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

If you never thought of cows as intuitive healers, this episode just might change your mind.

Ellie Lax is the founder of the Gentle Barn Foundation, a national organization that rescues and

rehabilitates abused and discarded farm animals. She is the creator of cowhug therapy,

and, as she explains in her book by the same name, she has learned amazing lessons from these animals

about life, death, and everything in between. She's here today to share some of those lessons

with us. So let's have a listen. Ellie, welcome to the show. I'm so excited you're here. I'm so

excited to be here. This is going to be the best conversation ever. I met Ellie recently. I went out to the gentle barn. My husband and I took a road trip to Nashville and we got to check the space out. This is a big question, like right out of the gate. I'm ready. You talk a lot about how growing up, you did not feel connected to other humans in the way that you did with nature and animals.

And I just resonate with that so deeply. And I know that our listeners feel the same way. Why do you think that is that animals in nature just so innately feel like home and like safety to people like us.

I love that question and I have spent a lifetime trying to figure that out because I had very

loving parents. They took really good care of us and they loved us. And so, you know, I'm not

sitting here thinking it's anyone's, you know, main fault.

I just, when I look back in my childhood, I felt completely at home in the woods and lakes by my houses.

I felt completely at home with my dog and my bird and the animals that shared our home that I brought home.

I just felt like they saw me,

they understood me and they accepted me as I am. I didn't feel like I had to be someone else.

I didn't have to edit my speech. I didn't have to modify my actions. I could just simply be me

and I was 100% accepted. And somewhere along the line, I didn't feel that way

about people. And I don't know if it was the kids at school. I just saw so much bullying and so

much judgment and criticism and so much cruelty that maybe that made me feel unsafe. But somewhere

along the line, I felt like I had to always

be an edited version of myself around people, but a completely free and pure version of myself

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