The Greenhorn Chronicles 59: Lynne Denison Foster on Last Comments (6)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/03/01

The Greenhorn Chronicles 59: Lynne Denison Foster on Last Comments (6)

Hans De Ceuster: I was thinking. Does Tiffany have a partner or have children?

Lynne Denison Foster: No.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: No, she has mentioned this in interviews: She doesn’t have a partner, a husband, or children. She is doing this solo. She has her team.

Ceuster: It is not about solo. Still, in this society, women get their careers sidetracked. I do not know anything about show jumping or horses, and I do not know what age you are in your prime to be a rider. 

Foster: That’s an interesting question, Hans. This is what I say to my non-horsey people: There is no gender differentiation at all. And…there is no age limit. 

Jacobsen: That’s right. 

Foster: Ian Millar was 69-years-old, I think at the London Olympics. The last time he competed. he was 72. 

Ceuster: It is about the age between 24 and 40 when…

Foster: … when they have childbearing and stuff. You have to time your childbearing.

Jacobsen: There are extremes, though. There is a Brazilian rider. She has been on the Olympic team for Brazil 2 or 3 times. She was first for the Olympics for dressage at age 16 or 17. That’s insane. Yet, you can have outliers like those who set that time range in a different mixup. What I find with a lot of horse people is that there are too many variables with a live animal. So, a lot of stuff is a rule of thumb. You can say 24 to 40. 

Ceuster: It is about giving people chances. What you see now is the mothers riding. The fathers…

Foster: …looking after the kids. 

Ceuster: Maybe, there will be more.

Foster: There will be a shift. You’re right. I just thought of something. For Canada, for the team, the successful team, all women. 

Jacobsen: Erynn Ballard, Beth Underhill, Tiffany Foster, and Amy Millar.

Ceuster: His daughter.

Jacobsen: They went to Herning, Denmark. 

Ceuster: Maybe, it is getting better.

Foster: She (Tiffany) was the only one who qualified for the final. They had some issues there. 

Jacobsen: We can leave those for articles. People can get mad at me. 

Foster: It is not really my position to discuss it. The point is that there were four women on the team.  

Ceuster: Women fade out of careers because they become mothers.

Foster: I was surprised this year. There were so many babies at Thunderbird for the season!

Jacobsen: Yes. You should see the barn. So many kids! So many.

Foster: These were babies. All these women had their babies in the last year or so.

Jacobsen: Miriam!

Foster: The dads are there packing their little kids around in their pouches.

Ceuster: In Europe and Belgium, it is pretty normal to have kids later and pursue your career.

Jacobsen: In that department, I would argue that America is 25 years behind us and Europe is 25 years ahead of us. 

Foster: Yes, it is interesting. Just based on gender more than anything else, women tend to be more resilient than men simply because they have to be. You guys don’t have to go through any pain to have those children [Laughing].

Jacobsen: Correct.

Ceuster: We don’t need the muscle as much to develop the countries. Public schools are needed right now.

Jacobsen: In the not-too-distant future, it’s just a matter of reverse engineering in a way, or just improving that engineering, before you get semi-autonomous robots, which can do basic tasks for us. They will be expensive at first. They get cheap like every cellphone. Who knows? Some of these artificial intelligence are well-developed in the military. Thank you very much for the time and hospitality and for being so wonderful.  

Foster: I tend to tell a long story. I hope I gave you what you wanted and what you’re looking for. I can talk a lot about infrastructure. 

Jacobsen: We talked about those before. It’s not the physical infrastructure. It is the understanding: Pick one of these choices, and they have various consequences. You live in a free country – go. They learn this at a young age. So when they make those choices, you are teaching them the non-tangible infrastructure of life. Life is just about choices. There is no single answer. That’s life. You’ll find out the hard way or as you grow.  

Foster: Can I give you one theory which I have?

Jacobsen: Go!

