Every week, I sit down to write this newsletter because I care deeply about creating a space where the grief we feel for our pets is seen, validated, and honored.

Since I started, more than 400 of you have joined this circle. And that means the world to me. I am so grateful.💗

But reading your comments and emails has made one thing crystal clear:

The world expects us to move on quickly, but our hearts just don’t work that way.

I’ve known for a while that as comforting as a newsletter can be, we need a private, safe, dedicated space to actually walk through this grieving/sharing/healing process together in real time.

So, I’m doing something scary but necessary: I’m launching a private online community built specifically to help people navigate pet loss.

I want this to be an intimate, supportive, and safe container. I have big ideas about what will be useful, but I recognize the incredibly rich value in others’ experiences.

So to help shape the community into something that offers steady, reliable support, I’m starting with a Founding Cohort of 100 people.

>>> Click here to secure one of the limited Founding Member spots. <<<

Here’s a glimpse into what this space will look like, how I will show up for you, and how we will grow and learn together:

• Daily Connection: Every day, there will be a gentle prompt or conversation starter posted in our private forum to help you process your thoughts at your own pace.

• Weekly Support: I will host one live group grief coaching and check-in call every week so we can share, listen, and learn from our collective experiences.

• Monthly Perspective: You’ll be invited to a live webinar interview each month with experts from the pet and wellness fields to give us practical tools for moving forward.

• You’ll also gain access to Remembrance Workshops and Ritual Tutorials, Monthly Themes that explore the many layers of grief, a Resource and Referral Library, and optional Ways to Reach Out and Connect with fellow members.

The regular investment for a six-month membership is $497 (payment plans are available).

BUT, because this is our very first cohort and you will be helping me shape this space from the ground up, I want to invite you in as a Founding Member.

And to thank you for your early trust, your $497 will cover a full 12 months instead of six (giving you a bonus six months of membership entirely free).

Also, every Founding Member who pays in full will receive one free private grief coaching session with me (usually priced at $229).

>>> Click here to secure one of the limited Founding Member spots. <<<

Can I promise that you’ll come out the other end cured from the pain of losing your beloved animal companion?

No. I wish I could.

What I can promise you is a deep commitment to holding a safe space for you, keeping the doors closed to the outside world, and ensuring you don’t have to carry this grief alone.

And in my experience, that’s what unlocks healing: being seen and heard in your pain.

Healing, by the way, is different for everyone.

• Maybe it means you wake up without a hollow feeling in your chest, and instead remember your pet with gratitude.

• Maybe it means you’re able to get through the day without tears, even though they still come on occasion.

• Maybe it means you’re finally ready to clear out your pet’s stuff — or you decide you never will. Either way, there’s relief in making a decision.

• Maybe it means you’re ready to adopt another pet.

• Maybe it means you feel peace in deciding you’ll never adopt again.

• Maybe you find calm in knowing you’re not alone when it comes to getting knocked sideways by the loss of your pet.

• Maybe your experience in pet loss grief goes a long way in helping someone else, and knowing you can pay that love forward gives you strength and joy.

I’m still on my own pet loss journey, by the way. I can’t tell you there’s a final place you’ll get to where you can put all this behind you.

What I can tell you is that being in community with others who share that strange woven experience of grief and love and pain and gratitude… it’s really the greatest gift.

If you feel ready to step into a caring, dedicated circle of people who truly understand what you are going through, I can’t wait to meet you and welcome you.

>>> Click here to secure one of the limited Founding Member spots. <<<

With warmth,

Mindy

“Echoing silence” is a phrase I never understood until my first devastating pet loss experience.

It obviously doesn’t make sense on the surface; it’s an oxymoron.

What I’ve since come to understand is that it’s a double-dose of truth.

Because when you lose a beloved animal companion, there’s the first layer of silence: The quiet house, the empty food bowl, the lack of pitter-pattering across the floor.

Then there’s the second layer of silence: the quiet of the people around you. Not because they don’t care about or recognize your grief. It’s that they don’t quite know what to say.

Which means a week or so after your pet dies, the world moves on. Back to work, back to school, back to weekend plans and chores and bills.

Meanwhile, you’re still standing in the kitchen at 6 am reaching for the food scoop that’s no longer needed.

If that’s where you find yourself right now, or if you remember being there, I want to share the one thing that makes grief easier to navigate…

It’s not a timeline.

It’s not “finding your new normal.”

It’s people.

The Risk of Grieving in the Dark

I’ve written a lot about disenfranchised grief, which is what happens when a loss isn’t fully acknowledged by the people around you. Grief researchers describe it as the grief you carry when the world doesn’t recognize your loss, because somehow that loss is seen as too small, too unusual, and somehow not legitimate.

This is a spot-on description of pet-loss grief.

With the rare exception of the occasional open-hearted human, there aren’t usually casseroles when your dog dies. No automatic bereavement leave if your cat passes.

Well-meaning friends who think they’re being helpful say things like, “Why don’t you get another one?”

They wouldn’t say that about a human. And sure, you can’t replace family bonds.

But what if the general understanding was that you can’t replace pet bonds, either?

What if you didn’t have to glide past those comments and grieve in private?

Or wonder if there’s something broken within you for you to be hurting this much?

What I’ve come to realize, after interacting with hundreds of people going through pet-loss grief, is that there’s nothing wrong with the lot of us.

Why a Mirror Can Change Everything

Here’s what’s come out of the many grief conversations I’ve had with other pet lovers:

When someone says, “Me too,” everything shifts.

When you tell your story to someone who’s going through or has gone through the same tumultuous silence…

When you don’t have to describe the pain because they’ve been there, too…

When you don’t have to explain, justify, or shrink your loss…

That’s when the healing begins.

People who’ve been there know what it means to schedule your day around medications, or to make that final heart-wrenching drive to the vet, or to still reach for the leash by the door.

They know what it’s like to wake up peacefully only to have your chest crush inward with pain as you remember life isn’t what it once was.

And being truly seen in this way by others who understand is no small thing. It’s the difference between curling up in a little ball with your grief and hiding away the dark, versus holding it tenderly, openly, in a room full of lights.

The same is true for the harder parts, the ones that are often left unspoken. The guilt over euthanasia… the flashbacks… the sense of incompleteness over the missing pet… the agony of 3 am tears.

These are things most of us hide from our closest family and friends.

But in the company of like-minded people who’ve walked the same road, they finally have somewhere to go.

And it’s got nothing to do with getting your grief “fixed.” It’s just about not being alone with it anymore.

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We’re Wired for This Kind of Support

We often treat reaching for support as something you only do if things are really bad, or if the struggle is incapacitating you in some way.

But grief works differently. It’s like the slow boil that doesn’t get noticed till the pot is empty and permanently burned.

The thing about being human is that we are wired for connection:

It’s how you survive the boiling but escape the burn.

I’m grateful that my Dad taught me this, all about the gift of reaching out to ask for help. Not because he specifically said, “Always reach out and ask for help.” But because he’s always been there, ready and willing to give help when I needed it, without judgment or questions.

And today is his birthday, so I honor him in turn. To paraphrase English poet John Donne, “We are none of us an island.”

When the bond you lost was with an animal who loved you unconditionally, who never made you feel unworthy or judged, who seemed to understand how you were feeling regardless of circumstances…

Then it helps tremendously if the people who help you grieve have been loved like that, too. It informs the grief-empathy process, allowing space for your grief that’s buffered by patience, free of judgment, and open to whatever the pain looks like today.

All to say, you deserve a place where your pet’s story and your journey together are welcomed. Where you can say their name out loud and not get met with an awkward look or swift subject change.

Where instead, the response is, “Tell me about them.”

Something Very Special Is Coming…

I’ve written before about being inspired to build this Healing From Pet Loss Community on Substack to shine a light on disenfranchised pet grief, so no one has to navigate this pain alone.

The response and support have been tremendous, and it’s inspired me to keep building. I’m now on the verge of announcing a new way for people who value this kind of connection to come together and shape a brand-new community from the beginning.

Because while we all grieve differently, the power of community in seeing someone through deep grief to the other side is indisputable. As to what’s on the other side…

Well, healing looks different for everyone. Sometimes it’s acceptance. Sometimes it’s the ability to move on. Sometimes it’s gratitude.

And sometimes it’s just a matter of waking up without heart-wrenching pain.

But it’s something we should all have access to.

If feeling seen and heard in your pet grief resonates with you, keep an eye on your inbox. On Wednesday, I’ll share the full details of how to be a part of this unique community opportunity where there will always be someone there, ready and willing to offer support should you need it, without judgment or questions.

Until then, if you’re grieving right now, please know you’re not alone. Reply to this post or message me if you’d like. Tell me about your pet. I would be honored to hear your story.

There’s a belief tied to Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) that made me catch my breath the first time I heard it:

They come before the grandparents. Before the aunts and uncles and old friends. Before the children, the lovers, the parents.

Día de los Muertos, if you’re unfamiliar, is the vibrant Mexican holiday where families gather to welcome back, honor, and celebrate the souls of their deceased relatives.

In a version of the tradition that’s caught on across Mexico in recent years, October 27 belongs to the pets. It’s the night families set out water, kibble, a favorite toy, maybe a photo…

And then they wait for the dogs and cats they’ve lost to find their way back.

The people get November 1 and 2. The pets get their very own night, ahead of everyone else.

Koda was on my mind when I read that. My soul dog, gone suddenly and much too soon, 14 years ago now. The grief that followed was long and confusing. One of the hardest parts was that I didn’t know how to navigate pet grief. There was no church service to plan. No casseroles on the doorstep. No day on anyone’s calendar that marked the transition.

This tradition gives you that day.

And even though October 27 has already slipped past us, you haven’t missed your opportunity.

There’s no hard rule about when a pet’s ofrenda goes up or comes down. A lot of families leave it up straight through the main celebrations on November 1 and 2, and some simply fold their pets right into the family altar. Each household decides when to set it up and how long to keep it.

So today works. So does tonight.

Borrowing With Care

Before we get to the how-to, a quick but important word.

Día de los Muertos is a sacred holiday with deep Indigenous and Catholic roots. For many families, it’s a serious, heartfelt act of love for the ones who came before them.

Here in Albuquerque, the Muertos y Marigolds celebration in the South Valley is now in its 34th year, and its organizers ask everyone who comes to respect the holiday’s cultural, spiritual, ancestral, and religious meaning.

I think that’s a good rule for a home altar, too.

You don’t need to be Mexican or Catholic to build one for your pet. But I’d encourage you to build it with care… the way you’d hold someone else’s family heirloom. Tenderly.

And with a lot of gratitude for what it’s offering you.

The Dog Waiting at the River

This next part gets me a little teary, so consider yourself warned.

Long before October 27 became the pets’ night, dogs held a sacred place in Mexica (Aztec) beliefs about death. The soul’s trip to Mictlán, the land of the dead, was said to take four years. And somewhere along the way, it reached a wide river.

According to Bernardino de Sahagún, the Spanish friar who recorded these beliefs in the 1500s, dogs waited on the shore. When a dog recognized its master, it threw itself into the water and carried that person across.

When it recognized its master.

The animal knew you. Instantly. And it came for you.

Today the hairless Xoloitzcuintli is the breed most tied to this role, though archaeologists have found many kinds of dogs in ancient burial sites. But the breed matters a lot less than the belief behind it… that the bond between a person and their animal was strong enough to cross over death itself.

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The Grief Science Angle

Modern grief researchers have a name for this, too. They call it a “continuing bond,” which is the idea that our relationship with someone we’ve lost carries on, just in a new form.

In one study of bereaved pet owners, keeping that connection alive through memories, belongings, and memorials turned out to be more comforting than distressing for most people. (Many people fear that confronting their grief will make it feel worse… but that’s just not the case.)

The ofrendas that are built during Día de los Muertos are a powerful way to keep that connection alive, because an ofrenda is a continuing bond you can actually touch.

What Goes on the Altar

You don’t need anything fancy. A photo, a bowl of water, a few flowers, and a toy can be plenty.

Here’s what each traditional piece means, and how to make it particular to you and your pet:

• A photo. This sits at the center. Skip the posed portrait and go for the one that looks most like them… ear flipped inside out, tongue hanging, mid-zoomie.

• Water. Souls are said to arrive thirsty after their long trip, so fresh water is a must. Use your pet’s actual bowl if you still have it.

• Their favorite food. Kibble. A treat. The cheese they begged for every single time you opened the fridge.

• Marigolds (cempasúchil). Their bright color and strong scent are believed to guide souls home, and some families scatter petals in a path from the front door to the altar.

• A candle. The light shows them the way home. LED candles work just fine, especially if a living pet with a curious nose or a busy tail shares your home.

