The Power of Trusting Your Lived Experience with Savanah McCarty

Savanah McCarty is a cowgirl, social worker, non-profit founder, ranch boss, and advocate for the responsible use of plant medicine to heal trauma and treat mental health issues.

The owner of S+S Stables Equine Center for Mental Health in Bozeman, MT, Savanah’s journey - from creating her dream job as founder and executive director of a successful non-profit equine therapy program in Northern California to dealing with debilitating depression and anxiety so intense she resigned and followed the call to move to the rugged heart of Montana, to healing from a devastating miscarriage and subsequent accident that left her near death - is a journey of learning to trust herself and her own lived experience to guide her to her life’s mission.

“You can’t work in your pain anymore. You can’t look at your childhood trauma every single day anymore. You’re past that. Move on.”

This is a conversation with a woman who embodies agency, authority, and action. Savanah is bold, brave, direct, and unapologetic about who she is and what she believes. She’s also very thoughtful about what it means to listen to your own voice - and act on it.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Savanah’s return to feeling love and grief after a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and near-death experience
• growing out of her life-long dream position as founder of a California non-profit and the inner journey that led to starting a business and finding community in Montana
• Savanah’s past as a foster youth and the healing power of horses that inspired her journey with equine therapeutic services
• her experience with debilitating depression and anxiety as the public face of a non-profit and her journey towards alternative healing modalities
• the brave choice to move to Montana and the physical reality of learning how to survive
• getting in touch with the rhythms of the seasons and the gift of being forced inward in the winter, and the writing that came out of being alone
• the beginnings of Savanah’s plant medicine journey and how it led her to choosing herself for the first time in her life
• how we recreate the situations that need to be healed
• the power of acting with integrity - choosing to be in a place where self-experience is not something to be hidden
• S+S Stables’ all-female crew of ranch hands and how that came to be
• the irreplaceable knowledge of lived experience
• the resilience that comes what learning what you’re made of in challenging circumstances and in taking on great responsibility
• the movement towards alternative and experiential healing modalities and the value of therapeutic horse experiences
• the power of community and feeling accepted for being her true self for the first time in her life
• the revelation of pregnancy in healing the mother wound and the anguish of miscarriage
• the accident that led to a near-death experience and coma, and the community who rose to the need and wrapped her in care while taking care of her business and 30 head of horses
• Savanah’s choice to quit opiate pain meds and begin plant medicine treatment, and the importance of guidance and support on the plant medicine path
• how anxiety expands or contracts depending on exposure
• the fear of getting back on the horse and the strategies Savanah used to come back to her touchstone
• when to fish or cut bait on your life’s mission
  

Find Savanah on Instagram @thevelvetspur and @ssstables_bozeman

and on her website S+S Stables

Links mentioned in this episode:

We didn’t talk about this on the recording, but Savanah recommended Dr. Dan Engle and his book A Dose of Hope: A Story of MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy which you can find on AbeBooks and on Scribd. Very excited to read it!

Shout-outs:

Sharon Blackie and Hagitude

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