Behind the equine coach, there is Véronique Fanard
'' We define ourselves by what we do, not by who we are. ''
That was the first thing Véronique Fanard said to me. I had just asked her to introduce herself without talking about her job or her horses, just her. The question made her smile, then hesitate. Because it catches us exactly where we have learned to hide: behind what we do. She took her time. And what came out was nothing like a pitch.
'' I am someone who is highly sensitive. I feel things enormously. ''
And then a deep need for calm, for silence, what she calls '' the flip side of high sensitivity ''. A contemplative. The kind to spend ten minutes on the colours of a sky, to notice details no one else does.
A wood overrun with blue
'' When you think of yourself as a child, what is the first image that comes to mind? ''
She answers right away: a wood. In Belgium, as a little girl. She would go horseback riding through the Bois de Halle, and in spring the ground disappeared under wild hyacinths. A blue carpet as far as the eye could see, and it smelled wonderful.
'' It was magnificent. I have never found that anywhere else. ''
A little girl in the middle of the flowers, on a horse. She did not have the words back then. But it is all already there, in that image: the animal, and that need not to be shut in that has never let go of her.
The horse, her first freedom
Horses have been there since she was nine. What lit her up so much, so young, about the horse? The eldest of a family of four, with a father who was a doctor and often away, and a mother who worked part time, took care of the house and the children. Riding became her bubble.
'' It was the space where I could be whoever I wanted, without judgment. The horse accepts you exactly as you are, in the present moment. ''
She connected quickly with the animal. With the world of the stable too, she spent her days there, helping the younger ones, riding the horses nobody wanted. She had her place. She felt understood. That ease with animals, she had it long before she understood she was highly sensitive.
I ask her what riding out taught her that the ring did not. The ring is structured, closed. Good for the basics, but the school horse goes round in circles and at some point it made her sad. Riding out is another world. Nature, the unexpected. The horse that remains a prey animal, on alert, ready to shy at a passing car or a slamming door. You really have to be calm to take it out there. And there are those moments she tells with a shiver in her voice, the full gallop, when you let everything go and the horse takes off at a wild speed.
'' That is where you feel truly free. And what is crazy is how unaware of the danger I was. ''
She fell, she broke a leg. Nothing made her back off, she got right back on. What she loved most was being out front. Leading with the horse.
Leaving Belgium
She left Belgium more than twenty years ago, at twenty-five, for love, for a Quebecer. What did she keep from over there, I ask, that still follows her? The tastes, mostly. The pleasure of the table, which comes more from her family than from her country. And the accent, that odd mix that gives her away on both sides of the Atlantic. She laughingly describes herself as linguistically stateless.
'' I am stateless. Here, they tell me I have an accent; over there too. ''
She ended up truly integrating, with time and studies partly redone here. But if she managed it, it is mostly because she stopped comparing Quebec to Belgium. And that, she understood quickly: when you compare, you do not live, you do not integrate.
'' If you always compare, you will always be disappointed, because it will never be the same thing as before. It is about bringing your own colour. ''
Fifteen years a notary
A notary from 2007 to 2022, specialized in personal law, mostly wills and estates. So I ask her the question running through my head: how do you last fifteen years in a frame that rigid, when you have, as she puts it, freedom tattooed on your heart? Her answer surprised me. It was what she loved in it that kept her there.
People. The encounter. Discovering a new story with every file. '' I am so curious about how people work. There is not just one way of doing things. '' That was her little space of freedom in a profession that did not leave much of it. And the trust placed in her, in fragile moments. Walking someone all the way to the question of their own death is not something you confide to just anyone.
For eight years, she sat on the admissions committee of the Chamber of Notaries, the one that reviews the applications of foreign candidates who want to become notaries in Quebec. The very one she had gone through, when she arrived. It got her out of her office, it had her meeting people.
The rest, though, weighed on her. Always at the end of the line, explaining and re-explaining her role. The accounting, the many laws, the rules of ethics. And underneath it all, something she could not yet name.
'' My colleagues looked at me like an alien. Véronique, calm down, it is not a big deal. And me, I reacted enormously. ''
Annabelle
Horses had disappeared from her life for years. She built a career as a notary, her children arrived, and there was no time left to ride. What she did not see back then is that she had put away a part of herself at the same time, the part that rode at nine, the part that felt free.
They come back for good in 2016. And a year later, she buys her first mare, Annabelle. She is the one who stirs her up inside, still today, nine years later.
'' I am a notary, and then I am a mom, and that's it. It is not true. Underneath, there is someone. ''
And there, one of those synchronicities she believes in. At a continuing education session of the Chamber of Notaries, a woman passes around Belgian candies. She comes from the same village as her, over there. Véronique offers to go eat together to continue the conversation, there is something to dig into, she feels it. And that woman happens to be going off to train in equine coaching in Arizona.