• Their things. Their collar. Their tag. The blanket that still smells like them. And if you kept their ashes, those can go on the altar, too.

Papel picado (those colorful cut-paper banners) and copal incense are traditional extras if you’d like to add them.

The Weird Little Details

Here’s something no checklist includes: the altar works best when it’s oddly, wonderfully specific. Maybe for you that means

The squeaky hedgehog that lost its squeak years ago.
The sock they stole every morning and paraded around the living room.
The brand of tuna that brought the cat running from three rooms away.

On my ofrenda for Koda, it’s the silly frisbee he’d flip over to balance tiny balls on.

Specific objects pull up specific memories. And those memories are where your pet lives on in your heart.

As you set each item down, say out loud why it’s there. Something like, “This is your ball. You dropped it on my foot every night while I was trying to make dinner.”

It might feel awkward for about thirty seconds. And then it won’t.

When to Take It Down

On November 2, or whenever it feels right to you, take the altar down. Do it slowly. If you set out unopened treats or food, consider donating them to a local shelter in your pet’s name.

Then tuck the photo and the collar somewhere you can find them next fall.

Because that’s the beautiful gift of this tradition… it comes back around. On every Día de los Muertos, your pet gets their night of remembrance all again. And you get a place to put all that love, alongside a whole community doing the very same thing.

Your Invitation

I invite you to build a small ofrenda for your pet before November 2. One photo, one bowl of water, and one favorite treat is enough.

Then, if you’d like, come back and tell me about it in the comments. What did you put on the altar, and why? Share their name, too. I’d love to say it with you. 💗🐾

There’s a particular kind of day that shows up every October.

The light goes thin… the house gets quiet in a way that it wasn’t in July.

And you start to notice little things that weren’t getting to you before. Maybe that’s the absence of a leash by the door, a blanket nobody’s claimed, or a vacant heater vent where somebody used to plant themselves the second the weather turned.

Fall isn’t a welcome parade of colors when you’re grieving a pet. Instead, every falling leaf and every wilting garden plant echoes the end of life.

Maybe, anyway.

Maybe for you, the cooler air and the pumpkin-spice-everything are your favorite time of year. So if this season doesn’t bring up harder memories of your pet, that’s okay. Celebrate and savor whatever joy you feel.

But if instead, you’re feeling weighed down on those heaviest of days when loads of things outdoors have met their end, it can hit hard. Especially if it’s your first autumn without your pet.

So here are some ways to navigate those colder, suddenly harder nights.

Name the Fall Routine You’re Missing Most

Autumn is commonly marked by a shift in routines. The daily walk comes before dinner instead of after. An extra blanket goes on the bed. The whir of the heater becomes the comforting sound you start the day with.

It’s cozier than summer. Less get-out-and-go and more snuggle-and-sip.

And if you had a lovey, cozy, snuggly companion who isn’t walking the change of season with you this year, it makes sense for you to be thrown for a loop — even if you thought you were reasonably past your grief.

So first of all, go easy on yourself. Try to let go of any frustration at going backward in your mourning, or feeling suddenly weaker.

Ignore any comments from the outside world wondering how you could be sad about this again. And maybe don’t voice your thoughts unless you know it’s to someone who’s in a place to fully acknowledge and accept your sadness.

Because if you haven’t gone through fall without your pet in years…

Or if it’s been years that you’ve been missing them, especially in fall…

It’s just a hard time. And that’s okay. Give yourself a hug. Take a hug from me: [[[(((<<<>>>)))]]]

Reshape for a New Anchor

Here’s what I invite you to do: Find the thing that’s hardest to think about, and rewrite it.

For me, that would be remembering how much my little dog Sydney loved to play with fallen leaves. Normally a stately, calm, watchful dog who didn’t bother with toys, something bizarre happened if I tossed crisp fall leaves in the air in front of her. It was as if she turned into a puppy again, leaping and soaring, twisting and turning, always chomping at the leaves as they fluttered around her.

I loved it so much.

I miss it so much.

And so now, every fall, I toss a handful of leaves in the air for her, as I think about her. Just to remember that moment.

Other ways you can reshape your fall traditions:

• Rewrite the sensory experience. Change the route of your dog walk if that’s what you’re missing. Pay attention to the way the walk smells and to the crackle in the air. Maybe you’ll notice the scent of apples, or the cry of a bird you don’t normally hear in the summer.

• Create a new routine. Maybe you’re missing the fall evening snuggles because it’s cool enough to put a blanket on your lap at night. Sit down with the blanket anyway, but light a pumpkin-scented candle beside you. Think about what you loved about the old routine, and then add something new to it.

• Treat someone else. Possibly it was the fall menu in your kitchen you loved best — the transition to hearty stews and deep-dish pies. If tossing scraps into food bowls put a smile on your face, maybe keep tossing them, but instead put them outside for the birds. Or just think back with a smile about the excited wag of the tail or the gentle padding of feet when they heard the scraps hit their bowl.

All of these approaches give you a new anchor to embrace. It becomes something you can turn into a ritual every autumn. It still folds in the memory of your pet… but also gives you a new perspective.

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Add Their Name to Fall Art This Week

The most important thing here isn’t to ignore your grief and try to move on because “it’s been long enough” and you’ve got to get on with life.

Instead, how would it be to bring them into fall with you? You could set your pet’s photo where the morning light now lands.

Or share a story about them, like when they had a leaf stuck to their head or refused to go out in the cold rain.

You could put a small marker in the yard that you’ll see as you come and go, or put a candle in the window, or put their collar back up on a shelf where you’ll see it every day even if you were able to take it down not so long ago.

If you have kids, let them decorate for the season with a nod toward your beloved departed pet. Maybe a tiny pumpkin by the door with their name on it. Or a paper leaf on the wall with one thing you each loved about them written on it.

So whether it’s the walk, or the blanket, or the scents of the season, pause and do the sweet work of remembering. Or if you feel called to, let yourself just cry or sit in sadness while you miss them fiercely.

Friends, something happened recently that I never saw coming.

And while I know life can be unpredictable, we never have full control, and that the Universe/God/Powers-that-Be love to upend our best-laid plans…

I was operating under the belief that I had at least a minority share in directing my life.

But you know what? I don’t.

And that is why now, though it was out of the blue, completely unforeseen, and something I’d have previously argued against…

I am the happy owner of a new Cat.

Meet Octavia Waddingham.

Yes, I named her after the bestie duo Octavia Spencer and Hannah Waddingham of Ride or Die dramedy fame.

Yes, she is a lovely blend of black and white swirled together in peaceful unity, much like the actresses’ friendship and also like my favorite cookie.

And yes, she was kissed by a celestial love entity who left its mark in the form of a black heart on her right side, exactly like my sweet dog Owie, who once saved my broken heart, and who also has a black heart on his side.

But for all my poetic waxing, she is full-on cat and so far intolerant of entreaties for cuddling. Or quiet.

Before I tell you how she finagled her way into my world, it’s fascinating to consider just how common this is.

When “Never Again” Becomes a Yowl at the Door

A lot of people say it out loud, even if it’s only to themselves.

I’ll never get another one. Not now. Maybe not ever.

And then a cat shows up on your porch. Or a friend calls about a dog that needs a home by Saturday. Or you walk into a feed store for bird seed and walk out with a rabbit.

This happens more than anyone admits.

And if this is your story, you might be like me, carrying around a strange mix of feelings:

delight,

confusion,

perhaps a sting of guilt.

As if loving something new so soon, or when you were adamantly opposed to it, says something about how much you loved the one you lost or how much you love the ones you have.

But you know what? It doesn’t.

An unplanned pet doesn’t mean you stopped grieving those you’ve lost. It doesn’t mean you aren’t showing up for those you still have.

It just means your capacity is expanding.

I think much of this is because grief can make your heart feel closed for business. I know it did for me, but life doesn’t necessarily read the signs you put up on your door that say “No Entry.”

Instead, life dishes it out when you least expect it, don’t want it, can’t handle it, and in the end, can’t believe you ever lived without it.

Half of All Dogs Weren’t Planned (Really?!)

When you stop and think about it, it’s not like babies and pets and marriages are always planned. The same goes for jobs, growth spurts, and medical maladies.

Like everything in life, the way these animals arrive is often sideways and uninvited. But it does follow a pattern.

Researchers in the UK wanted to know how people actually end up with their dogs. In a 2021 study published in the journal Animals, a team working with the charity Dogs Trust interviewed 142 sets of dog owners. About half described their dog as unplanned. Those dogs came through family and friends as gifts or because someone stumbled onto a dog who needed help. In most cases, nobody went shopping around; the dog simply arrived.

Cats may even be more likely to show up this way. Animal welfare groups have long estimated that at least 1 in 5 cats comes into a home as a stray.

And then here’s another finding I love. When the ASPCA surveyed nearly 1,500 shelter adopters, adult cat adopters most often said the deciding factor was how the cat behaved with them. In other words, the cat made the first move.

So when you say “she picked me,” you’re not being sentimental or froofy. You’re describing something adopters report all the time.

But Is It a Sign? What the Research Says

This is the question I hear most from people whose new pet arrived at an uncanny moment: the week of the anniversary, the day after the ashes came home, a kitten with the same white patch on the same front paw. (Or like me, the matching black hearts.)

Bernard Beitman is a psychiatrist and visiting professor at the University of Virginia who studies meaningful coincidences. His research points to a few conditions that make people notice them more: being in a big life transition, running high on emotion, and needing something specific.

Grief pretty much checks every box, don’t you think?

(Fun detail: Beitman’s own curiosity started when he was a boy. He lost his dog, cried his way down the wrong road home, and found the dog right there.)

Some people hear that and think, so it’s just my brain. Others hear it and think, so I was open enough to notice. Both interpretations are welcome here, whatever you believe.

The way I see it, what people describe as signs tend to mush together like the perfect sandwich. They weren’t looking. The animal came to them first. The timing felt pointed.

And instead of the guilt they expected, they felt a peaceful sense of all-is-right, like a door they thought was locked had been opened from the other side.

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Two Loves Can Share One Heart

Here’s something that surprises a lot of people: Loving a new pet doesn’t end your grief.

Sometimes it stirs it right back up.

You might catch yourself calling the new cat by your old dog’s name. You might cry the first night she sleeps in his spot.

But I wouldn’t view this as a setback. It’s more like two separate loves merging into something shared.

Grief researchers Dennis Klass, Phyllis Silverman, and Steven Nickman described this decades ago in their work on continuing bonds. Staying connected to the one you lost is healthy, and it doesn’t block new love. It complements it.

Please never look at the unexpected pet as a replacement. Nothing could be. They’re a new chapter. You already know how to love well, and probably you’ve got more love to give. From all angles, that is a beautiful thing.

So if you’re welcoming a new pet and navigating old grief at the same time, embrace the contrast. If you let them, they make each other sweeter.

For me, there was a smidge of guilt in adopting a new cat because my two sweet dogs are way up there in years. I didn’t want them to think they were being replaced. I want their final years to be peaceful and wrapped in love.

And then this darn cat came along and showed me I was full of it with my best-laid plans.

How It Happened

It’s not that I couldn’t love a cat. I grew up with them. Adored them. Grieved them hard.

But I’ve been firmly ensconced in the dog world for over twenty years, paired with the chaos of the kid world. Then the kids proved slightly allergic to my parents’ cats. Then I met a cat-person I couldn’t stand.

Don’t you see all my identity-based, order-driven, medically necessary, judgy reasons for not wanting a cat?

But last month, the world started to shift. I took my kids to our local Catopia Café to look for kittens for my sister’s family. The plan was to surprise my niece and nephew with a pair of roly-poly kittens.

We sat for a few hours, highly entertained by the antics of the 30-plus cats around us. But as my children played with the different sets of bonded kittens, an older, bolder cat kept catching my eye. A distinct black-and-white, she crossed my path again and again. I couldn’t help but notice the swish of her fluffy tail. It was like watching a temptress in action.

We found our perfect pair-o-kittens and filled out the paperwork, planning to pick them up two days later. When we returned, the black-and-white duchess returned. She surveyed the cat bed we’d brought, brushed up against my legs, and then tossed her head and walked away.

I dreamed about her the next two nights in total defiance. Then came the signs. Then my children’s entreaties, each sure they’d outgrown their allergies.

I hesitantly called Catopia and asked about the black-and-white. This regal little girl was a one-year-old who’d had four kittens much too early in life and so would always stay petite. She’d been an excellent mama but never got to have her own shot at fun. She also got hit with a tooth issue and had all her teeth extracted.

There were so many things to love about her story that I related to, as I’m also a petite mother of four (though happily, I have all my teeth).

