As she began college, Annie Soutter Horton had a clear, singular identity: She was a swimmer. But something began feeling off and she had to make a change that left her in search of who she really was at core and how she could feel more whole. In following a path toward education, she saw others who might not be secure with who they were and what made them well. Find out how quieting yourself to tune into the elements of wellness can bring you fill circle.
As she began college, Annie Soutter Horton had a clear, singular identity: She was a swimmer. But something began feeling off and she had to make a change that left her in search of who she really was at core and how she could feel more whole. In following a path toward education, she saw others who might not be secure with who they were and what made them well. She continued to center the idea of wellness in her work. When an opportunity came to move her family across the world to New Zealand she leaned in and found ways to incorporate indigenous ideas of wellness into her academic studies and home life.
In this episode, find out from Annie how quieting yourself to tune into the elements of wellness can bring you fill circle…on Roads Taken with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode’s Guest
Anne Soutter Horton would tell you Three Sisters is her mountain, Metoliius is her river, Oregon is where she is from, Christchurch is where she lives, and her name is Annie. She is currently a lecturer in Educational Studies and Leadership in the Faculty of Education at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, where she teaches courses on child and adolescent wellbeing and health, as well as leadership. She is raising a brood of five children with college classmate Travis Horton and, in summer of 2024, competed in New Zealand’s South Island Short Course Championships and broke longstanding national records in her age group in the 400-, 800-, and 1500-meter freestyle.
Annie Soutter Horton: Through gifts of reciprocity or taking care of people, you know, inviting them in for a cup of tea and taking care of them…I think the wisdom of the indigenous folks here, it's just so rich and powerful and there's a lot to be gained by learning from one another.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: As she began college, Annie Soutter Horton had a clear, singular identity: She was a swimmer. But something began feeling off and she had to make a change that left her in search of who she really was at core and how she could feel more whole. In following a path toward education, she saw others who might not be secure with who they were and what made them well. Find out how quieting yourself to tune into the elements of wellness can bring you fill circle...on today's Roads Taken, with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
Today, I'm here with Annie Suter Horton, and we are going to talk about being far away and yet being with home that we bring with us and take with us and what that means and what really matters for everybody's wellbeing in the end. So Annie, I'm super excited to talk to you finally. And thanks for being here.
ASH: Thank you for having me. This is a pleasure.
LJR: Great. So, when I talk to someone for the first time on this program, I ask the same two questions, and they are these: When we were in college, who were you? And when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you would become?
ASH: Hmm. Yeah. You know, I did a little prep work this morning. I was listening to Erika talking, which was awesome. It's good to check in with what she's been up to. And it did get me thinking about these questions a little bit. So I, I've been trying to come up with something really profound, but all I can really say is I think I started at Dartmouth with a really clear identity that was quite singular as a swimmer, and that was sort of my role I thought I was supposed to play heading into Dartmouth. But beyond that, I really wasn't sure what to expect. It was a pretty big leap for me to head all the way across the country, away from family, to kind of be the first to head all the way over to the East Coast. I definitely had Dead Poets Society kind of thing in my head and all the stereotypes that go along with the type of school that we were heading to.
LJR: Because where did you grow up, Annie?
ASH: I grew up in Oregon. So I was born in California, but grew up in Oregon. And Oregon and Salem, which we would call Snail-em, like the town that never moves. And there was one Dartmouth student in the year prior to me. So that was kind of my, I got a little peek into Dartmouth, but didn't know much about it other than the East coast tour that I was kind of privileged to take and look around, but I certainly walked on campus and was like, yep, this is it, this is going to be the one. So the stars aligned and I was lucky enough to get in.
In terms of what I expected after, I had a few shifts along the way, moving from what I thought I was, and so I swam for two years, and then I had a difficult time kind of lining up with the philosophy of the swim coach, which is very, very different than my home coach. It changed my feeling about swimming, and I made a really hard decision to stop doing that. So, yeah. And then I had the really hard decision of trying to figure out who I was if I wasn't that. So the last two years I was lucky enough to play water polo and figure out what happened with the rest of the world between 3 and 5 pm, which was really eye opening, like, you know.
LJR: This is what happened.
ASH: And, yeah, just had some great opportunities taking some classes. I fell in with Robert Binswanger and got in the education space. And I had been trekking along the med school. I've pathway for a little bit and when I started taking the classes in education, I thought, maybe, maybe this feels a little more right. So, the last two years really started to open up some possibilities for me and think about, hey, maybe I'm not just this and let's go explore who that could be. So, it was kind of a wide open spaces there, but I felt that the vibe was definitely in teaching and education. And so I thought I would do what I thought I was supposed to do, which was head to San Francisco, which seems like where people should go.