She ends up offering to be a guinea pig for her first practice sessions with the horses. She gives a lot of her time to it. And that is where it starts to shake her up, in her head: those sessions force her to look at where she is really going. Is it the notary profession, for the rest of her life? Every time, the answer comes back to the same place. The horses. And the taste for helping others.
All of this pushes her to want to understand herself for real. She throws herself into NLP training, at first, just to understand herself better, and she goes all the way, to the coach certification. Through the exercises, something finally comes back up.
'' I realized that I was actually absorbing other people's emotions. It is mind-blowing, but that was it. ''
High sensitivity, 15 to 20 % of people are, after all, and it explained why she was always on edge. And she drew a very simple reflex from it: when she feels an emotion, to ask herself whether it is hers or the other person's.
'' Does this belong to me, or does it belong to them? ''
Before, she ran on autopilot, without ever asking the question. Nature helps her as much as the horses to come back down.
The turning point
The pandemic makes the cup overflow. Clients at the end of their rope, the children at home. The sponge was full. She ends up resigning from her notary position, the one she had held for ten years, and finds another one working from home, and it is that job that will let her follow her coach training. Then, in September 2022, Annabelle falls seriously ill. She has to be treated three times a day. Véronique cannot keep up: she also leaves the remote job and launches her business. Before the end of the year, she has left the Chamber of Notaries for good.
There was a night when she thought she would have to have her put down. The call to the vet, the letting go. And that very evening, a stranger tells her: no, wait, there is something else to try, I am sending someone. That woman ends up offering Annabelle a boarding spot at her place. Véronique moves the mare there. And the little farm next door is for sale, the one they had been looking for for three years. In May 2023, they go for it.
Annabelle is thirteen. The illness has weakened her a lot, but she has a good life in her paddock, with her friends nearby, without being pushed around. '' She brought me to where I am. I will be eternally grateful to her. '' A great coach on her path. More than a lot of people, she says.
In the meantime, she found a part-time notary job again, working from home, to secure the financial side, because horses are expensive.
Animals that do not lie
I stop her to be sure I understand correctly, because I had pictured it wrong: do people ride the horses? No. Not the clients, not her. No halter, no rope. The sessions happen in the paddock, where the horses are at home. In freedom. At first, she had tried with the halter and the rope. Her horses refused to move forward. She took it all off.
'' And there, I got the real answers. If they come, it is for a reason. If they do not come, it is for a reason too. ''
That is where it gets powerful. The dog wants to please us. The horse is another matter. It is a prey animal. It does not need us and it does not know how to lie. It becomes the exact mirror of who we are, what we are living, in the moment. Someone stirred up inside, at odds with themselves, the horse senses it as danger. It may move away or, on the contrary, come toward the person, depending on its own history and its own character. But either way, it will go, with no detour, straight to what we have been avoiding for years.
Why does she insist on the difference between equine coaching and equine therapy? Because what she does is not therapy and that matters to her. Quebec's professional code is clear on what a coach is allowed to do. She is neither a psychologist nor a psychotherapist. Coaching starts from today to move toward tomorrow, without digging into old wounds. And her time in a professional order left her a rigour, a reflex of confidentiality and ethics that still follows her.
I ask her for a concrete example. What does it look like, a horse that goes '' straight to the sore spot ''? She tells me about a session. A client who arrives with a goal: to learn to think of herself a little more. They step into the paddock. The horses are grazing far off, not the least bit interested. The client walks forward, wants to connect with them. Nothing. Zero.
'' How do you feel? '' Véronique asks her. '' I feel ignored. I find that a bit selfish.''
Projection, for sure, a horse knows nothing about selfishness. Véronique explains it to her. A horse eats roughly sixteen hours a day. Its own needs come first. In freedom, it does what it wants and that is exactly what makes it revealing. Then she turns to her client and she asks the real question.
'' And you, do you think about your own needs or do you always put them aside? ''
And there, it breaks open all at once.
'' Oh my God. I never put myself first. It is always other people before me. ''
It is only at that moment that a horse comes closer. The emotion has come out, the client has become coherent inside and the animal senses it. It comes and rests its muzzle on her wrist, right on a tattoo. One word: Dream. '' Tell me about your dreams '', Véronique says. And the client realizes she had forgotten one along the way. Both horses come closer.
Legitimacy
Is there even a recognized certification in equine coaching? My question touches a sensitive point. For a long time, it held her back: she has no training in it. The training exists, but it is not recognized anywhere, and neither is coaching, really. So she did not dare bring her horses into her practice, even knowing full well that was where she was most in her place.
