By Samantha Kroese
I am a writer. I have been my entire life. My life's goal has always been to use my writing as a way to give a voice to the otherwise voiceless. In my own recent struggles, I have found a difficulty that I can't find help for, and I don't know how many others are out there. Unlike most others who may just give up the struggle and fade away, I am a writer and I can give us a voice.
I am a middle-aged single woman, who seven years ago ran away from a situation of 'grotesque and excessive abuse' as told to me by various mental health professionals. Due to a lifetime of trauma, I have complex PTSD, severe anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and severe depressive disorder. I am also unable to take any medications for any of these because I react badly to all of them and I'm considered allergic in the sense that they damage rather than harm me.
My hope, my salvation for surviving a lifetime of horrific abuse that destroyed my mental health came in the form of a horse. As a young child, I always wanted a black stallion, and it was the one dream I had the strength to fight for. I waited twenty-one years for an opportunity to present itself. I had gotten my first job and the first thing I bought with it was my dream, my horse.
This was a horse I researched obsessively for 21 years of my life. He is pure black, with the exact bloodlines I wanted to breed, and I bought him with dreams of breeding black Arabians and having a therapy ranch. Our futures looked bright. Then tragedy struck.
My aunt who was caring for my blind grandmother passed away suddenly and my family was forced to move back to care for her. Because of the unique situation I was in, and the hold my family had on me, I was forced to move back with them instead of breaking free. They promised me the horse, room and board, and food in trade for my staying home and caring for my ailing grandmother. I finished paying off Wisper and managed to find a boarding ranch (which is not easy with a stallion) where I could work in trade for some of his board.
However, my dreams of breeding, showing, and getting a life together for us and our independence would be shattered as my grandmother continued to deteriorate into dementia. It was then my family started to not allow me to leave the home in case she needed me. I was locked inside the house with my only escape out to the horse. I lived with very abusive people, both verbally and at times physically. Wisper became my safe haven because I could run out to him to avoid them (they were afraid of him so he became like a giant guard dog), and also all of my dreams for a future and a beautiful life free of this madness were wrapped up in him. He became the ONLY way I could cope with the extreme abuse and my only way of handling the PTSD I started to develop. When I have an episode the ONLY thing that can calm me is touching him or being near him. That is the only time I feel 'safe'. Life has taught me I can't trust other human beings they will hurt me, and that I can only find love and safety in the company of animals. He is the only reason I am STILL ALIVE. Otherwise, the pressure of my mental illnesses and the abusive situation would have seen me give up. I can give up on myself. I have no self-esteem or self-worth. But I can't give up on him and the dream he represents and the hope for the future he embodies.
Getting up to care for him gets me moving and out of bed. It gives me an immediate and pressing task to do by taking care of him and gets me past the overthinking and panic from the nightmares I wake up with. Going outside to feed him and care for him gets me moving out of my chair and into the outdoors where I would just sit and not do so otherwise due to my mental disorders. Touching him, and having him neigh to me is my signal that it's okay to go forward with the day and face other things that are challenges because it will be fine, he's there if I need him. Trying to explain this and the desperate need of someone who has an ESA animal to have them nearby for the security, safety, reassurance, and boldness they give you is difficult to explain, even for me. Especially, for someone with my particular brand of disorders since they work against me being able to articulate what I need to WHEN I need to. But again, I am a writer, so I'm writing this in the hopes I can give voice to others who can't speak on their situation.
To say I would just give up if I did not have him, at this point, probably isn't true. There was a point in my life back then where it was true though. If he was not there I could not muster the strength to get up and face the horrors I knew waited outside my bedroom. I lived a few months where I had to board him and I could barely get out of bed then. I have a unique situation where I am too stubborn and strong to give up. I will go down fighting. MANY people like me do not have this strength. I believe I was given it to help THEM up as well and to speak for them when they can't find the strength to do so.
Anyway, hopefully that articulates the importance he holds for me in this situation. Back to what happened -
I became trapped in a dangerous situation from which he was my only escape and the only reason I am still alive today. I was trapped in that situation for fifteen years, because while he was my freedom and safety, my family made very certain to also make him my chains. It is hard enough to run away to safety when it is just you that you have to consider. But when it's you and something you love more than even yourself that you have to protect and cling to? To try to even describe the fifteen years of torment I lived through with friends begging me to get out for my safety and my stubborn refusal to do so because I would not leave my horse, my only friend, my only love, my hopes and dreams to be slaughtered by my family...I can't. I can't make you understand even with all the words in the world how painful and traumatic that is. To know you're in a dangerous situation where you could die at any point but to stay to protect your animal. Society as a whole understands this to an extent when it's someone with a child they are protecting. They don't want to equate people who love animals instead with the same. But it is the same. I know many people who have stayed in situations where it was detrimental to their safety to do so to protect their animals.
