This tran­script has been edit­ed for clar­i­ty. There may be dif­fer­ences between the audio and this tran­script.

John Moir: 0:07

You know we don’t talk enough about the toll that trau­ma takes on first respon­ders. I’m a retired para­medic. I first start­ed my career in 1978. What I want to talk about is that there are peo­ple who show up on some of the worst days of our lives Fire­fight­ers, para­medics, police offi­cers and oth­ers. They deal with sit­u­a­tions most of us can’t imag­ine day in and day out, but I’m glad for that. You should­n’t have to. And while these pro­fes­sion­als are well-trained in their jobs, noth­ing real­ly pre­pares them for the emo­tion­al weight that comes from see­ing what most peo­ple should nev­er have to see. So it’s no sur­prise that many of these first respon­ders strug­gle with burnout, anx­i­ety, ptsd and even soul loss. The ques­tion is how can we help them heal? How can we cre­ate spaces where they feel safe to process their expe­ri­ences? That’s what we’re going to explore today, and there is no one-size-fits-all solu­tion, but there are inno­v­a­tive approach­es mak­ing a real difference.Carmen Theobald: 1:14

What did hap­pen is that dur­ing the school shoot­ing, I was stuck in a class­room on the path for the shoot­er to be. He was open­ing the doors and going into a bunch of class­es and doing ter­ri­ble things. I had to be stuck in a dark class­room hid­ing with my class­mates for 45 min­utes lis­ten­ing as he got clos­er and clos­er to where we were, and I tru­ly believed that that was going to be my last day on Earth.John Moir: 1:44

Our guest today is a sur­vivor heal­er and a bea­con of resilience. With pro­found courage, she’s trans­formed per­son­al trau­ma into a jour­ney of growth, guid­ing oth­ers towards heal­ing. Her com­pas­sion­ate work bridges human and ani­mal con­nec­tion, offer­ing trans­for­ma­tive insights into grief, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and the incred­i­ble strength found in embrac­ing life ful­ly. Wel­come back. You’re lis­ten­ing to the Urban Grief Shamans and I’m your host, john Moyer.Carmen Theobald: 2:14

It’s such an hon­or for me to be able to work with those who serve our com­mu­ni­ties, and serv­ing those who serve oth­ers tru­ly is the most impor­tant thing I can do with my time. I know that at a vis­cer­al lev­el because of some of my expe­ri­ences, includ­ing that school shoot­ing from all the first respon­ders that made it pos­si­ble for me to be alive that day.John Moir: 2:36

This is our guest, car­men Theobald, who is deeply com­mit­ted to serv­ing those who serve oth­ers. With heart­felt ded­i­ca­tion, she cre­ates safe, trans­for­ma­tive spaces for first respon­ders to heal from trau­ma. She helps these brave indi­vid­u­als process grief and redis­cov­er resilience in pro­found and last­ing ways. Let’s lis­ten in, car­men. I’m real­ly curi­ous about your sto­ry. I know every­body has grief. You men­tioned it in some of your mate­r­i­al. That there is a peri­od of grief in Mon­tre­al, I think, is what made me think that that’s where your sto­ry start­ed. Would you be able to share some of that with us?Carmen Theobald: 3:13

Absolute­ly. Yeah, I think it’s real­ly impor­tant to share my sto­ry because it does real­ly relate to every­thing that I’m doing now. And as I share this sto­ry, I also invite lis­ten­ers to have a lit­tle bit of an acti­va­tion warn­ing that some of the things I’m going to talk about might be dif­fi­cult to hear and even though they were dif­fi­cult expe­ri­ences, I’m also grate­ful to be able to talk about them because they real­ly taught me so much. Grow­ing up in my fam­i­ly home, there was a lot of trau­ma. There was a lot of emo­tion­al and ver­bal and psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse emo­tion­al and ver­bal and psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse and I was doing my best to nav­i­gate that, learn­ing about it, because of course, that was my real­i­ty. But I real­ly felt not well in that envi­ron­ment and then I decid­ed to go and study social ser­vices. So I got to the point of going to col­lege in Mon­tre­al and I chose to study a field that was in ser­vice to oth­er peo­ple and as I was learn­ing more and more in social ser­vices, it was help­ing to artic­u­late what I was expe­ri­enc­ing at home. Those were lay­ers of grief that were hap­pen­ing but also very val­i­dat­ing. So it was this simul­ta­ne­ous med­i­cine of what was hap­pen­ing as well as going through the deep feel­ings of that, going through the deep feel­ings of that, and then, while I was study­ing social ser­vices, an event took place that com­plete­ly changed my life. It was a Wednes­day and it was dur­ing one of the most mean­ing­ful class­es that I had that semes­ter. It was a very long class that had extra­or­di­nar­i­ly pre­cise tim­ing from nine to noon and then from one to four we had class and I’m say­ing that because it real­ly mat­ters to this sto­ry that this was the only day that that pre­cise tim­ing of lunch, being exact­ly from noon to 1pm, did not hap­pen. Lunch was bumped 20 min­utes Because what hap­pened that day is there was a school shoot­ing that took place, and I would have been right in the cen­ter of the worst of it had I gone to lunch at that moment that we were sched­uled to.Carmen Theobald: 5:13

