My name is Paul Caldwell. I have been a volunteer at From the Ground Up (FTGU) for 13 years. This is the story of my experiences with this wonderful program.
In the summer of 2011, my wife Connie and I took our daughter Evelyn to a “volunteer training” at FTGU. Evelyn was 14 and had learned that her close school mate, Quinn, a petite girl on the Autism spectrum, rode horses at FTGU. Evelyn had ridden a friend’s horse a few times and found it amazing that Quinn was a rider. So, Connie and I saw FTGU as a place where our daughter could learn more about horses, witness the magic of Quinn masterfully riding a horse, and develop an appreciation for what it means to be a volunteer. Since I would have to be driving Evelyn to the farm to assist with the therapeutic riding sessions, I decided to also volunteer. Connie would have loved this as well, but she was allergic to most hairy and furry creatures, and hay.
By mid-Fall, Evelyn was too busy with school and dance classes to continue going to the farm, but I was hooked. I was 61 years old, had only been on a horse a few times on supervised trail rides, knew almost nothing about these magnificent animals, and had never considered doing anything about that. I was an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at Syracuse University, where my expertise was mental health, substance use disorders, and human behavior change. Prior to coming to Syracuse in 1994, I had been a clinical social worker for ten years in New Hampshire, and prior to that worked for five years with vulnerable adolescents in various human services settings in Pennsylvania and Florida.
The common themes between my education and experiences as a helping professional and the power of horses as agents for change was a revelation for me. Andrea Colella (the Director of FTGU, and co-founder with her husband Chris Lombardi) began to educate me about why horses are such marvelous partners in contributing to improvement and even healing of physical as well as emotional challenges for people of all ages and various situations. I won’t go into that here, as it is information that is available on our website, but I was captivated by the similarities in our views of how to help people. We began to plan for more programming at FTGU directly related to mental health services. I dove into the research literature on Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP), and we both became certified in a team-based form of EAP that requires a mental health specialist and an Equine Specialist. We developed a program with Elmcrest Children’s Center and kids from their residential program started coming to the farm for therapeutic groundwork and riding as well as EAP. I was back to working “clinically” again, but now with enchanting, half-ton co-therapists.
We also submitted an application for a grant offered by Syracuse University for the development of innovative summer courses, and our submission for a three-credit course on Equine-Assisted Activities and Therapies was funded. The university valued the uniqueness of the so-called “horse course,” and it was successfully co-taught by Andrea and me for four years (and a fifth year with our colleague Yvonne Smith), attracting undergraduate and graduate students from various departments across the university. In those last years of my career at the School of Social Work, my energy for academic work was rejuvenated by my affiliation with FTGU. I talked about the “helping process” in new ways in the other courses I taught, informed by what I had learned from horses and from doing equine-assisted psychotherapy. I began to explore the possibilities for pursuing research at the farm, and used the existing scholarship on equine-assisted services to inform some of what we did there. It was exciting, interesting, invigorating.
Then my life changed, unexpectedly and profoundly. In Fall 2017, my wife Connie was diagnosed with glioblastoma, the most devastating form of brain cancer. When I got the call from Connie, Andrea and I were consulting about equine-assisted services at a residential program for young men with addictions near Watertown, NY. My relationship with FTGU went to the back burner and I began a part-time phased retirement from the university as Connie and I, and Evelyn, began another journey. Connie underwent brain surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, but after five months the cancer was already progressing. We knew this was a possibility, as half of those diagnosed with glioblastoma die within a year. So, in April 2018 we were fortunate that she was eligible to enter an innovative immunotherapy clinical trial at a premier brain tumor center at Duke University in North Carolina. We took eighteen trips to Duke over the next two years, initially for managing the immunotherapy treatment side effects and subsequently for monitoring her status. She had a year and a half of pretty good quality of life until April 2020, when the cancer found its way around her immune system. A very tough year followed, and she died at home with hospice support in June 2021. She had lived longer than about 95% of people diagnosed with glioblastoma.
Connie and I were together for 37 years. “They” say people grieve differently. I’m still not completely sure what my way has been, or is, even now. But I know that in June 2021 I went deep down what I called a rabbit hole. I remained very reclusive. I was retired and had lots of time, but I had little energy, and found it difficult to be around people generally. I wasn’t finding my way back into the world. I thought at times that I was one of those people who doesn’t get over losing their soul mate. I tried to reengage with FTGU in Fall 2022, and helped briefly with one EAP participant for a couple of months, but when days got shorter and the dreaded Fall and winter holidays came, I went back down the rabbit hole. I knew FTGU would be there when I was ready, and over the past 6-8 months it has become a major way in which I am reconnecting to the world.
And that is my FTGU story, so far. Horses, the children and adults with special needs whom the program serves, and the staff and volunteers at FTGU are a resource for me, as they have been for so many people over the 20+ years since Andrea and Chris began their FTGU journey. I invite anyone who is seeking an enjoyable, enriching, and potentially life-changing experience to consider a volunteer role at From the Ground Up. And I ask for your donations to help sustain this valuable resource in central NY. Thanks for listening.