Tending Ground
An ongoing grief circle for horse folk unlearning traditional horsemanship
The grief of
knowing better is real.
And it deserves somewhere to land.
If you’ve spent any time in the unlearning — the slow, sometimes painful process of shifting how you show up for horses — you know that it doesn’t just change your horsemanship. It changes everything. How you remember the past. How you see yourself. How you hold the losses that came before you knew what you know now.
That grief is quiet. It’s complicated. And it’s almost impossible to explain to someone who hasn’t lived it.
Tending Ground is a monthly grief circle for horse folk doing exactly this work — unlearning traditional horsemanship, sitting with what that stirs up, and finding their footing alongside others on the same winding path.
This is a place to return to. Month after month. For as long as the work requires it.
The Weight You’ve Been Carrying
Something brought you here. Maybe it’s been sitting with you for a while.
The horse you lost — and everything that went unsaid, undone, between you.
The training methods you used before you knew better, replaying in your memory with a clarity that shame makes sharper.
The loneliness of changing your relationship with horses while the world around you — your barn, your trainer, your riding community — stays the same.
The fear of going further into the unlearning. Of what you might feel. Of what it might cost you. Of whether you have the courage to become someone who shows up differently, even when it’s hard.
This is grief. All of it. And grief — especially this kind — needs tending.
What Tending Ground Is
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A facilitated session grounded in grief education — specific to the experience of horse folk who are unlearning traditional horsemanship. You’ll build a shared language for what you’re carrying: the layers of loss, guilt, shame, tenderness, anger, and meaning-making that come with this particular kind of transformation.
Attending at least one educational group and watching at least three of the first Micro Lessons is required before joining a process group — it gives everyone a shared foundation so the deeper work can go deeper.
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This is the circle within the circle. A held, witnessing space where community members show up for each other’s stories — not to fix, not to advise, but to be truly present. You can come to speak. You can come to listen. Both are medicine.
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All educational group recordings are available to community members — for the night something cracks open and you need to remember you’re not alone in it, or for the session you had to miss.
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For the in-between moments. The barn day that left you undone. The small victory that needs witnessing. The question you’ve been turning over. Community at your own pace, on your own terms.
Tending Ground is not a course with a finish line. It’s not a six-week program you complete and move on from.
It’s an ongoing community. A circle you can keep coming back to, for as long as this work is alive in you.
Rooted in Stable Grounds Sanctuary’s commitment to trauma-informed care, land justice, and the radical reimagining of our relationships with horses, Tending Ground holds space for the grief that lives inside the unlearning.
Each month includes:
TENDING GROUND
TENDING GROUND
Where This Work Takes You
Grief, when it’s tended rather than buried, changes shape.
People who do this work long enough find something waiting on the other side — not the absence of grief, but a different relationship with it.
Relief. The weight doesn’t disappear, but it stops being the thing you carry alone.
Language. Words for experiences that used to live only in your body, wordless and heavy.
Forgiveness. Not the kind that erases what happened — the kind that releases you from being defined by it. The younger you who did the best they could with what they had deserves that.
Courage. Embodied, felt, grounded courage — the kind that lets you step into the field differently. That lets you try, and stay present, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Clarity. A path forward that doesn’t require you to pretend the grief isn’t there. One that moves through it.
Community. People who see exactly where you are — and choose to walk alongside it.
This Circle Is For You If…
You’re a horse person — experienced, newer, somewhere in between — and you’re carrying one or more of these:
Grief for horses you’ve lost, and the feeling that you never fully processed it
Regret or shame about how you trained, handled, or managed horses before you knew what you know now
The loneliness of walking away from traditional horsemanship when it feels like no one around you understands why
Fear of stepping further into horse-centered, emotionally present practices — getting stuck at the threshold
The hunger for a community that gets it without needing it explained
You don’t have to be at any particular stage of the unlearning to belong here. You just have to be in it.
About Your
Facilitator
Dr. Rebecca Cohen is a licensed clinical psychologist with over 15 years of experience, a certified equine-assisted mental health practitioner, and the co-founder of Stable Grounds Therapeutic Farm Sanctuary — a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the Greater New Haven, CT area dedicated to land justice, equine wellbeing, and trauma healing.
Her doctoral research examined multiculturalism in equine-facilitated psychotherapy. Her clinical work is trauma-informed, neurodiversity-affirming, and rooted in a deep commitment to dismantling the harmful patterns embedded in traditional systems — in therapy, in horsemanship, and in how we relate to land and animals.
She knows this grief from the inside. She created Tending Ground because she knows what it costs to unlearn — and what becomes possible when that unlearning is witnessed and held. She needs this space as much as you do.
Tending Ground is a peer support community, not psychotherapy. It is facilitated by a licensed psychologist and designed to complement — not replace — individual mental health care. If you are seeking individual therapy, you can connect with Dr. Cohen’s clinical practice at stablegroundstherapy.com.
Sign up for Tending Ground at $75/month — cancel anytime.
Attend your first Educational Support Group — this is your entry point into the circle and is required before joining a process group.
Come to the Grief Process Group once you’ve completed one educational session.
Access the replay library, resources, and Signal community whenever you need them.
Keep showing up. The ground doesn’t transform all at once. Neither do we.
All sessions are held virtually. Scheduling details are shared upon joining.
How to Join
The grief you’re carrying has been waiting for ground to land on.
You’ve been tending this alone for long enough. There are others on this path — people who understand the particular ache of loving horses and having to reckon with how that love was shaped. People who are in the unlearning too, at every stage of it.
This is the circle. Come tend it with us.
Questions? Reach us at hello@stablegroundssanctuary.org
FAQs
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Tending Ground is a peer support community, not a therapy group. It is facilitated by a licensed psychologist, but participation does not constitute a therapeutic or clinical relationship. If you’re looking for individual therapy, Dr. Cohen’s clinical practice is at stablegroundstherapy.com.
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No. You might be just beginning to question. You might be years into this shift. You might be stuck at the threshold, not sure you’re ready to go further. All of it is welcome here.
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The educational groups build a shared language and framework that makes the process groups safer and more spacious for everyone. When the whole circle is working from a common foundation, the witnessing goes deeper.
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Educational group replays are available to all members. Process groups are not recorded, in order to protect the intimacy and trust of that space.
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Not at all. Tending Ground is for anyone in the process — questioning, shifting, grieving, stuck, or somewhere in between. The unlearning is not a destination. Neither is this circle.
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Two live virtual group sessions per month (one educational, one process), access to the educational session replay library, curated resources, and optional Signal group chat access.
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If something in you leaned toward yes while you were reading this — that’s enough. Readiness isn’t a prerequisite for tending.
Tending Ground is an offering of Stable Grounds Therapeutic Farm Sanctuary, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization rooted in land justice, equine wellbeing, and trauma healing in the Greater New Haven, CT area.