Military & First Responder Families & Caregivers

We offer programs and retreats for Blue Star and Gold Star families, partners of First Responders and anyone who ‘holds down the fort’ for the guardians who serve our country and communities.  While not on the front lines themselves, these family members bear the burden of not knowing whether or not their significant other will come home.  

Family members whose partners or children have made the ultimate sacrifice, are also in the unique position of standing by, knowing that this is always possible. In both cases, family members must deal with a tremendous amount of worry or grief — and all are in need of tools that build their capacity to handle these experiences.

To that end, sessions with guardian families center on building the ‘window of tolerance’ for feelings of powerlessness, worry, sadness and grief that are mixed with ones of pride and honor.  We aim to help these folks expand their ability to handle the tension of these seeming opposites. To love someone, know that they may not come home and support other family members as they do — is no small feat. 

We and our horses however, have created specific exercises and practices that:

• Address the need for healthy boundaries
• Offer a process for managing difficult and paradoxical emotions 
• Encourage asking for help with the horses
• Provide tools for managing the natural and authentic feelings that are difficult for all of us to acknowledge

Our goal is to help guardian family members become more congruent,  more grounded, and more connected to themselves and others around them. 

We help break through self-limiting patterns and help people appreciate what happens when they allow themselves to experience both worry or grief and pride at the same time.

We use ground-based experiential learning with horses, didactic material called Emotional Agility to address healthy ways to process emotions, and resilience tools to help clients manage people and situations between and beyond sessions.  

Why horses?  As prey animals who understand both fear and sadness very well, horses are particularly attuned to authentic expressions of emotions.  When someone is honest about feelings — no matter how difficult they are — horses are completely engaged.  Sometimes a person needs to just release what they have been carrying on their own for too long. 

This is where horses are miraculously attuned, present and engaged. They never mask their intentions and value trust over all else, so when a release of stress is real, they’re ‘all in’.  Release is also a key ingredient for renewal — so clients tell us that they left in far better spirits than when they came.