It was three coaching sessions that unlocked it. Her coach asked her to list all her training, with and without horses. All of NLP, up to the coach certification. Equine language and behaviour, backed by science. Nonviolent communication, too. And even yoga nidra and equine nutrition. Once the list was done, the obvious jumped out at her: she is ready and she had been for quite a while.
So she stopped justifying herself. She built her own method, from NLP and from an instinct she learned, over the years, to listen to.
Stepping outside the frame
I remind her of what made her decide to do this offbeat meeting, this interview with me. A piece of my own path, read on my site, that idea of brilliant professionals stuck in frames too narrow for them. She had recognized herself in it right away. A recognition I understand well, having left a rigid world too, in banking, to make my own way. So I ask her: what is the message she wants to pass on to someone who feels shut in right there, right now?
'' The notary profession is extremely rigid. And me, I have freedom tattooed on my heart. My message is: everything is possible. ''
Everything is possible, she holds to that. For her, it comes down to courage, to the boldness of daring. Privilege has nothing to do with it. '' Privilege belongs to the person living it. '' With equal chances, there are those who dare and those who stay on the edge. And she knows one thing, about the frame we end up leaving: once you are out, you never really go back in.
'' Even if I wanted to go back full time, I could not anymore. It is too much. ''
I then bring her to her mission, her why. And that takes her straight back to her estate files. She saw, from too close, how fast a life can tip over in one second.
'' I have seen families torn apart because the father retires and two days later dies on a golf course in Florida, after a whole life spent working himself to death. ''
People who end up incapacitated young. The gentleman who, once in the residence, no longer recognizes anyone. Personal law put her in front of the fragility of everything, day after day. That is where it comes from. '' Life is not about enduring. It is about living. '' Slowing down, enjoying it day by day. Not putting it off to a retirement we are not even sure we will live to see.
Her mission, she states it plainly: to offer others the freedom she did not have, as early as possible. As a little girl, she dreamed of being a mounted police officer. Helping people, but in uniform, inside the frame. Her parents strongly suggested she study law first. She regrets nothing. '' I am the sum of all those learnings. I am coming back to what I wanted, maybe a little late. '' With everything the detour taught her, though.
And for those who feel crushed by everything happening in the world, she has an answer on her own scale. '' One human at a time. It starts with yourself. '' Reconnecting with yourself, without it turning into selfishness. Because you cannot be well with others if you are not already well with yourself.
Powerful gentleness
Toward the end, I ask her a slightly offbeat question. If one of her horses could say a single sentence about her to a client, what would it be? She thinks of her mare right away.
'' You are going to see what powerful gentleness she is capable of. ''
She who described herself as '' blunt '', direct, and still is at times, has softened through contact with her horses. Especially through the third one, her sentinel, gentle as can be. Her three horses, for her, are three pieces of herself. Annabelle is power, perseverance. That strength to live despite illness. The second is the quiet leader. The third, vigilance and gentleness at the same time.
'' If you are able to carry any message through gentleness, it gets through. '' That may be her signature. The precision of a notary, the gentleness of a horse, in the same person.
One last offbeat one: if freedom had a smell? Lavender, without hesitation. The fields of Provence from her youth. And a detail that is very her: as an essential oil, concentrated, she finds it too strong. It is outside, in the open air, that she loves it. A bit like her freedom.
What struck me, listening to her, is that she does for herself what she does for her clients. That high sensitivity she carried for a long time like a flaw, she has made it her finest tool. That frame she left, she first drew her best qualities from it. Only afterward did she move beyond it. And that freedom she offers the world, it took her forty years to give it to herself.
At the end of our meeting, she was the one who thanked me. Telling her story gave her perspective. You never see your own path when you are right in the middle of it, living it. That may be the heart of these meetings. Giving yourself the time to look back, because life moves fast.
There is that little girl, in a Belgian wood full of blue hyacinths. And there is the woman of today, in her paddock in the Laurentians, with her three horses who let her cheat on nothing. Between the two, fifteen years in a more rigid frame and a good deal of courage. And the same idea, from one end to the other, the one she wants to pass on to anyone who feels shut in: that everything is possible, if you dare to step outside the frame.
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To follow Véronique Fanard
Equine coaching, NLP coaching and Yoga nidra - Véronique supports, in the Laurentians, those who want to reconnect with themselves and find their inner freedom.
Website · Curious to know more, here is a video (French version only)
You will find other portraits of perfectly atypical and profoundly formidable professionals on Les Rendez-vous Déjantés | adnevolution.ca/en/les-rendez-vous-dejantes
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