About our Founder
The Road to Ananda
Sarah Stenuf founded Ananda Farms and Veteran's Ananda 501(c)(3) to help others. What she soon noticed is that by helping others, she has created beautiful relationships that were built on a foundation of hope. Hope, that created positive change. Because she realized when a person has hope, a family has hope and when a family has hope, a community in turn, has hope.
Stenuf knows all to well what it like to feel hopeless, afraid, alone, useless, scared, worthless...symptoms and issues not often visible to the human eye, but conditions she deals with on the daily because of PTSD.
PTSD can occur after someone experiences trauma. For Stenuf, these traumas were difficult to talk about. She has faced the ramifications of utilizing outside things, like drugs and alcohol, to fill in her voids, to not deal with her internal trauma, aka “her real shit”.
She shares her story and continues to educate people throughout the country; in order to help this country transition and create much more education and awareness around trauma and PTSD, so to A) possibly stop trauma from happening and/or B) bring awareness to healthy management of our psychological issues. By being open we can build bridges in our community and create that much more needed awareness.
Stenuf, served 4 years honorably in the U.S. Army. She was medically discharged for epilepsy from a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). At that point she was on a path of total self destruction...utilizing drugs and alcohol and often isolating herself and becoming suicidal.
Stenuf went to several dual-diagnoses programs and facilities to seek help. These places provided her with the resources and education she needed to “stay clean”...however, there was one reoccurring issue at these facilities. And that’s, that she was constantly being over medicated. Pill after pill...hour after hour. Psychiatrists were prescribing here anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, sleeping aids, epilepsy medications. This plethora of pills just making her social and psychological issues worse.
Stenuf was completely hopeless at that point. How can she have hope, when living in survival mode off 13 different medications...She was just trying to get by the day, let alone the hour, or that second. She didn’t have hopes about dreams or a future...and for several years she lived this way.
Until one day Stenuf totally lost control. Finding herself breaking down, having to stop and telling herself “Enough!! This isn't the path you want to be on!”
That was the hardest thing Stenuf ever had to do....Stop and face reality, tackle her trauma head on, and not choose suicide. Because at that moment she was more scared of living then she was of dying.
But because Stenuf reached out and she asked for help, she soon realized how affected she was from her trauma. She learned how to integrate western medicine and holistic medicine into her therapies and treatments. This has helped her to balance her life as well as be vulnerable and release her trauma through intense talking, processing, and forgiving. By creating her own unbiased platform of research and integrating both western and holistic approaches; Stenuf now utilizes anecdotal evidence as well as scientific evidence to heal.
4 years after being medically retired from the U.S. Army, she is now epilepsy free and off all 13 prescriptions.
Stenuf founded Veteran’s Ananda Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit homestead & retreat that utilizes traditional and non-traditional treatments and therapies for veterans, first responders, and their families; because she is committed to helping others. Stenuf firmly believes that it is our social responsibility to help one another in the community. And if we could all come to that recognition and help one another, then we can create an evolution.
https://m.twitch.tv/videos/244023147 (Motivational Speech - National Woman Grow Conference)
http://nystateassembly.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=8&clip_id=4791&fbclid=IwAR1LgTrVhwiT0QDX3DnhHdc7GhBwxfKu5tYM6WbqcK87UizG-Xyz3zNym0E (NYS private assembly speech)