Recently, I pulled out Kim McElroy’s Secrets of Drawing Horses dvd given to me by the artist when we met at her home in the Pacific Northwest in 2014. On vacation with my daughter, I had spotted prints of some of her pastel horse paintings. When I picked up the first image, I was delighted to find that among the white clouds were hidden horses. After generously inviting me to her home, I interviewed her for my forthcoming book, Called by the Horse: Women, Horses and Consciousness.
Kim has since made the workshop available for free online. It begins with The Girl Who Wanted to be a Horse. In it Kim describes her girlhood love of horses and her frustration while trying to capture the movement of horses in her drawings. When she imagined herself as a horse, though, the drawings came easily. Afterwards, she fell asleep in her friend’s hayloft where a white winged horse came to her in her dreams to tell her she could tune into the magical power of horses through her imagination and art and affirmed her path as an artist.
Following prompts from the DVD, I listened to Kim’s meditation. I imagined myself as a horse in a sea of horses and picked up chalk pastels to draw the feelings evoked in the drawing shown here.
I believe that women are called to horses in many ways, including, as in Kim’s experience, through dreams and art as well as to living, breathing horses. My curiosity about the call to the horse experienced by so many women has preoccupied me for almost twenty years. Why now? What does it mean? How shall we respond? These are questions I have wrestled with in the book. As I prepare the manuscript for publication, the answers are clearer. Ultimately, I have come to believe that horses are calling women—and some men—to empower us into greater leadership and partnership for the sake of our precious Earth and all of her inhabitants.
Some of the most interesting science behind equine therapy and equine facilitated learning focuses on the measurable heart connection between horses and humans. But science alone cannot adequately explain how horses heal humans or the sense of wonder it evokes. Recently, as I was writing a chapter in my book about horses and healing, I watched some videos of a very special French stallion named Peyo from the Dijon region of France. In the video, Peyo and his person, Hassen Bouchakour, visit Ehpad des Orchards of Chartreuse de Dijon, a convalescent hospital serving people with Alzheimer’s and other end-of-life issues. After backing out of his horse trailer and negotiating the elevator, Peyo chooses which room to enter. He invariably seeks out people that are very, very sick or close to dying, and his healing presence brings great joy to the suffering. Though the video is in French, no translation is needed to witness the healing power of Peyo’s generous heart.
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