I melted and said I would take her on the spot.

And there you have it. That is how Octavia Waddingham came to join my family. And I’ve loved her more every day since.

Here’s some wonderful news for pet lovers: A growing number of companies now offer bereavement leave for pet loss.

It’s not a huge number, but the list is definitely longer than it used to be (because it used to be zero). Kempton Hotels, Mars Pet Care, Brewdog, and others are just a few companies that have formalized their own pet bereavement policies in recent years. Some cities and countries are even beginning to explore it legislatively.

The fact that it’s happening at all is fantastic. It means someone in those organizations looked at the deep grief their employees were carrying around following the loss of a pet and recognized that it deserved to be acknowledged and honored.

So if you happen to work for one of these amazing companies, or any company that offers pet loss validation of some sort, then please take the leave. Make the most of it, actually use it, and try not to spend it the way that most people might spend it, which would include:

1. cycling through social media,

2. lying in bed,

3. feeling vaguely guilty about not doing anything,

4. and going back to work worried that you wasted your time.

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Bereavement Leave Helps More Than You Might Think

What those days are actually for seems like it would be obvious. But, given the disenfranchised view of pet loss, not everybody uses pet bereavement leave to actually mourn their pets.

This holds true even for those who are deeply saddened or even devastated by the loss of their pets.

Part of it is because there’s a lot of guilt in actually making time to grieve a pet.

Too often, someone who takes pet bereavement leave sees it as a way to get a few days off work to maybe get something done around the house.

But this is not supposed to be a period of “productive healing,” nor is it supposed to be a period of productivity and knocking things off your to-do list. It’s also not a time for forced emotional processing (which, let’s face it, is really unappealing to most people, even those in deep grief).

Really, pet bereavement leave is buffer time.

It’s time to pull yourself out of your routine and allow your nervous system the space to begin absorbing what happened without the additional requirement of showing up for colleagues and bosses and clients and then performing normalcy for 8 hours.

In fact, grief researchers who study bereavement in the workplace have noted something counterintuitive: people who take the designated time to grieve, even if it’s just 1 or 2 days away from the normal day-to-day, show a faster return to baseline functioning than those who push straight through.

This isn’t because you can resolve your grief in a day or three, or whatever your bereavement leave amounts to. It’s because just allowing yourself the permission to process instead of suppress what’s going on is, in itself, a form of healing.

How To Make The Most Of Those Days Off

Don’t think of any of the following as rules. These are just things that people tend to look back on and feel really glad they did.

1. Slow mornings. Maybe your bereavement leave starts with one slow morning that does not have an alarm, where there is no list of things to accomplish and nowhere to be.
   Grief can benefit from uninterrupted time, meaning space where you’re not rushing toward doing anything. We have almost none of that in our daily lives, and then when we go through something traumatic, we give our grief none of that space.
   So even just one morning of real space and quietude can make a profound difference.

2. Move your body with intention. The next thing you might try is doing something physical in a significant place.
   Maybe that’s taking a walk somewhere that your pet loved to go, or spending time in the garden, or sitting by a sunny window.
   Anything that involves your body moving through an area or space that holds a memory of yours. This kind of movement, with intention and purpose, can benefit your nervous system in ways lying in bed can’t.

3. Start a meaningful project. Consider beginning something that is dedicated to your pet.
   Maybe it means you gather the first few photos for a memory book, or you write the first line of a letter to your pet, or you put a vase on a dresser where you plan to have a small memorial.
   Really, you’re just looking for one small action that says, “I’m going to intentionally begin something that honors the memory of this pet.” Note: I didn’t say finish. This is just about beginning.

4. Connect with a feeling human. Spend time with someone who truly gets it, not someone who wants to go play tennis with you because you got the day off.
   Maybe reach out to someone who knew your pet or who takes the loss very seriously. Someone who can sit with you and just be, without pressuring you to talk about moving on or any other aspect of life outside of what you had with your pet.

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If Your Employer Doesn’t Offer Pet Bereavement Leave (Yet)

The truth is, most don’t. If that’s your situation, you are in the significant majority.

Here’s something worth looking into: more companies have added, or are in the process of adding, pet bereavement leave in recent years because employees started the conversation and asked for it.

This proves the cultural narrative is shifting and YOU can be part of it. If you have a human resources department or something similar, go talk to them. Express the desire. Ask your boss about it. Share it with the decision-makers.

If you’re a manager or an employer reading this, please know you have more power here than you might realize. Offering even informal flexibility around pet loss, like a delayed start to the day, a shorter workday, or some kind of quiet acknowledgment that this is a significant event in your employee’s life, costs you almost nothing.

But it means more than you can probably imagine to the person receiving it.

Thank You, World, For Moving Forward

In the meantime, if you don’t have pet bereavement leave and you’ve lost a pet, take advantage of whatever kind of space to grieve you can arrange. That might just be half a day on the weekend or maybe a work-from-home morning where the bar is just a little bit lower than it would be if you have to show up to the office. Try to use that time with intention.

Even a very small amount of space, when used deliberately, is worth more than a week of pushing through as if nothing significant happened.

For anyone reading this, please consider that bereavement leave is formal permission to grieve. But if you don’t have that formal permission, allow yourself that space regardless, even if your employer hasn’t caught on yet.

Happily, the world is getting better at this, albeit very slowly. The fact that I’m even able to write about this… the fact that “pet bereavement leave” is a phrase that now exists… is beautiful evidence.

It’s almost an inevitable question after you lose a pet: “When will you get a new one?“

It comes from well-meaning family and friends who want to see you happy again.

It comes from curious coworkers and nosy neighbors.

And sometimes, it’s something you ask yourself in the middle of the night as you try to work out how to move forward.

Like everything related to pet loss grief, there is no universal right answer. But here are some things that might help you navigate the question.

If It Feels Like Being Punched In The Face...

Imagine running a grueling marathon, all 26.2 miles, in biting wind and icy rain, to the point where your body is stretched past all limits and your mind cries out in agony with each step.

Also, the finish line keeps getting pushed back.

That’s what pet loss feels like to some people.

And so getting asked if you’ll find a new pet is like being told to sign up for another marathon when you’re still trying not to die from the first one.

I’ve overheard people in this stage say things like,

“Never.”

“I can’t go through that again.”

“It’ll break me for good.”

“I could never love another pet the way I loved this one.”

And all of that might be completely true for you right now.

But I do think that instead of saying never, it’s equally true and maybe less defiant to take the Scarlett O’Hara approach: “I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

It leaves you space to ask yourself the question if the timing ever feels right, but also allows you the freedom to put that thought aside.

If It Feels Like Something You’re Obligated To Do…

A tricky road to navigate following heart-breaking pet loss is the way other people in your family feel about getting a new pet.

Maybe you were closely and lovingly connected to the pet that passed, but your family didn’t share that connection.

Maybe it was an older dog that you raised and adored for 15 years, but your young kids only knew him as a creature that snored a lot and wobbled when he walked.

Maybe your partner never liked your cat and is now really excited to get a new kind of pet, even as you navigate profound grief.

Instead, give yourself a lengthy runway.

Saying something like, “I acknowledge you’d like a new pet. Maybe a new pet is in our future. And I would love to have three months to grieve and process all of this.”

The benefit here is that three months is a really long time (especially to kids), so it makes it clear that this is not a conversation you’ll be ready to have next week or the week after.

Ideally, they quit asking, knowing that you’ve expressed your desire for a solid amount of time to mourn.

If it’s your kids who are insistent, possibly putting a date on the calendar for when you’re ready to talk about it is something that would give them a more concrete way to approach the topic (it tells them you’re willing to have the conversation, just not yet).

I think at the end of the day it’s really a matter of honoring your own feelings and making sure you’re in a place where you’ll be ready to give love and care again without resentment and without feeling depleted.

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If It Feels Like Something Your Other Pets Need...

In my opinion, this is the hardest question of all to navigate in the midst of pet grief. I think it’s absolutely true that pets mourn each other, particularly if they were a bonded pair or grew up together.

When I lost my soul dog, Koda, my other beloved pup, Sydney, grieved hard. I was so lost for the first month or two that I didn’t even notice.

But then it became clear to me she had lost weight. She rarely wagged her tail. And she just seemed blue all the time. That’s when I started looking at rescue sites for Cavaliers. (Sydney and Koda were Cavalier King Charles Spaniels.)

It was unlikely that I would be picked to adopt a rescue because I had small children at home at the time, but one miracle led to another, and Owie came into our lives relatively quickly. He was another tricolor Cavalier, just like Sydney.

Of course, Sydney did not appear to appreciate him at first and eyed him with the wary ambivalence of a mama bear watching an approaching male.

But interestingly, she perked up.

She began to eat again (maybe so Owie didn’t get her food first?).

She began getting up to greet me at the door again (maybe so Owie wasn’t the only one who got attention when I came home?).

She started snuggling with me on the couch again (maybe out of jealousy that Owie was also next to me?).

I don’t really need to know whether her new behavior was born out of a competitive spirit. The why didn’t matter.

What did matter was that she slowly came back to life and eventually played with and snuggled Owie on her own. I do firmly believe that Owie saved her. He helped me in unexpected ways as well, even though getting him wasn’t exactly my idea and I hadn’t felt ready.

I guess the take-home here is that sometimes the decision is out of your hands. In those cases, I encourage you to just open yourself to the possibility that good might come out of a new adoption even though you can’t yet see how.

So at the end of the day, when it comes to navigating others’ questions about whether to adopt a new pet after pet loss but not feeling ready, the trick I’ve found most useful is to simply acknowledge what the person is saying.

And then go about your day, give yourself the care and timeline you need, and be open to what may come next.

My long-time childhood kitty, Sammy, went missing when I was a teenager. But I never once doubted we’d find him. A stealthy, highly independent cat, he was obviously out exploring.

My mom found him a few days later through the website of a local animal shelter where someone had dropped him off. The picture didn’t look like my sweet cat at all—just an irate black ball of fur.

Looking back, I can’t imagine what my mom went through, having raised Sammy up from his kitten days till 17 or 18 years by that time. I was too wrapped up in my own teenage drama to really worry.

But she’d had him longer than she had any of her kids and I imagine it was terrifying.

That’s the thing about losing a pet that goes missing…

It’s different from most pet losses. However devastating, those other losses come with black-and-white finality. There’s a last moment you can point to. A date that becomes the dividing line between before and after.

But when a pet just disappears, you don’t get any of that.

The collar still hangs on its hook.

The food bowl is there, waiting to be filled.

You can’t stop opening the door to check one last time, going for late-night walks with a flashlight, or combing “lost pet” posts.

Because somewhere, deep down, part of you insists today might be the day they come back.

It doesn’t even matter whether it’s weeks or months later. Hope can stay alive with very little fuel.

And as humans, we’re drawn to hope and story. Just look at all the movies that encourage this line of thinking: Homeward Bound. The Incredible Journey. A Dog’s Way Home.

Because sometimes, just like my Sammy kitty, pets do return home. So it feels wrong and unnatural and kind of like losing faith in your pet to give up on their return.

Life In Limbo

The truth is, a pet that disappears is one of the most painful yet least acknowledged forms of pet loss. Yet it’s not because the grief is any different than other types of losses. It’s because in addition to the grief of loss, there’s no resolution to bookend the grief.

It’s difficult to process what happened when you may still have a future with your pet.

It also leaves you sort of at a loss as to what to do. Memorials, rituals, funerals, and tributes go a long way in helping us work through grief. But it feels wrong to do any of this if you might still see your pet again, or if their state of being gone will ever change.

And so you’re left in agonizing limbo with no clear distinction as to when it is okay to begin processing what happened and move on.

The Grief Science Angle

Grief researchers have a name for this type of loss, thanks to family therapist and researcher Pauline Boss. She coined the term “ambiguous loss” to describe losses with no clear ending.

The situations behind ambiguous loss tend to be those where someone is physically absent but psychologically present, where the loss itself remains unconfirmed, and the possibility of that someone coming back is always present.

It’s a state of being where your mind tumbles and worries and exhaustively toggles back and forth between worry, hope, grief, and questioning.

One moment you’re grieving.

The next moment you’re angry at yourself for losing hope.

Then you’re questioning every last moment and searching for clues.

And for fleeting moments, you become sure you can solve the mystery and bring the pet home.

Boss’s research found that ambiguous loss is among the most difficult forms of grief to integrate into your life precisely because the uncertainty keeps the wound fresh. She also identified what she called “boundary ambiguity,” which is the difficulty of not knowing how to classify someone’s place in your life when it’s unclear where they’ve gone.

• Do you speak about your pet in present or past tense?

