Damage done, p.19
Damage Done, page 19
I’m beginning to understand that it’s not just the incidents themselves with which I have unfinished business. The underlying theme, at this point, appears to be moments when I have gone against myself. Times when I should have or wanted to speak, act or feel, but didn’t or couldn’t. Those times when I acted in a counterintuitive way. The times when my thoughts or actions violated my own personal truth. Wishing someone a harsher death: that violates my personal truth. Dragging by the hair a homeless person who threatened to hurt me: that violates my personal truth. Not feeling compassion for a family who lost their only son or brother in a rollover: that violates my personal truth.
The nightmares have stopped, but my journey continues. Resolving trauma is hard work. Damage has been done, but I owe it to myself and my family to see this through.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Onward and Upward
The purpose of the War Horse Symposiums is to provide information about operational stress injuries and recognize the programs and services available to frontline service providers who struggle with these injuries. From my own experience, however, I learned that often information isn’t enough to create change. We experience powerful moments, as I did on that bridge, moments that create shifts in our perceptions. What is required is an equally powerful experience to create a shift back the other way.
This change became most clear to me during the first War Horse Symposium. A new horse had just come to Riversong Ranch, and Chris was “saving” this gigantic, high-headed warm-blood named Vegas specifically for this demonstration. Vegas was initially full of attitude, but Chris demonstrated—by speaking in a body language that Vegas could understand and appreciate—that the horse was actually soft and sweet and gentle.
Unexpectedly, Chris called me into the round pen and asked me to lead the horse around the pen without a rope or halter.
Vegas was free to follow me or ignore me—it all hinged on my ability to speak his language and give him enough of what he needed to feel comfortable. I was already nervous, and having Chris put me on the spot during his demonstration turned up the pressure in a big way. I had worked with a few horses previously at Riversong, but most of my experience was with Maggie. She’s a smaller horse. Vegas is big and powerful.
I took a breath and said hello. I pointed to Vegas’s hip and drew away with the core of my body. He looked at me as if pondering his options. Again, I put my energy on his hip to turn him in and then moved out of the way of his head, inviting him to come with me. He lowered his head and came in right behind me. We moved around that pen together, and when we came to a halt, his head was below my waist (a measure of how relaxed he was), and I looked into those big, soft brown eyes of his.
That’s why I wanted to bring these people here. I wanted each of them to experience a moment just like this, because there truly is nothing like it. I wasn’t nervous anymore. Just seeing the transformation in Vegas created a space in everyone there to allow that shift in perspective.
The agenda for the next morning began with another horse demonstration and the opportunity for people to participate in exercises with the horses. Chris had his horse, Dollar, brought into the arena. Dollar has a large scar on the front of his face—a souvenir from a previous owner who had hit him repeatedly with a two-by-four. Dollar would have been sent to slaughter for being “unmanageable” had Chris not purchased him—for a dollar. Here was a case of If you don’t do it my way, you will suffer the consequences (a board to the head). And if you still don’t do what I say, then you will be tossed aside and replaced. Everyone there could easily relate to Dollar’s story.
Two people volunteered to work with Dollar. One woman was employed by Alberta Health Services and the other was a former police officer. They each took a position at Dollar’s shoulder, each holding a lead rope attached to his halter. The object of the exercise was to keep Dollar pointed straight ahead and to make him feel safe and relaxed. The first thing Dollar did was back up—his non-aggressive way of saying, With all due respect, I really don’t feel comfortable being in the middle of you two.
They had to adjust their body language and their energy in order for Dollar finally to exhale and stand still. The exercise involved blocking Dollar’s head from turning into one person, and straightening him to keep him from bending his barrel into the other person. The two volunteers had to work together and stay away from Dollar’s head. Everyone initially wants to go to the head of a horse, unaware that the animal feels most vulnerable when a predator (a human) goes there. For the human, the trick lies in doing not what we want to do, but what the horse needs, thereby earning the horse’s trust and respect.
This simple exercise turned out to be a profound experience for one woman who participated. She would transfer what she had learned with Dollar into real life; she realized the importance of boundaries, that it’s okay to say no and that she will be respected if she does say no. And that people (and horses) will test those boundaries, and it is up to her to put up a respectful block. One hour with Dollar changed how this woman lived her life.
I spoke with her several times after the symposium to support her through the courageous changes she was determined to make. I knew how she was feeling and what she was going through—because of my own experiences with horses. They just have this way of being mirrors for whoever is with them at the time. They have the ability to show you who you are, if you are willing to open your eyes and see. Time with horses can change your life—I know, because it changed mine.
Horses don’t care what you do for a living and they do not judge. And with very little training, someone with no experience of horses can learn to “speak” horse, a language that all horses—domestic or wild, miniature to draft—understand.
