People ask me all the time: How did you get started with horses? How did you know they could help people heal? And my honest answer is — I didn’t choose horses. Horses chose me, quite literally, before I could even walk.
Here’s the story.
I was somewhere around six months old — maybe more, maybe less — and my mother had taken me outside while she hung laundry on the clothesline. (Yes, a clothesline. We’ve evolved since then.) She set me down on the ground, went about her business, and when she turned around to collect both the laundry and her baby, I was gone.
She found me in the barn.
Specifically, she found me sitting on the ground inside the stall of our Shetland pony — a little mare who had originally been purchased for my older brother, who, as older brothers sometimes do, had immediately lost interest and moved on to other pursuits. There I was, a crawling infant, holding the pony’s halter with one small hand, just staring at her. And she was staring right back at me. Perfectly still. Completely unbothered.
My mother reached in and picked me up. I responded with what I’m told was an impressive temper tantrum — screaming, crying, kicking — the full performance. So she put me back down. I crawled right back into that stall. Took the halter. Started staring again.
And that, friends, was the beginning.
Growing Up with Horses in Powhatan, VA: Lessons I Didn’t Know I Was Learning
The pony’s name was Top Hat’s Golden Lady. I called her Top Hat. She was my first friend, my confidante, my co-star in every childhood adventure I could dream up. My favorite television show growing up was Bonanza, and I would watch an episode, run straight out to the barn, and do my absolute best to reenact it — galloping across our field as if I were riding the Ponderosa range itself. Top Hat was a remarkably good sport about this.
We went on picnics together. I would pack a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for each of us, plus bananas. I ate the banana; she ate the peel. She thought this was a fantastic arrangement.
But beyond the adventures and the picnics, Top Hat gave me something I didn’t have words for as a child but have spent my career trying to help others find: peace. As a kid, no matter what kind of chaos was swirling around me — and life always has some chaos — I could go sit in that barn, listen to the horses chew their hay (there is a rhythm to it, a slow and steady sound that is deeply, almost inexplicably calming), and feel better. Not fixed. Not solved. Just… better. Grounded. Like the world made a little more sense.
Top Hat lived well into her thirties. I was in my late twenties when she died, long out of college, and I grieved her the way you grieve someone who helped make you who you are. Because she had, she taught me confidence. She taught me determination and gave me joy and peace long before I knew how badly I needed either of those things.
What Horses Taught Me About Healing Before I Became a Therapist
Over the years, I’ve had many horses. Each one has taught me something. And what I’ve come to understand — both from lived experience and from the work I do with clients — is that horses offer something rare and remarkable in the context of healing: they don’t need you to explain yourself.
You don’t have to talk. You don’t have to process out loud or find the right words or perform your pain in a way that makes sense to someone else. Horses communicate through presence, and they respond to yours. It’s a silent language, and it’s honest in a way that can be startling if you’re not used to it.
Why Equine Therapy in Virginia Works Differently Than Traditional Talk Therapy
What I see happen — again and again, with clients who have never been near a horse in their lives — is a kind of quiet opening. Something shifts when a person gets still and simply feels what it’s like to be near a thousand-pound animal who has no agenda, no judgment, and no interest in your carefully constructed defenses. The experience doesn’t end when you leave the barn, either. The memories, the smells, the sounds — they stay with you. They come back at unexpected moments and bring something gentle with them. A little peace. A little clarity. Sometimes, a question you didn’t know you needed to ask yourself.
That’s the gift horses have been giving me my whole life. And it’s the gift I get to watch them give to others now.
So that’s the story — how a crawling baby ended up in a pony’s stall and never really came back out. It has been a lifelong love, a lifelong learning, and genuinely one of the greatest privileges of my work to share it with people who are curious, or hurting, or simply wondering what it might feel like to connect with something that meets you exactly where you are.
Start Equine Therapy in Powhatan, VA
If you’re wondering what that connection might feel like for you, I’d love to talk. Schedule a consultation, and let’s find out together. Reach out and let’s start a conversation — no pressure, no agenda. Just two people talking about what healing might look like for you. You can start your therapy journey with Gray Horse Counseling by following these simple steps:
- Contact me and schedule a free one-on-one consultation.
- Check out my FAQs and read more about me and my therapy approach.
- Start finding lasting healing!
Other Services Offered with Gray Horse Counseling in Richmond and Throughout Virginia
Horses have a way of meeting us exactly where we are — and so does the work we do together in the therapy room. Gray Horse Counseling offers a full range of services in addition to equine therapy to support your healing journey. Other services offered include individual therapy, group therapy, anxiety therapy, EMDR therapy, depression treatment, life transitions therapy, equine sports therapy, and clinical supervision — available in person in Powhatan and Richmond, VA, or statewide through online therapy. Explore my FAQs, get to know me, and reach out today to take your first step.