What did hap­pen is that dur­ing the school shoot­ing, I was stuck in a class­room on the path for the shoot­er to be. He was open­ing the doors and going into a bunch of class­es and doing ter­ri­ble things, and I had to be stuck in a dark class­room hid­ing with my class­mates for 45 min­utes lis­ten­ing as he got clos­er and clos­er to where we were, and I tru­ly believed that that was going to be my last day on earth, all signs were point­ing to the like­li­hood that I very well may not make it through this, and I had some­thing real­ly inter­est­ing hap­pen that I feel like is appro­pri­ate to talk about on this pod­cast, where I had a moment where it was the pan­ic and the fear was real­ly ris­ing and I real­ly was hav­ing that esca­lat­ed sense of all the fear that was very con­ta­gious in the class­room. There was sti­fled sobs and cries that were hap­pen­ing all over the place. Also, to give con­text, all the com­mu­ni­ca­tions went down on the island of Mon­tre­al, because it was such a huge col­lege that this took place at Daw­son Col­lege in Mon­tre­al in 2006 that every­one was try­ing to reach their loved ones, and so all the cell tow­ers got over­loaded and no one could reach any­body. And so when that hap­pened, when that moment of peo­ple are reach­ing out, tex­ting, call­ing their peo­ple, being reached out to, that was already being you, you know an esca­lat­ed moment.Carmen Theobald: 6:49

But then, when no one could reach any­body, the fear and inten­si­ty of that pan­ic rose for every­one in a real­ly sig­nif­i­cant way, and I felt myself have a fork in the road moment and I it’s like I caught the scent. I caught the whiff of an alter­nate option to more fear, and I don’t know what in me was allow­ing myself to even notice that that was an option or what allowed me to choose it. But I do feel like it was a com­plete and utter game chang­er of my life. Not just of that moment where, instead of con­tin­u­ing to feel afraid, I got very still and calm and ground­ed. I felt very in my body. I felt very capa­ble of action. I had a clear action plan of if the shoot­er came in, this was my next step. All these things. I was able to think through the quote problem.Carmen Theobald: 7:40

I just felt like I sur­ren­dered to the moment in a way, with this rad­i­cal self-accep­tance and rad­i­cal accep­tance of every­thing that allowed me to feel tremen­dous peace and to know that if my actions did not allow my life to be saved, if this day real­ly did claim my life, then it’s okay, I felt at peace with that, and then a group of police offi­cers, maybe five min­utes lat­er, came into the class and escort­ed us to a posi­tion of safe­ty and we secret­ly, silent­ly, went out­side of this back stair­case and we got out­side and the sun­shine hit my face and I took a deep breath and I real­ized that I was actu­al­ly going to be alive for a while longer. It con­nect­ed me in this very intense­ly vis­cer­al and beau­ti­ful way to the feel­ing of alive­ness and also courage. If I am pre­pared to die with peace, then I am pre­pared to live with courage. And it changed every­thing mov­ing for­ward, changed all of my deci­sions after that point.John Moir: 9:03

Did any of your oth­er class­mates have sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences to that, Carmen?Carmen Theobald: 9:08

I end­ed up leav­ing school and it sounds like well, yeah, of course, but I actu­al­ly was­n’t leav­ing to run away from school. I did­n’t have hard­ly any post-trau­mat­ic stress symp­toms being at school. I had a few dreams, but it were quite min­i­mal. I would real­ly describe this expe­ri­ence as post-trau­mat­ic growth, but what that also meant is that I was­n’t as in con­tact with the peo­ple who were in my class any­more, because what I was real­ly doing leav­ing was going toward what my heart was telling me to go toward Choos­ing, to spend my time with peo­ple in places that real­ly filled me up in a way that I just was­n’t able to access in school. Although I loved study­ing what I was study­ing, I knew I need­ed to leave school and I need­ed to leave Mon­tre­al. Some­thing else was call­ing me. I could­n’t artic­u­late it, I could­n’t quite put it into frame yet, but I knew I had to have coura­geous choic­es, to fol­low my heart, and that’s what I did. So, to answer your ques­tion, I don’t real­ly know. Maybe I hope so, for them but I don’t know.John Moir: 10:08

And so that was the begin­ning of your new journey.Carmen Theobald: 10:10

That was the begin­ning of my new jour­ney. So I left Mon­tre­al to go vol­un­teer on a farm for room and board. Although there can be lots of amaz­ing things said about my fam­i­ly, that I do have a lot of love, there was also a lot of harm harm and it was so impor­tant to get out of that space and to fol­low what my heart was telling me to do. So I got on this bus and took a leap of faith and thought I was going to be vol­un­teer­ing at this farm for room and board that had veg­etable gar­dens, maple syrup and 24 hors­es. I thought I was going to be there for two weeks. Turns out I was there almost two years and it opened the door to me work­ing with hors­es professionally.Carmen Theobald: 10:50

I got an appren­tice­ship as a far­ri­er, so that’s a per­son who takes care of hors­es’ feet. I put shoes on hors­es, I trim their feet. I’ve worked with thou­sands of hors­es now in that way and that led me to the work that I’m excit­ed to real­ly talk about more at some point with you. But all of those pieces of that jour­ney would not have been pos­si­ble had I not had this kind of post-trau­mat­ic growth life expan­sive­ness that is woven with grief but also com­plete­ly life-open­ing and life-affirming.John Moir: 11:20

What brought you to the idea of work­ing with hors­es? What?Carmen Theobald: 11:23

brought you to the idea of work­ing with hors­es. Well, it was my moth­er, who knew that I was­n’t doing well in school emo­tion­al­ly and although I did very well with my grades, it was not good for me, and she could tell and she knew that I might want to try some kind of adven­ture. So she was very sup­port­ive of that at the begin­ning. My father not so much, but she learned about this pro­gram called WOOF, which is Will­ing Work­ers on Organ­ic Farms Also. Anoth­er acronym could be World­wide Oppor­tu­ni­ties on Organ­ic Farms, and so at the time it was a paper book­let. Now, of course, it’s all online, but you get a whole list of farms in the coun­try you sign up for, and so I signed up for Cana­da. I got the $40 book­let that was for Cana­da and they list out all of these dif­fer­ent farm options where peo­ple are will­ing to be hosts and want­i­ng you to come and vol­un­teer in doing this exchange. So I just read these lit­tle para­graph descrip­tions and of course it was the one with hors­es that was telling me I want to go there, and I’m so glad that I did.Carmen Theobald: 12:21

