If you're a Cobra Kai fan like Ree Drummond, you probably know Courtney Henggeler as Amanda LaRusso—wife of Daniel, mom of two, and the always-reasonable voice of reason in the middle of all the karate chaos. She's been in all six seasons of the hit Netflix show, and now she's stepping away from acting entirely.

"After 20 plus years of fighting the good fight in the acting business, I hung up my gloves on Friday," she wrote in a heartfelt post on Substack. She called her agents and let them know she was ready to be done. "I no longer wanted to be a cog in the wheel of the machine," she said. "When prompted to know what I did want to do, I simply replied, 'I want to be the machine.'"

Courtney reflected on her two decades in the industry and it wasn't just the roles she remembered, but the grind of auditioning, waiting, and trying again. "All I've truly ever knew was the hustle," she wrote. "The grind, sprinkled occasionally with the odd acting job."

Still, she shared plenty of gratitude. Courtney landed a role on a hit Netflix series that lasted six seasons, had her face on billboards, and even got to be directed by George Clooney. "This by all definitions is the golden goose," she said. But after years of pushing forward, she admitted she felt worn down.

"For years, I silenced the voice in my head, begging me to walk away," she said. "Not because of the acting itself. But because of the gauntlet I had to run to reach the acting."

She ended her post with one last question: "What if we never needed to run the gauntlet? What if we are the gauntlet?"

We're wishing Courtney all the best in whatever she does next. And if she ever wants to trade the hustle for a little fresh air and porch time in Oklahoma, we know a ranch that wouldn't mind a visitor.

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Kelly O'Sullivan
Senior Editor
Kelly O’Sullivan is the senior editor for The Pioneer Woman and manages the website’s social channels, in addition to overseeing content strategy and news.