She uses horses to help veterans cope with trauma
Kayla Arestivo has never seen war. But she has felt it.
As a kid on Long Island, she was 8 when the planes hit the skyscrapers in Manhattan. Her dad, William Fallon Jr., was on the 103rd floor of the north tower. He and every one of his colleagues at Cantor Fitzgerald at work that morning on floors 101 through 105 died.
It took time for Arestivo to grasp what had happened. Her life became consumed by night terrors, eating disorders, addiction, an attempted suicide as a teenager. She saw counselors, but what she really needed was a community.
“I needed somebody to tell me I wasn’t crazy,” Arestivo said. “That it was OK to feel this way.”
Twenty years later, on a 15-acre farm in Chesapeake, Arestivo, 28, is working to cultivate what she never truly found in the wake of her trauma: a space for people to heal together. Through a nonprofit called Trails of Purpose, her small staff of counselors and five rescued horses help military veterans cope with issues ranging from post-traumatic stress, sexual assault trauma, marital troubles and anxiety from constant moves.
Her husband, Kyle, helps her run the organization.
She uses the horses for therapy; the 1,000-pound animals help her identify the source of her clients’ pain. Her practice focuses largely on what she calls “ground work” – that is, activities that involve handling the horses on foot. For one exercise, she asks clients to team up with one person blindfolded while the other looks on and tells them how to lead the animal through a course. Clients seldom ride the horses – some veterans she works with are in wheelchairs because of service-related injuries.
For Arestivo, horses can be humbling, even for men and women trained as warriors. She picked each animal with great care. She’s got a mini horse named Olive who is great with kids. Drummer is the alpha of the herd because he’s the most sensitive and responsive with clients. Each one has an even temperament and likes people.
Horses are prey animals so they’re always on alert. They’re also herd animals so they look out for each other. These qualities make them great at sensing uneasiness in humans. When clients focus on a task with the horses, they relax. And being on a farm helps veterans and activeduty members enjoy the freedom and privacy of the land they roam in.
“When you move around, when you start doing something, your brain is less careful of what it’s going to say,” Arestivo said.
Her services are free. She relies on donations and grants, which dried up during the pandemic.
Her farm, which she calls Amber Acres, stretches behind her family’s home. They have pigs and a gaggle of geese that came with the property. A small barn has a long folding table inside for therapy sessions, and the horses have a small round pen to walk around in.
Because of the trauma she endured from losing her father, the New Yorker-turned-farmhand has an immediate connection with veterans. She can relate to what they’re going through.
Arestivo shares another connection: Some of her clients may have been driven to join the military in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks just as it drove her to combat trauma through her nonprofit. Some are now grappling with the lingering effects of war on their mind and body and have found Arestivo’s nonprofit as a place to help.
The work is meaningful for Arestivo but it can also trigger secondary trauma. In therapy, she asks veterans to paint a vivid picture of their pain and, as a counselor, she sometimes absorbs it.
Arestivo doesn’t always talk with clients about what happened to her dad, but she said some of them appreciate having their experiences understood and validated.
“I can say things I wish people had said to me,” she said.
About 10 miles away in
Virginia Beach, Arestivo has teamed up with Lynn Bukowski, who runs a similar nonprofit called Landing Zone Grace. Arestivo leases some horses to her on her 38acre farm near Pungo for weekly classes.
Bukowski is living out the dream of her husband, Steve, who was a Navy SEAL for 32 years and wanted to build a retreat for veterans returning from war. When he was serving, he started bringing his platoon home for meals. He died in 2010 from a heart attack he suffered during a bicycle ride, but Bukowski wanted to keep that space going. She knew the community was tight-knit and didn’t trust outsiders.
On her property, they feel safe. The horses were a great addition, she said.
“You have to be present at all times with a large animal,” Bukowski said. “Instead of concentrating on the worries and going down the valleys and roads of what’s wrong with my life and the panic that starts with how I’m going to fix that, you have to be physically present with a horse.”