Now I have a busi­ness called Horse Sense North and we offer per­son­al growth, lead­er­ship and team devel­op­ment and we do a lot of trau­ma recov­ery work with the help of hors­es and we work with a lot of first respon­ders, mil­i­tary, pub­lic safe­ty per­son­nel. Many of the peo­ple with­in the first respon­der and mil­i­tary com­mu­ni­ty are men. Many of those peo­ple are resis­tant to get­ting some kind of emo­tion­al, men­tal health sup­port. Hors­es tend to be a real­ly help­ful piece to break through that bar­ri­er. But when it comes to the ther­a­py work with hors­es and hors­es peri­od, I think they real­ly cross all gen­ders. I think they real­ly cross cultures.Carmen Theobald: 12:59

I think the hors­es real­ly are able to have this beau­ti­ful way of just touch­ing our heart regard­less of what our human lives and expe­ri­ences are real­ly detailed on, but just about being alive with them, help­ing us remind us that we’re part of nature with them and inspir­ing us to be healthy ver­sions of who we are.John Moir: 13:24

Are the hors­es them­selves pre­dom­i­nant­ly female the ones that we work with?Carmen Theobald: 13:30

Yes, Right now we actu­al­ly have a herd that is all geld­ings, so males, who have, uh, no longer the abil­i­ty to repro­duce. Um, which is fun­ny to me, because, if any­thing, I, if some­one had asked me if I have a pref­er­ence, I prob­a­bly would have said mares, so female hors­es, not because I real­ly like them more, but just because that’s who’s been my like clos­est con­nec­tions over the years, but just because that’s who’s been my clos­est con­nec­tions over the years, but just because of cir­cum­stance, we have most­ly male hors­es, only male hors­es, right now on site and that’s going to change and ebb and flow. And our herd right now they’re incred­i­ble and I think that, just like any pro­fes­sion or any group, yes, gen­der has a part to play, it has influ­ence, it has, you know, there’s infor­ma­tion there, but it does not in any way mean any­thing more than just lit­tle bits of insight into that indi­vid­ual. It does­n’t mean that they can’t be incred­i­ble beings or have incred­i­ble chal­lenges or what­ev­er that sto­ry might be. So it’s real­ly neat to have this herd right now, also because for many years to have this herd right now, also because for many years they had a female leader, they had a matriarch.Carmen Theobald: 14:36

Her name was Grace and she was tru­ly the most phe­nom­e­nal leader of humans, hors­es and all species I have ever come across. She was my first horse. I worked with hors­es for a long time before I offi­cial­ly took one into my fam­i­ly because I knew it was a life­long com­mit­ment that I was resist­ing a lit­tle bit. But she came along and I knew it had to be her and she was the first horse that came to my farm and she has been the leader of many iter­a­tions of our herd here, as we’ve had oth­er peo­ple’s hors­es stay with us, as we’ve had hors­es pass away, as we’ve had new hors­es come. She’s been the leader for almost a decade. And when she passed away a year and a half ago, of course I was prob­a­bly the most grief-strick­en I’ve ever been in my life. She was tru­ly my best friend and my clos­est work­ing part­ner in what we do. But I was also con­cerned because I was wor­ried like, well, what’s the herd dynam­ic going to be like? Because you know hors­es, I see hors­es at so many dif­fer­ent farms. In my role as a far­ri­er, I see so many dif­fer­ent herds and some­times those herds are peace­ful, some­times they’re not.Carmen Theobald: 15:44

It has a lot to do with the lead­er­ship. It has a lot to do with what’s the tone being set about what kind of behav­ior is allowed and not allowed. Is it kind of more of a bul­ly­ing envi­ron­ment? Is it more of a col­lab­o­ra­tive envi­ron­ment? Is there a horse that’s will­ing to like put the law down, like, put their foot down, lit­er­al­ly their hoof, and say we don’t treat each oth­er that way? Or are they the one who are actu­al­ly like role mod­el­ing unhealthy behav­ior? Who are actu­al­ly like role mod­el­ing unhealthy behav­ior? And so Grace just had such a beau­ti­ful com­bi­na­tion of being an incred­i­bly pow­er­ful being where she would­n’t let any­one get away with any­thing but she was so gen­er­ous and kind and warm and con­sid­er­ate and would share the hay and share the water and be so inclu­sive and real­ly wel­com­ing and just have this deep, deep heart con­nec­tion and have that simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with this super deep, ground­ed pow­er. And what that’s done with her matri­ar­chal lead­er­ship style is it’s infused this herd of geld­ings, this group of males, males to have the same kind of cul­ture, even with­out her here. That is car­ry­ing on, even as we’ve had a new herd mem­ber inte­grate who’s com­ing with dif­fer­ent kinds of ways of engag­ing social­ly, used to oth­er kinds of more like, you know, bick­er­ing or bul­ly­ing tac­tics and this and that. But it’s amaz­ing to watch how the herd actu­al­ly is car­ry­ing on the val­ues that they’ve all real­ly healed with. They’ve all done heal­ing cycles with that kind of lead­er­ship and the new herd mem­ber is now inte­grat­ing in the same kind of way.Carmen Theobald: 17:26

