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.

When you lose a dog or a cat, the people around you usually at least try.

They might say the wrong thing, like “You can get another one” or “It was just a dog/just a cat,” and those comments are particularly awful.

But for the most part, they at least understand that you’re grieving something real.

On the other hand, if you lose a bird, a rabbit, a fish, a guinea pig, a snake, a gecko, a horse, a chinchilla, or any of the other number of pets out there, you probably get something different.

Something like “Er, I didn’t realize you could get attached to a fish.” Or “Are you kidding? It was literally a reptile/fuzzball/work animal.”

Or you just get silence… that polite, blank, not-really-sure-what-to-say kind of silence that lands like having someone tell you your grief doesn’t count.

Today I want to spend some time on that because I’ve heard from enough people in this situation to know how much that particular type of aloneness can hurt…

Not to mention how much any pet, regardless of how small or how different, can bring real grief.

Basic Animal Love Math

The depth of grief is not determined by the size of the animal, the length of the lifespan, or what species they were.

Grief is determined by the depth of the bond.

And bonds happen in all directions:

• The parrot who said your name every morning when you walked in.

• The rabbit who would come and press their head against your hand when you were sad (I don’t know how they knew, but they knew).

• The fish that you watched every single evening, whose presence in the tank became part of the rhythm of your home, and whose absence left something you didn’t expect.

The Assumption That Gets Made

There’s an idea floating around (unspoken, mostly) that grief should be proportional to something measurable, like the size of the animal. Or the number of years the animal was in your life. Whether they could be trained, whether they cuddled, whether they were warm-blooded.

But consider this: That’s not how attachment works in the human brain.

The brain doesn’t measure the animal’s characteristics and calculate how sad you’re allowed to be.

The brain forms a bond, and when that bond breaks, it hurts. Consider

…the hamster who sat on your shoulder every evening while you watched television.

…the turtle you drove forty-five minutes in traffic to get to the right vet when they looked sick.

…the parrot you held wrapped in a blanket on their last night with you.

These are real relationships, and the fact that most people don’t understand them is their limitation, not yours.

I mean, hey — I don’t understand every pet relationship myself. At least, not those I haven’t witnessed.

But what I have experienced, even from afar, has changed my view on this. Like watching my young son with his little orange corn snake. If you’d asked me prior to him getting that snake if one could get attached to a snake, I’d have said it was more of a hobby than a pet.

And then I saw my son’s heart break when said corn snake escaped. (Yes, in our house, and yes, he’s still on the run.)

Same thing when my kids got ferrets. Ferrets, to me, were previously just rodents. But to my kids, they were companions, playmates, jokesters, sources of comfort… the list goes on.

All to say, you don’t know till you’ve been a witness to one of those bonds.

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The Part That Makes This Especially Hard

Beyond the loss of a non-dog or cat, there’s this extra layer of challenge: any pet grief support that exists mostly wasn’t built for you.

Most articles about pet loss talk about dogs. Most communities are organized around dogs and cats.

When you go looking for someone who understands what it’s like to lose a bearded dragon,

or a horse you’d had since you were twelve,

or the birds that filled your house with sound for fifteen years —

you often find yourself in spaces where the grief being described doesn’t quite fit what you’re feeling.

That isolation on top of the loss is something I think about a lot.

I started this newsletter and this community because I believe grief is grief, and every bond deserves to be honored. That includes your special bond with your unique pet, whatever it was, however small they looked to the rest of the world.

And while I write about dogs and cats a lot, I’m committed to being all-animal-inclusive — even for those animals where a bond seems unlikely to those who’ve never seen such a thing.

The more you share about your own pet experiences, the more I can share those stories with the world.

So would you do me a favor, please, and tell me about your pet? Just comment below and tell me their name, what kind of pet you had, and one thing you miss. I’m listening.

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Maybe you let an important meeting slip by the wayside because you just couldn’t bring yourself to show up.

Maybe you’ve been eating nothing but crap food. Or not eating at all. It really depends on the day.

Maybe you cried in the car for 20 minutes over a love song that wasn’t necessarily written about pets but spoke directly to your heart, and then you were stuck in the parking lot for half an hour trying to pull yourself together before going inside to buy bananas.

