Some people are fortunate enough to connect with the mind of another that is forged in a fire where no words are needed. The result is a quiet knowing and an unspeakable understanding. This is a story of just such a connection.

It began with two souls in two entirely different places and circumstances. One tale starts where there should have been safety and security but wasn’t. The other in a place of serenity and peace before being removed from that world and thrown into a realm of chaos–full of the unknown.

Though the specifics are vastly different, the experiences mirror one another. A woman and a wild stallion, brought together by scars that forever mark their journey.

Gena

Gena was a mere five years old when her world began to shatter. A developing child needs safety and security above nearly everything else. At this tender age, Gena was denied that necessity. Her world became filled with the darkest nightmares as she was repeatedly molested.

Instead, a time that should have been filled with carefree childhood exploration was marked by trauma and despair. The fracture that took place would permeate her life.

Once experienced, trauma never entirely leaves.

An inner chasm breaks when a child longs for and desperately needs a safe place but does not have one. An internal struggle arises to both survive and protect oneself by any means possible.

Taking a mental leave while trauma occurs is the only defense available for a helpless child. This is just what Gena did. In crucial years of development, she lived a broken, uncertain, and scared existence on the inside while functioning on the outside as a sad and quiet child.

Shelter

There was one salvation in Gena’s life.

Horses.

She got her first at the age of 8. Her horse was the only place she felt safe and understood. He was her protection from the storm raging inside her and the inner turmoil threatening to engulf her. It was a temporary but vital escape from the destruction happening to her.

But the scar left by trauma is deep.

Despite functioning as a survivor, the nightmare of her sexual abuse constantly ran through the tapestry of her life.

Struggle

Gena’s first suicide attempt was at the age of 16. The desperate need to escape the pain was manifested in regularly occurring suicide attempts from that time forward.

Readily accessible pills, intended to improve her mental pain, were a frequently used method in her attempts to end her life. Death seemed the only hope that the unrelenting pain might be forever erased.

This pattern of suicide attempts repeated itself regularly for more than 20 years.

Despite drastic changes in her life circumstance–having her own home, becoming a mother, and then grandmother, the fear and emotional repression remained. The desperation to escape the horrible things that had been done to her lingered.

Gena began to finally heal, at the age of 40, when she found a relationship with Jesus. After maintaining a personal relationship with Christ for over a decade, she felt that most of the healing she would receive had taken place.

At the age of 55, Gena worked to fulfill a lifelong dream. Secure in her healing; Gena adopted a feral horse, most commonly referred to as a mustang.

Taken

The black stallion that so many girls dream of owning ran free on the range of Nevada. He lived with his family herd until the day everything changed. In a bid to maintain the range at appropriate management levels to not disrupt the ecosystem, the stallion was taken from his family, and they were removed from the only home they had ever known.

No longer free, the black stallion was thrown into a world of humans, creatures he was entirely unfamiliar with but with whom his new life would now be intertwined.

This stallion became known as Hawk.

In the space of only 20 days, he was placed into captivity, gelded, and sent to a new, unfamiliar home. Taken from pasture shadowed by the Sierra Nevada Mountain range, he made a 13-hour trailer ride to Yakima Washington, was moved to another trailer, and then transported another 5 hours to the mountains of Washington.

The black stallion found a gentle landing with Gena.

Slaughter

Hawk was gathered off the Fort McDermitt Tribal Reservation, a place of controversy in the wild horse world. Here the free-roaming tribal horses mingle with horses on land managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

Horses on BLM land are identified as “branded” and are protected by the United States Government. The horses on reservation land have no such protections. As a result, when gathered due to concerns that the horses are destroying natural lands, many are sent directly to slaughter.

The Fort McDermitt Tribal Reservation horses are allegedly privately owned but have been grazing illegally on the land for the past 30 years. While many would welcome the debate of the correct jargon in reference to Hawk, human labels and discrete delineations mean nothing to the stallion.

For Hawk, life and death are the only matters of his mind. At only three years old, living wild and free was the only life he had ever known.

Most of the horses rounded up with him were sent directly to auction and sold to the highest bidder. Often, this is the “kill buyer. ” Aptly named, they are individuals and businesses who sell horses to slaughter in Mexico or Canada for profit. It is a lucrative business in which wild and abused horses are often prime targets. 

Adopted

The logistics of obtaining any wild horse can be tricky. The transport is difficult and costly, and the minute details often become massive hurdles to overcome.

However, with Hawk, the logistics seemingly fell into place.

Four days from when Gena first saw Hawk in pictures online, at a rescue desperately trying to save the lives of as many horses as they could, he arrived at her home.

