I Invite You to Explore This Landscape of IPM | John Fox, PPM
- IPM Team
- 3 days ago
- 8 min read
Updated: 4 hours ago
I introduced my letter to you with the subtitle If You Put Your Foot Down in this Landscape.
What follows here is a portion of that landscape to set your foot down – and I hope it captures your attention. Please remember that this is only a portion!
Crescent Moon: Creativity and Horses
IPM has had the great pleasure and the blessing for many years working closely with the Crescent Moon Center – specifically with its founder, Karen Kahn, and program coordinator, Vickie Tugwell.
Crescent Moon says this about its vision:
We envision a world where life challenges are met with compassion and where shame and stigma are no long obstacles to recovery and holistic wellness.
and the composition of its visionary offering:
Through proven experiential art and equine-assisted learning workshops, followed by ongoing community engagement and support, Crescent Moon Center offers an empowering path toward healing, resilience, and growth.
Learn more about Crescent Moon Center.
I admire Karen for how she joins her life-long love of horses with her faith in creativity in all its expressions.
On Sunday, February 16, together with Jane Vanderwerf, a Horse Assisted Educator, we brought to eight participants, Horses & Poetry: Creativity and the Practice of Mindfulness.
This day-long retreat, designed by Jane and myself, wove welcoming each person’s creative, poetic voice, and with care and sensitivity, introducing each person to a horse that they chose to meet.
There was a gentle seamlessness to this and together with slowing down, this combination encouraged both self-care and a vibrant sense of community. This happened at Rush Ranch of the Solano Land Trust, a very special place, created in-part by Michael Muir. Michael is the great-grandson of explorer John Muir.
It is difficult to describe this experience – something truly beautiful happens when a horse, standing next to you, casts his or her eyes on you. Something more happens when by not trying to “do” anything except place the palm of your hand on that horse’s side. Perhaps you brush the horse. Nothing more than that.
Is this so different from letting a blank page look up at you in the spirit of poetic medicine? Where you realize and feel that page, like those eyes of the horse, does not have judgment?
As you begin to write, with a sense of invitation, you could place your palm on that page and your writing. My sense is that in this way horse and poem are quite close. This intimacy with your unique creativity – whether you are crying out or savoring the moment – is a gift that will last. The generative nature of this will extend into our part of one’s life.
Added to this was the opportunity in the latter part of the day when we each read our poem written to that particular horse a person chose. We each stood close up to the horse to speak our poem and from there we turned around and spoke our poem to everyone sitting in the bleachers in the horse pen.
The sense of this expanded community – horses and humans – brings healing, and at times, joy. The following three poems were written that day by Nezrin Hasanly:
A Universal Connection
I gaze at the horse.
Eyes so marvelous, I sigh, calm, while she exhales.
A Childlike Fascination
As a child, before I knew how to speak, I knew how to appreciate horses.
I’ve always loved looking at them.
All it takes to make me speechless and childlike again is for a horse to look back at me.
The Breath of Life
Although I’m still determining the details behind my faith,
my life changed the moment I was told to connect with a horse’s breath.
I realized that God did breathe life into our bodies
because it was through that exchange of breath, I found the meaning of life.
Being kissed by the warm scent of hay made me feel one with the Earth.
When I read one of my haikus outside and sighed,
there was a sudden gust of wind so strong it was as if the hills exhaled at the same time.
I was told the ranch is with me.
I now know God is also with me.
Nezrin says this about these poems and her experience:
“Before discovering the Crescent Moon Center, it never crossed my mind that my passions for horses and the creative arts could merge into something so powerful and healing. For years, I’d been told that spending time with horses was a childish hobby and that writing poetry wasn’t practical. These comments may have contributed to my intense writer’s block that lasted several years. However, I rediscovered my joy to write again when I participated in a recent Poetic Medicine workshop.
Watching participants read aloud their poems to the horses that inspired them, while embraced by the peaceful green hills of Rush Ranch was an experience I can only describe as magical. Many people laughed and some even cried. It truly changed my life and I hope you can take part in one of these wonderful workshops for yourself.”
I had my own experience. Earlier in the afternoon, the horse I stood by and wrote about was dedicated to her – Duren. However, she was very rambunctious, racing around the pen. Jane decided, rightly, that Duren needed to be on her own for the rest of the day.
So, in place of Duren, when we shared our poem with the horse I read my poem to Rip! You can see that Rip’s attention was strong and so I don’t think there was ripple of ego! I am almost 100% sure that Rip enjoyed the poem – and yet I will admit that the not quite 100% was telling me that it was the brown buttons on my sweater he wanted to eat.
My Poetic Medicine Journey to the East – New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania – with Jean and Jim
I would like to whet your appetite by sharing about my trip taking poetic medicine to the East. I will only share a few things and promise, god-willing, that next month there will be much more.
