Sarah's Story

Hello everyone! My name is Abigail Jenkins. I'm the blog's author, and I've been working at Reins of Life for a little over a year now. For this post, I'm going to be doing something a little different. Instead of having one of my four-legged friends share their stories, I was asked to write about one of our past clients, from the staff's view. For legal reasons, I've not been using the actual names of the patients. So, for now, I'm going to call her Sarah.
Sarah was seven when she started in our program and was referred from a local residential program for women and children in crisis. She had a lot to work through and was very temperamental. Her dad was very controlling of her mom and even tried to kill her by shooting her in the gut. Mom was in the hospital for four months. As far as I know, Dad keeps saying that it was an accident, and tried to convince his daughter that it was all her mom's fault. As soon as mom recovered, she regained custody, and they left. Although Sarah didn't believe all of her dad's lies, when mom took her back, she was rebellious and confused. But, she loved horses.
During her first sessions, she started walking with Pepsi around the fields. Pepsi had never before been used with children because of her nervousness but was calm and confident the whole time.
Sarah and Pepsi made an instant connection and followed each other around. They did a lot of emotional exercises and worked on overcoming anxiety. Meanwhile, Sarah's mom learned to establish healthy boundaries based on watching the sessions. The activities included an approach and retreat method, labeling emotions, and "holding" them while riding, and teaching her the consequences of stuffing emotions. There were places labeled in the arena where it was appropriate to leave emotions, i.e., "you seem to be having a hard time hanging on to fear. Is there a place you need to leave it for a while?" during one of these sessions, Sarah was having a particularly bad day. She was frustrated and was doing her best to find places for all the emotions she had labeled that day. Throughout the sessions, one emotion would remain. Fear was the only emotion she couldn't seem to get rid of. However, when the session was almost over, Sarah took one more good look around the arena. Then had Pepsi walk over to the corner labeled "God." Gently, she leaned over on Pepsi's back and stuck the labeled animal in God's corner. Then she said, "I think I can leave my fear here with God." Tears all around.
After her time at Reins of Life, Sarah continued to be involved in the activities we host, such as Horse Camp. She also was involved in a little thing called Cowgirl Club for a year. Sarah's older now, she's doing very well in school, and both mom and daughter are doing great.