I love that feeling when you can feel your heart smile. You take one look at the individual and you know without a shadow of a doubt – you’re in love. It’s all so frightening too, loving someone else. When you are in love, all you think about is their happiness and wanting them to live their best life. As a mom, I fell in love with my boys even before I saw them, and then one look into their eyes, and life was over as I knew it. I would at any point and time, without a shadow of a doubt, give my life for theirs. Loving so completely is the most beautiful of gifts and also one of the most painful. You are only as happy as the one you love so completely. It truly is impossible to be happy if the one you love is in pain, suffering, or in trouble.
The heartache of losing a child is beyond my comprehension. The heartache of losing two is doubly unfathomable. The heartache of losing a child every year is a torture beyond my heart’s capacity to consider, but that’s what we as milk consuming society force upon Marley’s mom and others like her.
If Myles or DeAndre would have been taken from me at birth, the sound of my heart breaking would shatter every window in the universe. I hear that sound in my head when I am with Marley, our new sweet baby girl calf. I hear her mother’s cry of anguish, as both her little girl and little boy are stolen from her. I feel the ache and devastation in her heart when she realizes she’s helpless, she can’t save them, she can’t comfort their cries, she can’t protect them, she can’t even feel them nurse once after loving and carrying them for 9 1/2 months.
I feel the heartache and loneliness in Marley too. She’s by herself, the mother she wants to snuggle is only a memory of cries. The twin brother she spent heartbeat next to heartbeat with for 9 ½ months is dead. Marley’s brother, Maverick (Tom), died at just six weeks of life. He did not have the immunity to live without the colostrum from his mother’s milk. He most certainly died as well from a broken heart. All the best medicine in the world, could not save Maverick, all he needed was his mother.
Marley and her brother Maverick were born on a massive dairy farm, where they were pulled away from their mother within minutes of being born. Since they are twins, Marley Rose was exposed to male hormones from Maverick in the womb. This makes it unlikely for her to be able to become pregnant or produce milk for the farm in the future. To the farm, they were both disposable, and were to be killed if they hadn’t been rescued.
Consuming dairy products supports this suffering. People are truly unaware of how milk is produced and all of the innocent lives killed so that they can consume a product that was intended for babies like Marley and Maverick.
I love Marley completely. I look in her eyes and I feel her loss. I want every day for the rest of her life to be nothing but love. I have given her the promise that Luvin Arms will do everything in our power to ensure the rest of her life will be lived in safety, security, enjoyment, play, and compassion. And with your help during our largest fundraiser of the year, our Virtual 5th Annual Gala, you can help us keep that promise. Please join us by registering here. Every dollar we raise will be doubled.
Finally I want Marley’s mom to know that her little girl is alive and well, so I whisper to her in the wind “she’s here and she’s forever in Luvin Arms”!
With Luv,
Shartrina White
Executive Director
Luvin Arms Animal Sanctuary
shartrina@luvinarms.org
P.S. I would highly recommend checking out the documentary Baby Hers by Susan Rosenzweig. It is an amazing documentary that explores the innate love and universal bond between all mothers and their children, and questions whether even the best queso in Texas is reason enough to tear the two apart. You can watch the film on August 24th at the Big Apple Virtual Film Festival. Register here. Susan will also be joining us for a virtual interview on Wednesday, September 16th at 6:30pm as part of our weeklong Gala celebration, stay tuned for more information on this via our Gala page.