, regain balance and coordination, coax the eyes to work harmoniously, process more than a written paragraph at a time and thaw neck and back muscles frozen by whiplash.

Amid all that therapy came the surgery. Unfortunately -- fortunately? -- I'm a plastic surgery veteran: Born with a bilateral complete cleft lip, with a massive fissure in the bone between my mouth and nose, I had my first in a series of a half-dozen operations at eight weeks. The most recent -- the final, we thought -- was when I was 25.

This, though. This mess was different. The operations had caused so much insult, a term used by doctors to describe extensively manipulated tissue. The plastic surgeon in the trauma bay could repair the most visible damage, but the next round, he said, would be up to university-level experts. The NYU surgeon who took on the job described the damage as a war zone. After the OR, after the fentanyl, I recovered at the home of my mother, my lifelong partner in dressing changes and prescription pain-med charts and food that doesn't need to be chewed.

Months later, my daily physical therapy complete and my face back together -- to the extent that it could be put back together -- it came time to find a trauma therapist. But call after call, meeting after meeting, I couldn't find the right fit.

And then it hit me: horses.

I had been gaga about horses since I could walk. A family photo shows me, no more than 3, clomping around in my mother's snow boots, which came up to my hips. I distinctly remember that I had fancied myself heading to an imaginary stables. I was 8 when my parents gave in to the constant begging and enrolled me in lessons and sprung for all the horsey trappings necessary -- a gift that was supposed to last for 10 weeks. It went on for about 20 years, on and off.

I'll keep this part simple. Many teenage classmates, obsessed with my cleft scars and wonky nose, were cruel. Horses were a way out. A longtime female coach molded me into a reasonably decent rider. I made a barn girlfriend who to this day remains dear. At the stables, no one ever pointed out that my face was different. After the attack, I reasoned, a return to riding would mean a peaceful environment, a world from my blighted urban neighborhood and its very real danger. I had a chance to connect with girls and horses -- women who ride will always be girls and horses. A chance to extract and conquer this new fear and anxiety that no therapist could reach.

I found the perfect stable, female coach and girl gang in December 2022. I acquired Victoria, a lovely British warmblood mare, four months later. Some detail I must keep to myself. The criminal case is ongoing, after all, and I have my own safety to consider along with that of my newfound friends and, of course, the horses and other animals I adore. I've returned to competing, even ribboning in three classes at an away show that we had entered merely as a dry run, with no hope, let alone aim, of triumphing. It wasn't lost on me that my first show was a benefit for an Olympic equestrian who had suffered a spinal injury. Horses. Humans. Healing.

Today, on this anniversary of my surgery, I head to my stables. It's snowing for the second time in a week, and the all-girl crew needs a hand with tough work that will make me cold and sore. And joyful. Joyful that my attacker didn't kill me, that I've overcome so much physical and emotional damage. Joyful that horses and horse girls accept me, once again, just as I am, scarred and so very imperfect. Joyful that I've befriended a young fellow rider who -- get this -- has a bilateral cleft lip.

On Monday I'll be back in criminal court for yet another hearing to determine whether my attacker goes to trial or is successful in her bid to plead guilty by reason of insanity. Afterward, so long as I'm not on deadline, I'll head to the stable. I'll get dirty. I'll be grateful.