There are times in life when it seems that outside forces are working together for a specific purpose. This felt like such a time.

Unplanned

Gena was an experienced horse trainer. She had helped numerous people with their horses, and when Hawk arrived, she had a training plan firmly in place. Gena was confident it would be everything she imagined. She was well on her way to checking off her bucket list, the goal of training a wild horse.

And Hawk was, without a doubt, wild. On the free-range, horse behavior bows to one central purpose—survival.

Unconcerned with Gena’s well-laid plans to form a friendship and live a peaceful life together, Hawk’s fight or flight instinct ruled his conduct. Hawk was functioning and reacting in the only way he knew how.

Survival

Survival was so central to Hawk’s concerns that he attempted to jump out of his enclosure rather than be touched by a rope Gena held. Gena’s extensive plans and training experience in her toolbox were soon obsolete. Hawk was a horse unlike any she had ever before encountered.

Distinct from the horses Gena had previously worked with, Hawk had a touch of something she, too, experienced. He felt the same desperate will to survive while not knowing where to direct that drive or how to find safety.

Trauma

When Gena began to work with Hawk, she felt she was already healed from the horrible experiences of her childhood, which had so fully engulfed her life. But there was one lesson still left for her to learn.

Gena would have to learn to trust.

As a survivor of sexual assault, she had learned to keep herself as safe as possible when being sexually abused.

Her safety resided in drawing into herself– keeping her head down and keeping quiet. When interacting with others was impossible to avoid, as a bid to avoid more trauma, Gena put up a tough impenetrable front. She would build trust to a degree but kept her emotions tucked away even as she did.

Reactive

Though he had never tried anything that would be dangerous to Gena, Hawk was reactive.

Reactivity is generally viewed through two lenses in the horse world—a means of communication, or more commonly, disrespect and disobedience.

Some threads identically weave themselves through life, no matter the details. Hawk’s behavior very clearly mirrored the human experience.

Many reactive children– those who are misbehaving–are likely experiencing or have experienced trauma in their lives and are desperately trying to communicate that devastation to others. The most common response with reactive children or reactive horses is to work to control the behavior, not to understand it.

Gena, attuned to Hawk’s reactions, began to see the subtle yet clear signs Hawk was trying to communicate—discomfort, fear, uncertainty.

The scope through which you view a problem drastically informs your response. In Hawk’s reaction, Gena found a fellow sufferer and thereby reached an understanding and connection unlike any she had experienced with horse or human.

It was two months after the time Hawk arrived before Gena was able to touch Hawk with a rope on his neck.

Fear

Another seven months passed before Gena and Hawk had actual physical contact. Gena was able to touch Hawk with her hand on his neck.

When Gena looked into Hawk’s eyes, she could see the intense fear he was feeling. Gena knew that fear. She had felt the same fear. And because of this, empathy emerged and guided her hand in her training.

Gena’s horse training slowed down; her methods were drastically reanalyzed. She toiled over the logistics and the how-tos. Most importantly, she built a connection.  

Connection

It is common to see someone posting about their mustang, fresh out of the wild, being ridden in only 30 days like an old ranch horse. The story for Gena and Hawk would be a less impressive picture but a much more significant experience.

The emotions Gena held so tightly bound were unleashing and softening. When Gena and Hawk worked together for nine months, emotional floodgates burst open.

By industry standards, progress was slow, though that is hard to judge when you can’t see what takes place behind the saga. The unseen progress that emerged had been in the making over a lifetime.

On Dec 19, 2021, after what felt like an eternity and an incredible amount of uncertainty and struggle. Time and learning. Gena was able to halter Hawk for the first time. This took place free of any force.

Gena had the halter almost entirely on Hawk, who had previously been wary of anything on his face. But, before completing the process and latching it, she took it off to run and get her phone so that she would have a picture.

Emotions

Void of tension, fear, and pain, Hawk began to integrate into the world he had thus far found entirely terrifying. He began to accept this strange, new life, guided by a compassionate hand.

Having been equally guided by the companion and teacher she found in Hawk, Gena ran to her boyfriend to tell him the news. As she related the story, she burst into tears.

Perhaps the tears were over a long struggle to halter a wild horse. Or maybe the tears were relief in finding and feeling compassion in a heart so long closed to emotion as a means of protection. They were likely tears of finding a path of light in what had previously been a dark and lonely road. Finding light on a path leading to trust and healing she didn’t know she needed.

New Beginnings

Gena and Hawk’s story is not over. It is just in the first chapter. But, already, it is a tale of finding healing when you didn’t know you needed it and building trust when you didn’t think it would ever be possible. It is a story of two separate spirits finally finding a place of safety.