LJR: Everyone was going, yes.
ASH: After school. Actually Jamie Keenan helped me out with a connection with a school out there that he had gone to. So I had a chance to try a little TA-ing in a school there, which led to a really awesome semester there and some wonderful mentors, which was such a, you know, that would be the theme for sure, across the board. And then got an opportunity to do a teaching stint in San Jose, which was a much more of a…it was a drastic change, say, from the type of school where I had started to the one I started teaching. So most of the students were first generation English, definitely not the first language for most of the students. But there were about 10 or 15 different languages spoken in the class by the parents. So it was a little bit of a trial by fire experience, but definitely cemented the fact that that's what I wanted to do. But I also felt like I needed to figure out what I was doing.
So that led me to get into a teaching program at Stanford, which was just a year long, but really intense and incredible. And again, awesome mentors and, and really helpful, incredible educators at the top of their game. And I thought, yeah, this is definitely the thing. And besides living at Stanford was pretty awesome, I gotta say. So, that was a pretty good life. And had the really cool fortune of getting a teaching job in Palo Alto after.
So, kind of what is emerging for me at this time is a little bit of a theme of what it means to be good or well, I guess because they certainly went into Dartmouth thinking that that meant getting the best grades, being the best in your sport or whatever, and having the most clubs and taking the premed classes and, you know, and that certainly had some benefits on, on keeping the trajectory moving in the straight direction. But I think the implications for health and mental and physical health were pretty significant. So I think during those last two years at Dartmouth, when I started looking in different ways, I was like, maybe this isn't really benefiting me in the long term. The stress and the, you know, the should factor, I guess, was kind of guiding a lot of my decision making.
LJR: You recognized that that early?
ASH: Well, I don't know. I think about that a lot right now because it's sort of where my PhD research has been around the state of wellbeing and just our self-awareness around that. I think I wasn't the healthiest person at the time and I think, you know, I knew that I needed to kind of get my act together a little bit and probably getting out of, you know, some of the things I had been doing, like swimming, for example, like maybe I needed a complete break and just trying to, to reimagine a self that wasn't so driven on a hourly and minute, you know, minute-to-minute basis.
LJR: Second-by-second, really.
ASH: Yeah, totally. Totally. So you know, the jump there is that I got this job at this high school that was in, you know, Silicon Valley. The kids of, you know,
LJR: Tightly wound…
ASH: CEOs and of Microsoft, so pretty intense. So the thing is, so this is where like the kids would be the high wellbeing, you know, if you think about who's got it, it would be these kids. They live in California in this really beautiful place and all this stuff, but the health, this—I don't know if I can say this—the suicide rate at that school is one of the highest in the country and so it was super intense. And then I'll come back to that later when we talk about the next high school I taught at. But in the meantime, with a lot of little blips along the way, I kind of reconnected with Travis and he came out for…
LJR: Travis Horton.
ASH: Yeah. Travis Horton. So he came out for a conference and we had been writing letters back and forth a little bit for the last year or two. And well, we, he came out and I don't know. It just sort of sealed the deal. So yeah, so we met freshman year at a party in Mid Mass. He was playing some music that was very Northwest and I was like, Oh, Chris Cornell, that’s Soundgarden. He was like, Oh. He was excited about that. But anyway, we had, we'd been friends at school, but yeah. So he was still at Dartmouth at the time doing his graduate work. And when my teaching year wrapped up at that first year, I was, pretty wrecked after, you know. It's just a…it was an intense year and I'd just come out of grad school and I felt like I needed a break. So I made this crazy decision to hop across the country to work as a community director at Dartmouth.
So they had just started that program. So they had the UGA's and the RA's. I don't know if they're still doing this, but these were sort of, there were three or four of us that were adults of sorts kind of mentoring the RAs and the UGAs. So I got to do that back in the New Dorms, which were not called the new dorms anymore at that point. So I'd spent a year back there while he was finishing up, we thought, his PhD.
And then it turns out that his supervisor got a position at Stanford. So we trekked back to the Bay Area, which was actually quite good. It was a really amazing year to be back at Dartmouth. I loved it. I mean, I love my time at Dartmouth so much. So it was just, it was pretty special to be back and live there again. So I got, happened to get another job at a high school again in Palo Alto. But again, we just had so many incidents of students whose stress levels were just through the roof and to drastic, drastic ends. And that really got me thinking about what it means to be well. Like here, I thought I was teaching these, this group and this was, you know, this is what everybody is going for: to get in the best school and to be, you know, to be the best at this and that. And yeah, they were really struggling. And so that was quite hard. I loved my job there. I really enjoyed working with the students.