This “broken and bitter cop,” as I once described myself, has been hugely helped by my connection to my own horse and to horses in general. I understood right away a salient truth: if this process helped me, it can help others. Given the number of first responders in need of assistance, and given that their stories have not been told nor their plight fully grasped, I see how important it is that the message of this book—a message of hope—be widely conveyed. In the end, this is a book about compassion, and the world could use a little more of that.
One of my favourite moments from the symposiums came at the end of the one held in 2011. After lunch, the plan was that the group would be led through some work with the horses. Those who were keen to see themselves through the eyes and perspective of the horse stayed, and one of those people was a trauma psychologist, the aforementioned Dr. Jacqui Linder. She is a wonderful woman and was working on her fourth degree at the time—specializing in neuropsychology. She assists first responders, but she is also very involved in helping gang members, sex-trade workers and other high-risk groups such as victims of human trafficking.
We were sitting around debriefing after being with the horses, and we were talking about communication. I saw a tear roll down her cheek, and I asked her what had made her emotional. She said, “Can it really be that simple? That all we have to do is say what we mean and do what we say?”
She went on to say she knows that as soon as she doesn’t show the emotion, when she is unable to cry, she needs to stop what she’s doing. Her work will mean nothing if she no longer has the ability to show and feel compassion. This highly intellectual woman found strength and purpose in her tears, where most find weakness and shame. Talk about a whole new perspective.
The fourth annual symposium in 2013 was the first event I organized as a retired member of the RCMP. Many times throughout this book, I’ve commented on how I expected to be treated. I expected to be shunned by my peers after I took a leave of absence, I expected to be given a punishment posting after I returned to Alberta, and I expected to be treated poorly after returning to work injured physically and mentally. It occurs to me that I had some pretty low expectations. I expected to struggle to find my new identity, now that my opening line when talking with someone wasn’t that I was a member of the RCMP. But horses have a way of dissolving the need for identity. Ranks and positions outside the realm of this sacred space are irrelevant. Year after year these groups of people come together to unite in the common goal of learning, experiencing and creating positive change. If I had any doubts, they were erased as soon as I arrived at Riversong Ranch.
I look forward to the symposium every year, but I was especially anticipating reuniting with Jeff. He was scheduled to put on a one-day resiliency workshop for the participants. His workshops are informative and interactive. Jeff had participated in previous symposiums, but this was the first year I had elected to do an entire day with just one presenter.
Jeff, in my opinion, is the ideal go-to guy on the clinical front. When he addresses an audience, he makes eye contact with everyone in the room. He’s warm, smart and capable, and he always sprinkles his talks with stories from his own time as a cop, including those where the butt of the joke is Jeff Morley. This year he told us about how one night his wife awoke and heard what she thought were burglars outside. Jeff had just come home and he was still in uniform.
“Call 911!” his wife told him.
“I am 911,” he replied.
Jeff has addressed audiences all across the country on trauma issues in policing—including the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. He has also conducted countless training sessions on conflict resolution, resilience and strategies to develop psychologically healthy workplaces. Since 2004, he’s been an adjunct professor in the Department of Counselling Psychology at the University of British Columbia. And in 2012, Jeff was awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal for his work in the area of trauma and resilience in policing.
Jeff’s interactive style of presenting was perfect for the symposium’s intimate gathering of thirty people. He has the ability to combine pertinent scientific or medical information with experience—whether it’s his experience or that of someone else in the group. He asks questions and starts a discussion. He opens the door to himself, which allows others to feel a sense of comfort and safety. Safety from judgment. Jeff has a way of making people feel “normal,” and he underscores what we have already learned about the horses—that there is strength and resilience in vulnerability.
My strategy is to start the first day off with the horses as opposed to just having the group sit and listen. It’s proven to be an effective way of getting everyone to see and experience everything else from a different place mentally. The theme of that year’s symposium was Putting Tools in the Toolbox. I talked about some of the ways to deal with stress—from journalling to peer support, from reiki to equine-assisted programs to meditation and exercise. The second day was filled with presentations delivered by people from a variety of organizations.
Most of those attending the symposium in 2013 would have had a notion of how horses fit into the equation, but some were no doubt still asking, What do horses have to do with operational stress injuries?
Some individuals at the symposium have horses of their own, and they were actually at a disadvantage because they would now have to unlearn habits—such as directing a horse by focusing on the horse’s head. “You herd the body, you do not capture the face” is how Chris puts it.
In equine body language, even those who had never been close to a horse before would learn that everything we do with our bodies provokes a response in the horse. The angle of the hip, whether shoulders are level or not, a step back or forward: all convey precise meaning to the animal. And horses respond to that, and we then respond to their response, so what seems simple can get complicated. It’s like learning any new language: hard, especially in the beginning, but delightfully rewarding when you discover that the lessons have paid off.
