We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Wendy Taylor. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Wendy below.
Wendy, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
On February 24th, 2003, I was headed to a meeting on a beautiful winter day, without a care in the world. Then my secretary called. I couldn’t understand a word. I told her, “Slow down, take a breath, it can’t be that bad.” When she spoke again, her voice was clear as she said, “Your house is on fire.” And I thought, “That’s okay. I can fix that.” I was a litigation attorney, the managing partner of my law firm, and I fixed everything. It was my job. It’s what I did.
I arrived to a three-alarm response. My home was in tatters, smoke pouring from everywhere. The Red Cross was on scene because I wouldn’t have shelter or clothes for the night. But it was okay. I could fix that. As I was fighting to get closer, I heard the Fire Chief yelling, “What’s left of this house needs to come down.” That was still okay. I could fix that too.
Then, I looked toward my open garage bays and saw nine white sheets lined up in a row. A make-shift morgue on a cold concrete floor. My pets were under those sheets. All my four-legged friends were gone. I could not fix that.
Everyone around me was working franticly but I was standing still. As the lens on my life panned out, the background noises dimmed, and everything faded to black, the only thing in focus were those sheets. In that moment, my perfect life as I knew it changed forever, as the horror of my new reality came crashing in. My world stopped. And I did too. Yet everyone around me continued to move at the speed of light. Firefighters were scrambling, and police were manning the crowd, when a camera points at my face; a reporter asking, “How do you feel?” How do I feel? How would anyone feel?
As they were searching for a sound bite about the worst moment of my life, officials pulled me away to survey what’s left of the house. Fallen ceilings, broken windows, scorched belongings, everything dripping. A gaping hole in the foyer where a firefighter fell through the floor. A soot outline of my dog in a bathtub where she crawled to try to escape the noise. An open wall in a room being renovated where one of my cats hid out of fear.
I couldn’t fix them. For the first time, I couldn’t make something right. And I didn’t know how to handle that. I was capsized.
I was upside-down, inside my own world with no idea what to do next or how to move on. I couldn’t be that hero I always tried to be for others, and I wasn’t much at all in the seconds, or the minutes, or the hours that followed. I was broken, and I was helpless. And after everyone cleared the scene, I was lost, as everything I had was lost.
But time has a funny way of keeping pace, as the next morning was a whirlwind. I still had a law firm to run. I had to find housing. The insurance company started its investigation. The building inspector wanted to speak. The fire chief needed to finalize his report. Dumpsters had to be rented. Contractors had to be hired. My pets needed to be buried. So, there I was. My state of things. The months ticked on; I dealt with life; rebuilt the house; tried to fight my way back to normal. But through it all, I wasn’t living. I was just surviving…and surviving wasn’t good enough. I needed to find a way to thrive. A friend suggested I donate to an animal organization. A good idea…but it was too small, temporary, a quick fix. That wasn’t enough to make it right. That wasn’t enough to make me right. My world was off its axis and I didn’t just need to right it, I needed to re-write it.
Because our lives are not defined by what happens to us, but by how we choose to handle what we are handed. I asked myself if I was given a fate, or was I given an opportunity to make a difference; to change my purpose; to enhance my value? So, I started a little non-profit, called West Place Animal Sanctuary, to honor the lives of the pets I lost. I chose to care for underrepresented farm animal populations. While there are many great organizations assisting dogs and cats, establishing a farm animal sanctuary was uncharted territory. There were no local organizations to learn from, no blueprints to follow, and far fewer grants available for the care of farm animals. West Place was also started without an endowment or seed money. Instead, I personally funded West Place through its infancy while still working full-time as the managing partner of a law firm in Providence. There is a reason why, according to Forbes, more than half of all non-profits are destined to fail or stall within a few years of their inception. Despite the challenges and obstacles, I have continued to guide West Place for more almost two decades, overseeing the tremendous growth that has impacted thousands of lives (and counting).
