Retreat to Peace
Retreat to Peace
Saddle Up for Healing: Embracing Equine Gestalt and the Power of Relationships in Overcoming Loss and Adversity
Have you ever felt a profound connection with a seemingly unlikely source of comfort and healing? Join us as we welcome Susan Bloom, who shares her heartwarming journey of love, loss, and finding solace in her relationship with horses. As a practitioner of Equine Gestalt, Susan reveals the incredible intuitive abilities of these majestic creatures and how they can help balance our energy, chakras, and even encourage us to live in the present moment.
We also dive into Susan's role as a caregiver and the importance of self-care during trying times. Hear about her husband's battle with cancer, the need for advocacy in healthcare, and Susan's commitment to starting a caregiver's circle and working with a non-profit for breast cancer patients. Throughout Susan's story, the power of relationships, both human and equine, shines through.
Finally, we explore the challenges and triumphs of Susan's decision to sell her family's farmland and move to eastern Kansas, and the impact this had on her son. In a conversation with Catherine Daniels, we discuss the importance of living in the moment and finding peace amidst life's storms. So, saddle up and join us for an inspiring journey of healing, love, and the undeniable bond between humans and horses.
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Thank you for being here with me and welcome back. My name is Catherine Daniels and I love to empower people with spiritual healing and wellness. The best thing about Retreat to Peace is the gift of inner peace, greater love and joy. And during these times of changes and uncertainty in our world, nothing is permanent except our souls, and that is why, as we come together and travel through one another's countries, creating a bridge, removing all the labels but just being one people finding our home in one world, that this signature talk today is so important. Today I have my privilege of honoring my guest speaker, Susan Bloom. Hi, Susan, hi Catherine, so nice to have you on the show today. Thank you for being here, and I would love for you just to open up the show and tell our listeners a little bit about who you are.
Susan Bloom:Well, I grew up as the daughter of the only doctor in a small rural community in western Kansas. So if you're from a small town, everyone knows you and thinks they know your business And it's to have that sort of elevated status was interesting.
Catherine Daniels:All eyes were on you, apparently.
Susan Bloom:Sometimes it felt that way, And you know whether they were or not. yes, definitely, sometimes it felt that way. I had no intention of staying here. I went off to college after I finished high school with no intention of coming back, And I was in a bad relationship in college. and I did come back, fell in love, got married and knew at that point that I would be here for the rest of my life.
Catherine Daniels:Yeah.
Susan Bloom:Well, because he was a farmer and was actually, I like to say, married to his land before he was married to me, And I mean so much so that I planned my wedding around having season and planting season.
Catherine Daniels:But that's what you do in a small town, right?
Susan Bloom:Yeah, that is what we do. Definitely everything is driven by the farm economy here. I wanted to be more active in the farming and ranching And I would say that his father didn't think that that was a woman's place to be, so I kind of went out and did my own things. We had a little travel agency here and a little design business And I went back to school traveling 90 miles one day with one way, with two kids at home, and I think that took me three years. Well, actually I got pregnant sometime in there again and ended up having three kids at home instead of just two.
Susan Bloom:When I graduated And I grew up, riding and showing horses It's kind of a passion of mine. I never would, and I do have to say that my choice to marry my husband made it so that I could keep those horses and keep that passion alive When my grandfather, who'd been a very significant influence in my life, died in 1990. We got part of his. He raised racing quarter horses and I got part of his herd. So then I was not only showing horses, i was racing quarter horses too, breeding them, and those things are significant in my life because I've always had horses.
Catherine Daniels:So when you were a little girl, did you have a horse?
Susan Bloom:I did. I started probably when I was five years old with pony little paint pony And then grandpa gave me a little bit bigger, half quarter horse, half pony. Yes, my grandfather indulged me with horses up until the time he died, pretty much Because he bought me one. Well, he died in 1990 and I think he'd bought Zandy in 87 or 88 for me, So they've always been a significant part of my life. I used to you know, whenever I had problems, they were across the road. Like I said, my dad was a doctor. They were across the road from our house and I would go over and talk to them. They were my best confidants And I didn't know until I started the equine Gestalt program in 2016 that they were sharing their healing gifts with me. I mean, I knew that it was. It always made me feel better to go talk to them. I didn't realize how they were healing me, And 2016 is when I started the equine Gestalt program.
