Hi I'm Gail!
I’m a devoted book lover and avid reader, with an eclectic bookshelf of topics and genre. Cold winter days are my permission to devour a few chapters by the fire.
I’m momma to three adoptive children in a transracial family, who’s a city kid who moved to a 23 acre 190 + year old horse farm in her 50’s.
Living on a farm with horses, donkey’s, cats and dogs has brought the cycle of life and death right to my doorstep. Experiencing death through the animals we love and care for has been a truly humbling reality. We have lost cats to predators, horses to accidents, and illness, donkey to old age and dogs to untimely deaths.
It was an honour to hold a horses head as he took his last breath, regretful to miss the euthanasia of our beloved momma donkey, painful to see missing cats, and gut wrenching when you don’t catch in time the disease inflicting your dog.
I have been present in the death of family members, and have been blindsided by family deaths as well, but it wasn’t until I moved to the farm and live in a continual ebb and flow of life and death that respect for death now replaces fear of it.
Grieving is a natural and necessary system to processing death, but it doesn’t need to overtake your life. Grief has become something to fix, patch or manipulate, but it deserves respect instead of contempt, attention instead of neglect, and the ability to feel emotions instead of analysis of thinking.
You can’t think your way through grief, and living on this farm with the cycles of life and death being such a common experience you realize grieving is an honour and grieving well deepens your life.
Academically
I hold Physical Education and Sports Administration degrees, I’m a certified Mediator, and Conflict Resolution trainer, Adult Education and Experiential teaching facilitator as well certified in Death, Dying, and Bereavement, a trained hospice and end of life volunteer as well as a Reiki Master and a medium.
I’m certified in 3 different Equine Guided Learning modalities; The Neuro-Equine Model created by Neuro Surgeon Dr. Allan, the FEEL approach to Equine Learning and Therapy as well as the Cartier Farms award-winning research base Equine Assisted Learning Building Block Program.
Our move to the farm allowed me to expand my Equine Guided Learning Programs where we bring the unique facilitation of horses into our grief and corporate leaning and team building experiences.