Some of the ways we always work the hors­es at Lib­er­ty they’re nev­er with a rope or a hal­ter on. They’re in a space with us, an enclo­sure, so they can move around. Lib­er­ty they’re nev­er with a rope or a hal­ter on they’re in a space with us, an enclo­sure, so they can move around freely. They’re not going to run away too far, but they can be quite a dis­tance from the human so they’re nev­er forced to do or be any­thing. They’re also always vol­un­teers, our hors­es, so we’re nev­er going out to the field and say­ing, okay, it’s your turn to work today. We’re say­ing who wants to work today? And we always get some­one volunteering.Carmen Theobald: 17:55

They kind of like go back and forth and then some­one will walk over, like they haven’t fig­ured out. Some­times they just give a very sub­tle cue of like, okay, they’ll put their head up like, hey, come on over, come get me, and then they’ll be very obvi­ous in how they want their head to go in the hal­ter. But if they show body lan­guage of like actu­al­ly in the hal­ter. But if they show body lan­guage of like actu­al­ly no, I changed my mind or I don’t want to do this then we lis­ten to that. They’re allowed to have their no, they’re allowed to have their bound­aries, their respect in that process.Carmen Theobald: 18:18

So the kind of part­ner­ship we have with them needs to be, in my view, for all work with hors­es, but espe­cial­ly what we’re doing here.Carmen Theobald: 18:27

It’s our val­ue sys­tem that we real­ly need to be in healthy, mutu­al­ly respect­ful relationship.Carmen Theobald: 18:33

Because if you’re not, then we’re work­ing and learn­ing with hors­es but it’s not going to be nec­es­sar­i­ly in true spir­i­tu­al align­ment for them if we’re using them as a tool.Carmen Theobald: 18:45

So how do we real­ly learn how to part­ner in healthy rela­tion­ship with them so they can show up in the full­ness of who they are and real­ly teach us as spir­i­tu­al beings?Carmen Theobald: 18:54

So I hope that I can, you know, not sound too woo-woo on this pod­cast about that, but real­ly the stuff that I see the hors­es do with humans, it cross­es out of that kind of just a very sci­ence-based world, because the hors­es are very spir­i­tu­al ani­mals. The hors­es are incred­i­bly emo­tion­al­ly attuned and they’re real­ly sens­ing us at a heart lev­el. It’s like they see through all the armor. They see through all the masks and they’re like I’m just going to respond to your heart and to your spir­it and I’m going to engage with you in a way that is exact­ly what is need­ed for you to grow with this very direct, clear body lan­guage. But that’s also safe and non-judg­men­tal. And it’s remark­able what hap­pens when we learn how to be with them in that kind of tak­ing the mask off, tak­ing the armor off space, learn­ing how to land in our heart and learn­ing to con­nect with our spir­it togeth­er. Whether that lan­guage fits for some­one or not, I don’t always bring it in, but real­ly that’s what they’re doing.Carmen Theobald: 19:56

They’re ask­ing us to devel­op a bet­ter rela­tion­ship with them, which ulti­mate­ly means devel­op­ing a bet­ter rela­tion­ship with our spirit.John Moir: 20:04

Yes, I remem­ber being shown a movie. It was about a fam­i­ly who had tak­en their young autis­tic son to Mon­go­lia Horse­boy yes, of course you would have seen that.Carmen Theobald: 20:17

Yeah, rupert’s in, yeah, yeah.John Moir: 20:20

I’ll leave some show notes about Horse­boy. It was quite an amaz­ing sto­ry. How much has work­ing with the hors­es changed you? The shaman­ism is all about spir­it and we’re all con­nect­ed to every­thing. Why would­n’t they be? That’s what makes the world so won­der­ful that we can com­mu­ni­cate and be taught by lit­er­al­ly every­thing around us. That’s right, and it’s what makes us rich­er. So I’m just won­der­ing, before we get on to first respon­ders, what you could share about your development.Carmen Theobald: 20:50

Absolute­ly Well, when I first arrived to that farm that I was vol­un­teer­ing at when I left Mon­tre­al, I’d had a hand­ful of horse expe­ri­ences before then maybe a trail ride one sum­mer and then anoth­er time I got to pet a horse, and then a trail ride anoth­er sum­mer, you know, but real­ly so min­i­mal. So when I arrived to this farm, I knew noth­ing, and the hors­es at this par­tic­u­lar loca­tion were actu­al­ly quite dan­ger­ous. I did­n’t know it at the time, but they had a lot of peo­ple like myself han­dling them where they did­n’t know any­thing about hors­es, and so the hors­es were con­stant­ly learn­ing that they could be in charge and that they could be very kind of bul­ly­ing in their behav­ior. They were quite dan­ger­ous, to be very frank, but what I learned quick­ly is that it was­n’t because that they were mali­cious or because they want­ed to take advan­tage. It’s because they were con­stant­ly search­ing for a sense of safe­ty and they were say­ing human, are you able to be a leader that I need you to be? And if not, then I guess I’m on my own. And if I’m on my own, I’m not going to be pay­ing as much atten­tion to you, because I’m just real­ly wor­ried about my own safe­ty, because I feel like I’m very at risk, and so there’s more injuries that are going to hap­pen because I’m just pay­ing atten­tion to my envi­ron­ment, about what I’m afraid of instead of what you’re telling me.Carmen Theobald: 22:11

And so I start­ed to work with this one horse, contessa.Carmen Theobald: 22:17

So, despite her kind of diva self, of course, she still had this very pure and kind heart as a horse this being that does­n’t have any mali­cious intent, even if she’s got a big, strong per­son­al­i­ty. And I start­ed to work with her at this farm, and what she start­ed to teach me is the theme of what I’ve been learn­ing with hors­es for the thou­sands of hors­es that I’ve now worked with and that con­tin­ues to be the kind of core piece of learn­ing that I keep doing and that I see clients do as well. And what she was teach­ing me is that I need­ed to be able to be pow­er­ful and gen­tle at the same time. Not pow­er­ful one moment and then gen­tle the next. That’s just con­fus­ing but to be real­ly able to land in my heart and in my body in this way that has this deep, ground­ed con­fi­dence, with­out shut­ting my heart off.Carmen Theobald: 23:09

