Nestled in the Black Hills, Sacred Mountain Retreat Center is starting its fifth year as a nonprofit organization supporting veterans and first responders. In the last four years, the center has hosted 160 people of all walks of life and parts of the country.
Jerrid Gevin, the president of Sacred Mountain Retreat Center, explained the services the center offers to our community’s heroes.
“We bring veterans and first responders in from all over the nation,” said Gevin. “We have equine therapy, we do blacksmithing, leather work, yoga therapy, massage therapy.
It’s just a spot and a place for people to come for quiet, for downtime, to be able to visit and interact and share stories with other like-minded veterans who have maybe gone through some of the same similarities, tragic incidents.”
The organization runs on a mentor/mentee basis, encouraging individuals with similar experiences to come together and bear one another’s burdens.
“We don’t have any doctors or clinicians on staff, it’s all volunteers and mentors,” said Gevin. “In today’s society, veteran and first responder suicide is, you know, well over 22 a day, and I just felt that there was a need to come up with a program that could help give back to the men and women that have paid the ultimate sacrifice.”
According to Gevin, the retreat center is a peaceful place where “the Hills heal the heroes.”
“Participants are provided a cost free seven-day program, which creates a safe place for them to let their guard down and begin to heal,” said Gevin.
Sonya Orr, a mentor and alumna of the Sacred Mountain Retreat Center, shared how the program helped her through some of the most challenging moments of her life, and how she hopes to help others by volunteering at the center.
“For me, this retreat gave me a second chance at life,” said Orr. “When I came through last year, I was at a pretty low point in my life. I actually had planned to take my own life earlier that spring. So, when I came through, I was at a breaking point in my life, where to me life just wasn’t worth living. So, when I left Sacred Mountain Retreat Center, I left with like a sense of hope, a sense of worth. So, for me, being able to leave here with that, like a newfound life again and that sense of peace in that sense of worth, it’s like this whole new world just opened up for me.”
Orr said she had suffered from PTSD from both her jobs in the military and the civilian sector, but after participating in Sacred Mountain’s program, she began to feel like herself again.
“It just was a pretty amazing experience. Just from everything I’ve learned from here and being able to take that experience, and now being able to bring it back here as a mentor and to watch and guide and help other attendees get through their demons and their traumas— it’s a pretty amazing experience. For me, that brings me so much joy and it just kind of fills my life with so much more hope and peace. And that’s all I can ask for, is being able to continue to do this. Getting a second chance at life that I didn’t think I could get is a pretty amazing experience.”
Brian Green, a current attendee, has been enrolled in the program for just three days, and is already noticing a sense of community cultivated at Sacred Mountain.
“This program has been amazing in the last three days,” said Green. “Just the atmosphere that we’re in up here. The things we get to do with people in therapy and with blacksmithing, massage exercise. Just kind of like a family environment where we cook meals together, we clean up together, we laugh together and we cry together. The big component for me is being able to talk about what I am going through, what I’ve gone through, and be in the company of people who are and have experienced the same thing as me. Just being able to tell my story and have people say, ‘I understand, or ‘I’ve been there. I’m still going there.’ This has been the best therapy for me. Period.”
Tommy Voorhis, another volunteer at the retreat center, explained some of the benefits of equine therapy.
“So, yeah, what we do with the horses down here is, in a matter of four days, we go from ground zero with the horse,” said Voorhis. “We start with the very basics with the horse and show the people what goes into working with the horse and how a horse’s mind works. We find a lot of parallels between the psychology of a horse and our psychology and how we deal with people, because horses kind of deal with each other in kind of a similar way.”
Karen Atkinson, current attendee at the center, shared how much Sacred Mountain’s care and attention has meant to her during her time in the program.
“People in the military get used to taking care of each other like we take care of ourselves. But when organizations like this— who are people who are not military— want to take care of us, it really is very heartwarming, and that means a lot to the community, our community. So, we really appreciate that.”
In addition to the profound sense of community, the center provides attendees with opportunities to explore and experience new things in a safe environment.
“It’s given me an opportunity to do things that I would have never done,” said Atkinson. “I mean, obviously my mobility would keep me from being out in the woods, and I don’t have the
ability to come and do this, and organizations like this make it possible for me to just get out of my, you know, out of my home and get out of bed and actually do something and participate and meet other people and find out that I’m not the only person going through struggles. Everyone else has similar struggles. And, you know, if we reach out to our community, we can get through that together.”
For more information about the program or to sponsor an attendee, visit Sacred Mountain Retreat Center’s website here.
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