Now available for download, the Sunstone Guide to Support Services is an excellent resource for cancer survivors and their caregivers in southern Arizona.

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The first time my son Andrew had an experience with a horse was when he was twenty months old. I placed him on a dark brown pony at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival one clear August day in 1996. His dimpled hands grasped the saddle as he sucked on the pacifier that covered his mouth. His eyes, however, were smiling and said what his mouth could not. He was an active, healthy toddler then. There was no way to predict or to prepare for what would occur only two months later.

At age twenty-two months, Andrew was diagnosed with an aggressive pediatric cancer. His prognosis was poor. During the days that followed, we were fortunate to receive an outpouring of love and support from our family, friends and community, which helped to turn our despair into hope. Andrew received many gifts during this time. One of these gifts was sent to him through the mail by my husband’s business associate. It was a large toddler-sized stuffed horse, which Andrew kept in his bedroom, lounging on it whenever he needed a rest.

Andrew went through a frightening year of cancer treatment that included aggressive chemotherapy, surgery, radiation and ultimately a bone marrow transplant. Throughout this time, I dreamed of him riding horses – wild, free, strong. Perhaps it was a foreshadowing of his ultimate journey back to health. Seven years later, he is a healthy, thriving nine year-old.

In March 2004, we came to the Sunstone Kids Cancer Equine Retreat with some apprehension. It was difficult to look back at the pediatric cancer experience and I felt strongly that I didn’t want us to get stuck there. After all, it had been seven years and Andrew was well. Still, I believed that we both had some unfinished business with it. I had spent years living in an anxious state, creating a sound case of post traumatic stress and perceiving the experience as one that rendered me powerless. Andrew was older and beginning to process things at a different level. He too had his own anxiety to manage and he began to wonder – why him? Did he do something to cause the cancer? Was there something bad about him? Why didn’t he know any other kids who went through cancer?

The Sunstone retreat environment proved to be one of caring support and healing. The staff and volunteers opened their hearts to cancer retreat participants while the horses served as wise and loving teachers. From the equine retreat experience, I emerged with a new perception of Andrew’s pediatric cancer experience. The turning point for me played out in an exercise with the horses in which I came to understand what a powerful advocate I had been for Andrew during his illness and that my loving voice for him during that time had been healing. When I asked Andrew what he learned from the retreat, he said that he learned that it felt good to meet and be with other kids who were like him, that he is good at talking with his heart (referring to how he connected with the horses) and that when he speaks with his heart, good things happen. Ah yes, the power of the heart. It is the power we always have despite circumstance, even beyond cancer. The power of the heart can never be taken away, thus giving us all the capacity to love and to heal through love. That is the Sunstone experience.

On the final day of the retreat, a volunteer lifted Andrew high up onto the back of a big strong horse named Ace to experience just sitting on one of his new best friends. Andrew’s face beamed with delight. The power of my heart felt in that moment that we had come full circle on this journey. Healed by the Sunstone experience, graced by the gift of the horse.

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