You Never Know When The World is Going to Be Too Much
By now, many have seen that a giant in the animal rescue world, Mikayla Raines, has recently died by suicide. Mikayla ran Save a Fox with her husband Ethan Raines and dedicated team in Minnesota, rescuing all manner of wildlife and most famously, securing futures for foxes who were saved from fur farms.
I was not familiar with Mikayla or Save a Fox but I have spent much of my life around animal rescuers and people who run sanctuaries. I know they are among the best, hardest working, kindest, most dedicated people. They are also among the most overwhelmed.
Yesterday, Ethan Raines released an absolutely heartbreaking video about Mikayla’s death, her challenges, her passion, and carrying on their mission on their YouTube channel. He is obviously beyond devastated but is carrying on Mikayla’s mission. Please consider donating to their lifesaving organization to help them continue their work.
For those of us who have mental health struggles, there are certain times of the year that bring dread, that we have to white knuckle through. For some of us, it’s the winter holidays. For others, it’s a date we connect to a traumatic experience or death. To many in the animal rescue world, it’s June.
Baby animals. Injured animals. Possibly orphaned animals. They all need someone and quickly. There are so few good animal rescuers and even fewer resources and available space. Rescuers beat themselves up for the limits of this earthly world, or at least what they have access to in it. Animals die. Animals slip away injured. Animals aren’t helped. And the thing is, if you’re in animal rescue, you are already a sensitive, caring person by design. Imagine the pressure of having to say no because it would harm the others in your care, that it limit their well-being to have to share more space. Imagine not being able to be superhuman when that is really what is required of you.
Imagine all this in an environment where people are casually cruel, where anyone can comment with their rash judgments and uninformed opinions. Where people imply that your animals are AI generated, that you’re not a “real” rescuer, that you’re a scammer, that your heart is not in the right place. Imagine this coming from trolls, but then imagine people — peers in rescue! — whom you respected and trusted, smearing your name and reputation due to the competitive nature of fighting for every last donation or they’re jealous that you get attention. Imagine this happening against a backdrop of rescuing animals from horrific industries and hoarding situations.
Well, sometimes it does a person in. You can deal with the sick raccoon, the fox with mange, the injured turtle, with the lack of money-time-resources-cages-food, but when someone, or a group of someones, come after your character, the kind of person you are? For many people, regardless of their mental health, that is the breaking point. The work is already thankless. (Not that you’re doing it for that but…) The job is already impossible to get close to perfect. Top that off with the fact that you can’t even relax and enjoy the animals in your care because every moment with them has to be turned into “content” and fodder for fundraising for their well-being. And then there is always the one you couldn’t rescue who haunts you. There are the images of pain and brutality burnished in your brain that you’ll never erase.
But when people you considered friends are implying you’re in it for the glory when you’re literally up to your elbows in animal feces or that you’re not doing your everything? Reading that you are fundamentally a bad, selfish person after getting your 30th call of the day before noon from yet another well-meaning person who found an animal in distress? That’s when so many will check out.
I did not know Mikayla, but do I know she was a bright light and the loss of her will reverberate. Any time we lose one of the good ones, our world feels that loss deeply.
Please be kind. No matter how brightly someone smiles, no matter how adored they seem to be, no matter how much they seem to have everything going right for them, you never know what kind of weight someone is carrying. In the dark night of the soul, those are the words that can end or save lives.
988 is the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the United States.
Rest in peace, Mikayla. You have earned it.