Grief is unpleasant and awkward on any day, but more so when it’s pet grief because so much of the population doesn’t understand how deep it goes. But it’s not even really the sadness that keeps you stuck. It’s the fog.

It’s the sense that your brain isn’t working right, that you can’t keep your thoughts straight, and you don’t feel on top of things — or like you ever will be again.

Let me say upfront, you are not falling apart. (I mean, technically you are, but in a completely normal way.)

It’s just your body doing exactly what bodies are meant to do when navigating grief.

How Pet Loss Grief Affects You Physically

What a lot of people don’t realize is that grief is not just emotional. Meaning, it’s not just the feeling of sadness.

Grief is an all-encompassing state of being that affects you emotionally, mentally, and physically.

When you lose someone you were deeply attached to, your brain responds the way it responds to physical injury:

Cortisol (your stress hormone) shoots up.

Sleep gets disrupted.

Appetite shifts.

Your immune system can take a hit.

It’s well-documented and well-researched. In fact, researchers at UCLA found that social pain, the pain of losing a close relationship, activates the same neural pathways as physical pain.

Which means that the ache in your chest isn’t a metaphor. It’s your nervous system processing a real loss that’s producing real pain.

The exhaustion makes sense. The not being able to focus makes sense. The feeling like you’re moving through wet concrete, that makes sense too.

So if you’re losing your grip on just about everything, that’s not you being overdramatic. It’s you trying to deal with something that has a genuine and profound physiological impact on your state of being.

The Specific Things That Catch People Off Guard

While in a state of grief, the concentration problem surprises almost everyone. People describe it as an inability to focus, to finish a sentence, or to read more than a paragraph before their minds drift back to the loss.

This is so common it has an informal name in the grief community: “grief brain.” Thank heavens it’s not permanent… but it is very real.

Time distortion is another one. Some days feel like they’ve been going on for a week. Some weeks disappear entirely. Your sense of “how long has it been” goes sideways.

And then there’s the blindsiding sadness — the kind that arrives without warning, triggered by a commercial. A specific smell. Someone else’s dog at the park. A song you didn’t even know reminded you of your pet.

Grief doesn’t respect your schedule. It shows up when something in the world accidentally touches the part of you that’s still aching for the companion you lost.

Another unexpected form of grief is what I’m going to call “overprotective grief.” If you have other animals, you might find yourself checking on them constantly. Watching them eat. Listening for their breathing in the night.

Know that all of this is very common among people who’ve just endured a loss. Your nervous system is reconfiguring and hasn’t necessarily figured out that the emergency is over and that you are transitioning to a new reality.

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A Note on When to Reach Out for Help

Most of this eases as time goes on. But sometimes grief needs more than community.

If you haven’t been able to eat or sleep for an extended stretch (and I don’t just mean a bad week)… and if you’re genuinely struggling to function, please reach out to a mental health professional.

Doing so is the kindest thing you can do for yourself. It’s the recognition that what you’re carrying is deep and heavy and you could use some extra support.

The Thing That Actually Moves Grief

So how do you muddle through this uncomfortable and unwelcome state of being? It’s not just about the passage of time. Time helps, but it doesn’t necessarily get you past the sadness.

What I’ve seen help — both for others and myself — is having a place to say the things out loud. Maybe that’s a person or a community or this newsletter right here.

It’s best when you can find a place where you don’t have to explain or apologize or pretend that you are past your grief. You can simply speak about it, air it, express it.

If you don’t have that yet, that’s why I’m here.

Hit reply and tell me how you’re actually doing this week in working through your pet loss, whether it just happened or it was years ago. I mean it; I’m here to listen.

You’re driving somewhere. You’re washing dishes. You’re about to fall asleep.

And the questions start to flood.

Did I wait too long?

Did I do it too soon?

Was it the right call?

Should I have gotten a second opinion?

Did he know I was there?

Did she know how much I loved her?

I’ve talked to a lot of people navigating pet loss, and this — what I call “the replay” — is almost universal among those who made the decision to euthanize.

It doesn’t seem to matter how carefully you thought it through, how much guidance you got from the vet, or how peaceful the final moment was. The question comes back anyway.

