Today we’d like to introduce you to Rebecca J Hubbard
Hi Rebecca J, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
From a very young age, I have loved two things passionately: animals and Texas A&M University. My first birthday gift was a pup, and from that moment forward, my relationship with and love of animals was the driving force in my life. I was lucky enough to love and know many different types of animals, from cats and dogs to wild animals like raccoons, squirrels, possums, and birds. I have a deep affinity for cats and horses and was blessed to grow up with both. As a child, I thought my love of animals meant I should be a veterinarian, so I went to Texas A&M to study veterinary medicine. However, I struggled with math and chemistry and decided to change my major to education. I didn’t understand why God would give me the gift of understanding and relating well to animals and not give me the gifts I needed to care for them. I thought my dream of working with animals would never come true.
I left Texas A&M with a degree in Curriculum and Instruction and taught life sciences in middle and high school. I loved teaching! But something was missing that I could not put my finger on. I decided to return to school. I received my master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, and focused on helping people overcome traumatic events. I immediately excelled at helping people. At the time, I did not see that the skills I developed as a young person working with animals helped me read and understand people well, too.
Like many clinicians my age, I cut my clinical teeth in community mental health, providing services to youth at risk of out-of-home placement and helping mothers who struggled with significant mental illness. In 2002, the agency I worked for received a SAMHSA grant to become a part of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, and I was the lead clinician for the project. As part of this project, I participated in the national dialogue about the impact of childhood trauma. I co-authored two papers, “White Paper: Complex Trauma in Children and Adolescents,” National Child Traumatic Stress Network, Complex Trauma Taskforce, and “Complex Trauma in Children & Adolescents,” published in Psychiatric Annals. I helped create the Child Development Community Policing Program in Clearwater, Florida, which pairs a clinician with a police officer to respond to violent crimes where children are present. Then, I ran the program for the first five years. I had the honor of working with and learning from leaders in the field of child traumatic stress. These opportunities took me to work at the leading center for treating childhood trauma in North Carolina, the Center for Child & Family Health, where I worked for eight years. I honed my skills during those years by working with the youngest victims. My ability to listen with my body and read subtle non-verbal cues, which I had learned through my relationships with animals, helped me excel.
I loved helping people overcome difficult things in their lives! I was excelling professionally, yet animals were on the periphery. In 2013, I was searching for a treatment model for older children who had experienced domestic violence that focused on the child-parent relationship. My internet search led me to Natural Lifemanship™, a treatment model focused on treating trauma through relationships. Natural Lifemanship™ is a type of Equine Assisted Psychotherapy and an experiential treatment model in which children and adults engage with an equine (horse), mental health counselor, and equine professional to reach treatment goals specific to their needs and challenges. Within a few months, I attended my first Natural Lifemanship™ training and began changing the way I provided treatment to individuals and families. Finally, my desire to work with people and animals was coming into focus.
In 2017, Reccia Jobe, my business partner, myself, and two other women formed Pecan Creek Ranch to help people heal from trauma by developing healthy relationships with horses. A person’s journey at Pecan Creek Ranch begins with individuals experiencing supportive relationships with the therapy team (mental health professional and equine professional), then learning how to develop a healthy, connected relationship with themselves and a horse they choose. While developing their friendship, individuals interact with their horse friends the same way they do with others, allowing PCR therapists to quickly help them identify their problems within themselves and with others. Often, these problems have deep roots and were created long before any awareness existed. This creates patterns of being and functioning in the mind and body that may no longer benefit the person’s life. PCR therapists help individuals identify these patterns and provide them with opportunities to learn and practice new skills and ways of relating to themselves and others. The skills and principles individuals learn in their relationship with their equine partner can then be applied to all human relationships.
My passion for working with animals took twenty-eight years to come to fruition. Where I thought a door had slammed shut in 1985, a window of opportunity had opened. I am doing work now that I could never have dreamed of then! Providing psychotherapy where horses are an integral part of the treatment is a dream come true. It combines my training and my first love. For the past eleven years, I have focused on helping people and animals overcome hardships and trauma while learning to develop healthy relationships with themselves and others. There is nothing like working with horses and people to help both live better lives. It is the most fulfilling and rewarding work because the horse and the person benefit from the relationship. No one is healing at the expense of another. This work allows me to use the skills I learned as a child working with animals, to listen with my body, read subtle non-verbal communication, and be deeply attuned to others. My love and passion have united!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
As with all things in life, there are ups and downs and, at times, significant hardship. But each struggle has made me stronger physically and mentally and more determined. I overcame many obstacles and struggles to get to where I am today. First, I had to overcome learning difficulties as a child and a belief that I was stupid and couldn’t learn. This played a part in my giving up on becoming a veterinarian because, deep down, I thought I wasn’t smart enough to do it. I didn’t hunker down and try to overcome my deficits. Instead, I moved on. I had to find the will to continue to strive when my dream of being a veterinarian was crushed. It was challenging. My whole self-concept was wrapped up in working with animals. I wanted to give up more times than I can count, and it took a lot of soul-searching to figure out what I was here to do.
In 2015, I decided to move back home to Texas to learn from and work with the founders of Natural Lifemanship™. The move was difficult, and at times, I thought I had made the wrong decision, leaving behind a life that was comfortable for a life full of uncertainty and promise. However, the move improved my skills and allowed me to work with Reccia Jobe, eventually leading to us creating a business. Our business has gone through difficult times, with founding partners deciding to leave the company and our business moving from Georgetown to Salado because of the massive development happening in the area. Keeping a small business running when the economy is struggling is challenging, especially since most people see therapy as a luxury instead of a necessity. However, every day, I focus on the importance of our work and how what we are doing changes individuals, our community, and the world.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Pecan Creek Ranch?