Catherine Daniels:So somebody right now is listening to our show and they're thinking well, how is a horse healing you?
Susan Bloom:So when we practice the Gestalt with them, they co-coach with us. One of the things that they can do is they can balance our energy levels, our chakra fields, and you know if they will do that. They also can tell if we are not speaking our truth. If someone you know they might believe what they're saying, but in their heart it's not the truth. The horses can detect that. My mentor, melissa Pierce, calls them equa detectors. They also, i mean they do so many things.
Susan Bloom:One time when I was working on a piece of work with Melissa for myself, i was trying to decide about moving And at one point I mean, the horse was behind me and I literally felt like she was going to push me to the side to move. They're very intuitive, very in the moment. They're animals that share their gifts. It was kind of funny. I have a mare who I would go in. She could come in and out of a stall and I'd go in to clean her stall and she would stand over the muck bucket that I was cleaning into And I would get so annoyed with her. And it was later that I discovered she was doing that on purpose. It was not to annoy me, it was to help me.
Catherine Daniels:Interesting, so why was she doing that on purpose?
Susan Bloom:Well, that was her way of saying. You need to be here in the moment. You see memes about cleaning stalls as 10% doing the actual cleaning and 90% solving the world's problems. We do tend to not be in the moment when we're doing that, and she was trying to bring me back.
Catherine Daniels:Isn't that incredible.
Susan Bloom:They are incredible beings, for sure. So in I think it was January of 2013. My husband called from the farm We lived in town, we live in town. He called from the farm and Said that he couldn't see, his eyes were swollen. He'd been in that the fall before. He'd been diagnosed with a couple of what they thought were sinus infections and This had just progressed. He did manage to Make it back to town that day and the next day I took him out and that was kind of the start of his His medical journey. The end of January.
Susan Bloom:It had gotten so bad that that the Healthcare system here and my dad wasn't practicing anymore at that point. He'd had a an accident in 2001 and Had a stroke shortly after that, so he Most people would not know that he dad wasn't, you know, just a normal aging man, mm-hmm. He didn't feel like he had The quickness anymore to practice medicine here, so he retired at that point. Anyway, the practitioners here Finally said we've done all we can here. You need to go To to a regional medical center That's a little bit bigger the one It's 90 miles away, and So I took him, but we went to school, or our youngest son was 12 and in the sixth grade we went to the school and told him You know, i'm taking your dad to the hospital, don't know What's gonna happen when we'll be back, don't know exactly what to tell you, even to do after school. And and took him and and I Didn't really realize that they were going to admit him to the hospital I thought we were just going to see a doctor No, they were admitting him in the hospital. When I went back the next morning The doctor said well, he has relapsing polychondritis and he explained it as an inflammation in his cartilage so That his ears would swell and his eyes would swell And his nose would swell, and, and at that point I think he had pretty severe inflammation all over his body. And they kept him there for three days, i think, and And treated him and, however, this relapsing polychondritis is a really rare autoimmune disease.
Susan Bloom:So our journey we started with a rheumatologist in Denver. Then he started having, he started getting anemic and They couldn't figure that out. He had the EGD colonoscopy To see, you know, if he was bleeding somewhere. He wasn't. And Finally we went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, minnesota, to see about his blood disorder and We also saw the rheumatologist there and He told us that of the seven million patients they had seen at the Mayo Clinic, they'd seen less than 500 with this disease. So it's rare and like a lot of like rheumatoid arthritis. They have those biological medications. Well, they haven't been tested on this disease because it's so rare. So if you want to try those you have to pay full price for them And they're quite expensive. And he refused to do that. And then that doctor had worked with The head. I think he's the head of rheumatology at KU med center, which is in Kansas City. It's half the half the mileage. So we started seeing him and started seeing a team of doctors in Kansas City.
