the spirit of the horse - Publication day review

By Justin Featherstone mc,
​Leadership facilitator and expedition leader

The powerful impact of our relationships with horses appears to defy description, it is after all “beyond words” to use the author’s own phrase. This book is a testament to the senses of grace, strength and agency that this relationship can gift us when we allow ourselves to be open and to let go of our fear. The author’s search for the new home that would allow her to live as one with her herd is intertwined with intimate and compelling stories of how individual horses have touched the lives of others, helping them to heal and to embrace the new and the possible. Both these strands are alive with emotional and sometimes physical jeopardy and cause us to reexamine our concepts of courage and connection. The book allows us to explore the physicality of trust and communication and to reevaluate how we frame the relationships upon which we rely and sometimes take for granted. It is also a playful but vital clarion call to see learning differently and to be prepared to engage more with our hearts and less with our heads, through immersive experiential encounters in which we are given permission to be our true selves.

At its heart, this is a poignant story of the authentic abandonment to the idea of relationship and the courage to be vulnerable. It is a masterful, insightful and occasionally unsettling work, so deftly crafted that you can feel the notions of power, raw emotion and discovery surging through each page; these messages are so urgent in these uncertain and tumultuous times, in which our ability to connect with others in our own human herds has been so severely disrupted. The Spirit of the Horse has left an indelible stamp on my heart and serves as a joyous paean to restorative and sustaining power of the horse. It is nothing short of a marvel.

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