Pecan Creek Ranch (PCR) is an equine assisted services facility, which means we provide various services, from psychotherapy to coaching and professional development, that incorporate horses or other equines. We partner with horses to help individuals (ages five and up), families, couples, and teams learn and practice the principles that will create healing, safety, and success in their lives. Our services are relationship-focused (self, others, world) and informed by neurobiology and the functioning of each person’s unique nervous system. Through connected, attuned relationships, individuals develop new skills, new ways of thinking, and new ways of being. We are dedicated to transforming relationships within and between individuals, families, communities, and organizations of all sizes to unlock a world of joy, worthiness, love, healing, and untapped potential for all. All our services are based on interpersonal neurobiology, the principles of Natural Lifemanship™, and a deep and growing knowledge of trauma-informed care. All practitioners at Pecan Creek Ranch are trained or certified in Natural Lifemanship™, a Trauma-Informed Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy (TI-EAP). At PCR, we are not just talking about healing our relationships; we are practicing doing the things that heal our relationships and ourselves.
We are known for our unique view of how we understand behavior. We don’t see people as “bad” or “damaged.” We see them as doing their best in a difficult situation and needing specific support to improve their functioning. People and animals communicate through their behavior. Unlike animals, humans talk, which, in theory, should make helping them easier. But what people say sometimes clouds the picture, making understanding the problem harder. We focus on understanding the whole picture. A person’s words are a small part of how we understand what is happening with them. We listen deeply to their body and nervous system and how their body leads them to interact with themselves and others. Most often, people are living in a state of survival in their nervous systems from either a long-ago event stored in their body or a current situation. People are usually surprised to discover that their bodies feel unsafe.
Each individual is unique, and the issues that bring them to seek services are specific to them and their life experiences. We build our services around the needs of the individual or system we work with. We can provide services in longer time frames than other providers, ranging from multiple hours a day to several days at a time. Insurance companies usually only reimburse services provided at a 45-50-minute a-week rate, which is limiting for many individuals. Due to insurance companies’ limitations, we decided not to take insurance. We are a self-pay facility and, therefore, out-of-network for all insurances. Depending on how their treatment is structured, if people have out-of-network coverage, part or all of their services may be covered.
In the seven years we have been in business, Reccia and I are most proud of helping people who had lost all their hope and were on the brink of giving up put their lives back together and find happiness and fulfillment. Helping someone change their life impacts them and everyone that person interacts with and touches. There are no words to describe the awe we feel when we witness the strength and resiliency of our clients and their healing.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Growing up, I was not a risk taker. I wanted to color inside the lines and limit any chances of getting hurt or losing big. But I realized as I aged that I had to get outside my comfort zone if I wanted to change the world and impact people’s lives. Change does not come from a place of comfort and familiarity. To change, you must be uncomfortable. There is a balance, however, because if you are too uncomfortable, you will trigger your survival response, and your ability to think and make good decisions will be vastly compromised. So, while you must be uncomfortable to change, you also must be aware of your limits. Change comes from pushing yourself, challenging your beliefs, forging unlikely friendships, and taking the leap even if you can’t see where you will land.
Looking back at my life, I can pinpoint several significant risks that greatly impacted me. One of those risks was accepting a horse from my mama for my forty-seventh birthday, even though I could not afford to house and feed him then. This gift led to the work I am now doing, a children’s book, and a friendship that has profoundly changed my life. In 2015, I took two huge risks. I moved from a wonderful, secure job in North Carolina to a job back home in Texas to immerse myself in learning Natural Lifemanship. The first three years were miserable. I wanted to leave and return to my old life, but I knew that I needed to be here to learn what I wanted and needed to learn. My business is a direct result of that risk.
The second was submitting one of my children’s stories to a small publisher. I have always written stories for pleasure and to facilitate healing for children who were in therapy with me, but I never had the guts to seek publication. That risk resulted in my first book, “The Gift,” being published and paved the way for other publications. My second book, “Kindness in a Scary World” followed in 2017, and “I’m Drowning And Don’t Know How To Begin” a book I co-authored with Reccia Jobe came a few years later.
Last year, I was asked to co-write a chapter for a professional book in my field. Initially, I turned down the opportunity because I was afraid. I told myself I was not that type of writer. But after a long self-talk, I decided to do it and experience all the discomfort and self-doubt that came with it. The result of that risk was the chapter “Exploring Socio-emotional and Cognitive Development in Horses” that I wrote with Tim Jobe, one of the founders of Natural Lifemanship™, and his son, Tanner Jobe, in “Integrating Horses Into Healing: A Comprehensive Guide to Equine Assisted Services” (Elsevier, 2023). This chapter addressed issues that are not usually the focus of equine welfare. Hopefully, it will begin a conversation for change.
Even though the best things in my life have come from taking risks, I wouldn’t say I like to take them. Every day, I must fight against my instincts to protect and play it safe. I remind myself how my life has changed because of the risks I took and how my goal of changing the world one relationship at a time requires me to continue to take risks. So, every day, I try to find ways, big and small, to push myself out of my comfort zone and then breathe deeply.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.pecancreekeap.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pecancreekeap/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pecancreekeap