Susan Bloom:We spent well a total of five and a half years Going back and forth to various places. We went to MD Anderson in Houston because They had diagnosed him with what they called MDS, mp and overlap syndrome, and it looked like the, the specialist in that field, was Down there in Houston. So we went down there Three, three or four months in a row each time, with trips to Kansas City in between, and Houston is a 12 to 13 hour drive from here. So We put on. I figured it up one time It was well over 57,000 miles just medically for him in that five and a half years.
Susan Bloom:He'd also had asthma from a very young age, so That was always a concern as well. Had pneumonia several times in that time. We'd go to to Kansas City to See doctors and One time his pulmonologist said. One time his pulmonologist said I'm going to put you in the hospital And he was there for a week And he was supposed to have surgery one time and he got sick beforehand and Was there almost three weeks And They So our son, who was 12 when this all started Never knew If we were going to be home.
Susan Bloom:When we were going to be home, if we left, how long we'd be gone. You know, we might say, oh, we'll be home tomorrow, and then they'd want to do some tests or or something and it would take longer. Um, fortunately my parents were still here in town most of the time and He had them to fall back on. We had some good friends to fall back on as well, and Mike's sister. So he had also one of the big things that that happened.
Susan Bloom:He had a stricture in his esophagus And With probably 30 or more blood transfusions, he probably had 30 or more Esophageal dilations, yeah, and at one point had a hole in his esophagus And they did. They did a test and they didn't do anything about it because his heart was blocking it so that fluid wasn't leaking out into his, into his body, but those were, i mean, those were some of the complications of his And I don't know if it was all the autoimmune disease or if It was Some other process going on. So, yeah, we spent a lot of time doing that And then in 2016, i started the equine gestalt program And everything was running along as smoothly as it could. We had online as well as in-person trainings, and Every in-person training I went to I said, you know, i didn't know if I was going to make it this time right.
Susan Bloom:I took my final exam on I think it was November 2nd, it was a Thursday and the next Monday I had a biopsy because I'd had a wonky mammogram, and the next Friday I was diagnosed with breast cancer, stage one so very treatable And we talked to The surgeon here and I said you know, i I want to go to KU med center because We have a relationship with a lot of doctors there, and So I had surgery at KU med center and there was cancer in some of the lymph nodes. And So a month later I had another surgery And, all in all, there was cancer in four out of 40 of the lymph nodes that they took out. So a month after that, i started the aggressive chemo. It was five, five months of chemo.
Susan Bloom:When I had told my Mentor and instructor I still had one in-person training to do. When I told her I was had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and she Said you know, okay, well, you don't need to push to get all of your stuff completed. It's a two-year program. You can take a little longer if you need to. So I didn't, and in May of 2018 I went, i got all my stuff completed and went to my last core training And Had It happened to be a core that she did Graduation at. So my parents and my husband had come to graduation And as Melissa handed me my certificate, she said Don't rush, this will be here when you're ready.
Susan Bloom:And I assumed she didn't want me to rush you to the next. I assumed she didn't want me to rush through treatment because I was in the middle of treatment. You know, i had no hair at that point and I was. I was in the thick of it And about five weeks later was the day before my last chemo treatment. I My husband Mike, was in a lot of pain and we took him to the ER And They admitted him into the hospital. I'm not sure they would have had I not been there to say This isn't right, this isn't normal for him, because the, the person who was covering the ER, wasn't his normal doctor And made arrangements for someone to take me to Hayes to get my chemo treatment the next day Finished, that had finished up.
Susan Bloom:I do a weekly blog post and that was the day that I do those, so I went over to the hospital to see him when I was done with that. He seemed fine. He was kind of grumpy, his pick line because he had a feeding tube. For over a year and a half And this was in June. They had pulled it out in December. He requested that it come out in December, right before Christmas, and then in January he started having IV nutrition. So he had a pick line And again he was kind of grumpy but he didn't seem to be in a lot of distress.