Before we dive in, I want to say this: I think those questions flood back because you loved your pet so much. That’s a major part of grief: wishing things had gone differently, even when you did everything you could.

Why This Decision Is Different From Other Types of Pet Loss

When you lose a person close to you, you’re usually a witness. You didn’t make the final call. You didn’t set a time. You weren’t handed the responsibility of deciding when enough was enough.

With pet euthanasia, you were. And that’s a weight that doesn’t have a human equivalent that I know of. Even withdrawing life support from a human is a passive step toward death, where you’re stopping life-sustaining interventions and letting an underlying disease take its natural course.

In most cases, you were either asked, or you decided on your own, to choose an act of profound love in the form of letting go. An act that says: I care more about your comfort and peace than about having more time with you.

That’s not a small act. It’s not a small thing to carry after it’s done.

And because it required a very black-and-white decision with a set moment at a precise date on a calendar, your brain can keep returning to that moment, wondering and asking and re-asking whether you got it exactly right.

Whether there was another option.

Whether you moved too fast or waited too long.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe: the question isn’t really about whether you got it right. It’s about whether you loved them enough.

And the answer to that one is clear.

For Those Who Chose Too Soon and Those Who Waited Too Long

Both groups feel equally guilty. I’ve heard from both.

The guilt is the same on both sides. Which shows that the guilt isn’t actually about the timing…

It’s about how much you cared, and how impossible it is to hold that much care in the face of an unbearable decision, and how the brain keeps looking for the version of events where you could have done it perfectly.

There was never going to be a perfect, easy answer. There was only you, loving them the best way you knew how, doing the hardest thing ever.

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The Simple Shift That Helps Your Pain

I can’t tell you the replay ever stops completely. At least not for a while.

What I’ve found, both for myself and from listening to others, is that the intensity of the decisions related to your pet’s death will change when you stop fighting the question and start responding to it differently.

If you find yourself again wondering, “Did I wait too long?” or “Did I decide too soon?” — don’t try and answer it.

Don’t work to justify it.

Don’t berate yourself about it.

Instead, acknowledge it.

Try something like, “I hear you. That’s a hard question, and it’s impossible to answer. But what I do know is that I loved him so much. And I did the best I could with the knowledge I had at the time.”

This saves you from even trying to answer the question. It keeps you from arguing around it. Simply acknowledge that the question is there, and that it comes from love.

It doesn’t make the swirling questions stop. But it does make them feel less like accusations and more like grief, which is what it actually is.

What Really Matters In the End

Never forget that above all, you showed up for your sweet pet. In the end, when everything got hard, you showed up.

In the end, that’s what matters.

And it matters more than the timing ever could.

I still remember answering the door with my tear-streaked face. A man with a shy smile stood there, holding a box. His expression turned to concern when he saw me. He awkwardly held out the box and said, “Your sister asked me to bring you this.”

You see, when Koda died, my sister lived across the country. So she called my favorite local bakery and sweet-talked the manager into hand-delivering a pie to my door.

I still think about that. She was far away; she couldn’t be there to hold my hand. Yet she found a way to show up anyway. It remains one of the most thoughtful things anyone has ever done for me.

But here’s the thing: that kind of love-in-action following pet grief is far too rare.

It’s not because people don’t care. They do. But most of them don’t really know what to do when someone suffers pet loss — because a pet dying doesn’t come with a social script. There’s no standard ritual. No go-to card section at the grocery store. No one stopping by the house a week or two later to ask how you’re holding up.

What I mostly got was: “Oh, I’m so sorry.” And then the conversation moved on within thirty seconds.

I very clearly remember sitting in my grief, wondering why my world was shattered but no one else seemed too affected. Was there something wrong with me, that I got so wrecked? Had I not loved him enough for it to count?

It’s taken me years to really sift through all the emotional/cultural/social implications of pet loss. And ultimately, there was nothing wrong with me.

There’s nothing wrong with you, either, if you relate to all this.

There’s an Actual Name for What’s Happening

A grief researcher named Kenneth Doka came up with the term disenfranchised grief. Here’s how he defined it:

Disenfranchised grief is grief that persons experience when they incur a loss that is not or cannot be openly acknowledged, socially sanctioned, or publicly mourned.

