The Godspeed Project helping Valley families with nontraditional grief support

PHOENIX — Megan MacIntosh lost her 18-year-old-son to a fentanyl overdose in January 2021.

MacIntosh’s whole family was in shock over the loss. She got her other two teenage kids into therapy after losing their brother, Chase Ellison, but traditional talk therapy wasn’t working for her 7-year-old daughter Sadie.

That’s when MacIntosh found horses as a way to cope and recover from trauma she wouldn’t wish on others.

“When I found horses, I was like, ‘oh, this might be a way that I can also help people,'” MacIntosh said. “And I just started to understand what it was that we were doing in these sessions and what it was I was feeling.”

What is The Godspeed Project?

The sessions inspired MacIntosh to provide her own equine grief support. The Godspeed Project began in January.

MacIntosh and her husband decided to buy a property and horses in Cave Creek to recreate the experience for other grieving families.

As a yoga instructor who also does guided meditations and sound baths, she felt like her skillset would translate naturally.

“I felt like those things could combine with horses, they’re all similar energies. They’re all very zen,” MacIntosh said. “And that’s what I felt grief needed, was like a big dose of zen that was free.”

MacIntosh took an equine assisted learning course and began to rescue horses from slaughter. She now cares for three horses and two mini ponies.

MacIntosh says she refuses to profit off mourning families because she’s been in the same position. She cares for the horses herself and is set to break even by the end of the year.

Who has benefitted from The Godspeed Project?

MacIntosh has opened her home to 17 grieving families sine Godspeed’s start. The equine visits are free of charge to everyone who visits.

Vanessa Orihuela was referred to The Godspeed Project by the New Song Center for Grieving Children. Her daughter, Daphanie, was diagnosed with multiple heart defects while still in the womb.

“I chose to continue my pregnancy knowing it was going to be hard because she’s my baby and I love her,” Orihuela said.

Daphanie passed away when she was just nine days old. Instead of focusing on her own grief, Orihuela, like MacIntosh, was worried about being there for her three grieving children. They participated in a family session at The Godspeed Project.

Orihuela described how it was healing to see her children laughing around the horses and watching the sunset.

“There can be beauty in it too,” Orihuela said. “There can be healing and there can be peace. And it doesn’t always have to be the ugliness that grief is,” Orihuela said.

When she felt like her children were finally happy, only then could she address her own grief and sit with it in that beautiful environment.

“It was amazing. It was like an experience that people need to go and feel for themselves because it is very healing,” Orihuela said.

Laine Munir is also a bereaved mother who participated in a family session at The Godspeed Project. She lost one of her twin boys, Aayan, to a brain tumor when her family was living in Rwanda at the end of 2022. He was only four years old.

Munir called The Godspeed Project a transformative experience. She brought her other son, Emil, to support sessions there and they anticipate on being regulars.

“The suffering is so intense that there often are no words and it’s really difficult to articulate what you’re experiencing,” Munir said. “But the beauty of the horses is that they don’t need any words.”

One in 10 Arizona children will experience the death of a parent or sibling by the age of 18, according to the Childhood Bereavement Estimation Model.

MacIntosh said the horses brought her back to life after she lost her son.

“You don’t know what you need until you check in,” MacIntosh said. “And to check in you need to just be in your body, be in nature, be real for a moment. Try everything you can try and be open to something new being just the thing.”