The Story of Riding Home.

Most of us treat death like a secret we aren’t supposed to tell. Caryl is done keeping secrets.

As a Vermont horse trainer living on borrowed time, Caryl isn’t just preparing to die— she’s teaching everyone around her how to survive it. While facing terminal cancer with honesty, humor, and an open heart, she invites her family into conversations many spend a lifetime avoiding. In doing so, long-buried wounds begin to surface, including the lingering trauma of a suicide that has quietly shaped their relationships for decades.

Through intimate cinéma vérité storytelling, Riding Home strips away the sterile, clinical curtains of the American end-of-life experience. By welcoming friends and family into the uncomfortable, messy, and beautiful reality of her final months and days, Caryl transforms her dying process into a final gift: an opportunity for healing, connection, and reconciliation.

The film seeks not only to document one woman’s final journey, but to contribute to a broader cultural shift toward facing death with presence, courage, honesty, and collective care. In the end, Caryl shows that the most healing thing we can do is talk about the one thing we’re all afraid to mention.