About Us

The passion for doing something to help kids who have experienced trauma came to me while sitting with our new Mustang, Modoc Sojourner (MoJo, see running horse above). The intensity of his trauma was palpable. He was a young wild horse living life with his band in the Modoc Forest of California just a few months before coming to our farm. He had no experience with humans, other than being rounded up by helicopter, processed for adoption and shipped in a semi-truck to the Midwest. Mustangs have intense family bonds, it is literally how a wild horse survives. He was lost without his family without anyone he could trust. After bringing him home, I sat and I sat until finally, he slowly turned his head and looked at me. The feeling of that moment is hard to describe because it was so intense. The patience, work and desire to make that connection made the moment it finally happened more powerful. It is moments like this with horses that have forever changed me.  After years of working with kids with trauma, I experienced the same trust that must be built through patience and acceptance. Youth in foster care have been removed from their home, separated from their families and placed in an unfamiliar setting, not unlike the experience of wild mustangs gathered from the range. This trauma affects our nervous systems and mental health in much the same ways. It is our vision that Harmony IN Horses will provide an environment in which horses and youth affected by trauma will come together to learn, trust, love, communicate and become who God them created to be.

 

Founder, Lisa Condes, MS, CSW

 

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