But Travis and I decided to well, he took, he got a job when he finished his degree there, got a job up in Washington. So we moved up there and then a couple of years later, a position came up in New Zealand and we thought, Oh, well, this would be kind of cool. Cause we had a two-year-old at that point and we thought, Oh, her accent will be quite cool and we'll just stay for a couple of years and then we'll come back and yet we ended up…We've been here coming up on 17 years now.
LJR: Well, and I will say your accent is kind of cool. I don't know if you noticed it.
ASH: Oh, that’s good. I can do, I can do “no” really well like a Kiwi, like in the dog park, I've got the “no” down. Everything else is…
LJR: When you said “so” and “East Coast,” I was like, Oh, there's the Kiwi coming out.
ASH: Yeah. So interestingly, I think if I had a theme across all of this, it would be around wellbeing. Because I thought, well, geez I thought I knew what wellbeing was. I thought it was this ideal of the successful student who has the best grades and, you know, has the most rewards and all this stuff. And then I thought, Oh, it's this high school student living in this great place that it's going to go off and get into the school and dah, dah, dah. So I got here to New Zealand and I thought, I would try teaching here, but there were a few hoops to jump through so I ended up deciding to start a PhD because I don't know. ‘Cause why not?
LJR: It’s what you do. Right. Right.
ASH: Yeah, yeah. So I started looking at their testing scheme because it was a new one and it was kind of very British-based and very compartmentalized. Like they would do little bits of, they will learn how to write a long essay and then they're doing…done with that. And then they move on to a short essay and they're done with that. So it's quite module-oriented. I thought, well, that was kind of interesting. Long story short, I started there and I ended up looking at what wellbeing means to students and ended up doing this kind of cross disciplinary analysis of the term and tried to come up with some sort of model that would work in schools. So that was what my PhD was around. At which point I learned a couple really interesting things. One, women who had more than four children had exceptionally high wellbeing scores. I was like, what's that about? Cause at the time I had two. So I had one and I had another one. I started my PhD and then I had another child when I was finishing my PhD and I was like, that cannot be right. And. Okay, so then Grace came along. That's number four.
LJR: And you got happy all of a sudden. This is true!
ASH: And then we had an exceptional surprise for number five. Yeah so five kids and I have to say at this point that I I'm not totally surprised anymore by that finding because I think here it is: At that at some point You just have to give up control, like, you have no more control. You are outnumbered and there's nothing more you can do. And I think that has been helpful for me in thinking about life here in New Zealand. That there's definitely a different vibe that's a lot more, you know, you, you kind of take responsibility for your actions. And you also try to sort yourself out. It's a very DIY attitude about things. They use the term “number eight wire,” which is this really thin wire that you can basically turn into anything, whether it's a fence post or, you know, a shoelace or you know, that's, so this idea that go out and try to solve your problem.
And that's not to say that New Zealanders don't also have a host of massive concerns. We live in a bicultural nation that's trying to live by the Treaty of Waitangi and respect what we call the tikanga, or the Te ao Māori, or the Māori way of living. And we've made a lot of progress. I mean, I thought our kids would be fluent in Toreo when we got here, and that's certainly not the case. They might have learned the colors and some numbers. A lot of them are involved in Kapa Haka, which is like learning some of the dance, and you'll see a lot in the rugby games. But we have a long way to go in terms of what it means to you know, engage with indigenous populations around decisions, around waterways and how resources are used and allocated.
I think there's some pretty impressive lessons to be learned from kind of Te ao Māori ways of being. There's a principle called Mori, which is like the life force or the spirit in someone and principles of Mana, which is kind of like everybody's got mana and you can give it to others and you can receive it from others and through mana kitanga, we support the mana of others through gifts of reciprocity or taking care of people, you know, inviting them in for a cup of tea and taking care of them. So I think the wisdom of the indigenous folks here, it's just so rich and powerful and there's a lot to be gained by learning from one another. And I think we've made some pretty good strides in starting to integrate and incorporate and do a lot more conversation with others about how we live our lives.But I do also think we have a long, long ways to go. Things are still pretty, you know, they're depending on where you live and which iwi or tribes are in the local area different degrees of relationship there.
LJR: Yeah. Annie do you think that centering of the Māori and mana and life force and caretaking kind of buffers some of that other like you'll just take care with the number eight wire. You'll DIY yourself out of whatever problem because I bet those kids in Palo Alto were also taught like you're going to DIY yourself out of this problem and just bury it and deal with it and we don't need to talk about it anymore. Like, there are two ways that one could look at that, right?
