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Obsession With Horses | A Horse Story
By: TINA TORRY
I am sure of neither when nor how I became a lover of horses. I have a sense that I was perhaps born with a natural affinity for the creatures, the proof of this innate tendency being that as a six-year-old I was tossed by my father onto a palomino stallion, and I rode with no fear of the unfamiliar as I had already begun to sense the power that horses possess and the idea that they would rarely yield to their own desires.
It was with this first memory that I knew I had been born to ride and to love horses, to nurture them, to befriend them, to have them carry me beyond all the realms of human thought and negativity to a much more suitable place of realness that I had yet to find among human experience. They, to me, were always so incapable of malice in a world so filled with spite. A horse was loyal and obedient, steadfast and kind — all beyond what I had experienced in human relationships.
My respect for horses grew even more as my parents’ marriage became troubled and then ended. My horses became the reason for my emotional survival. I would take my horse and go riding through the pastures, the forest, any environment that would remove me from the reminders of my life being tossed into confusion far beyond my control. It was as if the horses were a constant reminder of what life could be — freeing, exhilarating, and all that was liberating from the seemingly impossible circumstances that had plagued my life. I would ride my horse for five miles to the show grounds, wipe the sweat from him, and several times, I was able to win the class. My horses gave me a determination to go beyond the boundaries of the sadness that had characterized my childhood.
I lost my horses when my father lost his wealth, the horses being the only reason why my resentment for my father’s avoidance of me failed to devour my spirit. I remember the moment I was forced to say good-bye to my horses, but more vivid was the memory that one day, the peace that my horses had brought me in my childhood would one day fill my life again.
Horses were always, in my mind, a symbol of strength, part of a fairy tale, of the ability to flee, and of being rescued. I knew this feeling all too well as I had imagined being swept away on every adventure I had created with my horses. Perhaps I needed that feeling again even as an adult. Perhaps I had wished and prayed hard enough to be rescued from my feelings of despondence that the horses were the way in which I would be transformed into having hope again. Whatever the reason, I was led back to the horse, to the innocence of my youth, and to the joy that I felt when riding. Ironically, it was the moment in my life that I most needed them that my horses found their way back to me — not the ones I had cried over losing, but the same concept of those horses and their way of taking me to a place I could feel free.
The road to finding my horses again began with a miracle. I had opted to terminate a pregnancy at seventeen. The abortion had been incomplete resulting in the miracle birth of my daughter Heidi. I had later married, had two more children, and then had been afflicted, oddly enough, much later in life after having been through the births of two more children by the guilt that I had attempted to abort my child. It was through this realization that I devoted my life to the cause of the pro-life movement. It was, in a strange way, my own attempt to make right my own mistakes, to absolve my own self of the guilt of knowing what I had tried to make happen.
Perhaps I felt that had I been able to counsel one young girl who had been in the same place, to prevent her from making that same unwise decision, or perhaps to make a young woman think twice before making such a final decision as terminating a pregnancy, I would somehow be able to right a wrong. I wished to share from my own experience how sexual experimentation caused one to make adult decisions at a time when a young person was so far removed from adulthood and all that responsibility required. There was also the idea of what experimenting sexually at such a young age had done to my innocence. It had created an involvement of emotions that I had been much too young to experience.
It was in the context of this life that a woman named Lori Humphrey gave to me the most precious tangible gift that could have ever been offered me. It was with the gift of this one woman that my dream of horses came to me after a lifetime of praying that they would return. Lori had heard my story of the miracle birth of my daughter Heidi. She was inspired by the idea that Heidi had survived the abortion, Lori being mostly moved because she, herself, was unable to have children of her own. She had heard my story on a national radio program and had immediately felt the need to meet me.
It was her ultimate unselfishness that had made her want to give to me rather than to judge my past decisions. She had been struck by the idea that I had been seventeen, that I had seen no other way but to terminate my pregnancy, but she was mostly drawn to me because I had chosen to divulge my secret past so that I could help others avoid the same mistakes I had made. She had no knowledge, nor did I, that I would soon be experiencing an overwhelming desire to hide from the world rather to confront it. She just wanted to meet me.
After speaking with her on the phone, I immediately flew to Michigan to meet her. We were instant friends drawn together not only by our understanding of my past but also by our love for horses. As she took me on a tour of her farm, I gasped at the barns and stalls full of beautiful Arabian horses, all amazingly majestic, even more so since so much time had passed since I had been near my horses. She stopped at a stall in front of a beautiful Arabian chestnut stallion.
Lori said the words, “Kasper is yours if you want him.”
Soon after receiving this gift, in the midst of my involvement with speaking engagements, television appearances, and fundraisers, I had been absent as my marriage and family had been falling apart, and one day as I returned from speaking at a conference, my husband confronted me with the news that he no longer wanted to be married to me. In one evening, I found myself replete with hopelessness at the idea of losing my marriage as well as my career, what I had considered a calling. I found no way that I could reach young women when my own life had crumbled. I saw no good coming from a woman who had made so many bad choices, had believed her life had permanently changed directions only to find that her circumstances had changed again so negatively. It was at this moment that I found the necessity of a self-imposed solitude. I canceled already scheduled speaking engagements and made the promise to myself to never schedule another appearance. The cost had been too great. I was in hiding from the world.
As I struggled through my divorce and the rebuilding of my life, I found great comfort in Kasper. There were many moments when I would place my head on his shoulder and cry. I derived much strength from his steadfastness and stability and, little by little, I was able to come out of my isolation to help women. With Lori’s gift of Kasper, I was able once again to give of myself. As an adult, in a similar way as when I was a child, at the moment when I was unable to connect with humanity, I was able to connect with my horse.
In retrospect, it was God’s way of giving back my horses to me that gave me the courage to minister once again to young women. It was also His giving of a gift to Lori that made the circle complete as weeks after she gave the horse to me, God gave her a child.
Tags: Amazing Horse Story, Emotional stories, Great inspiring Horse Story, Horse 2 Heart, Horse Stories
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