In other words, it’s

• Grief that society doesn’t recognize as legitimate.

• Grief that doesn’t get rituals.

• Grief that doesn’t get acknowledged at work.

• Grief that doesn’t warrant pie (or flowers, or casseroles) — unless you have the rare phenomenal person in your life like my sister.

It’s not the only kind, of course. There are loads of other types of disenfranchised grief in our culture:

• Pregnancy loss and infertility.

• Death by suicide.

• Losing a friend you were close to but not officially family with.

• Divorce.

• Estrangement from family.

• Death of a patient.

• Grief following adoption.

That’s only a bit of it; the list is actually really, really long. I’ll go into it in depth in another article.

What I really hope you take away from this is that the grief itself is real; our culture just hasn’t caught up.

The effect is real, too. And here’s what it does to you: it doesn’t just make you lonely. It makes you question yourself. You’re already in pain, and then you spend mental energy wondering whether the pain is appropriate.

Whether you’re overreacting.

Whether other people think you’re being ridiculous.

That second layer — the self-doubt layer — is sometimes the worst part.

Why It Can Actually Hurt More Than Losing a Person

That may seem like a strange thing to say. But I’ve heard it from enough people now, and felt it myself, and read the actual research behind it, to know it’s a valid point. Let me explain…

When you lose a human you love, people expect you to grieve. They make space for it. They ask about it. They check in. Even if they don’t do it perfectly, there’s social scaffolding around the loss.

When you lose a pet, you mostly grieve alone. And your pet was not just an animal you owned. It was an energetic being woven into your daily existence. Maybe they were your alarm clock, or your reason to come home, or your companion through those 3 am white-night worries.

Your relationship with your pet had a texture, a realness to it that’s hard to explain to someone who’s never experienced it.

And consider this:

It demonstrates the same intensity, the same physical symptoms, the same process.

What’s different is that you don’t get the same support around it.

And that gap between the size of the loss and the size of the acknowledgment is where your pain lives.

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You Are Not Overreacting

I want to say this plainly, because maybe no one has said it to you yet.

What you’re feeling makes complete sense. The crying at random times, the not wanting to move their things, the way you still turn to look for them. You’re not being dramatic, not in any way. You’re just missing someone who was genuinely important to you.

Please know that you don’t need to shrink this grief to fit other people’s comfort level. You don’t need to be over it on a timeline that works for anyone else.

Because your love was real, the loss is real. That’s just how it works.

Why I Built This

I started this newsletter because when I was in the worst of my grief, I went looking for something to explain what I was going through. Something specific to pet loss — not just general grief advice recycled and relabeled.

But I couldn’t find it. So eventually, I built it. I knew I couldn’t be the only one.

And neither are you.

If you’re in the thick of it right now, hit reply and tell me where you are. I read everything. And I’m not going to tell you it gets easier on any particular schedule, because I don’t know your situation.

What I do know is that you don’t have to go through this alone. 💗

When you lose a pet, words don’t really fix the pain.

People help, but only so much.

What I’ve noticed (and what a lot of grieving pet parents tell me) is that being outside in some intentional way—planting something, walking somewhere your pet loved to go, putting your hands in the dirt—softens the grief when nothing else seems to.

This post is about exactly that: small, natural memorials that honor your pet and give a little back to the earth in the process.

Dirt and Sunlight as Powerful Healers

Time outside helps… a walk through a favorite park, an hour under the tree your pet used to nap beside, or even just sitting with your shoes off in the grass. These things lessen grief in a way that’s hard to explain but easy to feel.

Part of it is that nature keeps moving. Seasons turn, things grow back, and that constant evidence of change can remind you that love doesn’t disappear when a body does. It just takes a different form.

A lot of people find peace in the idea that their pet’s memory can live on in something that grows — a tree, a flower bed, a stretch of replanted woodland (even if it’s somewhere they’ll never see, in the case of a donation to reforestation groups).

Small rituals help, too. Picking up a stone on a walk. Carrying a clay pawprint in your pocket while you hike (I love that one). Watering a houseplant you bought the week your pet died.

None of it is dramatic, and that’s the point. It’s a quiet, physical, tangible way to say I still love you & I remember you with your hands.