There was a grey named Budweiser in the paddock closest to the meeting room where the symposium took place. Chris needed Budweiser to offer some simple pointers, and he needed a volunteer. Rob—an EMT who had been off on stress-leave for almost four months—bravely put up his hand and walked into the paddock with a rope and halter in hand. He has horses at his place but they’re for his wife to ride, not him. Still, he knew about going up to a horse and putting on a halter. Asked to do just that, he approached Budweiser, who was, of course, quite willing to be “caught.”
With Chris both advising Rob on what to do with his body and explaining what the horse was thinking based on its body language, we could all see that the horse was reacting to very subtle changes in Rob’s body language. Just changing the angle of his hip suddenly made Budweiser relax.
“Horses,” Chris said, “don’t respect wimps and they don’t trust bullies.” So if Budweiser tried to enter Ron’s space with his head, Chris’s instruction was to put up the closest hand as a block—not to touch the horse’s head but to protect Ron’s space. Horse rules. And the second that Budweiser saw Rob take charge, not in any mean way but in a clear, consistent way, he began to make licking and chewing motions with his mouth—signs of contentment.
There were many such “aha” moments that day. We had everyone working in teams, with groups of two acting as horses (imagine two people, with the one behind resting her hands on the shoulders of the one ahead) and one as horse handler. The idea was for them to practise equine language before working on actual horses. Core out, core in. Shoulders level, or tipped. The angle of the hip. Position of the hand. These all mean something specific to a horse. Humans are vertical and horses are horizontal, but we can communicate with each other as long as we understand what meaning our bodies convey to a horse and what the horse is saying in return. It was all a warm-up for the horse clinic the next day.
I had some concerns about how the second presentation would be received. I asked my good friend Sandra to come for the day and talk about the work she does. Sandra by trade is a school teacher, but she also endeavours to be a teacher of a different kind. Sandra is a highly skilled and intuitive energy practitioner.
I met Sandra when my oldest daughter started playschool about eight years ago. Sandra’s oldest daughter attended the same school, and we had both just had our second daughters. We often ran into each other with sleeping infants nestled inside car seats or hanging off our arms. At the time, I was in the midst of dealing with my depression and what was left of my career. To be honest, a friendship with a “civilian” was not what I was looking for. And yet, when she asked me to go for coffee, I said yes. It turned out to be the beginning of a long and meaningful friendship. Sandra slowly opened my eyes to a whole new perspective, one that was instrumental in bringing me to a place where the world began to make sense again. She has been not only a friend but also one of a few guides along my way.
It’s hard to describe what it feels like when you get to a place where you feel completely numb. You can’t even wrap your head around the concept of joy or happiness, let alone remember the experience of it. There is no wonder, no anticipation, no expectation that one moment will be any better than the next; in fact, you believe, it’ll probably be worse. In such circumstances, one is completely disconnected from everyone and everything.
The concept of energy was new to me at the time, but I was willing to listen. Then Sandra took my hand one afternoon and grabbed what she called a thread of energy in my palm, and I actually felt it. I was hooked. After she let my hand go, I just sat there and stared down at it, because it felt like it was on fire. And much as with the horses, I experienced something I knew needed to be shared with others.
The symposium was Sandra’s first public showing of this other work she does. Although she wholeheartedly believes in it, she knows that not everyone is open to the concept of energy healing. There were a lot of skeptics in the room, and I could feel her nervousness as she began to speak. Shortly into her presentation she stopped for a moment. I wasn’t sure if she was going to continue. But then she took a breath and proceeded to deliver her story in a genuine and authentic way. She ended by offering to donate her time for the rest of the day to give participants the opportunity to experience what she does. That morning we had turned my trailer into her private working space, complete with massage table. Sandra uses a massage table, but she doesn’t touch the person at all during the treatment.
I was confident that at least a few participants would take her up on her offer, but we were both amazed at the steady stream that entered the trailer. She worked through lunch and all that day.
But healing is a complicated business. Many of these first responders told stories—around the campfire, during exchanges as part of the symposium, or in private conversation—of the most harrowing kind, stories that helped explain why they were seeking respite through this symposium.
Rob, an emergency medical technician, described the events that had compelled him to take time off work. After four months away, he still could not think about going back. When there’s been an accident or a heart attack, Rob and his partner show up at your door. The bright red light is flashing, the loud siren has just ceased. Help has arrived. For twenty years, this has been Rob’s work. And no doubt he does it well. During a coffee break at the symposium, he came to speak to me. He wanted to talk about the circumstances that had brought him here. I had the sense that he had told his story many times before—maybe to a psychiatrist or counsellor. Maybe to a friend or relative. For the most part, he did not choke up as he spoke, but neither was he dispassionate.
In the space of four months on the job, Rob had been called to four different scenes where young people had died. He described how a four-year-old boy had slid into a river and drowned. He described fishing around in the water and finding the boy’s limp body, taking him in his arms and sprinting across a field to the ambulance. “I would have died for that kid,” Rob told me. They took that boy to the hospital, working on him along the way and desperately trying to revive him. At the hospital, Rob was crying, the nurses were crying, the doctor was crying.
