M E D I A
A life-shattering accident. An extraordinary horse.
And a story that became much bigger than either of them.
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T h e S t o r y
On 17 September 2024, Nicola Huelin was riding her Friesian horse, Monty, along a quiet Cheshire lane when they were struck by a car.
Monty died at the scene. Nicola survived.
What followed became an extraordinary story of traumatic loss, recovery, justice, ancestral discovery and the search for meaning when life changes beyond recognition.
It is now the subject of Nicola's forthcoming memoir, Monty's Gift: When Surviving Is No Longer Enough.
But the story opens a much bigger conversation:
What happens when surviving is no longer enough?
Because survival doesn't always look like falling apart.
Sometimes it looks remarkably like coping.
It can look like being capable, responsible and successful. Like holding everything together, carrying what needs to be carried and continuing long after something within us knows that the way we're living is no longer sustainable.
Nicola had spent much of her life doing exactly that.
Losing Monty didn't simply confront her with grief. It brought her face to face with the way she had been living, the places she had searched for safety and belonging, and the question that would ultimately reach far beyond the accident itself:
If surviving has brought us this far, what becomes possible when we no longer need to live that way?
More than a story about a horse
For six years, six days a week, Monty was a constant in Nicola's life.
The 650kg Baroque Friesian she came to know as her Gentle Giant taught her to dance through dressage, to communicate beyond words, to trust differently and, somewhere along the way, became the place she felt most at Home.
His death shattered that world.
But what emerged in its aftermath reached backwards as well as forwards.
As Nicola began the long process of recovery, she uncovered a remarkable thread in her own family history: the story of her great-grandfather and the horses he had loved and lost through the Boer War and First World War, more than a century earlier.
A story of horses, war and unresolved grief that had remained largely buried within her family.
Suddenly, the story that had begun on a Cheshire lane was no longer only about one woman and one horse.
It was about what we carry. What we survive. What we lose. What love leaves behind. And whether the things that shatter us can sometimes reveal something we could not have discovered any other way.
Media Conversations
Nicola is available for thoughtful interviews, features and conversations across podcast, radio, television, print and documentary.
Her story and wider body of work open into a number of editorial territories, including:
Life after the unthinkable
What happens when a single moment divides life into before and after, and the challenge of building a life from what remains.
When surviving is no longer enough
Why survival can look remarkably like competence, and what happens when the strategies that once helped us cope begin to cost us more than they give us.
The extraordinary relationship between humans and horses
What horses can teach us about presence, trust, communication, safety, relationship and ourselves.
Grief, trauma and the search for meaning
Not how to make tragedy "happen for a reason", but how meaning can sometimes emerge from the life we are left to live afterwards.
The hidden inheritance of family stories
Nicola's discovery of her great-grandfather's relationship with horses across two wars, and the questions it raises about the stories, grief and experiences that travel through families.
The hidden cost of being the capable woman
Why the women who appear to be coping can sometimes be carrying the most, and what changes when we stop measuring wellbeing by how much we can continue to endure.
Finding our way Home
Identity, reinvention, self-trust and the question of what remains when the roles, relationships, achievements or certainties through which we once knew ourselves begin to fall away.
When the way we've learned to survive becomes the way we lead
How the patterns that help capable women succeed can also shape the way they carry responsibility, make decisions and lead others, and why greater capacity and self-awareness can create more choice in how we lead.
About Nicola Huelin
Nicola Huelin is a British author, speaker and transformational practitioner whose work explores what happens when the ways we have learned to survive are no longer enough.
For more than fourteen years, Nicola has worked with thousands of women through leadership, entrepreneurship, change and personal transformation, helping them reconnect with themselves, hear their own wisdom and find a way forward that is genuinely their own.
But in September 2024, the work Nicola had spent years exploring professionally became profoundly personal.
While riding her beloved Friesian horse, Monty, along a quiet Cheshire country lane, Nicola and Monty were struck by a car.
Monty died at the scene. Nicola survived.
The collision left Nicola facing physical injury, post-concussion syndrome, PTSD and the devastating loss of the horse who, for six years, had been one of the great relationships of her life.
What followed became an extraordinary story of traumatic loss, recovery, justice and ancestral discovery, and ultimately a much bigger exploration of what it means to survive, to heal and to find our way Home to ourselves.
That story is now the subject of Nicola's forthcoming memoir, Monty's Gift: When Surviving Is No Longer Enough.
Today, Nicola brings together more than fourteen years of professional experience with a story she never expected to live herself, speaking and writing about survival, loss, identity, women's lives, leadership, the human-horse relationship and what becomes possible when the way we've always lived can no longer take us where we need to go.
Her work asks one deceptively simple question: What happens when surviving is no longer enough?
Monty's Gift
When Surviving Is No Longer Enough
A true story of a gentle giant, a life-shattering accident, and the journey Home to myself.
For six years, Monty was Nicola's teacher, companion and the place she felt most at Home.
On 17 September 2024, she lost him.
What followed would change not only how Nicola understood his life and death, but how she understood her own.
Monty's Gift is a transformational memoir about profound love and loss, the aftermath of trauma, an extraordinary ancestral discovery and one woman's journey through the hardest season of her life towards something she hadn't known she was searching for.
Discover Monty's Gift
Media Resources
If you're featuring Nicola in a podcast, article, broadcast or other media, you'll find approved biographies, photography and background information below.
Please feel free to use these resources in connection with editorial coverage, interviews and features involving Nicola.
B I O G R A H P I E S
From short intro for podcast, radio and event, to full bio covering work, background and story.
P H O T O G R A P H Y
Current headshots, images of Nicola and Monty, and approved editorial photography.
M O N T Y 'S G I F T
Book synopsis, cover artwork, author information and publication updates.
Media Enquiries
Looking for a guest, contributor or a story?
Nicola welcomes thoughtful conversations across podcast, radio, television, print and documentary.
Whether you're interested in the extraordinary story behind Monty's Gift or one of the wider conversations it opens, we'd love to hear what you're creating.
Get in touch