• Do you keep their things or put them away?

• Do you create a memorial?

• Put together a tribute?

• Let everyone in your life know?

Also, in a case of ambiguous loss, your brain enters a high state of alert, constantly flooded with stress hormones. It’s hard for the mind to maintain that kind of crisis level indefinitely, and so every small daily decision becomes its own source of micro-grief.

And the way this saps your energy is extensive. The cognitive and emotional load is exhausting in ways that are genuinely hard to describe to someone who has never been through it.

Especially when, in a lot of cases, your own brain forces you to detach and give up hope just to protect you from the crushing weight of continuous grief and anxiety.

If this is you right now, know that it’s an act of survival and not a lack of love or loyalty.

What Not to Say, Ever

There’s another side to pet loss where pets go missing, which consists of all the unintentionally painful things well-meaning people might say. Things like

“I’m sure they’ll come back.”

“Why don’t you get another one until they show up?”

“They probably found a good home.”

“Have you tried looking? Have you done X, Y, Z?”

Or the worst of all: “At least you don’t know for sure.”

Granted, these comments are offered as comfort, but they kind of come across as instructions not to grieve. This leaves you stuck in a loop where you stay hopeful and cheerful and don’t give your sadness its day in the sun.

But the truth is, for most people, the uncertainty of not knowing is much more painful than a confirmed death because it keeps the hope going long past when hoping is maybe unsustainable.

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3 Simple Steps For Wading Through

While there’s never any specific prescription that works for everybody, here’s what might help you navigate this difficult road:

First, yes, this is still a true loss. Your pet is somewhere else with someone else and you don’t actually know if they’re okay. It’s uncomfortable and you don’t have answers. There’s no clarity. There’s no final moment where you pick up and move on.

So allow yourself to treat it like a true loss:

1. This means you acknowledge that the grief is there. You honor that grief by crying, stomping, journaling, screaming—whatever it is you need to wade through it, and as many times as you need to do it.

2. Acknowledge the additional pain of not having closure. Maybe that means more tears. Maybe it just means telling yourself it’s okay to feel pain from not knowing.

3. Understand that you don’t need a confirmed ending to deserve support. You’re worthy of support when you’re in pain, no matter what that pain looks like.

It also helps a lot, however small it sounds, to have people in your life who can hold both possibilities alive with you instead of diverting to false reassurances.

Here’s what that person might say and what I encourage you to say if you’re ever helping someone through this kind of ambiguous loss: “I know you don’t know yet, and I’m here with you in the not knowing.”

That’s worth more than a hundred people offering premature comfort.

If you don’t have someone in your life right now, finding a community like this one that understands ambiguous loss can be the very thing that keeps you from going under.

Small Solaces

The takeaway here is that closure isn’t a prerequisite for grieving, nor for healing. Grief science has made this abundantly clear.

And as an eternal optimist myself, you don’t have to hold out constant second-by-second hope for your pet’s return. You absolutely can still hope, but in between, you can let yourself grieve because it’s really, really hard, painful, and devastating to lose a pet in any way for any amount of time.

At some point, many people find that it’s helpful to create a simple form of acknowledgment that the pet is still in their heart and that they’re still holding out hope, but that they are also sitting in some type of remembrance.

It’s kind of like channeling your grief and giving it a dedicated place to go.

A small memorial by your bedside with a picture of your pet and a candle might be all you need. Putting together such a memorial doesn’t mean you’re giving up or that you believe this is how this story ends.

You might also write a letter or begin a morning ritual that says, “I loved you. I still love you. I looked. I’m going to keep looking.”

Regardless of what happened to your pet, you can hold on to the one firm truth that stands:

This will always hold true, no matter how the story finally ends.

A while back, during a Zoom check-in with colleagues, it was my turn to give an update.

“I sleep a lot,” I said simply. But before their smiles turned into elevated eyebrows and wrinkled foreheads, I added, “The good kind. Like when you’re healing after a big accident.”

I went on to tell them it wasn’t quite the same as relaxing sleep. Not invigorating. Definitely restorative.

So today, and because sleep is so crucial to our health, work, and the quality of daily life, I’d like to delve into the many different flavors of sleep—especially as they relate to grief, and to pet grief in particular. For example:

There’s the kind of sleep forced upon you (like when I make my children take naps and fantasize about someone doing the same for me).

Then there’s the kind where you passively drop into bed because there’s not much else to do and another day is right around the corner.

There’s also the sleep where you’re so stretched past your physical limit you don’t even remember your head hitting the pillow.

These are the common ones. Most of us have a mosaic of these throughout our lives.

But then there’s a whole different kind of sleep, the kind where you’ve checked out mentally, emotionally, and physically. Where you really just don’t want to be here because something—grief, usually, or pain, is draining you so fast that you can’t keep up.

So you give up, tuck in, and hope to wake up a year or five later when the nightmare is over.

It’s different from suicidal ideation, because you’re not actively planning your exit. But you do maybe entertain the thought that a massive asteroid plants itself on your house, or that some conveniently airborne biological agents soundlessly creep through the window screens.

I’ve slept that sleep. It is not restful. You wake up feeling heavier than when you started and balk at the idea of wading through another day.

Then there’s the sleep that comes after that agony.

After you’ve weathered the pain and started to heal.

This is what I’ve come to call the Grief Sleep Cycle.

The Physical Signs of Grief

We talk often about grief as an emotional experience. The tears, the guilt, the sadness that seems to permeate every pore.

But there’s much less said about what grief does to the body.

The exhaustion I referenced above is different from the ordinary kind of tired. It’s not related to “I didn’t sleep enough” tired. Think of it more as “my entire system is running on backup power and that’s about to combust” kind of tired.

In this strain of tired, food is no longer a means of sustenance, but rather something you avoid entirely—or the flipside, where you immerse yourself in too much of it.

Maybe your immune system gives up and you catch cold after cold.

Your ability to care about things that once seemed important, like locked doors and paid bills, goes missing.

And so sleep either won’t come or won’t stay or is laced with nightmares, and is more draining than reviving.

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The Physical Reality of a Broken Heart

Even having been through deep grief and knowing just how unpleasant it is, I find it fascinating to really look at what it does to your body.

First off, there’s the stress response. Significant loss, pet loss included and maybe especially so, triggers a rise in cortisol and an increase in inflammatory markers. Your nervous system goes into high alert and might stay there for weeks or months.

In fact, researchers have documented a whole array of physiological effects in those suffering from loss.

It includes changes in heart rate, blood pressure, immune function, sleep quality, and even a potential hormonal imbalance.

One landmark study identified proof of what’s been labeled “broken heart syndrome,” which is a real, documented increase in cardiac risk in the days immediately following a significant loss.

Meaning the concept of a broken heart is not just metaphorical. It’s physiological and measurable. Your chest aches for a reason.

The loss of the steady, constant presence of an all-loving, ever-welcoming pet can trigger this, no question.

But physical demise following pet loss isn’t imminent, even if it feels and looks like you’re about to crash and burn. According to research published in Psychosomatic Medicine, bereaved individuals who maintained even moderate physical activity showed faster recovery of their immune function.

This was true even when their emotional grief was as equally intense as their physical symptoms.

Think of it as your body needing motion to process loss in ways your mind can’t do on its own.

And while most of the published research on the physical aspects of grief focuses on human bereavement, the grief response in pet loss can activate the same physiological pathways.

Why?

Gifts For Your Body

Now back to grief sleep…

When grief has taken up residence in your body and is affecting your sleep, there are small things that can genuinely help. None of these should be considered cures or steps to rush your way through.

Think more along the lines of basic maintenance while your nervous system does the hard work of absorbing the reality of your loss.

Some things that can help you weather grief sleep:

• Protein. Go for whatever’s easy. Greek yogurt, nuts, maybe an egg. Protein supplies amino acids that help regulate your blood sugar and produce sleep-promoting brain chemicals. (But how do you eat with no appetite? I get it. Just start with a single bite.)

• Water. Crying is more dehydrating than you might realize. And when you’re dehydrated, everything is harder, from focus and mood to pain tolerance and sleep. Take it one sip at a time. Try a water enhancer or water flavor drops.

• Light movement. As mentioned above, it’s a way to move the grief out of your body. The less cortisol you’re carrying, the better you’ll sleep. I’m a big fan of long walks with sunshine on my face.

• Sunshine. And speaking of, morning light has a documented effect on cortisol regulation and sleep quality. Since grief messes up both, counteract it with a fifteen-minute walk in the morning. It’s okay to go slow. It’s okay to cry the whole time.

Consider This Permission to Lower Every Bar

Also, don’t look for a quick fix. Grief, like healing after a big accident, takes time to wade through. (And believe me, I understand how aggravating this can be if your life requires efficiency and effectiveness and it’s hard-hard-hard to stop and take time for yourself.)

The first goal is to get past the zombie sleep where you’d rather not wake up.

The second goal is to let yourself sleep as much as your body asks.

This means you’re allowed to cancel plans, to not volunteer or say yes to anything, to eat as simply as possible, to let the house go to pot, to ignore the to-do lists…

And to just allow yourself to work toward healing. Hopefully while sleeping. 💗

After a traumatic pet loss, be it a sudden accident, an unexpected death, a disappearance, or euthanasia that went nothing like you’d hoped, some people experience a feeling that goes beyond what might be called ordinary grief.

It’s when the images come back without warning. They replay on a loop, sometimes for months, haunting the person who went through the experience. In turn, that person might avoid certain places, avoid certain routes home, or turn the music off if a specific song comes on.

Sometimes they can’t sleep or don’t want to eat.

Some feel like they’re still bracing for something to happen, even though the worst has already happened.

What is this? And can losing a pet have this drastic an effect?

But the way you experience a grief/trauma blend is totally unique to you and what you went through, and it’s not wrong in any way.

What Trauma Actually Is

Popular culture and people in general tend to link trauma to a lot these days. It might be when when referring to major things, like childhood or a career or relationship:

I had a traumatic childhood.

My last job gave me PTSD.

I’ve got a lot of trauma from dealing with my ex.

Sometimes it’s something brief and minor, or a way to describe a less-than-stellar experience:

That math test was traumatic!

I still have trauma from that blind date.

My brother traumatized me with his bug collection.

But trauma isn’t defined by the what. Meaning it’s not about what specifically happened to you. It’s defined by the way you experienced what happened, and how it landed in your unique nervous system.

The American Psychological Association explains trauma as “an emotional response to a deeply distressing event that overwhelms a person’s ability to cope.”

• Witnessing somebody else suffering can qualify as trauma.

• Knowing there is suffering going on outside of your control, even if you can’t see it, can count.

• A sudden violent death qualifies, whether it was a human or an animal.

• A high-stakes medical crisis with impossible decisions meets the criteria. Euthanasia falls under this category.

In terms of pet loss, researchers have documented what some clinicians now call traumatic pet bereavement, which is grief complicated by traumatic elements that make the experience much more intense and much more difficult to integrate than a typical loss.

In a 2016 study in the journal Society and Animals, researchers found that pet loss following traumatic circumstances was associated with significantly higher rates of post-traumatic stress symptoms than non-traumatic pet loss.

(And sure, none of this is a news flash. You might be nodding your head, well aware that the harder an experience is, the more difficult it is to get over. Obviously.)

But something goes awry with this thinking when it comes to the world of pet loss. Unlike with human loss, people are less likely to ask about how the death happened, or how you might be coping. It becomes just another water cooler conversation, followed by the weather forecast, national news, or local gossip.

Yet if you’re the one who went through the traumatic loss of your pet, it’s not an experience you can easily wave aside — especially if you’re reminded of your pet constantly throughout your home and your daily schedule, where they used to be woven throughout.

So in order to validate that grief, it’s sometimes helpful to understand that it absolutely can be traumatic and can potentially leave you with signs of PTSD.

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Symptoms Worth Recognizing

Consider whether you’ve experienced any of the following recognized trauma responses:

• Intrusive images or memories that arrive without warning, often at random moments

• Avoidance of places, sounds, or situations connected to what happened

• Being more easily startled than usual or feeling chronically on edge

• Sleep disruption or nightmares

• Emotional numbness, alternating with sudden intense waves of feeling

• A sense that the loss hasn’t fully registered, like you’re watching your life from a slight distance

None of these are signs that you’re overreacting.

None of these mean you’re broken.

All they mean is that you went through something that your nervous system can’t absorb all at once, and so it’s working through it little by little (which, for the record, is exactly what nervous systems are supposed to do after a major shock).

I experienced quite a bit of this when my little soul dog Koda passed, because it was sudden, completely unexpected, and quite horrific to see him in his suffering.