Susan Bloom:And the next morning I was getting ready to go over to see my doctor, who had just come off maternity leave, and the hospital called and said we're going to fly your husband to Kansas City. He started having trouble breathing at night. He wouldn't let us call you. About two or three this morning He started having trouble breathing. So we put him on BIPAP and at six or seven we intubated him And she said it usually takes about 40 minutes for the plane and the crew to get here. I said okay, does it make more sense for me to drive to Kansas City? You can do that if you want to, but you need to come over here now. So I packed a bag and went over And I watched for an hour as they tried to stabilize him before the flight crew got there, another hour after the flight crew got there while they tried to stabilize him And finally they put us on the plane to head to Kansas City.
Susan Bloom:I hadn't even reached cruising altitude when his heart monitor went flat. It was just like you see on TV. It was flat And all I could do. I wanted to help but all I could do was try to make myself small and stay out of the paramedics way. They got his heartbeat back twice And then the pilot said we're going to land in Hayes instead of going all the way to Kansas City.
Susan Bloom:So we landed in Hayes, they loaded us into an ambulance, took us to the hospital and the chaplain met me at the door And they sent me to a private waiting room, which I knew couldn't. You know, it couldn't be good. So I called my dad to tell him what was happening And before I was even off the phone with him, the doctor came in. I mean, and I knew at that point that he wasn't alive, that it was done, it was over, and it was, you know, a shock, because I didn't expect certainly so soon. And they said he was septic. I suppose that's true. Probably the pick line that had been keeping him alive basically for the last six months was what caused that, and I have to give credit to the Equine Gestalt Program for giving me the emotional resilience, the emotional support to a have gone through that medical journey with him to do the breast cancer thing And to help me get through his rather dramatic death.
Catherine Daniels:Before the show you and I were talking for a few minutes and you had shared with me that you didn't think you had anything you could share. And I said that's not true. And you know, as I'm listening to this journey of your family, i mean I can't help but think all kinds of thoughts. I mean you have been through a lot in a short period of time. I mean it's not just your husband's health, it's your health And I think that you have to help these boys.
Catherine Daniels:You know that you also have to figure out how to guide them through these trials, because it's their mom and dad. You know, like they have two people that they love and they're both suffering And I'm sure for them that was very hard Even. You know, and as a mother, i think sometimes when we're in the thick of things, it's hard for us to put ourselves in their shoes, you know, because we all we know is we just have to keep going, whatever that means, we just have to keep going, take that next step, do that next thing and just keep going When you were in the thick of all of this. I mean there's someone who is listening right now and may have just gotten diagnosed with breast cancer, or maybe has a husband who is suffering from an autoimmune disease and possibly terminal. What would be some pieces of advice that you would have given yourself going through those moments?
Susan Bloom:You know, the biggest piece of advice is to take care of yourself If you're caregiving for someone else. I, i feel like there was a reason that I got breast cancer, and I feel like so when I, when the doctor told me, i had a pity party for about 10 minutes And then it occurred to me that the universe was trying to teach me something. So what is the lesson? And then you can have it back. And you mentioned before we started that you've talked to people who have cured their cancer. I did do the medical things. However, that was for the doctors. Once they, once they, cut the cancer out, it was gone And and I mean there was some in my lymph nodes, so it was hard to tell if it had spread at all. But I never I from, i just felt like a survivor. And I feel like, again, the breast cancer, there was a reason for it.
Catherine Daniels:What do you think the reason was?