And so, whether that’s, how do we set a bound­ary in a way that’s not shut­ting off con­nec­tion, but that’s still very clear. How do I step into a lead­er­ship posi­tion to say, hey, it’s okay, if you’re afraid of this thing, let me show you that it’s actu­al­ly not so scary, but I’m not going to min­i­mize your fear? How can I real­ly val­i­date this being while stay­ing safe myself? And so it’s that com­bi­na­tion of how do we be strong and kind, how do we be gen­tle and pow­er­ful as a whole unit, not as two ends of a spec­trum. They keep invit­ing me to find that mid­dle point of bring­ing them togeth­er in a para­dox­i­cal way.John Moir: 23:48

Nice.Carmen Theobald: 24:27

Does that affect your rela­tion­ships? With that, can I have more accep­tance for myself about that, and then can I have growth and learn­ing and trans­for­ma­tion with that? And then, of course, that is com­plete­ly impact­ing all of my rela­tion­ships, whether it’s some­one that I meet on the street or who’s cash­ing me out at the gro­cery store, or my part­ner, or a busi­ness rela­tion­ship, or a friend or a client. It’s every­one, because I think rela­tion­ship is at the core of our entire life.John Moir: 24:57

Well said, I want to know about your first respon­der peo­ple. Being a retired para­medic, I’m cer­tain­ly aware of the effects of trau­ma response in peo­ple and we had a few episodes that spoke to PTSD. So yeah, I’ve seen it. I felt it in my own body. I had a bit of a philo­soph­i­cal approach to my work. That devel­oped a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty that start­ed ear­li­er for me and it real­ly changed the way that I was work­ing in EMS and I think that helped me quite a bit. But I used to always say that those big calls that nobody should be part of or see we all leave a lit­tle part of our­selves behind and as I got more into shaman­ism lat­er on, years after I real­ized that lan­guage was real­ly express­ing, I’m feel­ing so lost. Yeah, yeah. So tell us more about your responders.Carmen Theobald: 26:00

Thank you so much for shar­ing that, john. I feel as though our clients who we’re work­ing with from that pub­lic safe­ty per­son­nel back­ground would deeply relate to that back­ground, would deeply relate to that, and it’s such an hon­or for me to be able to work with those who serve our com­mu­ni­ties, and serv­ing those who serve oth­ers tru­ly is the most impor­tant thing I can do with my time. I know that at a vis­cer­al lev­el because of some of my expe­ri­ences, includ­ing that school shoot­ing from all the first respon­ders that made it pos­si­ble for me to be alive that day, includ­ing that school shoot­ing from all the first respon­ders that made it pos­si­ble for me to be alive that day and also just as a mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty, as a per­son of this world real­ly deeply appre­ci­at­ing and valu­ing the ser­vice that peo­ple like your­self have offered to the com­mu­ni­ties that you sup­port. And so, as I built Horse Sense North and start­ed to do more of this horse and human well­ness work and then tran­si­tioned more and more into the ther­a­peu­tic side, work­ing with ther­a­pists, work­ing with oth­er men­tal health providers, it was so clear that the pop­u­la­tion I was the most pas­sion­ate about was this pub­lic safe­ty per­son­nel com­mu­ni­ty, and we also had a lot of these indi­vid­u­als com­ing to see us, even with­out a pro­gram specif­i­cal­ly for them, and it just real­ly affirmed that.Carmen Theobald: 27:11

And I think that’s again where the hors­es real­ly draw in peo­ple who are com­ing from all walks of life. But I think that they have a spe­cial gift. The hors­es have a spe­cial gift of kind of cross­ing that bar­ri­er that’s some­times there for peo­ple who need to be incred­i­bly strong for their job, for their life, for their lifestyle, that it can be very hard to lean into dif­fer­ent kinds of sup­port and dif­fer­ent kinds of soft­ness and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty with­in the self when there’s so much of that armor­ing up and putting the uni­form on and liv­ing in that kind of way for just being able to keep going. And the hors­es offer this exam­ple, this kind of inspi­ra­tion, this bea­con of hope, if you will, that we can actu­al­ly learn how to be vul­ner­a­ble and do the heal­ing work with­out los­ing our strength. And I think that’s a lit­tle bit of what they invite. So, work­ing with peo­ple from these back­grounds, it’s very clear that.Carmen Theobald: 28:11

Well, a cou­ple of things I want to say about that. One post-trau­mat­ic stress is so inevitable in the kinds of work that you do. How can you pos­si­bly expect a human to be exposed to these things over and over and not car­ry so much of that weight and not have this soul death or this los­ing of your­self that hap­pens over time Be part of that to a degree, espe­cial­ly when there’s not a lot of sup­port around that. And the oth­er thing I want to say on that note is that the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple who we talk to and who we sup­port will very often say that yes, the very hard calls were extra­or­di­nar­i­ly dif­fi­cult and in a lot of ways it’s the orga­ni­za­tion­al trau­ma, the sanc­tu­ary trau­ma, that impact­ed them more painful­ly, because we go to those calls, we have those expe­ri­ences and then we come back to the place that’s sup­posed to keep us safe and sup­posed to sup­port us and sup­posed to have our back and it does­n’t and it does­n’t val­i­date our expe­ri­ence and it actu­al­ly makes us feel weak for being human and hav­ing human responses.John Moir: 29:29

