Hoofs and Heartaches: Healing Wounds with Horses' Help

Therapy jumps the species boundary for Kristin DeLibero, who has found a way to help animals and humans at once.

As owner of the Georgia Equine Wellness Center, DeLibero, 33, has worked as a professional horse trainer for 15 years and spent the past decade working as a facilitator for equine experiential learning.

While DeLibero helps horses recover from surgery and trauma, she also helps young girls recover from the troubles life throws at them.

The Equine Wellness Center is one of the few programs in the country that use experiences and therapy with horses to help at-risk teenage girls develop self-confidence and other life skills.

The DeLibero family founded the center 10 years ago after moving from Washington, and it remains in the family.

“We’re building a safe container with no fear and no judgment,” DeLibero says. The compound will soon include a retreat center where girls can stay for recovery and therapy.

DeLibero serves as a facilitator rather than a therapist or psychiatrist. She leads girls through exercises in which they learn on their own instead of being taught.

Two girls who stand out to DeLibero had abusive relationships before age 18 and resorted to self-mutilation. After private lessons with DeLibero and the horses, one girl told her the center on Old Brown Road in Hickory Flat was the only place she ever felt safe.

According to the center’s brochure, another girl who went through the program said: “When I come to the barn, it is all about me. I get to focus on myself and have fun. It is the only place in my life I can do this.”

The horses pick up on your “authentic self,” DeLibero says. If a girl enters the pen with pent-up anger, the horse can tell and will respond based on cues humans overlook.

Horses evoke emotions and behaviors in humans that can lead to personal awareness and growth, an article in Animals and Society says. “Horses give accurate and unbiased feedback, mirroring both the physical and emotional states of the participant during exercises, providing clients with an opportunity to raise their awareness and to practice congruence between their feelings and behaviors.”

Experiential therapy is not only for at-risk girls, DeLibero says. Middle-schoolers and high-schoolers can visit the center for private lessons or workshops to learn leadership skills while maintaining a feeling of awe toward horses.

Mother-daughter programs help moms learn to relate to their teen daughters through exploratory exercises with horses. DeLibero hopes to build a program for younger girls as well, but for now the center’s youngest girls are 10.

Since January, DeLibero has worked with more than 20 women and horses. Fall and winter are her busiest months.

“The crucial part is that they all have their own uniqueness that makes them amazing,” DeLibero says of the girls in recovery. “They have to find it for themselves.”