Children and Horses

Loving horses can save you. 

Kristen Hankla of the Post and Courier has written a profile of Elizabeth Steed, the director of LEARN Horse Rescue, that proves my point. In it, Hankla explains that Steed's nonprofit saves horses from abusive and dangerous situations as well as educates horse owners about their care.  However, the profile not only explores what brought Steed to loving horses and the work she does to help them, but also how the horses helped her survive the loss of a child.

Hankla writes:

One of the pivotal events in Steed's life was the birth of her babies. "I never thought I could love something as much as I loved my children," she said.

Another was the death of her son in 2007.

Paul Hendrix was 20, driving home from a party on Johns Island where he had been drinking, Steed said. His car went off the road; he overcorrected and hit a tree. Steed was told he died instantly.

Her memories from the days following his death are spotty. She remembers a friend coming to her door to give her the news and thinking it had to be a mistake — her son would never drink and drive. She remembers praying with Hendrix's friends the next morning, and she remembers seeing him for just a moment in the casket before she had to turn away. His face looked like plastic.

She turned off her cell phone and went to the pasture. A 2,000-pound mule that had been severely abused stayed by her side as she sat on the ground, lowering his mammoth head to her shoulder each time she cried.

I can’t imagine the pain that Steed felt – it’s my worst nightmare, losing a child.  However, she survived and has done good in the world.  And I can see that part of her survival hinged on her love of horses.  Loving horses prepared her for loving, and losing, a child. 

Nothing is more like caring for a child than loving a horse.  In learning to trust a large animal, one who could kill me without meaning to, I enter into the kind of faith it takes to love a child.  A child’s death, like the one described here, could destroy me, too, like a horse could.  But I love the child anyway, just like I climb on the back of a horse anyway.  Both are acts of faith – that somehow the risk is worth it, that somehow I will survive, that somehow this extension of myself won’t break me.  

The partnership between a rider and a horse is similar to the one between a parent and a child – we give up ultimate control of our hearts and bodies to something larger than ourselves, and in that act, we expand our spirits and become more than we were. Each time I get on a horse, I face the primal fear of a larger, more powerful animal.  Each time I see my child and step-children sprint away from me to risk their own adventures, I lay bricks of hope against the fear that they might not return.  Learning to transcend the fear stretches and pushes my psyche, making it more resilient and strong.  And this is what it takes to survive our worst nightmares.  

Elizabeth Steed seems to have found that, and I find it each day as I love the children and horses in my life.