After her world was rocked by news of her husband's affair, writer Alison James travelled to an Indonesian island to try a unique form of equine therapy to help her heal.
ACHILDHOOD DONKEY ride on a seaside beach; the odd clumsy attempt at pony trekking; an occasional day at the races… I’d never had much to do with animals of the equine kind. They scared me to be honest – all flying hooves, huge teeth, flaring nostrils and unpredictability. I’d certainly never connected horses with any kind of healing power but then what did I know? I’d never expected to find myself after 30-plus years of seemingly happy marriage, starring into an abyss no longer knowing what my future held.
In 2019, I discovered that my husband and the father of our three grown-up kids had been having an affair for more than a year. As infidelity goes, it was pretty standard fare, I guess: his lover was younger, fitter, more exotic than me. But there was an added twist. A sting in the spousal tail. My husband’s lover was another man. “Yeah, I’m gay!” was my husband’s frankly flippant explanation. “I think I’ve been gay since I was 12 years old. I hadn’t acted on it before. I just didn’t feel ready.” To say I was shocked was the ultimate understatement. My whole world suddenly collapsed. My life was like a demolished building, and my once muchloved husband had pressed the detonator.
IN NEED OF A REBOOT
Fast forward three-and-a-half very difficult years and the beginning of 2023 saw me attempting to seriously move on. I wanted to put the past behind and look towards the future – a future I knew I was going to have to rebuild. I also needed to rediscover my identity after decades of being a wife and mum and putting my own desires and needs at the very bottom of the list. I’d had some therapy and, although it had helped, I’d found it to be a long, drawn-out process. I needed a stark reboot – a kind of caring and nurturing short, sharp, shock treatment, if there was such a thing. And this is where the horses came in...
A friend told me about a new week-long equine therapy retreat taking place on the remote Indonesian island of Sumba. The retreat was the brainchild of professor Andreas Liefooghe, a chartered psychologist and psychotherapist of many years standing, who was also an equine expert. He had founded Operation Centaur in London in 2005 after witnessing how well soldiers with severe PTSD responded to horses. Now, 18 years on, he had launched ‘Retreat and Conquer’, a holistic five-day retreat during which horses would play a central role.
‘When we connect with a horse, we don’t just connect with an
