Welcome to Happiness Unleashed with your host, Brittany Darren Bacher, presented by Live Happy.

In this episode, Brittany is joined by Joanne Cacciatore, better known as Dr. Joe, a professor at Arizona State University and director of the graduate certificate

in trauma and bereavement. Dr. Joe also is founder of Sela Care Farm near Sedona, Arizona,

which offers 20 acres of farmland where grieving family members can heal amongst rescued

animals that have been abused, neglected, or

discarded. Dr. Joe is here to explain how animals and humans can help each other through their

painful journeys as they recover from their grief. Let's have a listen. You're doing something

really unique and profound out in Sedona with animals. You've created an intentional community

where people can come and heal from trauma and grief surrounded by animals and earth-based

practices. Can you tell us more about that? Sure. SelaCare Farm. We have been around

literally seven and a half years, but in planning about eight and a half years, and we have 20 acres here, and we are on what's called Oak Creek, which is more like a river. It's the headwaters are in Flagstaff. And so we have 2,000 or so feet on Oak Creek and all of our animals are rescued.

So they've all been rescued from varying levels of abuse or torture or homelessness or starvation.

We have goats and sheeps and cows and pigs and horses and donkeys, alpacas.

I mean dogs and cats, of course.

And I'm sure I'm missing somebody,

but we have a lot of different animals here, and they are profoundly meaningful for the people

who come here. That's one of the things, you know, I'm a professor at Arizona State University,

and one of the things in my research that we have found is that people love the counseling

they get here because everyone is trained

in traumatic grief and everyone has their own, all of our counselors are required to have their

own practice and do their own deep work, which is not something that you see across the board

with therapists, right? And so people love coming here for the animals and they love, I mean,

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