He’d been acting nervous a few days before the 4th of July, which was normal for him because the sound of fireworks always made him panicky and our neighborhood was filled with early celebrations.

On a particularly challenging night when my two toddlers did not want to go to bed, Koda was more agitated than usual. I stuck him downstairs in the laundry room (something I’d never before done), reasoning that he’d calm down because he couldn’t hear the fireworks there. I closed the door on him and went back upstairs to wrangle my babies into bed. When I returned to check on him, I found he had thrown up all his dinner, was heaving air in a deep, strange way, and just seemed off.

I called the emergency clinic and they asked me to look at his gums, which were white. I was told to bring him in immediately. They took him to the back with very few words. Forty torturous minutes later, I was told I could come see him. He looked terrified in his cage. As I moved toward him, fluid started coming out of his nostrils. The clinic staff swooped him up and ushered me out, telling me he was “basically drowning.”

That was the last I saw of him alive. He died of congestive heart failure shortly after.

It’s Universally Unique

Maybe a better way to think about trauma is that it’s not about what happened; it’s about your own reaction to it. Your reaction, whether it’s extreme or quite small, is normal. Meaning:

You are human, and when something genuinely hard happens, your ability to cope is based entirely on who you are, what you’ve been through, and how you were built to cope.

In other words, you’re not weak for struggling with this.

Also, as we’ve talked about so often, traumatic pet loss tends to go unrecognized, mostly because the cultural permission to grieve a pet is so nearly nonexistent.

People would never question your trauma symptoms if you witnessed a human death, particularly if something about the death went unexpectedly or if it was sudden or difficult.

But if it was a pet that died in a sudden or difficult way or if the euthanasia went wrong, you’re often expected to move right past it in a matter of weeks. Depending on your personal makeup, this could be difficult or feel almost impossible.

When there’s a big gap like this between what you experience and what those around you expect you to experience, it can add a painful layer of isolation to something that’s already difficult to go through.

So please take comfort in knowing that what you’re feeling, or what you may have felt when you went through this, was real, normal, and is worthy of being supported.

It’s also important to recognize that traumatic grief takes a lot longer to get over than ordinary grief. This isn’t because something was wrong with the experience or something is wrong with you.

What helps?

• Gentle movement like yoga or tai chi

• Short walks outside

• Sitting in the sunshine for a few minutes each day

• Hugging someone and holding on for more than 20 seconds

• Meditating

• Journaling

• Letting yourself cry and really allowing your feelings their day in the sun

All of these steps help coax grief out of your nervous system and into the open, where it can float away, almost like a balloon that you’re finally ready to let go of.

An additional thing trauma researchers note is that the urge to avoid all reminders of what happened, while completely understandable, can actually prolong your traumatic grief symptoms.

Better is to have gradual and gentle re-exposure to reminders of your pet, and of their passing, in a safe setting with support so that your nervous system learns the danger has passed, the shock is over, and you can move forward at your own pace.

After a pet dies, something happens that a lot of people experience and almost nobody talks about publicly.

It might be as simple as a moment of sudden peace with no explanation.

Or a dream so vivid it didn’t feel like you were dreaming.

It could be a butterfly that lands right where your pet used to sit in the afternoon sun.

Or a bird at the window looking at you in a way that feels deliberate.

Maybe even the scent of something that brings your pet back for one beautiful, disorienting second.

People go silent about these things. And it’s no wonder — they’re already grieving a loss the world barely acknowledges.

Who wants to also have to defend what they felt or saw?

So they carry it alone. We carry it alone. I carried it alone.

But what’s carried — both in my experience and in the experience of scores of people I’ve heard from — is something that actually helps. Something that offers a breath of comfort in the middle of an otherwise stifling grief.

Across Cultures, This Isn’t New

But there’s logic here, and history.

For one thing, the human impulse to look for continuity after death, including animal death, is ancient. It appears in nearly every culture, in every era of recorded history.

• Indigenous traditions across North America speak of animal spirits and ancestors who return in animal form.

• The Japanese practice of mizuko kuyo honors even brief lives lost.

• Mexican families build ofrendas for Día de los Muertos — constructed around the belief that a bond doesn’t end at death, it just changes form.

• Ancient Egyptians mourned their cats with the same ceremonies used for human family members.

And these aren’t just reassuring belief systems. They’re the accumulated wisdom of billions of people across thousands of years, all arriving at the same understanding:

What strikes me, and what I find genuinely comforting, regardless of how I hold it theologically, is the impressive consistency. Cultures with no contact with each other, across every continent and every era, all developed ways of preserving ongoing connection with the ones they’d lost — animals included.

That convergence is profound.

I’m no exception. Following various losses in my own life, both human and animal, I’ve had inexplicable experiences with birds and butterflies and clouds. Experiences that are as mystifying as they are puzzling, that make me wonder if it’s my grief-stricken mind playing tricks on me.

But then, when I read about similar experiences from people across the world who were raised in a different culture and religion and language… the similarities are too striking not to believe something strange and wonderful is going on.

Resilience Hides in Signs and Meaning

Whether or not you have a spiritual framework behind your understanding of death, there’s something worth noting that happens in the nervous system following a significant loss.

First, consider that grief heightens our attention. We’re tuned to everything connected to who we’ve lost.

This opens us up to genuine moments of meaning we might otherwise skip right past. These moments are meaningful because they help us heal.

Researchers who study grief have found that “continuing bonds experiences” — aka, felt moments of connection after loss — are associated with lower levels of complicated grief and better overall adjustment over time.

Researcher George Bonanno, professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University and a pioneering researcher on human trauma and grief, has spent decades studying resilience after loss.

Bonanno found that people who could find meaning in and after a loss showed significantly better long-term outcomes.

Note that the meaning you find doesn’t need to come from one particular framework or a sign or symbol. It can connect to whatever belief system you choose.

Whether you call these experiences spiritual contact, meaningful coincidence, or the mind’s own clever way of healing itself — the comfort you get from it is real. That much is documented.

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Can Anything Real Just Vanish?

If you’ve ever had an experience like this, be it a sign, a dream, a moment that felt like contact from beyond — please give yourself permission to hold it as real.

And also, hold it close to your heart, like you might a sacred talisman.

You don’t have to share it with people who’ll minimize it. And you certainly don’t have to rationalize it into something insignificant to make it socially acceptable.

Whatever you believe happens after death, whatever your tradition, your theology, or your frank uncertainty — just accept that the love that transpires between a pet and their owner is real. It’s about as real a relationship as you can get.

And so if it existed, it can’t just — poof — cease to exist.

My youngest son recently learned about the Law of Conservation of Energy, which says that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed from one form to another. Like thermal energy (heat) being added to solid ice. What happens? The ice melts, of course. Add even more and that water turns into steam.

But the heat energy you started with didn’t just vanish. It became the kinetic energy (motion) of the water molecules.

I can’t say for sure, of course. I’m learning about all this right alongside you.

Yet I think it’s good to ask the questions. I think it’s smart to consider alternate possibilities that we’ve yet to crack open.

So whether that energy or that love or the connection you had with your pet manifests as a message in the clouds or a puzzling communique from a butterfly or a transformational ceremony… I think it’s fair to say any of it is possible.

But most important is to find meaning in the message or the experience. Whether it was a divine interaction or just an epiphany that brought you back from the doldrums of sadness, it’s a good thing regardless.

So just consider it, remember it, in whatever way best serves you and the memory of your pet.

When you reach that heartbreaking point where it’s clear your pet is dying, the advice starts to pour in:

• Create lasting memories.

• Give them everything they want.

• Cherish each moment.

• Make every day count.

• Be present.

And this advice is well-intentioned. It sounds beautiful. It is right… but to a point.

Because if you take a minute to assess where that lands you, there’s a heck of a lot of pressure behind those words.

As some of my favorite friends would put it, “Life still be life-ing.” Meaning the world and everything you’re supposed to do in it won’t stop because you’re facing impending death.

Some days, you’re too exhausted to be present.

Other days, work or home obligations eclipse all your time.

In between, fear makes you shut down and carry on as usual, as if your world weren’t about to implode.

And there may be days where your pet isn’t doing well, but neither are you, so the day is just a matter of survival. There’s no space for carefully-curated memories to be made.

Then comes the guilt, which adds to the grief, which tops off the exhaustion…

It’s a pesky, rubbishy little cycle, isn’t it?

Here’s how to get out of that loop…

What Real Presence Looks Like

What I’ve come to learn through my own grief research and my personal experience with loss is this:

Nor is it a photo shoot, a meaningful outing, or a specially-made meal.

It can be all these things — but they are on the same level and equal to just showing up on a Sunday morning and sitting by your pet. Where you’re both just there, on the couch or the floor or wherever.

There’s no phone in your hand, twitching to take pictures.

There’s no to-do list to check off.

You’re just there. Present. Breathing deeply. Maybe with a hand on your pet as they breathe deeply in turn.

And that’s it. That’s all you need to do.

It feels counterintuitive, absolutely. But it’s these ordinary moments that you’ll miss the most.

Not the posed photos (all 87 of them because you wanted to get the perfect shot🙋🏻‍♀️).

Not the extraordinary adventures (because you always meant to take your pet here or try this new food or buy them that toy and by golly, now you’re making it happen!).

It’s not those things that count most in the end at all. It really is the little things.

Once your pet is gone, you’re not likely to crave the more extraordinary memory-making moments you orchestrated. Instead, you’ll be thinking about

The way your pet used to feel on your lap.

The curve of their back as you laid your hand on their warm skin.

The little noises they made.

The way they followed you from room to room or greeted you at the door or came and found you in the middle of the day for no reason at all other than to snuggle up to you.

So what I’m really saying is…

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Easy Things You Can Do Right Now

All that aside, it’s also perfectly normal — healthy, even — to want to do something out-of-the-box in the days leading up to the end. If that’s you, try some of these simple ideas:

• Make a video. Nothing staged or fabricated, just your pet going about their ordinary day. Try to capture their sounds, habits, and the little quirks only you know about. It takes maybe five minutes. But on the other side, you’ll probably watch it a hundred times.

• Write down the very specific things you love about your pet. Not just general things, like “She was so sweet.” Dig for details, like, “She always plopped her ball on my lap when I sat on the couch, even if (especially if) I was sleeping.”

• Start saying goodbye early. Say it more than once. You don’t have to save it for the last day. You can start telling them right now how much they mean to you and how hard it is to let them go, but that you know it’s right for them. You might feel silly at first, but many people later say they wish they’d done this more.

• If you have children at home, let them be part of the goodbyes. Children often handle grief with more grace than adults expect. And they may have their own ideas or ways of wanting to sit with the pet in the final days.

• Let other pets be part of the goodbyes and the videos and the sitting-in-presence time. Your other animals are likely picking up on what’s happening, and every intentional effort you make could help them along in their own process of letting go.

There’s No Place For Perfect Here

Grief therapists who work with anticipatory loss describe something they call “ambivalent presence” — being physically there while emotionally bracing, which leaves people feeling like they failed at being present even when they were right there in the room.

If that sounds familiar, know that it is nearly universal among people navigating this kind of loss. But that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It’s just a very difficult, heart-rending situation. It’s hard to love and be terrified at the same time.

Know that being there imperfectly, tearfully, some days maybe even barely, will always be enough.

That’s what true pet love is. It’s not an Instagram highlight reel of carefully-staged final days. It’s boring and messy and real.

And when there are days you can’t show up — the days where grief is winning, and you feel too depleted to be anything but physically present and emotionally absent — those days don’t cancel out the others.

They don’t define you or your love for your pet.

They were part of a season that asked a lot of you, and sometimes you fell short, and that’s okay because you are human and therefore perfectly imperfect.

So give yourself grace and just be there. That’s really all you can do.

One last thing:

If you never get the chance to do any of this presence-with-goodbyes-stuff, go easy on yourself. My little soul dog, Koda, departed suddenly and traumatically in the night at a very young age. Goodbyes and presence were not on my radar at all.

I’ve made peace with it by saying all my goodbyes in the days and years after and by sitting in presence with his photos and toys and leash and bed.

It’s not the way I would’ve wanted to say goodbye, if I’d had the choice. (But if I’d had the choice, I never would have said goodbye at all.)

And so, when this is what life deals, this is how you move forward.

If there’s anything our new digital world has taught us, where webinars have replaced in-person conferences and texting threads have usurped phone calls, it’s that we as humans still need community. Connection. Interaction.

And while human-to-human interaction is important and powerful, we can get a lot of our emotional and social needs fulfilled through pet interactions.

Now, when I say pet, most people think of cats and dogs. Naturally. They’re the most common pets.

