BY SPENCER STEERE
There is a particular kind of silence that exists in a barn before dawn. The soft shifting of weight in a stall, the warm breath rising in the cool air, the sound of hay pulled slowly from a rack. If you have ever stood inside that silence and really stood inside it, you already know something about healing, even if you don’t yet have words for it.
When I stood beside Mac, my first horse, I was twelve, fragile in spirit and drawn to her quiet strength. I vividly remember placing my hand on her shoulder and feeling an unspoken connection that has never left me. Little did I know that this would not be the first time a horse showed up for me when I was lost, offering me comfort and strength when I was vulnerable, reminding me I was not alone. I only knew that without horses, I was less myself.
The Weight I Carried
By my late thirties, I had become skilled at a particular kind of invisibility. On the outside, life appeared full. But inside, I was living under the crushing weight of low self-esteem so deep it had wound itself into the fabric of who I thought I was. I doubted my worth. I silenced my voice. I moved through the world as though I were apologizing for taking up space.
The painful truth that finally became unavoidable was this: my insecurity wasn’t just making me unhappy. It was sabotaging every meaningful part of my life—my relationships, my sense of purpose, my ability to be fully present for the people I loved. Something had to change. I simply didn’t know yet that the answer would have four legs and seventeen hundred pounds of quiet amazing grace.
A Childhood Passion Returns
When the horses returned to my life, not as a hobby, but as a calling, I was not looking for therapy but a path back to wholeness. What I found instead was a mirror. Horses are incapable of deception. They read energy, not words. They respond not to the story you tell the world, but to the truth you carry in your body. What began as a childhood bond transformed into a lifelong spiritual relationship.
What the Herd Revealed
Horses taught me to listen, not with my ears, but with my whole being. In equine-facilitated sessions, horses are partners in the healing process, not props or therapy tools. They bring their full, authentic presence to every encounter, and in doing so, they invite—sometimes insist—that we do the same.
Over fifty years, my healing herd showed me where I was holding fear. They showed me when I was pretending to be okay. When I approached them, anxious and armored, they turned away. When I arrived open and honest, they came close. It was the most unambiguous feedback I had ever received in my life. And unlike human relationships layered with social complexity, there was no cruelty in it, only truth.
Slowly, I learned how to trust again. I learned to feel my emotions rather than suppress them. I learned that my sensitivity, the very thing I had always believed made me weak, was, in the language of horses, a gift. They are sensitive too. It is how they have survived.
The Path Becomes the Work
What began as my own healing has become my life’s work. I founded Amazing Grace Equine Healing to offer others what the horses so generously gave me: a space free from judgment, rich with presence, and guided by wisdom that predates psychology by thousands of years. I also provide community service at Furnace Brook, a therapeutic farm in Marshfield, Massachusetts, where I witness this transformative work unfold across all ages and circumstances.
I have come to believe that horses do not rescue us. They reveal us. They reflect back the parts of ourselves we have forgotten or abandoned, and they do so with a patience and acceptance that is, truly, grace. My book, By Your Side: An Unexpected Path of Healing Painful Low Self-Esteem Through Equine Grace, is my attempt to honor that revelation and put into words a journey that was mostly lived in silence, in fields, in the warm company of beings who asked nothing of me but honesty.
An Invitation
If you are reading this and you ride, you likely already sense what I am describing. You have felt it in the moments after a difficult canter finally flows, or when a green horse softens and decides to trust you. You have felt it in the early morning quiet of a barn before the world wakes up.
But I want to offer a gentle invitation to go deeper. Beyond the discipline, beyond the competition, beyond even the deep joy of the ride itself, there is a conversation available with horses that can change you at the cellular level. It changed me. It changes the people I work with, week after week, in ways that talking alone rarely does.
The horses are not waiting for us to be perfect. They are not waiting for us to be healed. They are simply waiting for us to arrive, honestly, in the present moment, exactly as we are.
In my experience, that is where all healing begins.
Spencer Steere is the founder of Amazing Grace Equine Healing, an animal Reiki practitioner, and the author of By Your Side: An Unexpected Path of Healing Painful Low Self-Esteem Through Equine Grace. Learn more about Spencer and her offerings at AmazingGraceEquineHealing.com.
