The messiness of pet loss and pet grief

The messiness of pet loss and pet grief

by | Aug 5, 2020

It was such an interesting week at Dr. Wolfelt’s Center for Loss.

I love taking time to learn, to grow and to enhance my personal and professional development skills. This course, Becoming a Grief Educator, was certainly right up my alley and in my wheelhouse! It was an amazing course.

The week proved to have more than education on how to be a good grief (did you see what I did there… “good grief!” Who doesn’t need a bit of Snoopy to start their day!) educator. As with all of the sessions I’ve been to at Alan’s place, not only do I learn from him, but I learn from the other attendees. It’s been almost 11 years since I’ve taken the time to attend a class at the Center. I guess if I had to send COVID a thank you, it would be for the time to do THIS!

There was something I was reminded of in spades with this class: the messiness of grief. The messiness of grief. I don’t think there’s any better word to describe this process than messy. It is just that.

Last night I took some time to reflect on this word, and it just seemed worthy to journal some of my interpretation of this description. It’s so true. Grief: We want it to be logical and prescriptive, linear and with plausible stages, describable and understandable. But it’s not. It’s so messy.

We want to have our head tell us what’s happening and to speak soft and understanding truth to us versus negative self-speak as to WHY we shouldn’t be having these feelings and thoughts. We want our head to actually allow our heart the permission to feel the way it really, truly wants to feel. We want our head to not argue with our heart on what’s happening with our being. We want our head to align with our heart, instead of fighting internally on the describable and indescribable feelings and emotions. While the feels the rest of the world “just doesn’t understand” or “it’s just a dog/cat,” we just want our own self to support our own self.

But alas it happens the way it happens. It’s all messy. Just plain freaking messy.

I just wanted you to know that today. Know it will be messy, know it’s not a beautiful straight line, but a bundled mess of stuff. You know, messy.

Will I Ever Get Over The Death of My Pet?

by | Jun 12, 2009

Will I Ever Get Over The Death of My Pet?

This big question is “will I get OVER the death of my pet?”

The smaller component that drives this question is those days when something, who knows what, hits me and all of a sudden, I am crying again over Mico just like that fateful day on April 21, 2003.  In addition, while I do not wonder about that question of “when I´ll get over this,” – others around me are truly the parties that want to know the answer to this.  “Why must she continue to cry?  She is not over the death of this dog yet. There is clearly a problem.”

Yea, I am not “over” it.  Oh my stars do I miss that little girl!  I, personally, am very good with knowing that I will NEVER “get over” the loss of her.  She was a major part of my life – a being that will forever affect me in so many aspects of my day-to-day world.  She taught me things that no two-legged human being could ever even begin to understand, much less teach.

Get over her death?  No – I will continue to get through it – just as I get through every beautiful day.  That is what life is about – taking what we have learned from a relationship, using those lessons within our being, and being a better person because of those nuggets.

Don´t ever tell yourself that you need to “get over” the death of a loved one.  Get through it – that´s all we are wired to do.  Get through it – figure out what you learned from the relationship – use those lessons – and the memories will live on.

Aahhh,… and, really, there´s nothing wrong with a good cleansing cry.  My little girl deserves every tear!

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