The Wonky, Unwelcome, and Totally Natural State of Being Called Pet Grief

The sadness of pet loss makes sense. But the fog, the exhaustion, the unexpected crying in a parking lot? Nobody warns you about those parts. Until now.

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.

Can you relate?

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.

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.