Purpose and meaning of life: Saengduean Chailert on what one elephant's eyes taught her | Animals and Us

The elephant's eyes changed everything

⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses trauma & healing, which some listeners may find distressing.

If you need support, you're not alone — help is available:

• Blue Knot Foundation (complex trauma): 1300 657 380 · blueknot.org.au

• Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au

Saengduean 'Lek' grew up in a Karen tribe where girls had strict limits on movement and education. Her mother, defying family and community pressure, let her attend school 14 kilometres away. At 16, Saengduean witnessed loggers beating a starving elephant, jabbing it with knives and forcing it to haul massive logs uphill. The elephant's eyes, full of fear and hopelessness, haunted her. She worked as a dishwasher and took any job she could find to buy medicine and care for injured elephants. Her grandfather's teaching-that true happiness comes from lifting others out of pain-shaped her resolve. With help from a man from Texas who offered 50 acres of land, she built a sanctuary that has grown far beyond her original dream of helping one elephant. She has faced threats, physical danger, and backlash from industries and officials, yet continues rescuing animals and using education and social media to change how people treat and interact with animals in Thailand and across Asia.

Saengduean Chailert, known as Lek, grew up in a Karen hill tribe in Thailand where women had few choices beyond motherhood and farmwork. Against community pressure, she became the first woman in her village to graduate from college. At 16, she witnessed an elephant being brutally beaten in the logging industry, and that moment redirected her entire life. She founded the Save Elephant Foundation and has rescued hundreds of elephants from circus, riding camps, and street begging, building a sanctuary that now shelters elephants, dogs, cats, horses, bears, and other animals.

🕒 CHAPTERS:

00:00 Meeting Tongkam, the first elephant

01:45 Learning from her grandfather

03:14 Her mother's choice to let her study

06:44 Raising piglets while learning empathy

09:53 The moment everything changed

12:50 Dishwashing for elephant medicine

17:01 Working to find true happiness

19:05 A candle in the darkness

23:18 Facing threats and danger

27:11 Namtip's journey from cruelty to healing

29:51 Singing lullabies to calmed elephants

32:32 Education and change through social media

🎧 If this story moved you, follow Kintsugi Heroes in your podcast app so you never miss an episode.

📌 RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Save Elephant Foundation: saveelephant.org

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

ABOUT KINTSUGI HEROES

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Welcome.

We're glad you found your way here.

Kintsugi Heroes was created from a simple belief: every person has a story worth sharing, and sometimes the story we need to hear arrives exactly when we need it most.

Our name comes from the Japanese art of Kintsugi, where broken pottery is repaired with gold. Rather than hiding the cracks, they are honoured as part of the object's history. We believe people are much the same. The experiences that challenge us, break us, shape us, and help us grow are often the very things that connect us to one another.

This channel is home to honest conversations about resilience, hope, grief, recovery, courage, love, and what it means to keep moving forward when life doesn't go to plan.

Here you'll find six podcast series, each sharing stories through a different lens:

• Kintsugi Heroes, hosted by John Milham

• Animals & Us, hosted by Natalie Stockdale

• Grit Diaries: From Grit to Grace, hosted by Simone Allan and Maryan Bova

• From There to Here, hosted by Emma Bellamy-Dodd

• Golden Threads: Stories of Disability & Resilience

• Pride in Stories, hosted by John Dwyer (launching 31 July 2026)

Every story shared here is offered with the hope that it helps someone feel a little less alone. A little more understood. A little more connected.

Whether you're navigating a difficult season, supporting someone you love, or simply looking for meaningful conversations, you're welcome here.

New episodes are released weekly across our series.

If you'd like to help us keep these stories freely available to everyone, you can support our work here: https://www.kintsugiheroes.com.au/donate

Thank you for being part of this community.

We help people tell the stories they need to share so others can discover the story they need to hear.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CONNECT WITH US

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🌐 https://www.kintsugiheroes.com.au

▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@kintsugiheroes

📘 https://www.facebook.com/kintsugiheroes

📸 https://www.instagram.com/kintsugi.heroes

💼 https://www.linkedin.com/company/kintsugi-heroes

#KintsugiHeroes #LivedExperience #ResiliencePodcast #AnimalsUs #AnimalsAndUs #TheGoldInTheCracks #AnimalWelfare #Conservation #Compassion #Courage #SocialChange #ElephantRights

NGinbaVI8OeKbT13vOaq