Susan Bloom:Well, so now, with my equine gestalt training, i and I always I do think that we are a culmination of everything that has happened in our lives The horses, the bad relationship in college with the guy that I was so in love with, or, you know, any of those things there's, there's a reason and they make us who we are, and my finding the equine gestalt program and learning how to help people who have had trauma or help people, even people, who need help with their relationships. So my, my passion is to help doctors have better relationships with their patients so that the patients have better outcomes. I mean, and it it all comes down to a lot of a lot of people see their doctors and their healthcare providers as superhuman, and when those doctors even share just seconds of things that are personal, it gives us a chance to see them as, oh, they're more like us than than we think, and if they listen to us and answer in clear terms that we understand not in doctor speak, i know there were times when I was talking to Mike's doctor and I'd say, you know, and I feel like I have a pretty good medical background I'd say, um, no, what was that? You need to explain that so that I understand. So to to help keep doctors from burning out, especially after the pandemic, and and all of that that's become my passion to, to help them.
Susan Bloom:I also, as soon as I get moved, we'll start a caregiver's circle for people who have or are either in the thick of caregiving or their caregiving time is over because it is draining. It is I. I got so tired of being the strong one, being strong for our boys, being strong for him, being strong for my parents, um, and being strong for everyone in the community who asked about him, because he was pretty well known. He was a big extrovert And if he wasn't related to someone, he knew them for sure. His mom said he never met a stranger and that was it was true, um. So the biggest thing if you're a caregiver is to, yes, take care of yourself.
Catherine Daniels:I think that's hard for people because they're always putting someone else first And a lot of times that comes with guilt, because if you're spending time taking care of you, then you're not giving your time to that other person. They hear that a lot.
Susan Bloom:And, and you also hear that you can't give from an empty cup- Yes, that's true. Um and I work with a non-profit called Hope, held by a horse that does programs for breast cancer patients. Um, and we're we're bringing it's a non-profit in Colorado and we're bringing it to Kansas here. as soon as I get moved to Eastern Kansas, we'll start having those programs, so I'm pretty excited about that too.
Catherine Daniels:Yeah, that is amazing. And how is your health today? Um?
Susan Bloom:well, i mean I have a few little health issues. I'm old enough that that that's kind of in the works, but as far as I know, there's no cancer, nothing extremely serious. Um, i, i see that and we talked beforehand I'm moving from Western Kansas to Eastern Kansas that that will be better for my health because I will have the horses on my property and I can walk out and do things with them and I can. Um, i've been sitting too much the last few years. So I mean, i'm healthy, i'm older, so I do have some issues, but nothing that's threatening my health right now.
Catherine Daniels:Yeah, well, it's wonderful to hear that you're healthy and cancer-free at this point and everything is good. And I feel, as you move into this authentic space that you're going into and honoring yourself, that's just going to really ramp up your health, too, as far as getting you into a better place. And where are your boys in the picture? Are they still in the small town or have they moved out and gone elsewhere?
Susan Bloom:Well, one of them lives out where his dad grew up And they have two children, so I have two grandchildren, which makes a move even four to five hours away tougher than it might be. That's the oldest. The middle one is in Kansas City, missouri, which is basically in the eastern end of Kansas, and the youngest one is well, right now. He's helping me move, so he's here, but we've been going back and forth a lot. He has an apartment in Lawrence. He was going to school at KU before the pandemic and then he started having some health issues himself And he's the one because he was home and he was 12 when this happened that I see, as he started having seizures. When he gets, i see that he gets emotionally stressed and his body just says, no, we're not going to do that, we're not going to deal with that, and he has seizures. So we've been working with that. It'll be great to be about 30 minutes from him instead of four and a half hours.
Catherine Daniels:Yeah, well, i mean, it probably affected him more deeply just because he was developing and didn't get the chance to learn the language skills to be able to articulate feelings and what he was going through. So I definitely can see that, and I'm sitting here on the other side of you thinking how incredible is it that we started off this interview with me asking you to share a little bit about yourself, and one of the things that you said right out of the gate was that you thought you were going to move away from your small town. Yes, and here you are. Here you are in this place and time And you're actually making that move and making those strides to create what it is that your future is manifesting into, and I just I applaud you for that, because that is not easy.