I would agree with that.Carmen Theobald: 29:30

Yeah, yeah, and in my own per­son­al way, which of course is not the same lived expe­ri­ence, but I can relate in the sense and that’s why I bring up my fam­i­ly home, because that kind of com­plex trau­ma that hap­pens in these lit­tle cuts, some­times big cuts over a long time, whether they’re metaphor­i­cal cuts or not those lit­tle wounds added up dai­ly, year­ly for decades.Carmen Theobald: 29:56

that adds so much chal­lenge that’s actu­al­ly more dif­fi­cult to come through than the one big expe­ri­ence of, in my exam­ple, a school shooting.Carmen Theobald: 30:07

Now, of course, I had a par­tic­u­lar­ly pow­er­ful spir­i­tu­al growth moment in that, and what I keep hear­ing over and over again from peo­ple like your­self is that there’s these two kind of cat­e­gories of what they’re car­ry­ing as far as wound­ing and dif­fi­cul­ty, and that wound­ing and the dif­fi­cul­ty of the place that’s sup­posed to be safe not being safe, and the rela­tion­ships, that rela­tion­al sup­port that’s sup­posed to be there with­in the orga­ni­za­tion to buffer the hard calls actu­al­ly makes them hard­er, or it’s just not there. How painful and how dev­as­tat­ing that is. So I’m very grate­ful to have spaces where peo­ple get to not only be togeth­er with oth­ers who can relate, but also prac­tice. What can it mean to have the body feel safer? What can it mean to real­ly lean into a space that feels pro­tect­ed in the way that we’ve need­ed it to feel pro­tect­ed, even if it’s not chang­ing the greater orga­ni­za­tion, giv­ing us some of that med­i­cine, if you will, that we’ve been lack­ing, some of those essen­tial nutri­ents that we have been mal­nour­ished with?Carmen Theobald: 31:14

And the hors­es help us prac­tice that, they help us live it and they help us bring it back into our day-to-day life. So I think the rip­ple effect of that whether it’s horse­work or any­thing else, but the rip­ple effect of con­nect­ing back with the parts of our­selves that have been wound­ed, is heal­ing not just for us, but for every­one we come in con­tact with.John Moir: 31:35

Give me an exam­ple of a first respon­der com­ing in and meet­ing the horse and what takes place.Carmen Theobald: 31:41

Sure, I’ll share the sto­ry of this per­son who I have a won­der­ful ongo­ing rela­tion­ship with and she would be fine with me shar­ing this sto­ry. I won’t say her name. She arrived to the farm and this actu­al­ly is a sto­ry con­nect­ed to Grace and an impor­tant piece about Grace. Although she’s no longer with us, she’s real­ly a pin­na­cle of a lot of things that we talk about and do still and will con­tin­ue to be. She grew up in the RCMP musi­cal ride.Carmen Theobald: 32:15

So it’s this pro­gram in Cana­da, the Roy­al Cana­di­an Mount­ed Police they have for hors­es, but it’s not mil­i­taris­tic struc­ture of the RCMP, which also reflects the very heavy hand­ed approach and because there’s not the safe­ty require­ment of learn­ing how to part­ner togeth­er for safe patrolling, it tends to have real­ly pret­ty dev­as­tat­ing impacts where the main modes of quote train­ing are real­ly just abuse tac­tics. And I’m say­ing this with evi­dence. There’s been reports about this. Grace was pur­chased by a far­ri­er client of mine, tak­ing her out of the RCP when she was about 12 years old and she was rear­ing and bit­ing and strik­ing at the offi­cers just try­ing to put her hal­ter on the most basic piece of equip­ment. And so, long sto­ry short, grace had suf­fered a tremen­dous amount of abuse. Her fight response was very strong because she did­n’t trust that these peo­ple were not try­ing to hurt her. And when I took her on from this client although she had set­tled down a lit­tle bit, I would­n’t say she was in any way, shape or form a safe ther­a­py part­ner, like I did­n’t even think she would nec­es­sar­i­ly be safe for me all the time, nev­er mind anoth­er per­son, nev­er mind a client. But what hap­pened is that after many cycles of heal­ing she became incred­i­bly skilled at help­ing oth­er peo­ple, very calm, very reg­u­lat­ed. Our rela­tion­ship helped her stay ground­ed in that abil­i­ty to do that with oth­er peo­ple. And if some­one had asked me would she be safe to work with clients, espe­cial­ly from like a mil­i­tary or polic­ing or pub­lic safe­ty per­son­nel back­ground, I would have said that’s a beau­ti­ful idea, but I’d be real­ly wor­ried about that because it could real­ly acti­vate her, bring up some old memories.Carmen Theobald: 34:10

But it turns out that’s the pop­u­la­tion she want­ed to work with the most. It’s as if she want­ed to help them have heal­ing just like she had. And so this client when she showed up to work with one of her hors­es I nev­er know who which horse is going to be, because the hors­es vol­un­teer and it turns out that this par­tic­u­lar day this client was look­ing at grace going oh, I real­ly hope it’s not her. There was some­thing in her that knew it was going to be very chal­leng­ing. She was like, oh, this is going to be tough. But it turns out Grace vol­un­teered and I did­n’t know this per­son­’s back­ground. This per­son came with an addic­tions recov­ery cen­ter that we do some work with. I knew enough about her to have a safe work­shop, but I did­n’t know that she actu­al­ly had a back­ground in a sim­i­lar line of work as Grace. And it turns out that not only does she have a polic­ing back­ground, she also has a lead­er­ship role with­in the organization.Carmen Theobald: 35:03

