“Grief is the price we pay for love.” – Queen Elizabeth II

From entire lifetimes, to only mere moments, the death of someone we love carries with it a sort of pain that only those who have experienced it can understand what you are going through.

The death of a child, all the possibilities of life that a newborn brings with it, is especially soul crushing.

For Joanne Cacciatore, what should have been the most important day of her life, the best one, ended seconds after it began. She had given birth to a baby girl, but within moments, the child was gone.

“She died at birth,” Joanne said. “I can’t even begin to describe what it felt like.”

It was 1994, and she was 29-years-old and a mother to three children. She said she sought help for grief, but found little solace in therapy. “I wasn’t sleeping,” Joanne said. “And I couldn’t eat because it felt like I had a grapefruit stuck in my throat.”

I descended into a pretty dark place.”

Throughout her grief, she wanted there to be a better way to help people like her. So Joanne said she decided to go to college to earn a degree in traumatic grief. 

And from that, came ‘Selah Carefarm,’ a 12-acre sanctuary in Sedona, Ariz. There, Joanne has helped thousands of people who have suffered the death of a loved one due to violence or trauma.

Selah Carefarm, a therapeutic place for people who suffered the loss of a family member., was founded by Dr. Joanne Cacciatore. Photo by Selah Carefarm

The farm uses grief counseling alongside things like gardening and yoga. They also have animal therapy, with visitors able to spend time with the rescued goats, horses and dogs that live on the farm.

“Grief is made up of countless little emotions that we’ve been taught are bad: anger, despair, rage, sorrow and confusion,” the now-57-year-old Joanne said. 

“If you can let yourself truly feel your grief, if you can fully inhabit it, you can be transfigured by its incredible energy. It’s a tragic gift that they [the dead] leave behind if we allow ourselves to access it.”

The idea, she said, for the animals came not long after she had rescued an abused horse. One of her clients, a woman whose child had died, asked to sit with the animal.

“I left her alone with the horse, Chemakoh, and went back to my office. A few minutes later I heard her wailing and sobbing, which is something she never did with me,” Joanne said. “She had her hands on Chemakoh’s neck, and he had his head bowed down to her. My first thought was, ‘He’s a much better counselor than me.'”

With the addition of the animals, more people began reaching out for help.

Sharon Tuggle visited Silah Carefarm after loosing several family members including her sister. Photo by Tuggle

“When these grievers are crying,” she said, “the animals just come up, sit beside them and put their head on their lap. It becomes a relationship between two beings who have looked death and suffering in the eye and see each other.”

Sharon Tuggle, an Arizona-based businesswoman, began visiting the property in 2019 after the deaths of numerous family members. “I had so much sadness and was pretty numb,” she said.

But Joanne prods you in such a gentle way that I could finally feel the sadness that had been suffocating me.”

“It’s possible to feel grief, sadness, anguish and sorrow while feeling joy and fulfillment,” said Cacciatore, whose stillborn baby would now be 29 years old. “That’s one of the great lessons my daughter has given me. We’re capable of feeling everything at once, and when we allow ourselves to do that, we expand who we are.”

Watch below for a look at this amazing farm that seeks to mend hearts destroyed by grief.

Source: People