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I was born on February 7th 1980 in Edmonds, WA. I was the third child of Jim and Adele Noetzelman, had an older brother, Jeremy, and an older sister, Sarah. From an early age, my parents observed in me a kinship with nature that seemed to come naturally. For the first six years of my life, I lived in the hills of Snohomish, WA on five acres. My family was a happy one, with me romping around happily in the mud, climbing trees, playing with my siblings and running through the fields with my dog, Darcy.
My parents, Jim & Adele had already begun feeling the “call” to mission work. Years had been spent in preparation, unbeknownst to me until I was nearly six. Shortly after my sixth birthday, the family packed everything up and went to Holland to attend a missionary training school. My family spent three months in Holland preparing to serve as missionaries. During that time, I was still running around in the hallways, charming the other students, and generally being a typically happy, busy six-year-old.
My family then went to Germany for an outreach, preparing for a large Christian festival in Frankfurt. Those months in Germany were rather difficult. We lived in an old, condemned apartment building in Frankfurt during a hot summer. My mother had to wash the family’s clothes in a bathtub, and there was no internal heat. Yet I managed to always find fun things to do, from growing plants from popcorn seeds on the balcony, to playing “hot lava” on mattresses strewn about the floor. After the festival, my family returned to Holland for a time and then traveled to Nuremberg, Germany, where we would be involved in an interdenominational ministry. We then went back to the States for three months, before the big change when we moved to Germany.
Nuremberg became the Noetzelman home for the next five years. I began school, and thus began one of the most difficult periods in my life. I went into the first grade, and immediately was shunned by my schoolmates because of my nationality, which I could not understand. The next five years were to become a trial for me, and an experience that I will always remember. As a child, I had no comprehension of the differences in culture, and how I was just so different from everyone else that they were nervous around me. After a while, I began to be nervous and shy around my peers, and soon began to turn to animals for comfort. I begged my parents to let my have a pet hamster, and when he died, I pined for a kitten of my own. Soon, I was given a kitten that I named “Tiger.” I spent lots of time outdoors exploring the forest beyond my backyard, still climbed trees and loved to ride my bike. I was shy around my peers and spent as much time as I could playing with the frogs in the pond, the neighborhood cats, and my baby sister (born in 1989), and with my nose buried in books.
My love for horses began during that time. It was the typical age when every girl goes through my “horsey” phase, but unfortunately I didn’t have an outlet available. My grandmother used to send boxes full of books for us kids, and often sent many horse books. I devoured Black Beauty, Sylvester, The Black Stallion series, and many other novels about horses. My hunger for the animals grew to the point that I begged my parents for riding lessons, but there were no barns nearby and money was tight. Unsatisfied, I read the same books over and over again, allowing my imagination take my where I couldn’t physically be.
In 1991, my family moved back to Snohomish, Washington. Eleven years old, I was thrilled to return to “home,” but found many things had changed in my absence. My childhood friends had forgotten me, and as a result of my shyness, I lacked many social skills with my peers. School was yet again an ordeal, and I returned again to my love of books and animals. Soon after we moved back home, a stray cat came along and established herself as mine, and promptly had a litter of kittens in the backyard. I used to sit outside in the grass, reading books with the cat in my lap.
As time went on, I slowly began to resocialize myself and started making friends. By the time I was in ninth grade, I had mostly overcome my previous shyness and became outgoing, independent, and friendly. I had many friends in my class and everyone liked me. My life had become fun again. I loved my church youth group and went on mission trips to Mexico, witnessing to the Indian tribes in the Sierra Madre Mountains. Later, as a young woman, I would realize that my childhood experiences that had made me timid when I was young, had actually built an inner strength that has become an asset to me as an adult.