And Grace’s sto­ry and this clien­t’s sto­ry are so par­al­lel in the kinds of abuse that they’ve expe­ri­enced, in the kinds of suf­fer­ing that they’ve had, in the kinds of respons­es that they’ve expe­ri­enced, in the kinds of suf­fer­ing that they’ve had, in the kinds of respons­es that they’ve had to this kind of trau­ma. And Grace had a big vis­cer­al reac­tion to this client, more than I was expect­ing. So before the client even went in, grace was run­ning around and she was doing all this stuff and the client stood up and said I think it’s because of me. I think I know what’s hap­pen­ing and as I helped the client calm her own ner­vous sys­tem. Grace mir­rored that and had a com­plete change, as did the client.Carmen Theobald: 35:44

The client went in, had a horse ses­sion with Grace. After Grace showed me that it was safe to do so, grace showed me that it was safe to do so and there was such pow­er­ful, pow­er­ful con­nec­tion between these two beings where this client describes it that her heart was black, almost like a dead black heart, and that day it start­ed beat­ing again and that grace saw into her soul and helped almost bring her back to life. And this is sev­er­al years ago. And now I’m so thrilled to say that this client is now actu­al­ly back to work. Not that needs to always be the goal at all, but just remark­able that’s where she’s at in her own life is that she actu­al­ly chose to go back to work at this point because she actu­al­ly feels well enough and that’s part of her pur­pose of going back to change some things. So how remark­able that kind of heal­ing jour­ney that Grace went on is being not only mir­rored in the abuse that they suf­fered with this client, but also that this client is able to do that same kind of heal­ing jour­ney herself.John Moir: 36:48

It’s an amaz­ing sto­ry and I don’t think that one needs to try to dis­sect what kind of com­mu­ni­ca­tion could have tak­en place, because it does­n’t use words, does it?Carmen Theobald: 36:58

That’s the thing. And that’s the thing with all the horse experiences.John Moir: 37:01

They’re going to all be dif­fer­ent and there’s through lines with all of them that we can use words, because some­times they help us con­nect to parts of our­selves, but ulti­mate­ly they don’t real­ly mat­ter how to be, and is there a dif­fer­ent response between males and female clients like more closed down ver­sus women be more inclined to talk about emo­tions and feel­ings, where­as men don’t want to talk about any­thing at all, espe­cial­ly in first responders?John Moir: 37:35

I think for myself and oth­er of my col­leagues it’s all about con­trol you know, that we’re here to take care of, bring order to the chaos, so to speak, and we can’t. We’ve got a job to do, so buck­le down and let’s get it done, kind of thing.Carmen Theobald: 37:50

That’s right. I’ve def­i­nite­ly seen that ener­gy from all gen­ders when they come through. There can be more of a pre­dom­i­nance of some of those qual­i­ties with men, but in that field I think that real­ly draws out those qual­i­ties and attracts peo­ple of those qual­i­ties, regard­less of gen­der. Again, the horse is to show up very authen­ti­cal­ly in that. And so if the per­son­’s com­ing into the ring with the horse with this sense of healthy pow­er, I’ll say of like being very con­fi­dent and ground­ed but still open in their heart, then the hors­es love that. They can rec­og­nize the strength of that per­son that exists. But if that per­son is lean­ing only on the pow­er side and clos­ing their heart off, so real­ly lean­ing toward the con­trol, the horse does­n’t want any­thing to do with them until they shift that.Carmen Theobald: 38:36

And so I think one of the amaz­ing things with the horse work, espe­cial­ly for the first respon­der, pub­lic safe­ty per­son­nel com­mu­ni­ty, is that we don’t have to have the sto­ry. Not that there’s any­thing wrong with that if peo­ple want it. But we actu­al­ly don’t have trau­ma talk at our pro­grams. Of course peo­ple are still speak­ing to each oth­er, but we’re inten­tion­al­ly not going into the sto­ries. We’re inten­tion­al­ly not going too deep into. You know, let’s have this cathar­tic, emo­tion­al release. That’s not what this is about. It’s actu­al­ly learn­ing how to be in rela­tion­ship in a very heal­ing way, and so the hors­es pro­vide this pow­er­ful moti­va­tor and a very hon­est mir­ror, because we want to be in con­nec­tion with them. We want to be in rela­tion with them and we want to show our peers, who are watch­ing us, that we can do that. And when we strug­gle with it, not only is that so relat­able and makes every­one feel safer, because we can all be vul­ner­a­ble about it, but it’s also the hors­es who just show us that it’s okay if we’re not get­ting it.Carmen Theobald: 39:39

It’s okay if we’re not in that. They’re not judg­ing us for that. They’re not say­ing you’re a bad per­son because you’re strug­gling to let go of some con­trol or open up your heart in this moment. But they’re also not going to like peo­ple please us about it. They’re not going to go. Oh, it’s fine.John Moir: 39:54

Don’t wor­ry honey.Carmen Theobald: 39:55

They’re not a dog, they’re not going to go. I’m going to love any­way and just be real­ly cud­dly with you, no mat­ter what state you’re in. Hors­es are not like that. So when we’re not in that kind of aligned place with both heart and pow­er, with healthy strength, with healthy con­nec­tion, they’re just going to show us that. And as soon as we make any kind of direc­tion toward more bal­ance, more align­ment, they reward us for that and they real­ly hon­or us in that by authen­tic con­nec­tion when we find it.John Moir: 40:30

After these engage­ments take place, car­men, what’s it like for them to say good­bye at the end of the day or the end of their week, or how­ev­er the ses­sions are planned out?Carmen Theobald: 40:41

The vast major­i­ty of peo­ple who come tru­ly do have trans­for­ma­tive experiences.Carmen Theobald: 40:49