But there’s a whole world of less common pets who offer equally valuable support and companionship to their owners, yet get drastically overlooked when it comes to the world of pet loss.

Which is why grieving an uncommon pet can add an additional layer of loneliness to what’s already a painful loss.

Some People Are Just Born With It…

Part of this stems from preconceived notions about how certain animals should be perceived.

Whereas one person might call a snake, rat, chicken, pigeon, goat, fish, or tarantula their pet… someone else might consider those creatures objects, hobbies, pests, livestock, or even a decoration.

In other words, not a beloved pet with routines, preferences, trust, and memories.

So on top of the standard minimization of pet grief, or an invitation to “just get a new one,” there’s also incredulity: “Seriously? You’re upset over a tarantula?”

I can’t pretend I understand the bonds to all these animals. I’ve never owned livestock. I don’t think I could hold a tarantula without a mild panic attack.

But I do have a good friend named Kim who gave me a different perspective on these less-common pets

Kim and I were roommates in high school (a boarding school). One day Kim, who was a runner, went on a long run near our school and came back carrying a tarantula. She’d noticed it near her path, put one of her socks on her hand, and scooped the little guy up.

I was flabbergasted. Maybe even mortified. She was delighted.

Kim is also the reason we once had a pet rat in our room; another thing that was never on my wish list.

I don’t think I was very helpful with the rat. But I remember watching Kim play with little Meek, named after dropping a dictionary on the floor and picking the first word that jumped out at us.

Also, Kim went on to become a veterinarian. She clearly had early recognition and appreciation for animals that I didn’t relate to.

It’s the Guilt Few Understand

There’s something called specialized guilt around the loss of an uncommon pet. It’s where the decisions pet owners replay following the passing of their creatures are specific and not relatable to most pet owners. Things like:

• Did the heat lamp fail?

• Was the salinity ratio off?

• Was the humidity too high?

• Did I wait too long to change the substrate?

• Did stress from handling harm them?

• Did I mistake a sign that they were in trouble for normal species behavior?

• Was there something toxic in their environment—cleaners, fumes, maybe insecticides?

• Should I have quarantined a new animal?

• Did I miss a subtle symptom?

• Should I have found a specialist sooner?

But not only is support thin on the ground for questions like these. There are also fewer rituals and witnesses to understand what an uncommon pet loss feels like.

There aren’t really any condolence cards for losing your bearded dragon.

No social norm exists for memorializing a pet duck, a coral colony, or a pig. That person is left to create private rituals all on their own.

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Stories Spring from All Connections

Here’s the thing I hope all people understand someday: What we grieve when a pet dies is not the taxonomy of the pet. It’s the specific relationship — the daily rituals built up over time, the particular presence, the way your home feels empty without them.

And all uncommon-pet owners have stories connected to their pets, just like common pets:

• The cockatoo owner who can tell you exactly what their feathered friend sounded like first thing in the morning. The vocabulary they developed together. The way they tilted their head when they wanted attention.

• The reptile owner who knows the warmth of their spotted gecko falling asleep on their chest while they watched TV.

• The person whose hamster was their only real companion through a painful convalescence.

• The bird owner whose parrot outlived two marriages and knew all her secrets.

• The fish keeper who maintained carefully calibrated habitats with the same love a gardener brings to land they’ve tended for years.

The Secret? Deliberate Attention

Research on the human-animal bonds has historically focused on dogs and cats — which itself reflects the cultural norm that makes this grief harder for everyone else.

But the research that does exist on other pets tells a consistent story: the depth of grief correlates with the depth of the bond, regardless of species.

A 2018 review published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science found that grief following the loss of any companion animal — including fish, birds, and small mammals — could meet clinical criteria for significant bereavement.

What researchers also found, and what resonates with virtually everyone who has loved a “smaller” animal, is that the bond is often more intense precisely because it required deliberate attention.

Just think about how a dog loves you somewhat automatically. But a rabbit, a bird, bunny, or reptile chooses you through consistent interaction, through trust that you have to build up slowly.

That kind of earned trust is precious. Losing it is devastating.

As the Saying Goes…

When you tell someone your duck died, or your mantis, donkey, or tortoise, condolences tend to be few and far between. The other person might pause. Maybe their expression shifts. Sometimes there’s stifled laughter.

I don’t think they mean any harm. They just have no framework for dealing with this. No social script. Our culture ranks animal grief by species and dismisses a lot.

That’s exactly why we have our community here at Healing From Pet Loss. Because if you happen to be in the camp where you’ve lost a pet of any size or shape or type and it’s been really difficult to walk through, we get it. Not everybody will, and that’s okay.

Hopefully at some point we’ll all reach the epiphany that it’s just not worth judging what matters to others if it doesn’t matter to you. Let them have their connections. Build your own. Kick judgment out of your thoughts. Like the poet and songwriter Ann Hampton Callaway wrote, “Love and Let Love.” (See the full lyrics here.)

You know how some stories stick with you and shape you as a kid?

That’s the effect a book about quicksand had on seven-year-old me:

Boy and girl go wandering into a forbidden jungle. Boy gets stuck in quicksand. Girl leaves him to rot (it was her brother). Then at the last minute, she swings through the air on a vine, grabs him, and saves him.

What struck me had nothing to do with the storyline (though I had a brother I’d have gladly abandoned or doggedly saved, depending on the day).

I was instead transfixed by the idea of quicksand, and how someone healthy and capable could just get stuck and stay put till they wither away and die.

It didn’t make any sense.

Granted, now, a few decades later, I see it all the time. But instead of jungle sludge gripping your feet and swallowing you, it’s unaddressed grief that tears you up from the inside out.

And like any kind of grief, it needs to be seen and heard and acknowledged before it even considers letting go. Which has to happen if you ever want to wake up without pain, anger, or regret, and instead revel in the good memories.

So I’m happy to share a simple way to do this, and it works wonders.

The Magical Grief-Escape Process

This exceptionally effective method starts with writing. But not just any kind of writing.

Also, don’t worry—you don’t have to be a writer.

It’s okay if you hate writing, can’t spell, got low marks in English class, or would rather peel potatoes underwater for three days straight than write.

Really, it’s like that little girl on the jungle vine, reaching down and swooping you up out of all the misery that keeps pulling you under.

You begin with pen and paper. This isn’t something to do on a keyboard, laptop, or phone screen. No voice-to-text, either. (Note that these can all be used if you absolutely must, but it’s not as effective.)

And if you’re like me and you’ve lived on keyboards for years to the point where your handwriting is nearly indecipherable, that’s okay. This writing is for you and you alone.

It’s flexible, too. You can do it in a leather-bound journal with a gorgeous fountain pen, or on looseleaf paper with a stubby number two.

What matters is what goes on the page. That’s what frees you from pain.

As to how and why, here’s the science behind it...

Brain-Pain Relief

Let’s start with your brain. When we go through something painful, the brain grabs it and holds it in an active state. This leaves you constantly reliving the pain, trying to make sense of it, looking for a way to make it not be true.

The pain becomes a lot like quicksand sludge, sprawled across an open space and constantly pulling you in.

What your brain wants is a nice little container to put the sludge in, where it’s no longer dribbling all over the place, tainting other thoughts and corners of your life.

As to why it’s more effective than typing, we can look to high-density EEG studies from institutions like the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Their research revealed stark differences in how the brain handles handwriting versus typing. For instance:

• Handwriting triggers widespread alpha and theta brain wave activity across the parietal and central hubs of the brain. These types of electrical rhythms are where deep emotions are processed, memories are formed, and new information is coded.

• The physical act of holding a pen sends significant sensory-motor data to your reticular activating system, or RAS (considered the brain’s ultimate attention filter). This signals to your brain that what you are writing is critically important and shifts your mind from a repetitive loop and into active processing centers.

• There’s also an element of useful difficulty. Typing is fast and efficient—it allows you to transcribe your thoughts almost completely unedited. But because handwriting is much slower, it creates a useful difficulty that forces your prefrontal cortex to slow down, reflect, and actively organize your painful, chaotic thoughts into a more linear narrative.

Now let’s look at what to write to make this work…

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The Pennebaker Protocol

Psychologist James Pennebaker from the University of Texas developed a protocol around this practice of writing to process pain. His research showed that people who wrote raw, honest truths about difficult life events had reduced anxiety, lower blood pressure, and stronger white blood cell activity compared to a control group that wrote about neutral topics.

And so he came up with a protocol that helps individuals transition raw, overwhelming pain into something that is more meaningful and ultimately honors the good parts of whatever was lost.

Here’s what that looks like when applied to pet loss:

1. Logistics: Start by planning a time to write each day for four consecutive days. Dedicate at least 15 to 20 minutes to your writing. Make sure you use a pen and paper you can keep handy and enjoy writing on/with.

2. While writing: When formatting, ignore grammar, spelling, and punctuation. If you ever run out of words, repeat the last word or draw a line until a new thought comes. Most importantly, never stop moving your pen during the writing session.

3. Privacy is key: Know that you are writing completely for yourself. You don’t need to show this to anyone. You can flip the pages, shred them, burn them, or keep them hidden somewhere sacred when you’re done.

And then here are your daily writing prompts:

Day 1: The reality of the loss.

Kick off your writing with a heavy focus on the factual and immediate emotional shock triggered by the loss of your pet. Write out the story of their final days, the moment of their passing, or the immediate emptiness you felt in your home right after they left. Let it pour out of you onto the paper unedited and give voice to your heaviest feelings of initial grief without trying to clean them up in any way.

Day 2: The stories behind the bond.

Now shift your focus to writing about the deeper history of your relationship. Write about how your pet entered your life, their quirks, their daily routines, and the specific comfort they gave you during tough times. Share what your pet symbolized to you. For instance, were they a constant anchor during a big transition in your life, like a move or a divorce or a period of loneliness? Put it all on the page.

Day 3: Regrets and unspoken heavy thoughts.

Grief over a pet is frequently complicated by guilt behind medical decisions, the timing of euthanasia, or the times you felt you just didn’t give them enough attention. Dedicate this day to exploring your deepest regrets, vulnerabilities, anger, and anything else you’ve buried. Give yourself permission on paper to feel the full painful weight of these complex emotions.

Day 4: Blend the past with moving forward.

On the final day, connect your past with your pet to your future self. How has loving your pet fundamentally changed who you are? How do you want to carry their memory forward into your life? Try to transition your language naturally from the isolation and pain of the loss to the enduring legacy of the love you shared with your pet.

Note that immediately after you finish writing, you might feel a temporary wave of sadness or vulnerability. Please know this is a completely normal reaction as you face intense emotions head-on.

I encourage you to plan a gentle grounding activity right after your writing sessions, like a walk outside, a hot shower, a bubble bath, a cup of tea… any kind of self-care that brings you peace and helps you feel centered.

Within a few weeks, this heavy emotional charge usually gives way to long-term relief and clarity and hopefully some peace.

And what does peace really look like?
What does it feel like?

It’s different for everybody.

My take is that it rescues you from the feeling of being dragged under by the grief quicksand muck. And that you start to see a path out even if you’re still near the pit.

Always, though, addressing your grief and taking the time to acknowledge what your pet meant to you is going to help you move forward without the constant handicapping pain of looping thoughts and regret… Ideally, to a place where remembering becomes ever sweeter.

I’ve had many of those broken moments… the ones that start with sinking onto the floor and losing all sense of space and time.

Then the swell of emotions starts to hit, be it sadness, fury, shock, or despair.

And then—because I generally only crumple in the safety of my home—a furry creature finds me within minutes and buries their face in my lap or nuzzles my hand or licks my cheek.

Very quickly, I feel better. Not necessarily healed or happy, but one teensy bit less desperate. The slightest nudge closer to calm.

That’s the magical power our pets offer us. From a mental health standpoint, it’s called grounding.

And so today I want to explore what that is and why it works, why pets need grounding too, and how to function when this mystical connection goes away.

The Mysterious Power of Dispersing Emotions Into the Earth

Most people know grounding as the practice of using simple strategies to pull your mind back to the present moment.

Grounding techniques are meant to interrupt the spiral of emotions that come with a panic attack or high anxiety. It’s useful for everything from intense fright, like traumatic flashbacks, to commonplace habits, like negative thinking.

Grounding for mental health is a term that’s been around since the 1950s, when physician and psychotherapist Alexander Lowen borrowed the literal idea of an electric ground wire dispersing excess charge into the earth.

He combined this concept with the everyday phrase of having your feet on the ground, and from there coined the term “grounding” to describe how posture, body tension, and deep breathing can help a person let go of or discharge psychological and emotional energy downward into the ground.