Do This and Watch Something Extraordinary Happen to Your Grief

A tree, a shrub, or a wildflower patch planted in your pet’s honor is one of the most lasting tributes you can make. Pick somewhere meaningful — your yard, a path you walked together, maybe a hillside you both liked.

If you want, try to find a plant that suits them. Think sun-loving wildflower for a dog who lived for the outdoors. A soft fern for a quiet cat. An oak tree for a staid horse. Dancing marigolds for a pet lost all too young.

There’s no wrong way to do this. You get to choose the meaning and the message.

Another approach is to leave a small marker somewhere you’ll see it again. A painted stone, a flat slate with your pet’s name, maybe a piece of wood with a date carved into it. Over the years, the plant grows and the marker weathers, but ideally it’s a place you can always go back to.

Create a Sacred Corner

A home memorial garden can be as simple or as elaborate as you want it to be. I’ve decorated stones for mine and placed them under trees I planted.

Some people build a stone pathway with engraved markers. Some set out a bench. Some scatter their pet’s ashes directly into the soil, often using a biodegradable urn (bamboo and pressed cellulose are the most common), so the ashes become part of what feeds the next round of growth.

Lighting a lantern outside in the evening or putting fresh flowers in the garden bed each season can turn a space into something you actively visit instead of something you just look at.

If you want to add life to the space, plant things that draw it in, like bee-friendly flowers or milkweed for monarchs. Maybe a small bird feeder if you have the patience to refill it.

There’s something eternally comforting about watching the space your pet would have loved fill back up with wings and movement.

7 Outdoor Tributes That Go Beyond a Gravestone

If you don’t have space for a full garden, there are plenty of other good options.

• Walk one of your pet’s favorite trails on the anniversary of their passing and bring home a stone or a leaf.

• Volunteer for a park or beach cleanup in their name.

• Sponsor a tree through a reforestation nonprofit. Some let you dedicate the planting and send you a certificate with the location.

• Turn your pet’s water bowl into a planter. Herbs are nice for this. Tuck your pet’s tag into the soil or wrap their collar around the base.

These ideas may sound small when written out here. But actually doing something, and doing it with intention is what makes it meaningful.

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The Green Goodbye

Or, here’s a newer approach… a lot of pet parents are choosing greener alternatives to traditional cremation. Aquamation (also called alkaline hydrolysis) is the most common one.

It uses warm water and a small amount of alkaline solution instead of fire to return the body to the earth, and it produces a fraction of the emissions cremation does. The remaining liquid is nutrient-rich and safe to pour into soil if that feels right to you.

There are also urns made from recycled or upcycled materials, memorial stones poured from reclaimed concrete, and seed paper you can plant.

None of these choices are particularly momentous. But if you cared about how your pet lived, it can feel right to make their farewell match.

The Healing Power in Watching Something Grow

I think the reason living memorials work is that they’re slow. You can’t rush a tree. You water it, you weed around it, you watch it through winters where nothing happens, and one spring you realize it’s taller than you are.

Grief works similarly. It doesn’t go away on a schedule. It just changes.

Watching something grow where loss used to be is its own kind of comfort. With a tree, for instance, the bond you had never went away… it just transitioned into the soil and the roots and the shade you stand in on a hot afternoon.

And if any of this feels overwhelming, be assured that even the small gestures count, like a potted plant on the windowsill. Or maybe a stone you painted with your pet’s name and now keep on the kitchen shelf. Perhaps a few words said quietly outside.

None of it has to be impressive. It just has to come from you.

Tributes That Keep Your Pet’s Memory Alive for Generations

At the end of the day, memorializing a pet through nature isn’t only about remembering them. It’s about staying in some kind of relationship with them.

The garden you tend, the tree you watch through the seasons — all it offers you a place to store the love you have that’s still here.

I’m a big fan of planting something that will outlast you (ideally something hardy for your region). Or, do something annually, like scattering petals across a meadow once a year.

Maybe just sit on a bench and say your pet’s name out loud.

Whatever shape your tribute takes, just doing something makes it enough to count and to ease your grief.