Susan Bloom:It has taken me almost five years since my husband's death to get this move made. I sold the farmland here, most of it, and upset my oldest son. I hope he comes to terms with that. You know they all have various issues around their father's death. He died the summer between the youngest's junior year and senior year in high school, and so from the age of 12 till he was 17, and you're right, those are very formidable years in a child's life. I mean he kind of lost both of his parents when he was 12 because we didn't know when we'd be here and how long we'd be gone when we left.
Susan Bloom:And he and I have talked about that quite a bit that he had to grow up fast. He had to. You know he pretty much lost us. When I told him that I had been diagnosed with breast cancer, the first thing that he said was so I have a higher risk of having cancer. He was 17. And I kind of shook my head and I thought where did that come from? And then I remembered that at that stage of development that was a perfectly normal thing for him to say, because it's all about when you're 15, 16, 17,. It's all about you.
Catherine Daniels:That's right.
Susan Bloom:And that is appropriate. Like I said, it kind of took me back And then I was like no, that's a perfect thing for him to say. And then he went on to say and when you and dad are gone and I tell grandma that I'm going to bed, i've been coming back to our house and sleeping here. Okay, what do I do with that?
Catherine Daniels:Right.
Susan Bloom:He was 17 and my parents were only a few blocks away. at that point, i mean, he knew how to get there if he needed to. He knew that it's a small town, but so we let him do that.
Catherine Daniels:Well, change is always hard for people, and even selling the land I mean the land it's part of your family. So I'm sure to him that also felt like another loss, all those memories and everything. But I feel like as you, as you grow and go into your journey and you start to see things through a different lens, you know there is understanding. So I feel at some point he'll come through and he'll have that understanding just part of growing up.
Susan Bloom:I'm sure he will eventually.
Catherine Daniels:Yeah, yeah. So was this a hard decision for you to make, because you said it took five years to get to this place.
Susan Bloom:No, the decision wasn't hard. It was, i think so. In the Equine Gestalt program we write a vision And when I wrote my vision, it was to stay in Western Kansas because I was married And even a few weeks before Mike died, i had had a conversation with his doctor his primary care doctor about he had another patient and they were making the same kind of trips to Kansas City and they had this discussion about is it better to stay here where you have your quality of life, or is it better to go to move to Kansas City where you'll be closer to the doctors in the medical community? And ultimately they decided to move And the man I don't think lived even a year after they moved And he had been in heaven in X-ray or some sort of a scan and he came out and he kind of got in on the end of that conversation and he basically said there is no way in hell I'm moving. We were just talking about someone else, that's okay.
Susan Bloom:So it took me a little time to I started looking at places actually in June of 2019 in the eastern end of the state And it took me a little time to take my vision and wrap my head around that it needed to move 300 miles east. And part of the reason I want to be in the eastern end of the state is, like I said, i want to work with doctors. There are plentiful there KU Med Centers. There I will be less than an hour from a major airport, whereas here it takes a minimum of a day to get here from anywhere. And I had overheard a young woman I assume she was a medical student talking to her And again I didn't even turn around and look. I assume it was her parents she was talking to and she'd been to some sort of orientation, and she said that the dean or whoever was talking said that they had made this decision to make KU Med Center one of the primary or one of the best places in the nation because it's a two hour flight from anywhere I would clarify that from any major airport in the country. Even when I flew to a training in Amherst, virginia, you know, and that's so, you fly into a regional airport and that took most of the day, not two hours, but it was probably two hours from Raleigh Durham, the other major airport I went through.
Susan Bloom:So those were my reasons for wanting to move That and I never intended to stay in Oakley, kansas my whole life And to rewrite my vision and kind of wrap my head around. That's where I was going. It took a while. It took a while for me to get up the wherewithal, maybe to sell the land, and I wish I could have found another way to do this, but I couldn't And the land wasn't making enough money. I had a land payment. It wasn't making enough money to even do that once a year, so it didn't make any sense to keep it.
