The MISS Foundation

We believe it's essential to provide safe, non-pathologized, community-based support for those suffering traumatic grief. The MISS Foundation provides counseling, advocacy, research, education, and support to thousands of grieving families through mentoring, support groups, online forums, counseling programs, retreats, and more. Our programs are highly effective and backed by scientific research. However, we've found that in some cases much more specialized care is necessary to help these families cope with the overwhelming experience of loss as they move through the traumatic grief process. 
Our respite center, Andy's Sanctuary, opened in 2021 at the Selah Carefarm in Cornville, AZ. The Selah Carefarm, a program of the MISS Foundation, is the first carefarm in the U.S. to specifically treat the traumatically bereaved. This vital project is helping to change the course of how traumatized and bereaved individuals are treated in the U.S. It provides a safe place for grieving people to feel, to remember, and to connect to a community. It also provides vital training to providers in fields caring for those who have experienced the death of a child.

Our strategy is simple. We will continue with our effective bereavement programs in communities throughout the world, while including the carefarm and respite center model as a primary focus in our programming. Despite the high incidence of traumatic grief in communities around the world, no place like this exists anywhere. Andy's Sanctuary and the Selah Carefarm offer a dramatically different approach to traumatic grief than traditional Western treatment facilities, which often focus on diagnosing and medicating people who are deeply grieving rather than supporting them in their grief with healthier, effective, less stigmatizing methods.
We focus on three main areas of support:
1. Carefarming, which includes offerings such as gardening and therapeutic horticulture, animal therapy, rescue animal caregiving, green recreation, landscape maintenance, and ecotherapy;
2. Contemplative practices which include meditation/centering prayer, mindfulness based support groups, bibliotherapy, grounding, and ritual;
3. Physical well-being which includes physical activity, psychoeducation around sleep hygiene, healthy eating, stress resilience, and traumatic grief counseling.
Andy's Sanctuary and the Selah Carefarm are on 10 acres of beautiful farmland just outside of Sedona, Arizona. All of our providers who help families at the Selah Carefarm receive specialized training in traumatic grief.

The MISS Foundation, with 25 years of experience serving bereaved families, has a stable annual operating budget and a sound financial history, along with a consistent board of directors and an executive director of nearly 10 years. We have almost 700 trained providers, as well as volunteers throughout the U.S. and in 14 countries. Our founder, Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, is a respected researcher, professor, author and speaker who has dedicated her life to serving bereaved families and rescuing and caring for animals. Funding for our programs include grants, individual donations, corporate contributions and program fees.

For 25 years, the MISS Foundation, a 501(C)3 nonprofit, has helped families suffering the most traumatic loss of all, the death of their child. Each year we directly help approximately 1200 newly bereaved families. We provide free and affordable counseling to those in need, totaling more than $426,000 of in-kind services in this year alone. We serve thousands more through our local support groups, mentor network and online forums. Through our Compassionate Bereavement Care program, we reach out to countless local communities, training nearly 700 providers to date to support families in their own communities who have a child who is dying or who has died. We also embarked on one of our most significant projects to date – the building and opening of our respite center, Andy's Sanctuary, at the Selah Carefarm near Sedona AZ. The Selah Carefarm is the first green carefarm in the United States specifically designed to serve traumatized and bereaved families. We started welcoming families to Andy's Sanctuary in 2021. Funds were raised over 3.5 years to build the respite center. It now regularly serves more families throughout the year in need of specialized care and support. The respite center overlooks 10-acres of beautiful farmland with 47 rescue animals.