During high school, I found I had an aptitude for business, and competed at the state-level in DECA. I was the typical high school kid – begging for the car keys, going out to movies, painting my face for the high school football games, and talking on the phone. I still made time for cuddling with my cats and playing with the family dog. I loved doing crafts, and learned the arts of candlemaking and soapmaking. Early on, I discovered the benefits of using homemade soaps and toiletries, began to research extensively, and became quite an expert on the subject of natural soap, lotion and toiletry making. I loved being creative with the appearance and scents of my products, and have sold many of my goods. I was a very social person, but always independent and never did anything just to follow the crowd. My senior year, I decided to join the Running Start program, and finished my last year of high school at my local community college. Two years later, I graduated from the community college with a Business Administration degree and a Management/Marketing degree.
After I finished school, I moved out across the state to Washington State University in Pullman, where I took on a full-time administrative assistant position. I had many friends at WSU and wanted to start out on my own. This was a very important life lesson – after four months working in an office, I realized that I could not continue to work in a desk job and be happy, and so the company let me go. I decided to return to school for a degree in Zoology, knowing that a career involving animals would make me happiest. I enrolled at Washington State University as a freshman and got a janitorial job at its Veterinary Teaching Hospital so I could spend time with the animals on a daily basis.
November 2001, I went home and was greeted with the news “Oh, and by the way, we bought a horse” from my father. I was thrilled! My younger sister had been taking riding lessons for two years, and while I was in Pullman, my parents had discovered their own love for equines. I found out that my father had fallen in love with Hanoverians and my parents had decided to start a breeding operation. Much of this was completely new to me, but it had been growing behind the scenes for a long time. And as a gift to me, my parents took me to the riding instructor and gave me my very first riding lesson. I was hooked two minutes after getting into the saddle. I spent every spare hour I could at the barn that week, getting to know the new horse, Star. He was a five-year-old ex-racehorse, was tall, beautiful and sweet. I liked doing the barn work, and offered to muck out stalls and do the dirty work for more lessons. I even spent my Thanksgiving morning digging drainage ditches with my father because the barn had flooded.
When I was almost finished with my Thanksgiving break, and I was ready to go back to my home across the state, I decided to stop by my local community college again. I did some research and found out that if I went back there for two more quarters, I could get my University Transfer degree and then would be able to transfer to the university as a junior, as opposed to the freshman that I was at the time. This was to my benefit because I already knew that I was irreversibly changed, and would be unhappy being far away from the horses and the barn.
So I immediately applied again to the community college, enrolled, moved back home, and settled into life back home. The previous month between Thanksgiving and the semester end had been the longest month in my life. I had been absolutely miserable without a horse or a barn to work around. Of course, as soon as I moved home, I was happy and spent my spare time at the barn with the horses. I immersed myself in the horse community, immediately becoming involved with a local 4H group, volunteering at the 4H shows, visiting my horse, and of course taking weekly lessons.
In addition to time spent with the horse, I again buried my nose into books, but this time they were horse training books, breeding manuals, behavior books, and more. I read everything I could get my hands on, just to know more about horses. As a family, we fell in love with Warmbloods, and I knew what I wanted to do for a living. My trainer had told me many times that I had a natural talent in the saddle, and I was a quick learner. Yes, I had gotten a late start in life in regards to horses, but I also knew I wanted to ride and train horses for a living. It was almost as if all of the puzzle pieces had magically fallen into place the day I took my first lesson, and knew. I then decided that after I was finished with school, I would head over to the east coast and try to get a working student or apprentice position, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to learn as much in Washington State. I felt it ideal to immerse myself in the dressage and jumper industry, and recognized that I would learn the most that way. I also found a way to care for my horse with the natural skincare products I had been making for years. I have developed and am currently testing horse care products, including an all-natural tail spray-and-leave-in conditioner that just happens to work as a fabulous detangler, a gentle castille horse shampoo bar, hoof conditioner, and many other products. I am on a constant quest to develop the perfect product to make my horse look stunning.
In spring 2002, I was on my last quarter at the community college, when I received notice that I was not accepted to the university because of space constraints. All of the universities in the state had received well over twice as many transfer applicants as they had space, and thus I did not get in. Initially, I was disappointed, but then I realized that this gave me an opportunity to go be a working student much sooner than expected.
That brings me to today, and I am excited to be pursuing my equestrian education in horse care, barn management, and riding.
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