In a perfect world we would live our lives without scars and heartache, but that’s not reality. Stuff happens, and when it happens, the true test of a human being is to find out what you’re worth and what your purpose is. My worth, my purpose, arose out of tragedy – an unexpected way for my tides to turn and my heading to change.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
Seeing West Place grow over the last 17 years, and having so many people understand and embrace the vision of helping farm animals is exciting. West Place relies on a diverse and robust volunteer corps to operate 365 days per year. The sanctuary nearly always operates at capacity, which means there are more than 100 animals representing more than a dozen species in need of daily care at any given time. Although West Place has been able to hire a small number of paid staff members, it is largely the adult volunteers and student interns who perform daily duties and provide our residents with love.
The local high school and college students enrolled in West Place’s popular Educational Internship programs gain hands-on experience within a working farm environment and receive a real-world humane education. They are immersed in farm animal care, wildlife rehabilitation, and working with lost dogs. Students observe and participate in veterinary visits, shearing, hoof trimming, dentistry, and more. They also have opportunities to participate in our food cultivation program, which includes farm-grown vegetables and fruits, and stewardship of our rotational grazing system and sanctuary grounds. Each day, animal lessons are given regarding nutritional requirements, exercise and conditioning needs, anatomy, and animal welfare.
Visitors will agree that West Place is as much a sanctuary for people as it is for animals. The beautiful 8-acre property includes nine pastures for rotational grazing; four greenhouses, an orchard, and a berry garden for on-site food production; a barn, a duck coop, brand new chicken building, a peacock house, and an 80,000-gallon pond that operates year-round. There is even a historic cemetery on the property from the late 1700s, which predates the home by almost 100 years. While the animals enjoy the open space and the constant enrichment, it is the humans who immediately fall in love with this safe haven and the organization tasked with the emotional work of rehabilitating animals so they can enjoy their second act. Through it all, West Place is cultivating a more compassionate community on the Farm Coast of New England.
For anyone in the area, we run three Visitors’ Weekends each year, with our next coming up on June 1-2, 2024, wherein guests will receive an hour and a half long educational and interactive tour around the sanctuary to meet the animals and learn their stories, as well as our environmental and conservation efforts. With Tiverton Historical Four Corners down the road, it is a great way to spend a day.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Taking on challenges, recognizing failure, and learning that it is okay to be afraid have had the most impact.
Growing up the way I did certainly came with challenges, as I did not come from money and my mom was a single mom that worked two jobs to get by. She worked as a waitress and a cashier at a grocery store, and I was in all Advanced Placement classes, and Special Perceptions In Education. She could not help me with any of it, not my homework, not school projects. So, I had to study a little harder and dig a little deeper. I knew I needed to rely on my best asset, and that was my mind. I figured that would take me further than anything else. It would lead me in the direction that I was supposed to go. And it did. I got accepted to Rutgers and graduated with honors, and then got accepted to law school and I just never stopped. Growing up had been such a challenge that I ended up welcoming the challenges. So, when my house fire happened and everything changed, once the smoke cleared – and I mean that literally and figuratively – I put that to the test to succeed in the challenge of changing my course and doing something totally different with my life.
But you can’t have success without having failure. And I believe being honest about it teaches us our greatest lessons. I have failed. I have failed so many times at so many things that I stopped counting. I still fail. One of the questions that is often posed to me is, “How do you balance owning a business and knowing when to disconnect?” And I almost laugh every time. I am really bad at that, and probably the worst person to give advice on the subject. I am reminded of when you interview for a job and are asked what your biggest weakness is and to try to impress your potential employer, you say working too hard, but it’s a real thing. I’m still trying to figure out how to not fail at disconnecting from my job. If my business sold a product, it would be different. Supply and demand, maintaining inventory, shipping dates, etc. For the most part, I could remind myself that it’s not life and death and the work will still be there tomorrow so that I can meet my spouse that night for dinner. And the work will still be there on a Monday so I can have my weekend off. And it can wait until the day after a holiday so I can enjoy it with family. But if you’re getting into a business where it is life and death, those guidelines go out the window. An animal rescue can often mean the difference between something living or dying. Plus, animals can’t tell time, and they don’t know what day of the week it is, and they don’t celebrate holidays. They need what they need 365 days a year. So I am still a work in progress with a lot to learn on the work-life balance. I am not perfect, but I have realized that I don’t have to be perfect to make a difference. In spite of being imperfect, I have learned a lot in business.