Foster: It is about one’s life. This is my theory: From 0 to 20, you, as a living, breathing human, don’t have much control over your life. Your life is influenced and managed by your parents, caregivers, teachers, and maybe your first employer in the first 0 to 20 years of your life. You are not managing your life. Somebody else is managing. You are a vessel. They are contributing to your growth. Your caregivers are depositing their values and ethics based on what they have learned themselves, so they are influencing you. Like with my daughters, I am contributing to providing that influence. I, as a parent or as a caregiver or as a teacher, from 0 to 20. 

After 20, you get to take whatever you’ve got from those who were managing your life at that time or caring for you during that time, and you get to try it on and see. What is it that fits you? What doesn’t? Go and experience your life, seeing other families, cultures, religions, environments, whatever; you check it all out and see what fits with you based upon what was given to you first, learn things, and try them on yourself. I have this theory. I have said this to quite a few young people. We ask our kids to decide about the future and their lives too soon. How can you, at 17, say, “Yes, I am going to go to university and study this, that, and the other thing”? Unless you have a specific passion like Tiffany. You always wanted to be a doctor. You want to be a truck driver, whatever. Most of us don’t know that yet. I certainly didn’t know that at 18 or 19. 

So, you’ve got from 20 to 30 to figure it out. What you’ve been given, what you can use, how you can gain more. It is your responsibility to go out, learn and make mistakes, have triumphs, whatever it takes. Then, at 30, if, after you’ve tried yourself on for ten years and you still didn’t find what fits for you, you have to decide, choose a path, and take that path. Maybe it is the right path, or it could be the wrong path. By 50, if you haven’t found the path that leads you to your self-actualization needs, as Maslow talked about, you still have a chance at 50. 

Now that you’ve got 50 years of experience, 30 of which you’ve had within your control, you can still go and try something new and see, especially if you feel you haven’t gotten what you’ve wanted in your life. Until you’re 70, then you must either reap your rewards or accept your punishment [Laughing] for your bad decisions because it is too late to do anything about it. You’re now on the downward slope and just looking at your life, either reveling in it because you’ve gotten so much out of your life or “shit.” My ex-husband is that way. He is a man riddled with regret. He dwells on the past. Be grateful for what you’ve got; look for the good things in your life.

Ceuster: The last phase after 70 is the latter, right? We talk about it in our meetings. 

Jacobsen: The NATO meetings?

Ceuster: Yes. At certain points, people start to reflect on their lives, regret what they’ve done, and say, “I’m sorry.”

Jacobsen: If they have a conscience… There is a small portion of the population who have none.

Foster: Right, that is when you can seek restitution. If you realize, “Oops,” [Laughing], “What have I done? What have I done to others?” Something else: Tiffany and Rebecca…when we found out that a very close family friend was suddenly diagnosed with terminal cancer. She only had about a month, if she was lucky, to live. These girls, they were in their teens then, were stunned and wondered how she was dealing with the fact that her life would end sooner than ever expected.. “Auntie has been told she only has that amount of time to live.” I said, “What we are guaranteed in our lifetime is that we will die. How or when do we die? Most of us don’t know yet. We have a certain amount of time on this earth. You have to live your life as if every day will be your last, and do what you can to make sure you have no regrets. That is all you can control.”

Jacobsen: That’s true. That’s true. 

Foster: So that you have no regrets. You have to live your life. My kids always say to me, “YOLO.” [Laughing] You only live once. 

Ceuster: No, you only die once.” 

Jacobsen: [Laughing] I have heard that retort once.

Foster: You do. You have to live your life. If you leave today, will you regret not doing what you should have done? Will you regret something that you did do? You have to think that there has to be a purpose on this Earth to do some good. Unfortunately, there is a certain length of time for you. We all have an expiration date. What you are focusing on is that you’ve got to build up that purpose instead of the corruption and evil in this world as you talk about humanness. 

Ceuster: I do not know the term that you use for it. I always call myself a positive naif. I am positive, nice to people, and naive because I don’t know the reaction. Someone says, “Bad person.” I can find that out for myself. Most of the time, I don’t get hurt. 

