As a writer, words mean a thing or two to me. So if anyone had told me that the best therapy I would receive involved no words at all, I would have been the last to believe it.
I’m the kind of person who gets restless during yoga, shushed at spas, and am a bona fide expert at drowning out meditation guides with my own louder, ruminating thoughts. Getting lost in stories has carried me through my life; escaping to the movies or in the pages of a book helps me reckon with my own goings-on, but addressing my issues directly?
‘You and your air time,’ my friends joke, referring to the two words I often use to cut any chat that’s gone on for too long, about someone or something that doesn’t deserve, well, the air time. Every summer since childhood, I have taken to sitting outside after everyone else has gone to bed and listening to the crickets, looking up at the night sky and letting my thoughts drift into eternity with nowhere to bounce off. (The thing with eternity is that when you’re in a good place, it feels great. When you’re in a bad place, it feels doorless).
Stillness can be either perfect or overwhelming, and when the alone time that the ‘happy me’ (who I would look back on with envy) shifted from invaluable to dreaded, I was at a loss. The key, as it would turn out, was to indeed let those thoughts drift — but for them to ultimately bounce off something. In this case, that something was a horse.
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Be it for children with disabilities, people with ADHD or war veterans suffering from PTSD, horses are increasingly used in therapy. But despite riding from a young age, my move to London four years ago cemented the end of an era: at this point in my life, as far I was concerned, there was little difference between returning to the barn and going on safari.
I have never been one to hide away during a hard time and learned early on how to avoid sensitive subjects in social situations, laugh on cue, appear engaged while tight-chested. But that bottling doesn’t work with horses, which brought me to realise that, in the long run, it probably doesn’t work with people, either.
This past summer, I returned home to Canada following an emotionally damaging year that had left me with something even scarier than internal wounds: I was at a place where I was unable to distinguish between my gut feeling and anxiety. I have always struggled with anxiety — I didn’t really realise this until one of my best friends said it point blank — but what would always leave me feeling somewhat in control was my ability to separate rational worries from irrational ones. And no longer being able to pinpoint which was which was terrifying.
I was existing somewhere between panic and survival mode and any happy times felt fleeting. Along with this was the guilt: my best friends and family are second to none when it comes to love and loyalty, yet I constantly doubted everyone.
While at home, I spent time with loved ones in my special places and couldn’t understand why I didn’t feel better. The usual back-to-school feeling that I had hoped would kick in before returning to London was replaced by deep-rooted disquiet and, in a moment of nostalgia, I called up the barn that I had spent my childhood summers riding at. I walked into the tack room and looked up at the wooden nameplates and horseshoes decorated with nail polish and glitter glue and, as I picked up the saddle and bridle for Devilwood, who grazed in the back field, felt with the weight in my arms a lightness in my chest.
That afternoon, my mother was early to pick me up, and on our drive home in what felt like a Jenna-goes-home moment from 13 Going on 30, quietly commented that I hadn’t seemed this at peace in a long time. A few days before my flight back, she came into my room to say she'd found a woman online who owned a barn just outside of London and used her horses for equine therapy. Would I be willing to try it?
I accepted somewhat reluctantly and, two weeks after returning to London, made my way to the stables on a rainy afternoon. As I walked down the long driveway, the horses in the fields — who I would come to know by name — peered at me curiously.
I’m not sure what I expected —trained riding school ponies?— but was surprised and saddened to learn that the horses, for the most part, had troubled pasts and were probably in need of therapy themselves. Some had been abused while others had unknown histories — which is of course the case with anyone we meet for the first time. I often think that, particularly in an era of social media, we all like to have the full story (and often think we do) from the start. The truth is, we never do, and like with the horses, we learn people’s stories through their actions versus their words.
In S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, Ponyboy, the narrator, says this of his brother: Soda had this buckskin horse, only it wasn't his. It belonged to a guy who kept it at the stables where Soda used to work. Mickey Mouse was Soda's horse, though. The first day Soda saw him he said, ‘There's my horse,’ and I never doubted it. I felt like this with Chance, the chestnut Thoroughbred who in many ways was just like me.
A key tool in equine therapy is mirroring: paying close attention to how our behaviours and internalised emotions impact the horses, and increasing self-awareness as a result. In working with Chance, I wasn’t focused on my words or facial expressions, but on what I was emanating. I’ve always known that horses sense how we feel — but grooming, walking and running with Chance made me realise just how impossible it is to be truly present with others if you aren’t with yourself.
Like me, Chance can spiral. Following a heartbreaking history of abuse, his bubbly nature and the way he runs to me for a nose-bop is testament to the liberating power of forgiveness. But like many of us, when triggered, he panics, and there is something about seeing the whites of his eyes and that split second between calm grazing and full-charge that just encompasses all-consuming fear. And in bringing him back to a place of safety by calmly stepping back but keeping my feet firmly on the ground, with my hands outstretched, I validate the moment without running from it: I— we — let it go. People are more like these sentient beings than we think and with Chance, I learned more than I have in weeks of pouring out my feelings to the most equipped of listeners.
Being on a horse is the ultimate metaphor for life. You sit in the saddle and you have the reins, but the horse is a being of its own: sometimes you ride together, other times you fall off. Being alongside a horse, having him come to you, follow you, let you drape him in a blanket when all of his previous associations with touch are triggering — that is the epitome of connection.
Through equine therapy, I have learned to pay attention and to truly work on what is within. Most of us address the surface before the roots. Sounds cliché, but so many of us continue to do it daily. With me, it took an animal who could care less about my job, how I spend my time, who I surround myself with, to make me realise how much finding peace — and maintaining that peace when threatened — at my core matters.
I have always loved horses and even after a bad fall at my first riding school that had me in hospital, I did the only thing that I could: get back on. ‘Horses teach us humility, if for no other reason than their size,’ my mother said — who never was a horse girl, but via both her best friend and I, was what you might call a horse girl’s girl.
Spending time in the natural world is one thing; truly engaging with it is another. When I am at the barn, I forget that I own makeup; I have dirt on my clothes but have never felt so refreshed. I am beside something bigger than me, but set a boundary of what can and cannot be done. I am present, in touch with my intuition and above all, trusting. Trusting of an animal that could buck at any time: throw me off, get spooked by something in the woods and take off in a fear-riddled spiral— but I know that I can bring myself, and the horse, back to a place of safety. To a place where we can return to the corner of the woods and let out that breath versus hold it. Patience, compassion, determination and belief are given equal weight.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to therapy. I’ve heard raving reviews of traditional therapies such as CBT and alternative ones from art to dance. But there is something to be said about having a living being with you — one that has centuries of history alongside humans— and being out in the natural world together, co-existing in what might be the safest and surest place on Earth: the present.
