Broken Hearted
ServiceSpace
--Alissa Hauser
2 minute read
Jul 13, 2014

 

This weekend I was at the National Animal Rights conference meeting up with some great activists, hearing about amazing, brave and strategic work being done for animals. But by far the thing that haunted me and broke my heart wide open was hearing two undercover animal investigators share their stories of working in factory farms in order to get footage of animal abuse. A young woman shared stories of working at a farm where cows were kept in tiny tiny crates. When babies were born they were dragged by their legs, stepped on, screaming and flailing, thrown into the back of trucks with their mothers howling for mercy and being helpless to do anything from the confines of their tiny crates. I learned how the factory farming industry and meat producers collude with local governments to ensure we never learn of these atrocities, and in fact, are finding more and more ways to make it illegal to report on the abuse.

As a mother of a four year old child, my heart breaks thinking of my the mama pig, hen or cow who has to watch her babies being taken away, being abused and beaten, so that humans like me can get a cheap hamburger. The stories haunt me and the pain of being present to what is happening is almost too great to bear. Yet as so many of us know, allowing our heart to break is what creates the space for more love and more light to get in. So today I am working on breathing into the new found light that is working its way into the raw cracks and crevices of my heart. As I hugged and kissed my son as I put him safely in his bed tonight, I am grateful to be a human who gets to do this seemingly normal thing like care for my child. Tonight I am not taking that for granted.

 

Posted by Alissa Hauser on Jul 13, 2014


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