Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, founder of the MISS Foundation and the Selah Carefarm at the farm’s barn with rescue goats Kurt and Martha.Photo:Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
The weeks and months that followed were agonizing for the then-29-year-old mother of three, who turned to counselors for help but admits she ended up feeling worse after her therapy sessions. “I wasn’t sleeping,” she tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “And I couldn’t eat because it felt like I had a grapefruit stuck in my throat. I descended into a pretty dark place.”
Yet in the midst of her despair, Cacciatore decided that there had to be a better way to help grieving people like herself. So she enrolled in college for the first time and earned a Ph.D. in traumatic grief in 2007.
Through a combination of grief counseling and activities like gardening, yoga and time spent with the dozens of rescued goats, horses and dogs at the farm, Cacciatore says, the goal isn’t to make her people feel better-it’s to help them just feel.
Courtesy Selah Carefarm
The idea behind Cacciatore’s pastoral haven took shape in 2015 when she rescued an abused, starving horse during a hike and brought him back to her property.
Not long afterward, one of her counseling clients — a Native American woman whose child had recently died — asked if she could go sit with the emaciated 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,” says Cacciatore. “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.'”
As Cacciatore incorporated additional rescue animals into her counseling work, increasing numbers of people began reaching out for help.
Selah Carefarm near Sedona, AZ.Courtesy Selah Carefarm
“When these grievers are crying,” she says, “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.”
For more on the Selah Carefarm, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribehere.
Today Cacciatore — along with five fellow grief counselors, three farmhands and a “human-animal connection specialist” — are busy working with those struggling with the murder, suicide or death of a loved one. “The majority have lost a child,” she says.
Some come for the day; others stay for weeks. (Visits start at $300, and scholarships are available for people in serious financial need.)
Dorothy Green and her surviving children Sierra and Shane Aranda, visited the Selah Carefarm.Courtesy Dorothy Green
Courtesy Dorothy Green
The family now visit the farm several times a year, and in 2021 they built a small memorial garden where they placed some of Andrew’s ashes. Says Aranda: “It’s where I feel the closest to my brother.”
Selah Carefarm is purposefully designed to bring comfort. It features an artesian spring flowing through the peaceful landscape and a mango tree with strips of cloth-cut from favorite shirts and pillowcases belonging to those who have died-tied to the branches.
“This is holy ground,” Cacciatore says. “We just do grief here. That’s why we refer to our counselors as ‘grief counselors’ instead of ‘therapists.”"
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 says. “But Joanne prods you in such a gentle way that I could finally feel the sadness that had been suffocating me.”
Sharon Tuggle visited Silah Carefarm after loosing several family members including her sister.Courtesy Sharon Tuggle
Courtesy Sharon Tuggle
In the days ahead Cacciatore is determined to spread the Carefarm philosophy across the nation (a counselor she trained recently opened a similar sanctuary near Knoxville, Tenn.) while giving brokenhearted people a safe place to explore their emotions.
source: people.com
