Walking Alone in the Company of Horses

February, 2020

The grief journey is different for every person who experiences loss.  One thing everyone has in common, however, is that they must walk through the grief alone.  Friends and family support me, empathize, and sympathize, but in the end, the ‘work of grief’ is a journey you must endure alone.  My daughter and I are on separate grief journeys.  She lost her father and I lost my husband.  The same person had 2 different, but significant and important roles in our lives.  We are both processing the loss differently.   

Recently, my daughter and I started equine therapy, which is a non-traditional method of dealing with grief.  I have not had much experience with horses.  Working with horses requires physical and mental energy as I am learning.  One of the themes in this type of therapy is mindfulness.  Mindfulness is a Buddhist concept that emphasizes the acceptance of powerful emotions you are experiencing in the present moment. 

I never gave as much thought to feeling in the ‘present moment’ before I experienced the significant loss of my husband.  Unbearable pain, fear, anxiety, and sadness are all normal feelings from a tragic loss.  The brain numbs these emotions for a little while and then you feel it all at once.  For me, mindfulness began when I accepted that I live with the feelings from grief, such as pain, anxiety, fear, and sadness, but know I can carry them as I move forward.  I know that amongst all these complex emotions, I can still also feel calm and happy too. 

The equine therapist equates grief to a brain injury or having a concussion.  There are clinical studies to support this theory.  My brain absolutely changed after loss.  It is like entering a time warp where everything you knew to be true was gone.  I felt a lot of confusion and had a feeling of being in a fog often.  The inability to focus was a struggle.  

During the equine therapy, we did an exercise that involved my daughter and a pony and myself and an older mare.  Interesting that the therapist gave me the old mare, right?  I feel like the old gray mare a lot of the time, but that was not the point of the exercise.  She had each of us try to get the horse to follow us in a ring using our ‘energy.’  The therapist’s concept was that some of the time we need to lead and some of the time we need to be a partner.  That is true in life and working with horses.  She demonstrated the concept using a rope that she spun in circles while walking to get the horse to move. 

Katie went first and walked alone for a little while without the pony following, but then got the pony to follow using the demonstrated method.  When it was my turn, my mare was much more interested in eating the grass than in any activity.  She did not follow me at first, which made walking in the ring a bit frustrating because I am walking alone.  In the end, I did get the horse to follow me in the ring for a short time, and she did walk over to me once I was in the center of the ring.  Walking alone through grief feels lonely and isolating.  When the equine therapist asked how I felt about the exercise, I told her that Katie and myself are handling our grief separately and we both need to walk alone through it no matter how uncomfortable it feels.