There came a point where things boiled over to the point where there was no question I was going to die if I stayed. I had to get out. But when I did so I found a way to do so WITH my horse (and my other support animals you can read about on this blog in other articles). Yes, it was insanely difficult. Yes, people told me it was impossible. I did it because I loved this horse more than anything else in this world, including myself, and I was not going to leave him in danger. Which he would have been. I did have to leave my dog behind, who passed away in mysterious circumstances only a few months later, only further proving to me that my animals had been in grave danger if I had left them. Because, at that point, I was no longer there to lash out at and my family has always been aware that striking out at what's important to me (my animals) is a far better manipulation/fear tactic than actually threatening me.
So, I did it. I got out. But now what? Now I've faced nothing but years and years of defending my right to keep him, people left and right telling me something so important to me is ruining my life, telling me to just give up on him. I'm struggling to find support even with mental health professionals because the answer seems to be obvious to everyone else. Just get rid of him and make your life easier.
I am here to tell you, everyone, that this approach is extremely damaging to someone like me. To someone who has an emotional support animal that is more important to them than their own worth. Yes, working with us to improve our self-worth is important but cutting us off from the only thing important to us before the work is done can have devastating effects. I have known people who have passed away after they were parted from their ESA animals. I am strong enough to endure if I had to, but I would suffer and it would set me back in ways that are difficult to define with science other than to say if I had to start over without this animal in my life I am going to lose any and all progress I have made up to this point because you would be ripping the foundation out from under me.
I already didn't give up on him when my life was in grave danger. No one would help me then when I lived through fifteen years of horrific abuse and I fought our way through it. This has proven to me that I can do it if I work hard enough. No one 'rescued' me from my situation. I did it myself with the help of a few friends. I reached out for help from various sources such as law enforcement and was told because I was an adult who was trapped with family, that I could just leave. There is a definite gap of help and awareness for abused people who are raised in families and locked away in secret for their entire lives and not taught how to live 'like a normal person'. I was raised to stay locked at home and take care of my family until they died. My family didn't care what happened to me once they were dead. They didn't care how difficult they have made life for me. And I'm not the only one I know who grew up this way, and none of us had been able to get help.
Life is so hard already looking at it through the lenses of someone who has suffered so much trauma. It's so draining to even get up out of bed and handle simple tasks. Working is often times impossible. Recovery is often long and time consuming.
I have heard so many times "your life would be so much better without your animals". How dare anyone say that to someone who is traumatized and comforted with an emotional support animal? Unless you know for a fact that it is going to improve their mental/emotional state how can you say that? What about those people who no longer had the strength to face life's challenges because you took away the only ground they were standing on and dropped them straight into the abyss by taking away their animal? Just because I am on here strong enough to be fighting daily for their importance because I have a lifetime of experience to tell you that they are deeply important and separating people from them is damaging in ways you cannot even comprehend without understanding the bond they have, doesn't mean most people in my situation can. They suffer in silence until they can no longer bear the suffering of the pain that was inflicted by them. They feel grief, loss, desperation, worthlessness, and even sometimes feel like horrible people because this innocent life that they loved and felt responsible for is gone and they couldn't save it. This is a control tactic used by abusers who know it works as well, as I can tell you from my own personal experience with my lifetime abuse...let them fall in love with an animal then take it away. Do it enough times and you get someone like me who will viciously defend the right for me to have my animal, but most of us don't get this far to this amount of strength. You are asking someone to give up a child, a loved one, something innocent that may have been the only love they've had in their life and their only sense of safety. Unless there is a detailed plan on how to counter the damage emotionally and mentally that the loss will incur then it's extremely harmful. I can tell you that because I have suffered that loss again, and again, and again as a control/manipulation tactic to wear me down over the years by my abusers. This also works to stop people like me from asking for help from anyone who threatens their animal, even if those people are trying to be helpful. This only lends power to the abusers because they can then come back with 'See, the world won't let you have that, but I will if you come back to me'.
