The Safety of a Centaur
An incest survivor finds healing through horseback riding
Readers, please note: this story discusses childhood sexual assault. For info or help, contact RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline, or IncestAWARE.
Today, I have four legs. I am a centaur. My pelvis rests atop the back of a horse, becoming one with its base, while my torso and all the parts above it remain human.
Separately, I am a person and she is a mare. My name is “Anne Marie Lauren,” which means, “Favored Rebellious Victory.” Her name is “Aria del Cielo,” which means, “Air of Heaven.” Together, we’re quite the pair, literally and figuratively attached at the hip.
I am 34 years old now and the beast is beneath me. I aligned to it by choice. It follows my lead through safe training and clear communication. By the active truth of consensual trust. We work together so that we can exercise our freedoms, futures of interdependency, as two beings walking as one. This is all new to me.
The beast used to be on top of me. My first rape was at the age of two by my own father. I ran away from my abusive family a decade ago and still can’t shake the fears of developmental trauma after years of diligent healing work. The violations of the past repeat in the present through systemic sexism and ablism built into the bodies of people, practices, policies, and procedures that govern my life. Equine therapy is my newest medicine.
Aria, too, was raised in captivity. Domesticated for human use from the very beginning of her life. But I know her spirit longs, too, to return to the freedom her ancestors once flew. My own desire aligns with hers and we, for a few hours, become one body. Together, we get to be as free as possible within the context of the worlds we were raised in. With me she is out of her stable on the trails, and with her, I am able to run with four legs instead of two.
My father weighed nearly 250 lbs and used every single source of his power against my brain, body, and being to convince, coerce, and constrict my life to his will. He hurt me because he could and he wanted to and he needed to in order to fulfill his own insatiable needs. I am damaged for life due to his lack of self-regulation.
Aria weighs over 1000 lbs. If she wanted me off her back, she could throw me. If she wanted to hurt me, she could kick me. If she wanted me out of her life, she could kill me. She would never.
I am safer with this horse than I was my own father.
My teacher integrates instinctual human and horse behavior to inspire coexistence, trust, respect, willingness to respond, and attention between person and animal. She trained Aria without pain or punishment tactics using this framework. Every week, I visit Aria to work on establishing a safe relationship with her and myself.
Can we coexist?
I enter the stable and if she welcomes me with approach and calm, I can continue.
Do we trust each other?
I approach her with a handout and touch her from head to back. If she allows me, then I can continue.
Do we respect each other?
I observe her and she observes me as we both honor each other’s space, bodies, and boundaries. If we both align, then I can continue.
Does she respond to my cues?
I ask her to follow me. If she follows, then I can continue.
Will she be attentive if we ride?
I saddle her up, get on, and practice the performance of horse and human communication. If she responds, I continue.
My father and I could not coexist. I could not trust my father. I did not wish to respond to my father’s cues. I did not want to attend to the needs of my father.
He used a belt to punish and change my behavior. On the ground, I have a whip to help Aria understand the boundaries between us. I would never use it against her body.
I enter the stable and Aria meets me head against head, my lips kiss her face. Instinctively, I place my hand near her ears and pull it across her mane, the bend in her back, her tail. She allows it, often putting her butt in my face, her way of saying, “Won’t you scratch where it feels best? I can’t do it myself, you know?”
I walk toward the brushes and she follows. I pull a hair and hand brush from the bin and begin caring for her, reminding her that I am here to help. I am her herd. The brushes return to the bin. Then, the pad to ease her skin, the saddle to protect her spine, the bitless bridle to direct without pain, go on next. I’m last.
I journey her on the ground to a place I can safely secure myself on the saddle and immediately provide soft cues that direct where I’d like her to go. A nudge to the right with my hand on the reins and a push with my left leg. The opposite to go left. A squeeze of my legs together to direct her forward. I’ve yet to learn to go backward, but because of my history, backward is generally a direction I choose to avoid.
Sometimes she resists my instructions. Sometimes she refuses my directions. I struggle to force her as I was forced. Never force, never violence, never pain, never the bending of will. My body demands these truths. I need alternatives from the models of my memories.
“Lead her, Anne,” my teacher reminds me.
I remember the tenets of my training. Coexistence, trust, respect, willingness to respond, attention. This is the language we speak. These are the behaviors we exchange. I keep trying.
Sometimes Aria decides for me. Sometimes, she sprints into a run, causing me to catch my breath between the force of her strength and the fragility of my perceived limitations as I bounce between her galloping bones attempting to find my balance.
I let her run wild. I let her run free, as I learn to teach my body it has four legs now and needs to move a little more lightly, a bit more fluidly and flexibly. My base must remain relaxed on her moving back, while my core straightens to establish balance. This is how we become one. This is how centaurs are made. I am her human and she is my horse and we form an unlikely bond when we are bound together.
Aria and I combine bodies so that we can run wild in this way of the world that requires us to be conjoined to be free.
As I ride her, I learn what it’s like to have a beast beneath me. The replacement of the monster on top of me. To pass down the lessons I have gathered from my safe teacher that I should’ve learned from my father.
How to coexist with someone stronger than you.
How to learn to trust someone different than you.
How to respect someone with other sources of power than you.
How to align willingness with someone who may have varying desires than you.
How to attend to the needs of someone who’s other than you.
Through horseback riding, I have absorbed a framework that teaches me not just how to safely bond with horses, but also how to interact with humans.
Can I coexist with this human?
Can I trust this human?
Can I respect this human?
Can I align wills with this human?
Can I be attentive to this human?
And the reciprocal:
Can this human coexist with me?
Can this human trust me?
Can this human respect me?
Can this human align wills with mine?
Can this human be attentive to me?
The answer isn’t always yes. The taught and/or internalized patriarchal, white supremacist ideologies that influence the behaviors of so many around the world still limit my capacity to safely participate in relationship with many humans, including those within my own bloodline.
When the answer is yes though, what joy I feel.
We coexist.
We trust.
We respect.
We align.
We attend.
This is the world I want to live in. The world of Anne Marie Lauren and Aria del Cielo. The mystical centaur. The human and horse united. The Favored Rebellious Victory riding on the Wind of Heaven.
This is the future of safety.
I choose not to be bound to the history of my violent blood, but instead free myself by bonding my body to the back of this brilliant beast as she abandons the confines of her cage through her glorious gait in the wide-open terrains of temporary liberty.
Together, we are as free as we can be.