This “journey to the east” began with honoring the 70th birthday on March 1st of my friend Jim Elsaesser. With his family, friends, professional colleagues and his partner Lori and daughter, Jessica, I spoke this:
“I admire and am inspired by your commitment to service, to serving others, with this gift you make of poetry-as-healer. I particularly admire that you have worked so closely with clinicians in different settings – Prosline, Delia, Paige, Terri and others – introducing them to the possibilities, potentials and perfectly sensible, creative ways to support and add value to therapeutic work.”
Jim originally entered into the life of IPM by becoming a Poetry Partner in 2017. Jim brought poetry and poem-making to the survivors of domestic abuse through an organization called DASI (Domestic Abuses and Sexual Assault Intervention Services). This deep healing work of poetry for domestic abuse survivors continues to this day with Jim, long after our seed money was given.
Here is a poem that emerged from the RISE UP work:
YOU
There will come a time when
YOU become YOU again
Maybe even a better version of YOU -
A stronger YOU
A YOU with more self confidence
A YOU who doesn't need anyone else to fulfill
YOU as you fulfill yourself
A YOU whose pieces are put back together
A YOU who finds pleasure again – in the little things as well as the big
A YOU who stands tall despite having the weight of the world on your shoulders
A YOU who feels free again, not shackled
A YOU who loves yourself – for YOU
M<3M
Rise Up! Poetry
This power of language to reclaim one’s life – creativity and voice – is essential to our work.
Jim also brought poetic medicine on-line to young women at The School of Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA), serving female students who attended a boarding school in Afghanistan. That was before the takeover of this troubled country by the Taliban.
Learn more about SOLA.
The following poem appeared in the SOLA anthology part of me, part of my soul published in 2019:
I Am Special
The Sun shines,
The moon appears,
The water splashes,
Venus twinkles,
Jupiter shouts,
Saturn calls to Mercury,
Mercury turns to Neptune,
And Neptune calls out my name.
I don’t know why
But I just know that I am special.
My dreams never end.
My eyes are never closed.
My heart never stops,
And my way is never dark
Nature talks to me, and I only,
Only understand it lies very deep Somewhere in my unknown heart.
Muslima, 17, 2019
You can rightly think this about Muslima: she writes with imagination, boldness, courage and truth. None of these qualities that a young person, a woman possesses, would now find the light of day under Taliban rule.
Yet before that Muslima’s voice was lifted up with the voices of her classmates.
What has happened to SOLA?
The good fortune is that when the Taliban took over, Shabana Basij-Rasikh, President and Co-Founder of SOLA, miraculously, beautifully, courageously whisked all her students and staff out of the country. They have moved to and resettled in Rwanda and continue to thrive.
The heartbreak is that while the students and staff literally escaped, the families of the students did not. Jim believes that there is more SOLA poetry to come.
You may appreciate how I committed myself to attend his birthday. Jim and I didn’t stop there!
Woven into this flow of travel to the east was inviting another dear friend, Jean Richardson, to join us and contribute to our outreach. Jean made that contribution in such abundance. She had a whole other map we could flatten out and follow to places extraordinaire! I appreciate Jean’s life from its many dimensions and angles:
She has spent her entire professional career working with non-profit organizations. As a part of the LGBTQ+ community, Jean understands the pain of institutional and personal exclusion. Being a parent of an adult son living with neuro and intellectual disability, she is a strong advocate for inclusion and has dedicated her life to creating spaces where all people are welcomed. She is an avid supporter of the work of Poetic Medicine. As she enters this season of her life, Jean and her partner Pat have launched Circles of Courageous Commons, a non-profit dedicated to having conversations of the heart for the common good.
Learn more about Circles of Courageous Commons.
What a gift that avidness is! Her resonant faith and deep support overflow into what we do. She SEES poetic medicine – and I will say me too – with a vivid depth. She sees the action of the healing poem and the holy surprise of the person who writes that poem.
Together, Jim, Jean, and I made our way to many places and with many people. For instance: the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Poconos, a decades-long men’s group; Bridgeway Rehabilitation Services; the Seasons of Healing for women who are survivors of domestic abuse; visits to the Camphill of Soltane, PA and Copake, NY – amazing communities that serve adults with special needs.
I will tell you more about this via a Zoom recording, I should say WE will share more. Jim, Jean and I invite you to travel with us. Please look for that May report and video next month.
For now, look at this group of poets who bring life … to LIFE poetic medicine. Jean and I met them in Andover, NJ. This is a picture of the whole group at the Bridgeway Rehabilitation Services. Bridgeway has supported this poem-making process and experience for many years. Jim has worked closely with the wonderful counselor Delia Cortez-Meade.
She and Jim blend her clinical expertise and his poetic medicine in superb ways. What a blessing to be invited into that circle!
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