There are studies that have shown that emotional connections to animals are healing for certain mental illnesses. But we live in a society where throwing away animal lives is nothing. They are seen as not important, or replaceable. "Get rid of your horse and get another later," is what they'll tell me. I can tell you that doesn't work because I grew up in a family that viewed animals that way and repeatedly FORCED me to give animals up and 'get another one later'. Every single one of those animals I had to abandon damaged me and I hold trauma over even half a lifetime later. Those are scars of wounds intentionally inflicted on me to keep me down and under control by taking away any hope I had because my hope lie within those animals and it's easy to just throw an animal away. The bonds formed and the comfort and strength found from animal to animal differ and it is not transferable to 'another' later. Everyone is different and some help more than others. At this point, I have had my ESA horse for almost 21 years. I have had my ESA cats for almost 10. These are not bonds that are easily transferred to a new pet later on when it's more convenient.
I am tired. I am tired of fighting every moment of every day just because I have a horse that helps me with my disabilities. Because my life situation is complicated and instead of understanding, people would rather just try to shove me into their box of expectations like forcing a square into a round hole. If this horse was a child no one would be trying to rip him from my side and more help would exist. The knowledge that all of us in this situation have of that and the fact that many of us can't have children and this was also our solution to that is just disheartening. I can't tell you how many times I have had my feelings invalidated over and over again just because they are toward a horse. Honestly, though, in many of our lives, animals have proven to be trustworthy and humans have not. So is it any wonder we would choose them over other humans? Most of us had to find a way to cope when no one else would help except for an animal. When humans had abandoned us to our fate. To then be belittled and told we are wrong constantly because we don't fit in the box society wants us to fit in is so tiring and wearing on people who are already struggling.
I grieve for those out there like me struggling and not able to find help or voice their needs in a way that's understood. Because, in this case, most of the world is determined not to even try to understand, and to just tell us what is better for us. For that, I am truly saddened and sorry. To anyone out there in a similar situation...please know you are not alone. I, at least, understand.
I pray one day we will see a world where people will be able to get out of bad situations with help to bring their loved ones with, whether people or animal, but unfortunately in my experience fighting the last several years we are not there yet. Animals are still not recognized as loved ones to the extent we feel they are, and the burden of defending them and our right to have them is still weighing heavily on our shoulders. Had I had understanding and help to get out of my situation fifteen years earlier I would have avoided most of the trauma that holds me back now. But I couldn't leave because I was abandoning my animal to a horrible fate and I couldn't live with myself if I did that.
That is not to say there aren't times when it might be necessary to part someone from their animal companion due to illness or housing or things being detrimental to both parties. But it needs to be done in a way that doesn't make the person feel like a horrible awful person who deserves to die because they couldn't take care of their animal and that translates to well if I can't take care of an animal I really can't take care of myself. Anyone involved in helping people in this situation needs to realize just how dangerous taking an animal away from people can be and be compassionate and see that care is taken and the animal is put into a safe environment for the rest of its life. As someone who has lost multiple animals this way I can tell you it will haunt me for the REST of my life, I will carry the scars of that trauma with me to the grave, even if I've learned to deal with the pain and carry on. Not everyone can just keep going forward and carry on, and they shouldn't be expected.
As I continue daily to fight desperately to find a safe and comfortable home for myself and my ESA animals I wanted to pause and give voice to those who are not strong enough to do so on their own. Because I have found the only voice I have on my side right now is my own.
If you are looking for scientific research links involving the benefit of animals for mental health disorders here are some links:
Americans Note Overwhelming Positive Mental Health Impact of Their Pets (American Psychiatric Association/Psychiatry.org)
The Power of Pets - Health Benefits of Human-Animal Interactions (News In Health) ( U.S. Department of Health and Human Services )
The Effect of Pets on Human Mental Health and Wellbeing during COVID-19 Lockdown in Malaysia (National Library of Medicine)
The power of support from companion animals for people living with mental health problems (BMC Psychiatry)
Further research on horses and humans specifically for therapy:
Equine-Assisted Therapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Among Military Veterans: An Open Trial (The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry) - related article discussing the findings on The Columbia University Department of Psychiatry - Horse Therapy Helps Veterans Overcome Trauma
And those are just a handful of the available studies and research available on this topic. Searching google for this topic reveals pages and pages of research as well as many therapists employing these methods.
Personally, I am running into an issue because I had the equine before I was in proper therapy, but he is no less important to me and my recovery because of it. I have decided to document my journey and challenges here, not only to share with the people assisting me, but also to give voice to those who may not be able to share why their animal is important and might get dismissed because their disorders keep them from communicating well. And to let others know they are not alone.
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