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If you’ve ever been lucky enough to have someone truly believe in you and see the best in you, then you understand how devastating it would be to lose them.

So it is with our pets. They bring out the best in us. They see the best in us. Dig deep and you might realize you really were your best self around your pet.

But when that pet departs, it feels as though you’ve lost your identity and no longer know who you are.

If you lost your soul dog, like I lost mine, it’s absolutely like losing a part of yourself. Really, it’s like losing a part of your soul. The part that made you want to be better, that helped you feel calm or capable.

There’s no definitive way to move on after the loss of your pet and subsequent loss of identity, but there are ways to move forward.

Making Space… Eventually

One way to transition into your new identity without your pet is to make space for things that are now possible.

For example, let’s say you held off on traveling because you didn’t want to leave your pet alone or with someone else. Now, that option is a possibility. So maybe you take a few nights to explore a nearby town. Or maybe you go abroad for two weeks.

It doesn’t even have to be such a large-scale change.

Let’s say your pet was an older dog who needed ramps and large orthotic beds and rugs across your tile so he wouldn’t slip. All of these items are testaments to your love… but also, cleaning up and donating those items frees up space for new possibilities… maybe even new pets.

Discovering New Parts

In terms of identity, it’s also possible that you put forward certain parts of yourself for your pet, or because of your pet, and no longer have that desire, or that option.

Maybe it was as simple as taking a morning walk with your dog or trotting through the neighborhood on your horse.

You made it a routine out of love. But now, you realize you can use that time to join an exercise class or sleep in or start your workday sooner.

Maybe it was your commitment to an evening of reading or Netflix so your cat could curl up on your lap and purr to his heart’s content. But there’s no longer the pull to sit in your favorite chair and not move for an hour or two each night.

It’s okay to shed that part of you that was created for or to accommodate your pet. It’s okay to make room for new parts and explore other areas of your personality.

Lingering Forward Progress

But while we’re on the subject of cleaning out… it’s also important not to rush it.

Something as simple as a water bowl or a cat bed, once gone, can feel devastating just by its absence.

If it breaks your heart to clean up the symbols and belongings of your pet, then don’t. Wait a while. Make peace with the slowness of getting used to the idea that your life has shifted.

Consider removing one item at a time, spaced out by days or weeks.

Give yourself space to think about what might be worth keeping because it makes you feel connected to your pet. It might be something you’d want to put in a pet memory box if you choose to make one.

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Lifequakes and the Education of the Soul

In the book Life is in the Transitions, author Bruce Feiler writes that, “Lifequakes may be voluntary or involuntary, but navigating the transitions that flow from them can only be voluntary.”

You’re best off meeting them head-on, naming them, addressing them, sharing them, and when you’re ready, converting them into soul education.

In the crazy flurry that took place last week across American stores stockpiled with colorful bouquets and rows of pastel cards and even glitter balloons…

There was something missing.

Don’t get me wrong; I love Mother’s Day. I am a mother. I have a mother. It’s one of my favorite days of the year because, thanks to my amazing family, it’s the one day I do absolutely nothing.

But all the hubbub and celebration is dedicated to a very specific kind of woman: the one who carried a human child. The one who packs lunches and schedules orthodontist appointments and claps at recitals.

That woman deserves every glittery, embossed word of gratitude and whatever flowers, brunch, and sweet jeweled gift that might accompany them—on any day, not just Mother’s Day. Because Mothering is hard.

But there are lots of mothers the cards forgot...

• Like the woman who sets her alarm for 2 AM to syringe-feed a kitten that fits in the palm of her hand.

• Or the woman who wakes up twice throughout the night to take her aging dog outside because he’s lost control of his bladder.

• Or the woman who googles, at midnight with tears running down her face, whether her gecko’s color change means stress or shedding.

Maybe this woman was never pregnant. Maybe she’s never been called “Mom” by anything that can speak.

But by every meaningful measure of the word, she is absolutely and completely a mother.

The 3 AM Test

My working definition of motherhood is this:

When something fragile cries out in the dark, do you get up?

Do you assess?

Do you offer love even when you’re tired or hungry or stressed with your own life?

You don’t do it because anyone will praise you. You’re not fascinated by the cry or drawn to intellectually problem-solve.