ASH: Totally. I think what's so fundamental to the Māori way of life is relationships. So they use the term whakapapa, which would be like your ancestry and your connections to the past, but also to place. So when you introduce yourself with a mihi, you introduce yourself by your mountain, your river and where you're from. So like Mount Cook or Aoraki Mount Cook is my mountain and the river that flows from that, the Waimakariri is my river. And so that shows this is where I'm from. These are my people. And that's the purpose of that mihi in an introduction is to say, Hey, this is where I come from. Anybody here in the room know where I'm about? And then others there know I can already connect with you because I have that connection piece. And so, phono, or relationships, incredibly important. Teaching through stories and narratives, or waiata, or songs. And fakatoki, which are like proverbs. We're often using a fakatoki at the beginning of a lecture to talk, you know, it's kind of set the stage of often a two or four line bit of wisdom and then say, you know, how does this kind of connect to what we're going to be talking about here? And it's a way of recognizing that we all have different interpretations of a particular bit of wisdom. But there are some general kernels of truth that connect us all. So I feel that my understanding of what it means to be well has certainly been incredibly enriched by being here. You know, even, even by hanging my laundry outside, which I never would have even contemplated doing in the United States. But it has become such a, it's just part of a calming way of life, like you've got a task, you're outside, you're doing this thing, you can recognize that, you know, having gratitude for a day that's actually gonna blow wind in your clothes and you're done with it. So it's a slower pace, you know, a lack of Trader Joe's, which I mourned for years, but it's required and forced me to try to, you know, sort things out, has been really, really good.
And the other thing that's strange about being here, I shouldn't say strange, different about being here is that whereas, at Dartmouth in the years after there was so much value in the connections that Dartmouth has, you know, through, you know, knowing who this person and I’ve benefited so much by just having those awesome relationships that are built for that school and this alumni network that just loves this place so much that they're willing to help out, you know, generations of people beyond them. No one knows at all anything about, you know, any of these places. You know, we all, put on our bumper stickers or on our cars, where we went to school back in the U.S. People look at that and they're like, what the heck are you doing? What is the thing in the back? In fact, I couldn't even pass my warrant, which is the test we have to do to make sure our cars are fit to be on the road. They wouldn't even let me pass it until I took my Dartmouth sticker off the back of the window. So I thought that was quite poignant. Oh, no, my connection to the past.
LJR: But that's so, but, but, I mean, you brought your connection with you, at least one of…
ASH: I tried. I tried. I tried to keep the green alive. Yeah.
LJR: That's right. Well, and there are lots of things I hear that you're keeping alive as well in terms of getting back to your swimming.
ASH: Oh my gosh.
LJR: Your core singular identity. You can't take it out completely. So tell us about that.
ASH: Yeah, no, I sort of got back into swimming again when I was at Stanford. I mean, how could you not have these gorgeous pools out there? And yeah, I think, interestingly, swimming has certainly been the thing I feel I know the most about, and I feel like it's so natural to me that in a time of massive change, like heading across the entire planet, it has served as something that is like, okay, let's just re-center on this thing that you know. So I've been swimming probably every day since I don't know, aside from that little hiatus in college, I've probably been in the pool most days of the year. Start my day out with it. It's just a great way for me to one, just kind of reconnect, but also know it, get my head in the water and nobody, especially my darling kids can't ask me any questions when I’m in the water. So that's good. But it's also been a great way to connect with people. I mean, I've met so many incredible people in the pool. You always find it. You know, a doctor and a veterinarian and a, you know, a lawyer in the lane next to you. So that's always a good connection, too. But yeah, I've been swimming with this little team and hadn't really done any racing until maybe the year before COVID and someone convinced me to race. And it was very traumatic. I was so nervous, horrible, but I got the job done. And then, Yeah, so I managed to break a New Zealand record then, which was a real crack up because who knew, but so then we had COVID and then, you know, I had a couple injuries and the kids were growing up and my job was, I'm starting to teach as a lecturer. And yeah, so it's just, I kept swimming, but. Racing was not on the, the ball game until this year and then someone again said, you know, this competition thing was gonna be in the pool where I…I mean, it's like 10 minutes away from my house. So I had zero excuses anymore. So I'd signed up. Yep, and trained for it a little bit, but not hugely and yeah, and so, managed to crack another few records, and yeah, it was kind of a big surprise, but I was really happy with it, too. So I think I've been listening to a few of us older swimmers getting back into the game, talking a lot about the importance of, you know, easy speed, I guess, is what we say a lot. And what usually trips me up is when I start spinning literally and metaphorically and whether that's, you know, trying to get all the jobs done or get the kids out of the door and record time or whatever. It's just such not the right feeling to be holding. But when you get that kind of flow state, you know, that easy speed state and across the board, I just, it's so much more effective. So it does get me thinking about. Again, wellbeing and like how we get so caught up in the momentum of things and that just taking it down a few notches and trusting in the process and trusting in your strength and what you put into it and not trying to get your head in the game too much. I think that's been a really good a key bit there so.
