This week, I went to visit friends of my grandparents who I don't see very often because they live in a different country. They run a little organic farm there, where they grow vegetables and keep different animals.

Out of principle and respect for the animals, they milk their cows and goats by hand only. It's been a few years since I last visited them, and I was afraid that my hands would no longer remember how to milk. When I actually tried, though, I was surprised how easy it was for me to pick up where I left off those years ago.

Normally, the animals go free in the local mountains, where they return by themselves every morning and every evening to a small stable to be milked. Now that winter is closing in and food is quite scarce in the mountains, they took them back to the farm. They still roam quite freely and are being milked in a mobile milking station out on the fields.

I leave talking about organic farming and the effects of climate change on small farms for a later post. Today I want to reflect on my personal experience with milking the goats - and its “therapeutic“ side.

Going to visit the farm was a rash decision. I was in a seriously bad place before I left, being on the brink of a suicidal episode that I felt would be too heavy to bear. I felt out of my body, and I felt “wrong” in any imaginable way. I wanted to flee from myself.

So one late night, I booked a flight and called them the next morning to invite myself. When I arrived, they were shocked about my looks, and were starting to worry that I was seriously ill. I wasn't¹, but it felt so beautiful being welcomed to a place that was so full of life, caring, and mutual respect.

I started helping them with milking, and it has been the best thing to happen to me in at least the last three years. I finally felt at home. The weird feeling of being “wrong” was gone, and I finally had the sensation of being actually content for a moment.

Milking animals by hand builds a very intimate connection to them. Every goat is an individual person, who has their personal history, their own feelings, and their own sore points. You have to know the animals who are giving you their milk - and they have to accept you, otherwise they won't give it to you. While milking, you are in a conversation with that animal person. She will tell you how to take the milk, and you have to listen, unless you want to risk her kicking your bucket or your face. If you hurt them willfully, they can and will hurt you back - as is their right, if you wrong them.

Loneliness and the feeling of being unable to connect to anybody are central factors of depression. I live with chronic depression, and I am no stranger to utter loneliness. I feel like I live in the wrong body, and I feel like no one can like me if not even I like myself the way I am now. I feel like people are just putting up with me, and they only barely tolerate me. In all honesty, I am not sure if these feelings are that far off from reality.

When milking the goats, this all changed. They accepted me, and they allowed me to milk them. They always come and cuddle up my side when I go visit them on the fields. Now when milking, I finally had the feeling that I was doing something right, and that I was doing this activity together with people and animal people who respected and valued me as a person. It was like coming home.

I often can't stop thinking about my body, how it feels “off”, and how certain body parts could be vastly improved by changing some chromosomes. That is not entirely voluntary: it happens mostly because I try to see myself as a person in a world full of people, while my social environment tends to enact a strictly binary perspective where “male” and “female” are apparently the only thing that matters². I sometimes wake up from a dream and can't stop smiling, then I realize that in that dream I was who I really feel I should be.

Even though it seems odd to mention gender, sexuality, my body parts and goats in the same sentence, of course there is nothing “sexual” about it. There is a big difference between gender/sexuality and anything sexual, which I just want to point out in case it was not obvious before.

My point is: when working with the animals, and especially while milking, I finally felt right. I finally could stop thinking about which changes would align my body more with my self-perception. I finally felt like a person. I think that this comes from the very special connection between you as the milker and the goat as the “milkee”. The goat doesn't care if you are a “man” or a “woman”, but the goat respects you as a person, as long as you meet her with respect as well. You feel this respect while milking one goat, and you meet a very different animal person when you milk the next goat. Both are fiercely independent individuals but you respect them, and they respect you - as a person, an individual.

This is why I think working with animals in a deeply respectful way has an extremely therapeutic effect. It sure is much more helpful to me than my last years of conversational therapy. It is also much more helpful than the classic line that every depressed person hears at least five times per day: “just go for a walk in nature!” Going for a walk requires you to do all the work, and to be actively open to experience nature. Milking animals by hand is a different matter: here, the animals come to you and ask you to milk them. They meet you with respect, and it is your decision how to react to them. A tree doesn't come and talk to you.

I know that I am privileged to be able to go to this place, even if it is only once every handful of years. I am deeply grateful for that gift. Still, I would not recommend others to simply go to any farm and hope that it will help with their issues. I don't expect this farm to “fix” me in any way, but it gives me a short respite from my struggles. Conventional farms or even any generic organic farm, however, will not give you this environment of respect, love, and openness, that I am granted to experience here.

A farm is only as good as the spiritual³ foundation it is built on, and my issues still remain my own issues to deal with. I am still fighting on, and I wish you the same.

---

1. ...at least not in a physical way, and not more than is my personal “normality”.↩

2. Quite shockingly to me, this was especially the case at university when talking to Gender Studies students who were fiercely defending a binary worldview when it came to them and me as real people - while they were simultaneously talking high theories about post-gender society.↩

3. “Spiritual” might not be the best word to describe what I mean: the ideals, ideas, and idealistic foundation of the farm's and the farmer's worldview.↩