You do it, you drag yourself out of that bed, because there is a small, fragile life on the other end of that sound. Somewhere deep inside, you know that you are meant to care for it and help it through its troubles.

Because that life is in your hands.

When you look at it that way, it’s really no different from the woman pacing the living room with a colicky newborn. The woman pacing the living room with an anxious rescue dog is doing the exact same precious work.

And even though that human baby will probably grow up to write her own appreciation for her mom, initially with rainbows and later with jagged poems and eventually with store-bought greeting cards...

The dog never will.

But the love that comes from both is identical in appreciation and emotion.

Love Isn’t Stratified

I bring all this up because I’ve observed a subtle snobbery in our world about what kind of love “counts.” Love from children, of course. Spouses, perhaps. Parents, naturally.

But pets? Is it the same?

Should we classify it or put that love in hierarchical order?

Are those mothers less than? Are they just different?

No. None of that. They are mothers. Mothers are mothers. Love is love.

Caring for another living being is not a static definition. It’s not a black and white image that has to fit into a certain box.

It doesn’t matter if the creature has hooves or scales or paws or big blue eyes and golden hair.

It doesn’t matter if that love comes from a hamster mom buying a bigger habitat because she read that standard cages are too cramped and cause stress.

Or the bird mom who spent hours on YouTube learning to clip wings safely so her cockatiel could flap around her apartment.

Or the reptile mom who runs a humidifier nightly in her bedroom because that’s what her ball python needs to thrive.

These women are not playing a game. They don’t do it just for fun. It’s actual, often unglamorous, usually expensive, invisible labor that keeps a vulnerable life going.

That is mothering.

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What You Give Without Thinking

If you’re a pet mom, you maybe never sat down to tally up all you’ve given, because you do it all without hesitation.

But if you were to list everything out, it’s staggering. Think about it...

• You’ve rearranged trips around feeding schedules.

• You skipped nights out because someone at home was scared of thunderstorms.

• You’ve spent grocery money on prescription food.

• You held your pet still while a vet worked and pretended to be calm so your pet would be calm.

• You’ve grieved losses that other people crushingly brushed off with, “It was just a pet.”

• You’ve been the steady presence in a life that depended entirely on you for everything.

And you did it all without any of the cultural scaffolding that human mothers benefit from (though I want to add there’s plenty to be improved in the human world in terms of honoring stepmothers and foster mothers and mothers who have no actual connection to kids but parent them all the same).

Back to the pet mother, there’s no baby shower. No parental leave. No school pickups where other moms nod knowingly or offer you a spot in the carpool.

It’s just you and a leash or a litter box or a tank or a saddle and your own daily, un-witnessed choice to show up.

And you’re doing it.

On Being Needed

Also, please never forget that there’s beauty in doing what you do. There’s a particular dignity that comes from being needed and answering the call from something that can’t fend for itself.

Plus, it’s a way to sidestep some of the limits around having children. You don’t need a uterus to be a devoted pet mom. You don’t need a marriage license or a partner.

You’re simply making the choice to, over and over again, put another creature’s needs alongside your own and treat them with respect.

This kind of devotion to guiding a creature through its life shapes you into a different person. Softer in some ways, fiercer in others. Maybe more patient. Probably more tired. Likely more tender.

All of this is what motherhood does to a human. It happens whether the dependent has fingers, feathers, or fur.

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A Nod From The Rest Of Us

So in honor of the United States’ recent Mother’s Day celebration, I’d like to give a nod to every woman who has ever

• woken up early to walk a dog in the rain

• talked baby talk to a parrot,,

• driven across town to find the particular brand of food her cat will tolerate,

• held a dying rabbit and whispered to it that it was loved,

• or made room in her life for the care of another…

Know that the world sees you. Or at least, right over here in this corner of it, we see you. I see you.

You may not have brought another human into this world, but you don’t need one in order to be celebrated for this particular honor.

What you did, what you’re doing, is noble and beautiful on its own: you took something small and breathing and you said, “I’ve got you. I am here for you.” You kept your word. That’s motherhood. That has always been the essence of motherhood.

Happy Mother’s Day yesterday, today, and all the days of the year. Thank you for what you do.💓