All any of us wanted when we were children was unconditional love from the people around us.
And, when that love failed to come our way sufficiently, many of us turned towards animals, sometimes literally needing to cling to the family pet for dear-life, in order to survive and receive enough warmth and acceptance to keep us going.
Animals give us unconditional love and through always welcoming our presence they give us the vital acceptance and validation that, who we were, and still are now, matters and is enough.
Whether that was the dog who raced to greet us every time we returned home; the cat who always chose our bed to cuddle and sleep, or the pony or horse who was always there and always happy for us to nestle our face into their neck and mane, as we allowed our tears of sorrow to flow.
I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve relayed such stories, myself included, with the oft-heard phrase being that, animals and especially horses or ponies, literally saved our lives.
I'm so thankful to these gracious beings who simply loved us as we were and demanded nothing from us except our pure love, bonds and affection in return.
For some, again myself included, it was these safe, secure and joyful animal-bonds and attachments, so utterly lacking in the human-realm, which laid down the templates for the capacity for more genuine relationships, trust and sense of security to develop. And, which crucially filled the holes left painfully gaping by those people who were meant to pour such love into us.
Of course, there's an awful lot more to say about what goes on in this process and I'll probably write a further article to explore all this. Most notably the projection and transference onto our animals, which at the time is crucial and causes no problems, but which can cause us problems later in our adult lives if we continue to "hide" in our animal friendships to the expense of human ones. This is where unhealthy dependency and obstacles to healing of deep relational wounds can get set-up.
And yet, this is also paradoxically, where interactions with horses can bring us to a place of deeper trust of people and we can start to open ourselves up to closer human bonds as we learn to healthily protect ourselves, and as we have positive experiences of being so utterly accepted and loved by horses so we can start to respect ourselves more, and feel safer to inhabit our true-self a little more at a time.
But for now I'll finish by saying that, I for one, am utterly grateful to the rabbits, dogs, cats and ponies who sustained me during those early, critical years, and know for sure that I wouldn’t have made it through without them and the life-raft they so generously and loving always provided for me.
I'd love to hear your experiences on this subject so please feel free to leave a comment below.
© Angela Dunning
Image by smile.artcraft, licensed via Shutterstock.
This post was originally published on my Facebook Page.