If not for the red, white and blue sign along North Carolina Highway 306, you might miss the Valor Horses for Heroes site in Grantsboro, but its understated entrance serves as an introduction to the tranquility found here. 

Tucked behind a short, unpaved road with a 5-mph speed limit sits a large beige house with an inviting open door and horses grazing in fields behind it. 

Created by Navy veteran Kenneth Palmer in June 2021, and joined by co-creator and best friend Michael McClain by the end of that year, the therapy organization offers a variety of services including equine assisted psychotherapy, with a focus on helping military personnel, veterans and first responders. 

Palmer, who was working as a firefighter paramedic at age 19, was inspired to join the Navy in 2003 because of the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I just kind of decided that I wanted to really do whatever I could to bring as many Marines home as possible,” Palmer said. He initially wanted to enlist with the Marines, but it was the Navy that was in need of medics.

Over the next 15 years of service Palmer worked as an independent duty corpsman, serving in a similar capacity to that of a physician assistant or nurse practitioner. He went on to serve as a battalion surgeon, a Navy medical officer and a ​​senior medical officer. Palmer saw four deployments, including three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, flying out of Cherry Point each time.

While in the Navy, Palmer began to notice a pattern with his mental health patients. He routinely made referrals for therapy, and the patients often came back to him with a similar answer about how the session went. 

“They would say, ‘Look doc, the person was nice enough, but I'm not going back.’ And I would just say, ‘Ok, like, what happened?’ And they'd say, ‘Well, it's just talking about this stuff isn't going to do anything, and as much as I liked the person, they did not have your background or my background. And I can't go there with somebody that hasn't done that.’”

These incidents, combined with Palmer’s experience as a volunteer firefighter and work in law enforcement, shaped his interest in creating a therapy service. And he wasn’t having much luck finding services that could handle complex post-traumatic stress disorder or other trauma processing therapies.

Palmer, who himself went through eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, found the experience transformative.

“I had been greatly affected by traumatic stuff myself, and I thought it was just kind of something to carry, just what it was,” he said. “And then when I went to my own treatment, I was introduced to EMDR. I moved into desensitization processing and trauma processing. And kind of through my own treatment, I realized, Ok, you don't have to have that stuff affect you forever.”

At Valor Horses for Heroes, as you step into the house that was converted to a therapy office, you first notice your feet sink into the plush red carpet. Past the kitchen, the space opens to a cozy couch and television to keep you occupied while you wait, with patriotic decorations strung around the room. A large window overlooks the equine partners grazing and resting in the shade.

Palmer, who is tall, with a scruffy beard and soft eyes, speaks with a secure confidence. Talking in a low, almost raspy voice, he brings a seasoned patience to his descriptions of the building and the grounds. 

M, a patient of Palmer’s who wished to remain anonymous for this story, has been a firefighter paramedic for 12 years. “You know, it can be a hard job. But it's very rewarding,” M said.

Traditional therapy didn’t really stick for M, who said they encountered a lack of understanding. Now, working through EMDR therapy has made a big difference, M said. 

“I definitely feel like (Palmer) understands where I'm coming from with certain things,” M said. “And I think it's all good. It just depends on what I'm feeling. And it's kind of the (stigma) that goes with it, mental health and the societal issues in general. But I don't feel that here. I feel like everybody understands it.”

That sentiment was echoed by R, another patient who wished to remain anonymous, speaking with Palmer for a telehealth visit. A retired sergeant who spent 21 years in the Marine Corps, R found that in his later years with the service, it was requiring too much of him, and holding him back from his personal goals. 

“I found myself telling people I have to retire,” R said. “And they would say, ‘Well what do you mean you have to retire?’ And my response was, I have to retire to be the father and the husband that I've always wanted to be.”

While in the Marines, R attended some therapy, but found the services lacking; and addressing the challenges he was experiencing was a struggle. “I'm not trying to talk badly about Navy medicine,” he said. “But there are certain constraints and there are limitations on what some of the Navy docs have in their toolbox and what they're able to utilize, right? And so I think a lot of it just kind of becomes talk therapy.”

Those sessions did involve EMDR therapies, but R found the treatment caused him to relive his experiences, instead of helping him process them. 

This changed when he began to work with Valor, where he was referred to by Veteran's Affairs. Palmer pushed R to try EMDR therapy again, and though he was initially hesitant, R tried again with Palmer’s help.

“I walked away from that experience seeing positive effects, and I continue to see positive effects from it,” R said.

A session with the horses

Over in the stables, Casey Bennington-Palmer, Kenneth’s wife, led an equine assisted psychotherapy session. 

Bennington-Palmer, who began riding horses at age 5, studied animal science at Berry College and therapeutic horsemanship at Lander University. She also competed on an intercollegiate equestrian team. With her background and Kenneth’s interest and exposure to the animals from friends in the military, EAP was quickly integrated into the practice.

Beginning the session Bennington-Palmer made her way from the dark stables to the sun-drenched fields where the horses roamed. She explained that the therapy was less about the interactions between patient and therapist, and more about the patient and horse, though she occasionally jumps in with “motivational interviewing” to get patients to explore their thoughts and feelings.

“Someone may come out and be dealing with a lot of anxiety and then kind of notice, well, that horse kind of looks anxious,” she said. “Ok, well, let's explore what ‘anxious’ is doing out here, and so we really externalize what's happening in the client's internal world.” 

Getting personal

Out on the dirt during my visit, I soon found myself face to face with multiple horses who had  varying reactions to me. Some trotted over, curious to say hi to the newcomer, while others continued resting in the shade, possibly weary or cautious.

“Horses are fantastic facilitators of healing for trauma — for a lot of different reasons,” Bennington-Palmer said. “The primary (one) being that they are primal, so even though they are cute, they're very aware of their environment and every change that happens in it.” 

At the start of the session, Bennington-Palmer asked me about a large white horse that had come over, and what I noticed about its behavior. She asked me to examine the other horses and their reactions to my presence, and then she invited me to interact with them. 

Soon after, she asked me to connect the interactions to my own personal experiences. I recalled my time in musical theater, drawing parallels between the attention from the horses and the eyes of an audience. I saw how theater eventually became a discomfort to me because of that kind of attention, and I came to an understanding of my own boundaries. 

Following this self-examination, Bennington-Palmer had me do an exercise creating a representation with a variety of props. After I created a depiction of my time in college and the diverging paths I’d chosen, one of the horses came over and began yawning. Bennington-Palmer explained this is part of their parasympathetic nervous system, a response to my stress from retelling the experience.

“Sometimes we get really good at lying to ourselves about how we're feeling,” she said. “But animals know, especially free animals that are really concerned with all the little things that are important for their own safety and their herd's safety. So they can help bring awareness to a lot that's happening.” 

The session concluded with Bennington-Palmer asking me to examine the time I had spent with the horses. My main takeaway was reflection, taking the time to breathe and notice what is going on around you, and being aware of your impact on yourself and on others.

A growing practice

Valor Horses for Heroes now has 15 clinicians in three locations: Jacksonville, Morganton and the main office in Grantsboro. In addition to eye movement desensitization and reprocessing  as well as equine assisted psychotherapy, Valor also offers cognitive behavioral therapy.

Palmer encourages people to try the specialized trauma therapy.

“​​You don't have to disappear into a bottle, you don't have to hide it from your family, you don't have to put it on your family and you don't have to just carry it until you die,” he said. “I think the biggest thing I hope people get, and what I want people to know, is that there are ways that you can connect to those memories, experience that emotion, and resolve them so that you don't have to continue to do that for the rest of your life.” 

For more information, go to valorhorses.com, call 252-631-8150 or email [email protected].