So I think it’s a real mix of what it’s like at the end, because on one hand there is such an increased sense of hope and ener­gy and com­mit­ment to life and com­mit­ment to them­selves and rela­tion­ships in a new way, so there’s almost an excite­ment to go back into their life to see how they can apply it and then, at the same time, there’s almost an excite­ment to go back into their life to see how they can apply it and then at the same time, there’s a grief.Carmen Theobald: 41:26

There’s a deep grief because some­times these con­nec­tions with hors­es are actu­al­ly the most con­nect­ed they’ve ever felt in their entire lived experience.Carmen Theobald: 41:29

So to say good­bye to the hors­es and good­bye to the envi­ron­ment and the group that also was a very safe con­tain­er is dif­fi­cult and it requires we do our best to do a wind down and a wrap up in a way that can car­ry those pieces for­ward as best as pos­si­ble and invite con­tin­ued inter­ac­tion with dif­fer­ent kinds of pro­gram­ming that we might offer. But some­times peo­ple come and vol­un­teer like there’s ways that peo­ple can keep in touch, but ulti­mate­ly that’s not pos­si­ble for every­body and it can be a real mixed bag. But I think that’s the case for most things right, like if some­thing’s real­ly pow­er­ful and impact­ful in a pos­i­tive way. There’s such a joy from that and there’s also a grief of when might I find that again. My hope and what I encour­age and what I’ve heard from peo­ple who return, is that there are ways to bring that back into their world. It’s not the same, but it’s that rip­ple effect that we can car­ry that light that we accessed in our­selves and real­ly lit­er­al­ly share that and spread that out with others.John Moir: 42:34

I find that Patri­cia and I had led some grief work­shops, just doing oth­er shaman­ic heal­ings with groups of peo­ple. I find that when­ev­er groups come togeth­er and they do any kind of spir­i­tu­al work, it’s a very inti­mate expe­ri­ence because it’s all ener­getic, it’s of the heart, the mind does­n’t have any­thing to do with it, but it’s this heart-to-heart con­nec­tion and we do form ener­getic con­nec­tions between peo­ple and hors­es and oth­er places. But it is a long­ing that’s cre­at­ed if we leave each other.Carmen Theobald: 43:10

Absolute­ly. One ben­e­fit of hav­ing very small groups is when we’re work­ing with peo­ple and hors­es, it’s a max­i­mum of five peo­ple at a time. I do work with big­ger groups for lead­er­ship and this, and that when it’s not direct­ly with the hors­es but for this kind of trau­ma work espe­cial­ly. One of the real­ly beau­ti­ful things that I’ve seen hap­pen is that we’ve had a cou­ple of these pro­gram groups stay in touch and they have some­times week­ly meet­ings with each oth­er, and it’s been almost a cou­ple of years now that one group is con­tin­u­ing to meet on a very reg­u­lar basis. So we might find sup­port in ways that are ongo­ing, no mat­ter what kind of envi­ron­ment pro­gram we might be attend­ing. But those con­nec­tions, they don’t have to always just end there, because exact­ly what you’re just say­ing, john, that it is so inti­mate, it is so con­nect­ed in the heart, and how won­der­ful when we cre­ate com­mu­ni­ties of care that can con­tin­ue to sup­port us.John Moir: 44:06

One last ques­tion for you, car­men. So what hap­pens to the hors­es after they’ve invest­ed this time with their human com­pan­ions, when the com­pan­ion now has to leave? Is there any reci­procity at all?Carmen Theobald: 44:21

Well, I think that the hors­es in my view they have such an open capac­i­ty to access love and con­nec­tion that they don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly go through the same lev­el of grief that the clients are going through leav­ing because they get to expe­ri­ence so much con­nec­tion in their day-to-day life all the time. It’s a con­sis­tent thing for them. It’s not just because they’re hors­es and they know how to do that. It’s also because the envi­ron­ment here for them is very sup­port­ive and safe, and so when clients are not around, the hors­es are get­ting a lot of dif­fer­ent kinds of care. The hors­es are real­ly sup­port­ed. I work with them reg­u­lar­ly to make sure that their needs are get­ting met. When they’re not on the job, so to speak, they also have a lot of releas­ing. That they do because some­times they take things on for peo­ple. They car­ry some of those emo­tion­al burdens.Carmen Theobald: 45:10

Yeah, and so they take that on ener­get­i­cal­ly and then they see how they release it back out in the field.Carmen Theobald: 45:15

They might go for a run, they might roll, they might shake, they might have a big buck and a kick. And we also do like things that help sup­port them with that as well, so dif­fer­ent kinds of body work and ener­gy work and things that real­ly kind of help keep things flow­ing for them. Of course, just like pro­fes­sion­als who work with the pub­lic, hors­es who work with the pub­lic, they’re going to have indi­vid­u­als who they have an extra close rela­tion­ship with some­times. And what’s beau­ti­ful to see is that when we have some of those clients return, that client I was describ­ing who worked with Grace, she’s returned many times. Grace and her have had have it depends how you want to look at it Grace and her have had have it depends how you want to look at it an incred­i­bly close rela­tion­ship in many ways and forms. So it’s not so much that I saw Grace being upset when this client left, but I def­i­nite­ly saw her light up when she would come back.John Moir: 46:05

Oh, beau­ti­ful. Well, thank you for all of this, car­men, and thank you for shar­ing your thoughts and explain­ing what first respon­ders can look for­ward to should they engage your ser­vices. So thank you very much. Thank you, john, it’s such a plea­sure to be here. Thank you for join­ing us in this heart­felt con­ver­sa­tion with Car­men. May her sto­ry inspire courage and heal­ing, and remem­ber you’re nev­er alone on your jour­ney, so take care and stay con­nect­ed.