Modern psychology went on to adapt the concept of grounding into cognitive and sensory regulation tools that help individuals experiencing trauma or dissociation return safely to the present moment. The 5-4-3-2-1 technique is an example. It involves:

1. Naming five things that you see around you

2. Acknowledging four things you can physically touch

3. Listening for three distinct sounds

4. Identifying two things you can smell

5. Noticing one thing you can taste

All of which, when combined, interrupt your brain with sensory input that pulls you out of an emotional tailspin.

So it’s interesting to consider that in hard moments with big feelings, we instinctively do this if we have pets around us. Consider whether you’ve ever intuitively reached for your pet while contemplating a crisis…

maybe sitting down on the floor beside them and burying your face in their fur…

listening to the steady, ordinary rhythm of their breathing…

inhaling the warm-earth scent of their fur…

looking into gentle eyes.

And in so doing, your spinning thoughts slow.

That is grounding.

When you think about it, reaching for your pet to rebalance your emotions involves loads of sensory input that pulls you out of pain or panic. It’s science and energy and love, all braided together.

Not a One-Way Gift

Given all this, and whether we realize it or not, our pets are natural grounding companions. They help us come home to ourselves every single day. It happens regularly, subtly, throughout any time spent with them

What’s even less known and appreciated is how much we can return the favor and ground our pets by helping them feel safe, regulated, and connected.

For a dog, that might mean:

• a slow walk that involves lots of sniffing and greeting passersby instead of a rushed lap around a block, or

• sitting quietly with them after a thunderstorm and speaking softly and keeping your own breathing calm.

For a cat, grounding might look like:

• predictable routines, like a sunny spot by the window or a familiar blanket,

• or simply petting them every evening as they rest on your lap.

At the root of it all, grounding is all about communicating,

It’s a mutual gift and a priceless one that we can give and receive from our pets.

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What We Lose When They Move On

But what if you’ve lost your pet, or will soon?

Then I believe it’s even more important to understand the gift of grounding, because it helps explain why, when our pets are gone, the grief feels so disorienting—far and away beyond the sadness.

Yes, losing a pet has profound effects on the humans left behind, but it isn’t just emotional; it’s physical. Your body might still reach for that presence that regulated it daily and finds nothing there.

Instead, there’s an absence of presence, not just in knowing that your pet is gone, but also because you no longer have those sensory touchpoints. Maybe because the specific weight on the bed is absent, or the collar jingle that greeted you at the door each day is silent.

Doctors have documented a rise in cardiac risk in the days after a major loss, sometimes called broken heart syndrome. This is just as possible with a loss of a pet as it is with the loss of a human loved one.

Memorial-Centered Grounding

If you are actively grieving the loss of your pet, please be gentle with yourself in those moments of deep sadness.

Put your feet on the floor, and hold your pet’s collar, a favorite toy, or a photo.

Remember the feel of their fur beneath your fingers, and say their name.

Step outside and take the walk you used to take with them.

It’s going to be painful, absolutely. But in a sense, it’s a way to honor their memory while also remembering the grounding gifts they gave you, as you transition to a time and place where you no longer crave their physical form to ground you.

In the interim, as you grieve and crave the grounding presence they offered, try to find grounding techniques that connect to your own sensory input and honor your pet’s memory as you remember the sense of calm they gifted you.

I’ve never liked the phrase, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

…Mostly because it smacks of taking things for granted and not living in gratitude.

But also because it’s super true for most of us concerning most situations most of the time.

And if you’re like me and you are tempted to doubt the veracity of this statement because it makes you feel awful about yourself, just comb the titles of country songs or books written by people who had a brush with death.

Or consider any kind of movie/show/story that involves someone trying to move on from the crazy guilt of knowing they had it really good and threw it all away or never told somebody special just how much they were loved.

Because the irritating phrase, in fact, is true.

It’s one of our fatal human flaws. And while it can be overcome, it takes a lifetime of consistent and conscientious work. So I acknowledge it can be done, just usually not until you face some kind of tragedy or disaster that opens your eyes to what you’ve got in life.

The Grief-Gift Flip

Here’s why I bring it up: I believe pet grief operates the same way.

A lot of people enjoy their pets and have fun with their pets and appreciate them and regularly acknowledge how much they love them.

Too often though, it’s not until those pets are gone and you find yourself bawling over an empty food bowl or triggered by a leash near the door that you realize you had no conception of just how much you loved that creature.

It hurts, yes. It’s confounding. Horrifically painful. Eye-opening. And very, very real.

But here’s the flip… have you ever stopped to think about what a gift that is?

What I’m saying is that your grief is the gift of knowing just how special your relationship with your pet was.

Some might think this is nutso thinking, because gifts and pain don’t usually align.

Yet I think it’s worth calling attention to, because when I was ransacked by grief over my beloved dog’s unexpected death, it brought me fully present to just how much he meant to me.

And after that, each time I went through a death and then got a new pet on the other side, I was able to enjoy my relationship with that new pet with greater awareness and intentionality when it came to really treasuring and savoring the new connection.

I wish I’d been emotionally brilliant enough to figure this out without the pain, but I needed the gift of grief.

The Confounding Gift of Grief and What It Means

Here’s an idea:

Consider that the walloping scope of your grief is not random. Meaning the harder it hits you, the more beautiful your connection with your pet was.

There’s research about this, by the way. How someone grieves their pet tracks closely with the strength of the bond they had. It’s unrelated to the size of the animal, the type of the animal, the length of time you had with the animal, or how prepared you were when it was time to let them go.

Shame, then, that from a cultural standpoint we’re taught to treat massive grief as a problem that needs to be eradicated. Consider common cultural messages like:

• Just get through it.

• Try and move past it.

• Don’t acknowledge it.

• Stay busy till it goes away.

Get back to normal, whatever that looks like.

But… what if your Great Big Grief is actually a very accurate report delivered by some inner knowing part of you that wants you to embrace the truth?

What if it’s really telling you, “Hey. This mattered. This was out of the ordinary. This relationship shaped you and changed you and helped you in ways that you can only see now that it’s gone, because for the first time you have to look at it from the outside.”

So how would it be to really look at it from the outside and really give attention to the ways that your pet helped or supported or changed you?

The Specific Things Only You Know

Taking it a step further, I’d like to invite you to think about the distinct things that made your relationship with your pet one-of-a-kind.

Not just that you loved them or you enjoyed sitting with them in the evening or walking in the park at sunrise.

• Maybe your cat only let you touch her paws, only at a certain time of day, only if you talked to her first.

• Maybe your dog had an extensive vocabulary of barks and you were the only person on earth fluent in all of them.

• Maybe your bird recognized your car in the driveway before you even opened the door and would squawk its little head off in pure joy.

• Maybe your rabbit had a specific way of thumping that meant something different every time you heard it and you knew exactly how to respond.

None of that transfers to another pet dog or cat or bunny or bird. It’s something that was built between you and this specific creature over years of small, unremarkable moments that nobody else was around to witness or experience.

Think of it this way: your massive grief is what happens when your mind is forced to look at the sum of this all at once. When suddenly every tiny and unrepeatable detail arrives in a flood of meaning because you know there’s no new material coming to continue the story.

Yes, that flood probably feels unbearable, but also? It’s absolutely remarkable.

It’s proof that you had something profoundly unique that you got to experience that nobody else on Earth had access to and that it took place with this special pet of yours.

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Let It Be Proof, Not Just Pain

I know for me, this is where “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” takes on a whole different meaning. Instead of being admonishment for what I missed and what I didn’t realize I had, it’s almost like the legacy of what I did have.

There’s a phrase for this that might help you understand it more, as it did me: Continuing bonds. That’s when you stay connected to someone or something that you lost, but not as a sign that you’re stuck and can’t move forward.

Instead, it’s a normal, healthy part of grief, and proof that you can keep right on loving after you’ve experienced a loss.

So feel free to let yourself remember the good stuff, say it out loud, and feel gratitude for it.

Consider not adding the “but I miss them and I’m so sad” thought every time you reminisce.

You’re absolutely allowed to laugh at the ridiculous memories you have of silly things your pet may have done and it doesn’t mean your grief is invalid. It’s still there. You’re still sad. But also there’s a kind of joyfulness threaded through the grief because you have these memories.

And you’re also allowed to feel that small burst of pride knowing that you were the person who got to experience all of this out of every possible human on earth.

You are the one who got all the love.

Your grief just proves that love was real and rare. Embrace it. Hold it. Let it put a smile on your face. Know what you had now that it’s gone.

One of the many unexpected things that hits after pet loss is what I describe as a “craving for presence.”

It happens when the world cruelly and adamantly continues spinning despite the pain you’re navigating. It almost makes the loss feel imagined, like you were living in a dream and now that you’ve had a cruel wake-up, your pet and the life you had with them never existed.

(Keep in mind that our brains do crazy things while in grief.)

For many, this feeling manifests as a kind of cognitive search party where you’re constantly on the lookout for the pet who passed.

You might look for them at the front door when you arrive home each day.

Or maybe your eyes flit to the particular indent they left in a couch cushion.

Or toward the corner where their bed was.

Or the spot by the window where the sun hit just right in the afternoon and you could always find them savoring a luxurious afternoon nap.

For me, it was the dog bed under my desk. Large enough for a hundred-pound dog, it was where my two Cavaliers often cuddled and where I’d find Koda snoring at my feet during early morning writing sessions.

After he passed, my early morning writing sessions looked like me crawling under the desk and curling up in his spot on the red velvet cushion. Then I’d cry. Then I’d try to… I don’t really know. Feel his presence, I guess you could say?

What I understand now is that this stemmed from my own urgent need to hold onto something that connected us, that said he was real and our morning ritual was real and the love doled out from that ruby-furred creature was absolutely real. In other words,

Also, this search for realness following pet loss isn’t pathological. And it’s not just me who did it — I’ve heard loads of other people describe similar experiences.

It’s about love that’s gone missing, that you instinctively go try to find.

So today I want to talk about tributes, because they serve a similar function. It’s a way to say you are not forgotten. You’re still here in my heart. I know you and love you and remember you.

This Research Flipped What We Thought We Knew About Grief

For a long time, grief psychology operated on a clear assumption: healing meant detaching. Cutting the cord. Not looking back. Focusing on the future.

We know now that this model was not just incomplete. For many people, it was actively harmful, and if we’re being really honest… it stunk.

Especially when it came to helping someone come to terms with a loss.

The Continuing Bonds framework, developed by grief researchers Klass, Silverman, and Nickman in 1996, introduced a different idea. It was about the upside of maintaining an ongoing relationship with the one you’ve lost, through memories, rituals, or tributes.

Most importantly, these actions are not a sign of unhealthy grief. Quite the opposite. For most people, it’s exactly how healthy grieving works.

This matters especially when it comes to pet loss, where cultural permission to grieve is already thin to nonexistent. The idea of actively honoring your pet after they’ve passed can feel indulgent. Even strange.

Why There’s No Wrong Way

The best tribute is the one that feels right to you when it comes to remembering and honoring your pet. There’s no correct version; no wrong way to do it.

Maybe you opt for

• A photo book with handwritten captions — not a polished slideshow, but the kind you’d sit down and look through slowly, commenting out loud.

• A small altar or dedicated corner: a photo, a candle, something of theirs. Different cultures have created these spaces for centuries — the Japanese butsudan, the Mexican ofrenda.

• A letter to your pet — one you don’t send to anyone.

• A donation to a rescue in their name.

• A memorial tattoo.

• A custom portrait.

• A tree planted somewhere meaningful.

• A recurring remembrance on the anniversary of the day you got them.

When Koda passed, I went through my phone and printed every single photo I’d ever taken of him — even if he just happened to be in the background of something else I was taking a picture of. It was important to me to have the photos in my hand, not just on my phone.

When my grief would get unbearable, I’d thumb through the photos, remembering the many days of happiness I had with him. Most of the time, I had his collar around my wrist while doing this.

So it wasn’t a fancy or grandiose tribute, and it wasn’t on display and I didn’t share it with anybody. But it helped me, and that was the whole point.

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When to Start Your Tribute

A lot of people ask me when is the right time to make a tribute, and again — there’s no wrong time. You can create a tribute long after your pet has passed, or you can start on it when you know their beautiful days will soon be coming to an end.

But there’s one thing I’ve noticed about tribute timing, which is that most people who look back say the same thing: they wish they’d started earlier.

Not because earlier is better or because grief has any kind of schedule. Rather, it’s because creating a tangible tribute — gathering photos, writing a sentence, lighting a candle — gives you something to do with your hands and your mind when grief has you otherwise feeling helpless and formless.

Grief researchers also note that meaning-making activities like tribute-building are among the more reliable predictors of healthy grief integration over time.

