Keeping Promises at Spirit's Promise: How Rescuing Horses Led to Rescuing People

Marisa Striano started rescuing horses more than a decade ago, but lately you could say she spends a lot of her time rescuing people as well. And she’ll tell you she couldn’t do one without the other.

The founder of Spirit’s Promise Equine Rescue fell from a horse in 2013. Instead of finding hopelessness on the ground, she found hope and a new purpose. After a doctor told her she shouldn’t keep riding, Striano thought he had a lot of gall.

But a few days later, a woman named Minna and her husband showed up at her rescue and changed her life. Minna could barely speak. Striano found out why: Her son had died by suicide just days earlier.

“She said he always wanted to come to this place,” Striano says. “She never could. She was too busy at work. She asked, ‘Can I pet a horse?’ So we walked back to pet a horse.”

SPIRIT’S PROMISE EQUINE RESCUE

FINDING HEALING & HELP

Minna ended up petting Seattle Slew’s great granddaughter, Big Mommie, whom Striano had rescued from slaughter.

“Big Mommie went over to Minna and lowered herself down. Minna opened her arms and cried on her shoulder for a good 40 minutes,” Striano says. “I learned so much about her. And the emergency room doctor’s words came into my head. ‘Get off the horse. Get on the ground. You don’t need to be riding.’ I realized that was my mantra. I needed to be on the ground to help people.”

Striano today is executive director of Spirit’s Promise, an equine rescue nonprofit and equine therapy center in Riverhead Town. She, with the Lederman family, co-founded Garret’s Promise, an equine therapy program to help those in need.

Rather than providing horse therapy involving riding, they help people by talking and listening in the presence of these herd animals.

“Life coaching takes what’s happening in the present and seeing how you can unlimit yourself,” Rachel Lederman, co-president of Garret’s Promise and co-director of therapy programs for Spirit’s Promise, says of the program.

RESCUING HORSES

Spirit’s Promise started in 2010 as a dream, rescuing horses and providing access for children who couldn’t otherwise afford to ride.

“I wanted to teach little kids how to ride,” Striano says.

While the riding program no longer exists, it still remains a horse rescue (spiritspromiserescue.org) and has since evolved into a place to find therapy in the presence of a horse.

“We call our therapy ‘shoulder to shoulder,’” Striano says of the Garret’s Promise program. “It’s a relationship between a horse and a person.”

Striano says horses, which are prey animals, not predators, are particularly sensitive to their surroundings, like emotional mirrors of the energy around them.

“The horse is 100% energy. They reflect back the energy presented to them,” Striano adds. “Equine therapy reflects forward. Anything blocking you in your life now from going forward. I don’t talk about what happened in their past. It’s always how to move forward in their life.”

Horses with names such as Gus, as well as Joker and Diva, boyfriend and girlfriend, ambled around the farm recently. Ramona is one of the newest rescues.

“She wasn’t strong enough to be used for lessons,” Lederman, an Equus Life Coach and a licensed mental health counselor, says.

Then there’s Little Joe, who “loves attention,” and Willie Nelson, a donkey.

“The fear of horses is because of their size,” Lederman adds of these often 1,200-pound animals. “As a prey animal, their first instinct is to run away.”

Rather than riding, Striano says horses can provide windows of perception for humans shoulder to shoulder.

“People don’t realize that,” Striano says of one trait. “They have eyes on the sides of their head that give them peripheral vision 300 degrees. They can’t see directly in front or behind.”

THE PATH TO THERAPY

Striano started equine therapy by getting an Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association (EAGALA) certification. The EAGALA website describes horses as “the perfect partner” in tandem with licensed mental health professionals.

“Because horses are highly sensitive, clients can work through their life struggles by interacting with the horses without feeling judgment or interpretation by another person,” according to the EAGALA site.

Striano says she later opted for another approach, finding different ways to work with horses and people.

“It didn’t speak to me as much as I wanted it to. Then I found the Koelle Institute for Equus Life Coaching, now known as the Center for Equus Coaching,” she says. “I became an Equus Life Coach, which is life coaching with horses. It translated into helping people with the help of the horses.”