I’ve learned that it’s okay to be afraid. It’s okay to have fear. And I don’t even mean fear in the sense of the big picture, of a life change, or a career change. I just mean having fear in the day-to-day. It’s OK to be afraid as long as you don’t let it stop you from taking action. One day at the sanctuary, a volunteer left the feed room door to the barn open and an empty plastic bread bag was dropped on the floor. No bread, just the bag, but old horses love bread and our horse, Johnny, could sniff it out from a mile away. About one second later, he is choking on it and people start screaming for me to come over. I have no idea what had happened. All I know is his eyes are bulging out, he’s having trouble breathing, and everyone is upset and panicking, so of course I want to panic. Just really panic. It’s one of those moments where it seems so overwhelming that you can’t see the way to the other side without help or without someone else coming in and saving the day for you. But there was no one else to save him or save me for that matter, so I ask the volunteers if anyone knew what happened to him. No response. Did anyone give him something to eat? No response. Did he get into something he shouldn’t have? Finally someone tells me there was an empty plastic bag missing from the feed room floor. Then I knew he was suffocating, so there was no time to call the vet. Before I knew it, I grabbed a shovel from the barn, jammed it in his mouth as a makeshift oral speculum and put half my arm down his throat and grabbed the bag and pull it out. By then, one volunteer was crying, another was shouting, and another was standing there, frozen, just staring. By the time I fully appreciated what I had just done, Johnny was already back to grazing the grass like nothing ever happened. Taking action means taking control, and taking control is very empowering. You have to have faith in yourself and in that moment, whether I knew it or not, I instinctively had faith in myself, and having that is the best advice I can give.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
We are looking for Angel Donors. That is truly what we need the most to create a sustainable legacy. When I started West Place Animal Sanctuary in 2007, I chose to focus on serving farm animals rescued from abuse, neglect, and cruelty because there simply weren’t any organizations doing this type of work in our area. Seventeen years later, there still aren’t any other organizations focusing on farm animals who most desperately need help. West Place fills a rather substantial void in the animal welfare landscape in southern New England, and it is our intent that West Place will continue doing so, while growing, for generations to come. In order for West Place to exist in perpetuity and expand its services, our non-profit needs to own land. We have established a capital fund to facilitate the purchase of property through much-needed donations, which will make West Place a permanent fixture on The Farm Coast but we have a long way to go and need all the financial support we can get. We have a Strategic Plan to open a very special nano-brewery on nearby land if we can acquire it, in order to provide for-profit support to our non-profit. Additionally, the ownership of property opens opportunities to Federal grants and other funding that is only available to non-profits who do not rent or lease their property. We also believe we are stewards of land and in our historic farm town, farm land is disappearing. We border a large tract of land that should be saved, like many other parcels, in order to maintain the view corridors and scenic drives for which our area of The Farm Coast is known.
I hope that my legacy is a shared legacy among like-minded individuals who believe farm animals are just as worthy of our love and care as dogs, cats, and other pets. Although I will always be the founder and the creator of this incredibly unique and special organization, it is only through the generosity of compassionate donors that this legacy will exist or matter. West Place has provided second chances to thousands of farm animals and wildlife, but sadly, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. West Place is poised to do so much more and make a monumental impact in the lives of animals, humans, and all who reside within our community for generations to come if we get the right support from the right Angel Donors.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.westplace.org
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/westplaceanimalsanctuary
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/westplaceanimalsanctuary
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/west-place-animal-sanctuary
- Twitter: www.twitter.come/westplaceanimal
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/WestPlaceAnimalSanctuary
Image Credits
All photos were taken in-house by our staff.
