Work Cannot Save Us but Let's Still Try: Labor, Utopias, and Futurity at an Equine Therapy Farm

Equine therapy is a highly adaptable form of therapy, which has been shown to benefit people living with physical, cognitive, and emotional challenges and disabilities. At an equine therapy program in Eastern Pennsylvania, which I call “True Hearts,” children and adults with documented disabilities learn to ride horses as a tool for sharpening neurological functioning in cognition, body movement, organization, and attention levels to strengthen these functions off the horse, in their daily lives. An element of “daily lives” off the farm includes preparedness at school and towards possible employment opportunities. The question of employment animates this article: for therapy riders at True Hearts, employment opportunities, linked to both potential self-sufficiency and also a sense of self-worth, are available on the farm. This article asks what this employment looks like in practice and argues that such opportunities come at a cost for the full-time care workers at True Hearts, who erode their own health and wellbeing in service of their students. Throughout, I argue that workspaces cannot save us, in terms of any liberatory potential under capitalism. And yet, we still try, moving always in the direction of this horizon of possibility.