48 SIDELINES DECEMBER 2012
FOR HORSE PEOPLE • ABOUT HORSE PEOPLE
Continued on page 50
By Sue Weakley
Those of us who love horses know they have extraordinary
healing powers. Somehow the act of currying, riding or even just
smelling a horse is all that’s needed to set a world askew with
problems aright. This equine emotional balancing can be even
more powerful for people with special needs and for children of
alcoholics or addicts, horses can soothe scars and help teach life
skills.
And that’s where Horses Healing Hearts, Inc., comes in.
The non-proft organization was the dream of Liz Olszewski of
Wellington, Florida, who founded the program in 2009 to help
ease the pain of kids growing up in a home riddled with substance
abuse. HHH provides children in these situations an opportunity
to work with horses for the purpose of healing emotionally while
learning positive life-coping skills, responsibility and confdence.
The idea to help some of the 28 million children of alcoholics came
to Liz because she is from a family with an alcoholic mother, father
and stepfather and she grew up in that same toxic atmosphere.
At HHH, children learn skills like setting boundaries, teamwork,
dealing with their emotions, the importance of routines and how
to minimize risk around horses as well as in their daily lives. Each
weekend, groups of kids meet at one of the local sponsor barns
located in Wellington and Delray Beach, Florida. While at the
barns, participants learn to groom and tack up a horse and each
child receives a 15-minute private riding lesson. While some are
riding, others are led through a weekly curriculum about coping
skills and boundaries. HHH teaches participants that they can
control two main aspects in their lives: their thoughts and their
actions.
“One out of every four children is being raised by a parent using
alcohol or with substance abuse issues,” she explained. “It reaches
all societal levels, wealthy and poor and is not discriminatory.
One-fourth of the kids in our program either have one parent in
Horses
Healing
Hearts
Helps Mend Kids
Hurt by Alcoholism
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Making A Difference
jail or who has died due to suicide, overdose or disease resulting
from addiction.”
Funds to run HHH come from donors and grants. “It is coming
in slowly, and we have made it to the point where we have proven
ourselves,” Liz said. Additionally, some of the participants receive
donations of riding attire and boots from Silver Spur Equestrian
Inc., and Georgina Bloomberg’s Rider’s Closet. Liz said the kids
are so grateful for anything they get and told the story of two
sisters, Savanah and Cassidy, whose father was an alcoholic.
“These two girls have seen two suicides in two years and have
been in the program since 2010. This past May we were getting
ready for their very frst horse show. Silver Spur had sent us home
with a few different sizes of show shirts for Savanah to try on. As
were trying them on in the barn bathroom, I asked if it bothered
her that the shirts had initials that weren’t hers on the cuffs and
collar. She paused for a moment, looked at me and said, ‘The way
I see it, if they were rich enough to have their initials put on there,
they wouldn’t have put them on cheap shirts, right?’ I just smiled,
gave her a high fve and said, ‘That’s my girl’.”
“This is one small, albeit poignant, example of how many of
Volunteer Bridget Cremin leads Dylan Armus on Libby.