Note that this isn’t rushed healing or tidy resolution. It’s just a way to honor our very human need to make tangible something that deeply mattered to us.

Also, don’t think of it as something that needs to move to completion. You certainly can create a tribute and feel like it’s complete. You can also consider it an ongoing process, adding to whatever you create as the memories drift through your mind.

So I invite you to just start. Start whatever feels right to you. Just getting started is enough to say that the loss of your pet’s life mattered to you, and that’s really the first step in honoring your grief.

There’s something a lot of grieving pet owners think but never say out loud. They keep it locked inside (I know I did). There’s guilt. It’s this:

If you relate, you are definitely not alone and you’re not a bad person and you’re not selfish or broken or weird.

Grief researchers have lately been studying this phenomenon seriously. What they’ve found actually makes complete sense when you look at the nature of the bond we have with our pets.

The Pet Relationship Is Something Else Entirely

Think back on what your day-to-day life with your pet actually looked like. Chances are good they were by your side constantly from the time you got up until you came home from work, school, or any other activity.

They were there on sick days… on lazy Sunday afternoons… throughout weather events and holidays and flu season and everything else that happens in normal daily life.

But more than just being there, your pet was always glad to see you. Not just some of the time, not even most of the time, but every single time, without exception, without condition.

Can you think of a human in your life who models that?

Don’t get me wrong — human love is beautiful. And it’s complicated. We have histories with the people we love. There are old arguments that were never fully resolved and weeks where we were too distracted or too caught up in our own challenges and stresses to show up the way we wanted. There were expectations, disappointments, unspoken feelings, and all the things that come with having a relationship of any kind with anybody.

But your pet?

Your pet didn’t bring any of that. What your pet brought you was constant, consistent, uncomplicated, beautiful, loving presence every minute they were with you.

Dr. Julie Axelrod, a grief therapist who has written about pet loss, describes the human-animal bond as uniquely non-transactional. Your pet asked nothing of you except your presence.

When you, as a human, receive that kind of love, fully and repeatedly through the years, it shapes you in ways that are profoundly painful to say good-bye to and genuinely hard to grieve.

And when that connection and adoration disappear from your home, your routines, and your life all at once, you feel the absence in every second.

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That Pain You’re Experiencing? It’s Backed By Research

But here’s where relieving validity enters the picture. Research shows that this type of grief really is comparable to losing a person in your life. Going back to the early 1990s, Dr. Mary Gerwolls and Dr. Laura Labott published findings that show grief symptoms experienced after pet loss were equivalent in severity to those following human bereavement.

Not kind-of-sort-of-like-it, but analogous. Equal.

A 2022 study in PLOS One found that people who had lost dogs showed significant depressive symptoms, and that the intensity of grief correlated directly with the strength of the human-animal bond. What didn’t correlate was the pet’s age or how long they might have been ill before passing or any other factor for that matter.

There’s also a phenomenon researchers call “broken heart syndrome.” It’s a documented increase in cardiac risk in the days that immediately follow a significant loss. Your chest literally aches, and it’s brought on by an actual physiological cause.

The research also shows us something else: people who felt most bonded with their pets — who described them as a central source of companionship and emotional support — showed the most intense grief responses.

And while, yes, it’s pretty obvious that it’ll hurt more if you loved more, this also shows us that how much the relationship mattered is measurable by the emotional effect it has on you.

The reason people question this is because of the disenfranchised aspect of pet grief. Most people think it’s not supposed to hurt as much as it does.

But consider that if your emotional bond to your pet is measurable, and if that bond is massive, then your grief will be massive. It all makes sense.

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The Hidden Challenge In Finding Support

So if you’ve been minimizing your own grief because it was “just a pet,” then please hear me clearly: The connection you had was absolutely real. The loss is real. The pain is directly proportionate to how much you loved your pet, and you don’t have to justify any of it to anyone.

Part of the reason I was so traumatized when I lost my little soul dog, Koda, is that the grief was so big I didn’t understand it. I was afraid to talk about it with anybody because he was my dog. I didn’t think anybody would understand. I thought I was maybe a little too emotional or too sensitive, or it was because I had small children who’d used up all my emotional reserves.

And I want to be clear that it wasn’t because I didn’t have amazing and supportive people in my life. I was surrounded by wonderful family members and friends who were empathetic to my loss and sympathetic to other things I’d been through, and who likely would have been safe for me to go to.

But I’m the one who chose not to go to them because I’m the one who thought my grief was ridiculous.

I don’t know how they would have reacted. I didn’t give them the chance really to see me in my pain.

Looking back, I’m pretty sure not a single one of them would have called me silly or made me feel less than because I was still struggling. They probably would have helped me considerably had I just been able to open up.

But being vulnerable is not necessarily celebrated or taught in our human culture. (Though I think it should be… we’d all be a lot happier knowing we’re still lovable in spite of our fears or weaknesses.)

So please give yourself the gift of acknowledging that your pain is valid, that it deserves oxygen, and that there are loads of people out there — probably in your daily life and definitely in this community — who are happy to hold your hand and support you through your sadness.

For six years, they were a pair.

Sydney was eight months old when we got Koda, a fat, wobbly puppy. That first week, she looked at him like a specimen, disdainfully observing his confusion over his new surroundings.

Sydney eventually decided he’d be worth experimental entertainment. I watched the first time she tried to play with him — cautious, a little terrified. But something clicked. I remember she jumped down from the couch he couldn’t yet reach. She stole the stuffy in his mouth, dashed around the coffee table, and then tossed it back to him as she sprinted back to the safety of the couch and surveyed the scene.

Koda was genuinely confused over what had happened. But his tail was wagging, so she tried it again, and then again, and soon they were playing like besties.

From then on, they were inseparable. Playing. Tearing things apart. Snuggling. Often, I’d have one on either side of me. That was our system.

Koda ate faster, but Sydney, though smaller, could hold her own — she wouldn’t be pushed around, and Koda knew it. As they got older, the wild play settled into quieter companionship. A steadiness. They just belonged near each other, the way some friendships get so easy you stop noticing any effort. It just is.

My kids like to say they were married. I called them siblings. Whatever it was, they were bonded. They had something, and it was theirs.

But all that disappeared when Koda died, suddenly and traumatically. Somewhere in the aftermath of losing him, I lost all awareness of the bond they’d had. I became consumed with my own grief. I wasn’t thinking about what losing him meant for Sydney.

And Then I Watched Her Look for Him

In retrospect I feel great pain at not being there for her in those early weeks of grief. It wasn’t until I looked at her one day, noticeably thinner, that it hit me how much she had been suffering.

I thought I had done the right thing by bringing her his ashes and his collar and letting her sniff them and explaining to her with loving pats on her head that he was gone. But that was the only effort I made for her, and I’m sure it took less than ten minutes.

Everything else was about me trying to survive that particularly painful period. Gradually, though, as I began to pay attention to her, I noticed that she would go to the places he used to lie and just stand there. She’d sniff his things and then go lie down. She started sleeping more than she ever had before. Sydney had always been a little more independent than Koda, happy to be in the same room but not on top of me.

That changed. She wouldn’t even follow me from room to room.

She was quieter. Not sick, not in pain — just quieter. Like something in the house was off and she was working out what.

It went on for weeks… dragged out into months. She seemed to be functioning normally. But she wasn’t herself, and I knew what I was seeing even though I hadn’t ever considered it.

The thing that broke me open — and somehow, also helped me — was realizing that she was mourning him too. That the loss in our house wasn’t only mine. That Koda had mattered to her in a way that left a mark when he was gone.

What the Research Has Started Saying

Scientists were skeptical for a long time that animals experience anything like grief. The concern was projection — that we were reading human emotion into animal behavior.

That has shifted. A study published in Scientific Reports surveyed people who had more than one dog when one of them died. Eighty-six percent reported behavioral changes in the surviving dog: less play, less appetite, more attention-seeking from the owner, increased fearfulness.

These changes lasted months on average.

Researchers who study animal behavior now broadly agree that social mammals — dogs, horses, elephants, primates — form genuine attachments, and that when those attachments end, something happens in them.

Whether we call it grief the way we mean it for humans is still debated.

But the idea that animals simply move on because they don’t understand what happened? That’s not supported by the evidence anymore.

Sydney understood something. I saw it. And it turns out I wasn’t projecting.

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What It Gave Me That I Didn’t Expect

Watching Sydney grieve Koda gave me something I hadn’t anticipated: confirmation.

Not the kind I needed to believe my own grief was valid — I already knew that, even on the days it didn’t feel that way. But confirmation that their relationship, their bond, had been real. That Koda wasn’t only loved by me. That his presence had mattered beyond what I could see, in a whole separate relationship I hadn’t fully known I was living alongside.

That helped me. It made the loss feel the right size, in the way that real losses should — big, and overwhelming, and not something to be talked out of.

How to Help Your Own Pet Grieve

If you have another pet right now who is grieving alongside you, keep their routine as stable as you can. Structure helps when things feel wrong. Don’t push them to seem okay. If they want to be quieter, let them be quieter. If they want to be closer to you, be there. You’re both in it, and you’re both allowed to take as long as you take.

And if watching them grieve is adding to your own grief — I understand. It added to mine, and also, somehow, it helped.

I think that’s because it’s evidence you’re not alone in your broken heart. So if you’re in a similar situation, I invite you to make sure your other pets know they’re not alone, too.

You’re watching your pet sleep, and the tears start to flow.

Even though they’re snoring right there in front of you, you know it’s not a forever-situation

That’s called anticipatory grief — the grief that arrives before the death. And it is one of the most painful, least-talked-about parts of loving an animal.

Most people feel like they’re doing something wrong when it happens. Like they’re being morbid, or rushing toward the end, or borrowing trouble from a future that hasn’t arrived yet. They’re not. They just feel deep love for a creature they’re terrified to lose.

What It Actually Feels Like

Anticipatory grief doesn’t look the same for everyone.

For some, it’s a low hum. Always there in the background, surfacing when you least expect it. Maybe triggered by a commercial about dog food, or someone mentioning their healthy, young pet.

Maybe it happens on a quiet evening when everything is fine and you suddenly think not for long.

For others, it comes in waves. There are days when you feel present, even grateful, followed by nights when you’re crying in the bathroom so your pet doesn’t see you upset. (Yes, many of us do exactly that.)

It can also show up as hypervigilance — counting their breaths at midnight, Googling symptoms you don’t want to find, hovering in a way that even you find a little exhausting. But you’re not being neurotic; you’re just trying to protect something in any way possible.

There may also be something happening in the relationship you have with your pet during this time — a strange, tender quality to ordinary moments that you can’t quite name. You love your pet, of course, but it’s almost like the love has a different weight now. Almost like your body, or your deepest intuition, knows something.

And even that knowing, as hard as it is, can make the remaining time feel more intentional, more awake.

The Research Says You’re Not Imagining This

Psychologists have been studying anticipatory grief since the 1940s, when psychiatrist Erich Lindemann first identified it in families of soldiers shipping off to war. What they found then holds true now: the grief we feel before a death is just as real as the grief we feel after it.

In pet loss specifically, research published in the journal Anthrozoös has found that people who know a pet’s death is coming often begin processing the loss weeks or months before it happens — and that this pre-loss grief period can be just as emotionally intense as acute grief afterward.

So no, you are not imagining it.

You’re not being dramatic.

Your nervous system is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do when something precious is slipping away.

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What It Can Give You, If You Let It

Many worry that feeling this way will somehow become a life sentence. But anticipatory grief is not a prophecy. It doesn’t speed anything up. It doesn’t mean you’ve mentally buried your pet before they’ve gone.

What it can do, if you let it, is make you more present — not less. Now that my sweet dogs are in the elderly stage of life, I find myself slowing down in ways I haven’t in years. I spend more afternoons on the floor with them. We take longer, slower walks, even when they can only manage a turtle’s pace.

Anticipatory grief is behind this new awareness. It’s turned ordinary, hustle-bustle life into something I’m stopping to savor.

Not that it makes the future any easier. A lot of people describe this season as one of the hardest they’ve ever navigated. Harder, in some ways, than the acute grief after the loss itself — because there’s no script for it and almost no support.

Friends and family don’t know how to respond. There’s no ritual. No meal train. Just you, loving your pet through borrowed time, trying to find a way to be present that doesn’t feel like practice for saying goodbye.

You can’t make this kind of grief stop. But you can stop fighting it. Notice when it arrives. Name it. Even something as simple as:

Think of it as a non-dramatic, white-paper-honest way of looking at the situation.

And then go be with your pet. Not in a grand way. Just there, just with them, in whatever way and on whatever day it happens to be.