Catherine Daniels:Right. So it's almost at this point in your life. you're literally turning a page and you're starting fresh and you're given an opportunity to just create whatever it is that you want, and at this point that's got to feel really exciting.
Susan Bloom:It does And a little bit scary.
Catherine Daniels:It's always got that scare factor because you don't know what to expect. But once you get there and you get comfortable, it'll be fine.
Susan Bloom:We spent a couple of weekends ago, spent four days there and I didn't want to leave. No horses there, yet Nothing. The movers took the big stuff and I have a bunch of antiques. I really don't have a lot of furniture that I'm taking, but I have a bunch of antiques. So they took the big stuff and some boxes and we spent four days and when it came time to leave, it's like I don't want to leave. It's so serene and so peaceful and it's on a hundred acres And it's I did one night did a Facebook video. It wasn't really a video because it was dark, but I had my window open and you could hear frogs and stuff outside, And it's outside a small town too. However, it's 30 minutes from Lawrence, probably 30 minutes from Kansas City, an hour at the most. So I have some new resources.
Catherine Daniels:And you'll have an opportunity to build your tribe, your network of people, and I mean. It's a very bittersweet feeling, i'm sure, but at the same time it's a new lease on life And it just sounds like it's going to be absolutely perfect for you.
Susan Bloom:I think so Yeah.
Catherine Daniels:Is there anything on your heart that is coming to you that maybe you would like to share with the audience about anything you've been through or ways for people to overcome some of these experiences, that maybe you have tools or something that helped you.
Susan Bloom:But whatever is coming to you that you might want to share, Honestly, the best thing I could have done was the equine gestalt work. We have a big herd of people that are very supportive of everyone in the program And I hope to bring that kind of support to caregivers and cancer patients and doctors alike, along with my horses.
Catherine Daniels:Yeah, it's really beautiful that you had that opportunity to do that. Was there any other tools or any other things that you did to help yourself? What did you do for self care? Did you journal or just take a walk?
Susan Bloom:I was not a big journaler. I was walking when I was home, twice a day. The horses were several blocks, four or five blocks away, i think it was a half a mile. So I would walk out there twice a day to feed them and back And I started getting massages. I had been having some acupuncture as well And those are things that Self care is kind of a funny thing. It's different things to different people. I have to say it was as much the people in the touched by a horse herd that were a wonderful support system Through all that and sense.
Catherine Daniels:Yeah, It sounds like in so many different ways. This whole embodiment of a decade just transformed you as a person, your life, your children, I mean it's really. It's a difficult journey, but what you've turned it into is absolutely beautiful at the same time.
Susan Bloom:Thank you.
Catherine Daniels:Yeah, i mean, that's definitely something that I am feeling from this entire conversation And I'm just very, very in awe of your ability to articulate and communicate what you shared with us, and thank you for your courage and thank you for your transparency, because I know someone needed this, they needed to hear this And, if anything, just give them hope and help with their own healing process. So, thank you very much, susan, really appreciate it.
Susan Bloom:Thank you, i had never. It never occurred to me that it's been a decade.
Catherine Daniels:Yeah, yeah, and I always ask my guests one final question as we're wrapping up the show. If I were to find your earth angel feather off on the ground and I picked it up, what would your message to the world be?
Susan Bloom:I live every day in the moment, because you never know what might happen next. And that's kind of what we try to do in Gestalt is to help people live in the moment to reduce some of that trauma. So live in the moment, in the present moment. Listen to the rain. I can hear the rain outside right now.
Catherine Daniels:Yeah, and throughout our interview, it was very apparent to me that that was how you are living, because you didn't put anything like five steps ahead. It was always just right here, right now, This is what we're working with, this is what we're going to do. So I think that is very powerful coming from you, and just so appreciate you, so appreciate everything you shared and just thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Susan Bloom:Thank you for the opportunity to be here.
Catherine Daniels:You're very welcome And, for my audience, this is Catherine Daniels, with Retreat to Peace, reminding you to live your authentic life with peace. And, as always, retreat to Peace and we'll see you next time.