Foster: You’re right. Pre-judgment is called prejudice, and attracts  negative behaviour. Right after I graduated from high school, I went one year to university. I shouldn’t have gone then because I was not ready for it. I came from a small school and went to this big university, and I didn’t know anybody except for about 12 other students who were in my high school graduating class. I didn’t do well in university, so I didn’t go back after the first year.The following year, my sister and I spent a summer traveling through Europe in a Westphalia Volkswagen camper that our parents gave to us as a Christmas gift. We were 17 and 19 at the time. We celebrated her 18th birthday in Belgium. When we returned, I started working for the airline and turned 20.. We traveled for six weeks, driving our Westphalia camper, which we picked up at a factory in Germany. I had never travelled that long without my family. My dad, he trusted me. He made assumptions about me, which I was able to fulfill. When my dad gave us the gift, he said, “You’ve got to work to earn spending money for your trip. So, I got you a job as a front desk clerk in a new hotel in Yellowknife. I went to work in Yellowknife, saved all the money I earned and used it for travelling expenses for my sister and me.

Ceuster: [Laughing].

Foster: My dad gave me a single envelope which contained the bill of sale for the van, the insurance, the flight tickets, a woman’s phone number and that was it. . He said, “The van  is at a Volkswagen factory somewhere near Hanover.” 

“You are going to fly from Edmonton to Amsterdam. My insurance agent’s sister lives in Amsterdam. He told her that you’re coming. Get ahold of her; she will help you a little.”  That is all he told me.  We were driving to pick up my sister from her last exam from high school. Then we drove straight to the airport so we could catch our plane. I said, “Dad, what do I do when I get there?” [Laughing]

Ceuster: [Laughing].

Foster: “I have to contact this lady. Then what?” He said, “It is your holiday, kid.Do whatever you want, but just make sure you take care of your sister.” That is all he told me. 

Ceuster: Now, people can get five years for that. [Laughing] 

Foster: We flew to Amsterdam. We had to figure out how to get from the airport to the city and meet up with this lady. I will tell the whole story but  it is getting too late and we must go to bed. I phoned her. She said, “It is good you are here.”

Jacobsen: [Laughing]. 

Foster: “It is 6 a.m., and I must go to work. I won’t be done until 7 o’clock tonight.” We travelled 12 hours. Now, we have to wait another 12 hours. We are in this strange city. [Laughing] What do we do? We figured it out. What you were talking about when you said naive, we trusted everybody. The Dutch lady did help us. A kid from Canada whose sister was a flight attendant on our flight was at the airport. He was travelling and ran out of money. His sister brought money. He befriended us and gave us some tips.

‘Go to VVV or the tourist information centre at every central station,’ we learned that and stuff. The German people were nice to us. We brought six pieces of luggage with us. We didn’t know. [Laughing] We were carrying all this luggage because we had to carry our sleeping bags, camping gear and things like that. The German people looked at us getting on these trains with all our bags as if we were nuts.

We wandered all over Europe naive, like you wouldn’t believe. We picked up hitchhikers, drove them, left people with our Volkswagen van, the key and passports and went off with these Italian guys we just met on the beach; no harm came. We had a good time. Something could’ve happened. We could’ve lost everything. Just trusting and believing, we had no idea what we were doing. We met many people who guided and helped us during the six weeks of travelling. I looked after my sister. So, when you said naive, it reminded me of that trip because we were quite naive and extremely trusting because we assumed that everyone had good intentions, like us!. 

An interesting thing is that a classmate of mine from school went to Europe  in September that same year. He bought a motorcycle in England to use for transportation. Two weeks after he was there, he was mugged. His motorcycle was stolen. All his money was stolen. He had to come home. Our experience was so different. Crazy, huh? Anyway, you guys have to get up early. Are you staying with Scott?

Ceuster: No, I am going back to Vancouver. 

Jacobsen: I have two interviews. We will see if she is up. She is constantly travelling and giving talks. She is based in Kyiv. She went from New York to Rome and then went every few days to a new country with a very high-demand schedule. The other one is that he is in the war zone, but his money might run out. I will send some to them and other charities. 

Foster: When are you going (to Ukraine)?

Jacobsen: [Laughing] I have mouth surgery on November 22nd in the morning. Then I will go straight to the airport.

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