LR: Yeah, it's interesting though Annie because for all of those years of swimming every day for you, because it was the right thing that you needed and that you needed to clear your head and all of those things. And then when you did it for something else, like for, you know, that it became a panic attack and like, Oh my gosh, I need to. [ASH: Totally.] And so it kind of does come back to those, those things that you were talking about earlier, the expectations that students have placed on them from external sources and all the things that kind of take away. And yet, there you are, like, busting New Zealand records, which is there is something that comes from achievement, right? Like, there's this well of like, well, I did this thing and that's exciting too. So finding the flow state, but yet pushing ourselves, at least those of us who have been kind of in this achievement lifestyle for many years or started out there at least. There's this balance. It's a tricky balance.
ASH: Yeah, it is. I mean, for me, it's about what you put in on a day to day basis, like what, where your priorities are and where your commitment is. Like for me, taking care of my, you know, being strong and, and moving my body. You know, kind of the main elements we talk about in wellbeing research all the time. Like, who are your relationships? Well, those, you know, not only the family and my colleagues, but the people I meet in the pool. Like, it's fun to go. And movement. Like, we all, moving our bodies in whatever capacity; that is so critical. Sleep, you know, and that kind of went by the wayside when the kids We're growing up, but I'm starting to reconnect with the beauty of sleeping. It’s good. And, and you know, daylight and being outside and getting that fresh air. I mean, you, you tick those boxes and you try to keep those central in the process. Like then the extra stuff becomes noise and, and really getting in the way. I mean, that's stress and the deadline and, Oh, I haven't published in, you know, ages because I'm trying to raise five kids. And how much do I want to prioritize that stress and that kind of overarching feeling of should I get that publication done or should I go to my kids’, you know, award ceremony? Well, that's not a hard choice for me, really. I'm very fortunate. I recognize the privilege that I have in making that choice and for that I'm super super grateful. And I think being here is also open some opportunities for that, too. But I also think the longevity of it and being able to stick it out and work through the hard, challenging stuff only happens because I got to keep things in that balance, which is a constant struggle, definitely, to achieve it. But I don't think you can get there unless you get that part done first.
LJR: Yeah. Well, it feels like you have worked at it by not working and then realizing that it's just, it's a balance, and it sounds like the balance that you have right now will continue to change, I'm sure, particularly as you start fledging some of these children, and whether they fledge close by or yet again around the world.
ASH: Yeah. That's hard to know. I think about that a lot. And we're lucky. Like the cost of education here is pretty reasonable, so. And yet, my second went off to Germany for a few weeks on an opportunity and I could just tell that she may be the one that wants to, you know, head across the globe. And I think, oh my gosh, what are we going to do when they all decide they want to be in…How are we going to meet up in the holidays? So yeah, it's exciting to think about, but they're, they're all such awesome little humans and they're going to find their way. And I think the best we can do is try to help them figure out who they want to be and be comfortable in that, and then feel okay with making those choices that are a little hard to know what, which direction it's going to go. So yeah, that's sort of been our goal.
LJR: Isn't it all of our goals for all of us?
ASH: Absolutely. Yeah.
LJR: Well, thank you so much, Annie, for telling us all about this. I am just, I'm thrilled we could catch you halfway around the world and keep you in our fold and keep these relationships going. So thanks so much for being part of this.
ASH: Oh, absolutely. And I hope anybody who wants to pop down this side of the planet, let us know, because we would love to show some folks around. It's a beautiful country, really great place to be.
LJR: That was Annie Soutter Horton, who would tell you Three Sisters is her mountain, Metoliius is her river, Oregon is where she is from, Christchurch is where she lives, and her name is Annie. Somehow while breaking national swimming records and mothering a brood of five, she is currently a lecturer in Educational Studies and Leadership in the Faculty of Education at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, where she teaches courses on child and adolescent wellbeing and health, as well as leadership.
There are, of course, lots of examples of what leadership looks like, but one of my favorites is finding something you love and getting other people excited about it. We invite you to flex your leadership skills and point someone new to RoadsTakenShow.com to hear our full range of episodes from our archives. Just imagine how happy they will be exploring our guests' stories and how thankful they'll be to you. Win-Win! And of course we are thankful to all those leaders in our community who have helped others find my guests and me, Leslie Jennings Rowley, on Roads Taken.