BY CHRISTOPHER S. PINEO
NAVAJO TIMES
CHINLE –– A father takes hold of a horse’s lead alongside the mother of his child.
Both have the same rope in their hand, but one parent holds a shorter rope as they guide the horse around a set of obstacles.
Jerome Towne, 50, of Chinle uses this equine therapy exercise to help parents understand how raising a child can be unpredictable, like a horse, no matter how well trained.
“We give the lead rope to both parents,” he said. “What they do is they have a trail. They go through that, and they have to guide the horse through all these obstacles.”
He said it shows how equality works in the home, where sometimes a situation does not allow for a perfect division of responsibility or time spent with children between two parents.
“Does the mother have more control and have to deal with kids more than the father, or is it the father that deals more with the kids?” he asked.
He said the exercise can frequently reveal a fear many mothers have when dealing with a son who could become aggressive.
“If the horse is a huge horse, a lot of times I have heard parents say, a mom say, ‘I’m afraid of this horse.’ What does that horse represent to you? A lot of times they will say, ‘My son. My son is huge. My son is big. I don’t know how to tell him not to do this,’” Towne said.
Currently, Towne works as a health educator with the Navajo Health Education Program under the Navajo Department of Health, but he also has 20 years of experience working with youth, young people, and families working to overcome addiction, alcoholism, or anger.
Equine therapy is one of the techniques he uses along with what he called “adventure-based programs,” that get people out into the wilderness for healing experiences. When someone completes a program and thanks him, he places the responsibility for the choice to heal, with the participant.
Featured last week in Your Story, Loren Anthony asked for a column on someone who helps kids with addiction. He wanted to ask how the counselor stays sober to maintain an example. Towne answered the question before I ask it.
He has not struggled with alcohol since he was young. He attributes blessings in his life story to setting him on the path to help children and young people overcome temptation as well.
“There’s social, crucial, and chronic sides of drinking,” he said. “I would say I was on the social and the crucial side.”
He drank with his friends — social. His drinking impacted elements of his life — crucial. But, he never became an addict — chronic.
He grew up in Chinle and worked at a Safeway in Phoenix after high school.
In 1986, he went for a job as a janitor with the NDOH. Instead, the interviewers saw potential in him for another position.
“After I applied and the interview was over, I was asked to come back over,” he said.
They asked him questions about drugs and alcohol, and ultimately offered him his first position as a counselor. He went on to work as a Children in Need supervisor, as a substance abuse counselor, and for a brief time in his own business called Hozhóogo Iina.
The first job set him on a path of two decades helping youth, families, and young people by laying out a path for them. Based on ancestral Navajo ways, he lets people he helps know that they have a path laid out for their whole life in the teachings he shares.
“When they are born on the east side they travel,” he said, pointing to the part of a circle between the east and south.
“Right here is where they need planning. This is where parents are supposed to not plan, but teach.” “Right here, there is a place to teach the kids, but a lot of parents don’t do that anymore,” he said.
As he explained this, he traced his finger on the table to outline the four directions. And he traces it so the person he explains it to can see and get the perspective from their angle, not from his. With the seasoned experience of a teacher of sorts, he made the brief lesson about uplifting the other by putting self aside — a perspective he maintains with those he helps. He said he runs into people he has helped sometimes.
He said those he helps choose the path, but only they can walk it.
“They say thank you, and I tell them the same thing,” he said. “It wasn’t me. You made the choice.”
When he finishes his time at his current position in December, he will return to his counseling business that takes the ancestral teachings as a guide — Hozhóogo Iina.