Striano remembers a girl who walked into the round pen after being told to “just show up how you are in life.”

“The horse took off, ran around the round pen,” Striano says. “She said she was a little anxious.”

The girl later told Striano she was worried about school, parents, money and leaving for college.

“I asked her to start breathing,” Striano continues, saying as the girl calmed, so did the horse. “I always say, ‘I know who people are before they tell me who they are, because of the reaction of the horse.’”

MAKING A NEW PROMISE

Striano began working with Jeannie Behrens, head bereavement coordinator at the East End Hospice, providing bereavement therapy for family, friends and caregivers.

“My dream was to help the helpers,” Striano says. “I wanted to help the helpers.”

Spirit’s Promise had “a round pen outside, exposed to the elements” and wanted to build a facility indoors.

The Lederman family arrived through East End Hospice after losing their son Garret, 28, on May 1, 2021. The family — mother Debbie, father Jan and sister Rachel — helped create Garret’s Promise, building a facility that can be used in all weather.

“When my brother passed away, we hadn’t selected an organization to support in Garret’s name yet,” Rachel Lederman says. “We didn’t have a cause that had spoken to us yet.”

Their friends and family raised money to build a 70-foot enclosed indoor round pen in an 80-foot-wide structure including an observation room, storage closet and office. Construction took eight months and ended in the fall of 2022. It now includes a table made from a tree that fell on the farm.

“It allowed us to offer equine therapy regardless of the weather, time of day and season,” Lederman says of the space that feels ethereal when you walk in.

JOURNEY FROM DOUBT

The pairing of a trained mental health clinician and a therapy horse uses the presence and perception of these herd animals and words to help others.

“Horses sleep in 15-minute intervals, even in their stalls. It’s how they’re wired. A horse’s only job, whether domesticated or wild, is to stay alive to the end of the day,” Striano says. “They also can’t stay in grief. They will die. They can’t live in the past or the future. They have to live in the present, ever on the lookout for predators.”

Still, Lederman says doubt lingered even as they built the new facility until people began using it.

“When you start something, it’s hard to not doubt yourself,” she says. “When we had three groups come from Brooklyn and spend the day at the ranch, it convinced me that what we’re doing is worth it.”

She talked about a boy who, after staring at the horses for 15 minutes, said one reminded him of an uncle who passed away.

“He said, ‘I’ve never talked about him since he passed away,’” Lederman says. “And then he talked about the impact his uncle had on his life.”

In addition to individual and group sessions, they give tours of the Spirit’s Promise farm on Sundays for $20, Garret’s Promise demonstrations for $50 on Saturdays and line dancing on Mondays, where all proceeds support the ranch.

They continue to help horses, as well as humans. When horses age and can’t do their job, they are often slaughtered. They saved horses from slaughter in Washington state, overworked horses, even a privately adopted New York City police horse, and more.

PROMISE FULFILLED

People from age 16 to their late 80s have sought help and hope here amid anxiety, depression, substance abuse and grief.

In addition to 15 horses (13 large and two minis), two cows, two pigs, nine goats, a lot of chickens, ducks and one guinea hen fill the farm.

Lederman says she lives with the loss of her brother, trying to help others through a program named in his honor.

“I don’t think you ever really get over the loss of somebody,” she says. “I’ll never get over the loss of Garret. I believe he’s with me every day.”

In a sense, he is very present at Garret’s Promise, which helps others daily.

“It helps you learn how to live, being with horses and learning about yourself through the horses’ eyes. It continues to teach me how to live with this grief,” Lederman continues. “I get to talk about my brother Garret almost every day. I see shirts and hats with his name. We’re dedicating a sanctuary to him that is helping people navigate emotional turmoil.”

Spirit’s Promise is located at 2746 Sound Avenue, Baiting Hollow in the Town of Riverhead. For more information, call 631-875-0433 or visit spiritspromise.com.

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