Healing Species

Founding of Healing Species

Through several years of legal research and personally conducting interviews with convicted violent offenders, Cheri Brown Thompson, founder and director of the Healing Species, discovered that not only did all of the violent offenders that she personally interviewed, but also all of those that she encountered through extensive literature reviews have two things in common: 1) they were abused as children and 2) they first acted out that abuse on the only victim more vulnerable than they, an animal. This realization led to the founding principles of the Healing Species, a program dedicated to ending the cycle of returning "violence for violence".

Thompson gave up practicing law, and now serves as the executive director of the Healing Species. Today, there is a waiting list of schools to be served, and Healing Species staff serves over 4,500 school children with the 11-week program each year in South Carolina. Healing Species also has satellite groups in several other states including: Arizona, Washington State, and Colorado.

Founding Principles

Crime is a learned behavior. It can be unlearned. Even children who have never been nurtured can learn “how to” nurture others and themselves, thus intercepting the cycle of violence, abuse, neglect, and crime.
Healing Species does not only address the problems of violence, truancy, and poor performance in school. Instead, Healing Species addresses the roots of these problems by dealing with issues of poverty, returning violence for violence, and gang related activities.
The Healing Species curriculum opens the eyes of children and teens by teaching and empowering them that they do not have to “give-up” or “drop-out”. There are other choices.
The lessons provide an epiphany for the children that they do not have to accept abuse; they do not have to join gangs; they do not have to sell drugs; and they do not have to fight their way through life.
Healing Species Character Education can literally lift these children from an environment of violence:by empowering children with age-appropriate awareness about abuse and providing tools for getting help if in abuse;
by making certain the children learn appropriate ways to deal with bullies; by providing avenues of resolving conflict without fighting; and by providing “hands on” experience with lessons in respect for the feelings of others, and gaining power, leadership, and esteem from practices in mercy instead of from bullying.
Once children gain empowerment in taking care themselves, the Healing Species opens their young eyes to ways of “making their heart strong” by teaching them how to practice responsibility, compassion, and empathy by reaching out to those around them.
The children learn first hand that – just like the visiting dogs nobody else wanted- that they are important and do have something to give.

Our Spiritual Higher Power

Our spiritual Higher Power, our Creator, our Lord is the only one who can really heal hearts and heal souls. We, at Healing Species, are merely the servants, the vessels, the ambassadors who deliver the message of hope, of peace, of love, and of a higher calling for our lives - all with the help of rescued dogs nobody else wanted - a voiceless, healing, species that can assist us in delivering God’s healing touch.

On this earth, the "cycle of crime," the returning of "hate for hate," can be intercepted through an intervention of practical training in the principles of love, mercy, forgiveness, of overcoming, of learning how to ask for and receive help if in abuse, and of learning to see things from the feelings of others. Who better to help us demonstrate and give children "hands on" experience with these sometimes new principles than beloved rescued dogs who were once unloved and unwanted, but who offer nothing but unconditional love despite all they’ve been through? And through learning compassion for them, comes an awareness of the possibility for a much better world in which these children must one day play a part.

What happens to us does not have to define us. We can define it and overcome it. All things can work for good.

Gravey's story

This is Gravey. She is happy today, but things weren't always so good for Gravey. Gravey now has a heated, air conditioned dog house with a human-sized door and has free run of 20 acres ofland. She has a family that loves her and takes good care of her. She has not always been this happy.

When Healing Species founder Cheri Thompson first found Gravey,
she looked like this:

She was covered with mange, had lost her fur and her whole body was like a giant scab.

Cheri had to pull over on the road to cry, promising, "I'll come back for you, Gravey."

Cheri named her Gravey because she was barely alive. She had one foot in the grave.

Gravey did not trust Cheri to pick her up and rescue her, so Cheri came back with food and water every day for the next 30 days. As the days wore on, Gravey would eat the food and drink the water and let Cheri get closer.

One day, when Cheri was feeding Gravey, a car drove up from behind. The people inside it pointed and said "Look, that's the lady who's been feeding that dog." You see, Gravey lived in somebody's yard. It was then that Cheri realized that the people responsible for Gravey could see Gravey with their eyes, but they couldn't see her with their hearts.

Cheri got permission to take Gravey home and get her medical care.

Gravey inspired Cheri to write the Healing Species curriculum. She never wanted anyone else to loose a piece of their heart. She wanted the teach children to always keep their heart.

Gravey helped Cheri teach the Healing Species lessons in South Carolina schools for a few years, but now Gravey is retired so she can run and play the rest of her life.