Coping With The Loss Of A Pet
“Grief is really just love. It's all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”
— Jamie Anderson
Grief Has No Roadmap . . .
The grief of losing a pet reverberates differently for every single person. There is no formula, no roadmap, no torchlight anyone can lend you for navigating the tunnel of this profound loss. It’s so deeply personal. Sometimes the most frustrating part about the mourning process as a whole, is all of the things we read about mourning—all of the euphemisms that are supposed to help, when what they sometimes do, is generalize the once-in-a-lifetime bond we shared with our pets.
Our pets can feel as though they were a Haley’s Comet of a connection: bright, and beautiful, and fleeting. We live with them in joy and love, and then we must re-learn what it is to walk through this lifetime without them by our side.
Though we know that grief is not a prescriptive thing, something that feels important for us at Loyal & Loved, is to convey that it is okay to not know how to process or move through the grief when it hits. Just know that it will change with time—and with time, you will learn how to carry it. You’ll learn how to hold the grief more gently. The grief won’t always have no place to go.
Rhythm & Routine Can Be Helpful
Some pet parents will grieve for weeks or months, while others might experience the grief for years. Something our team has found helpful in the immediate aftermath of this difficult time, is maintaining daily rituals as a way of grounding yourself. Regular meal times, early bed times, daily walks outside—these are things that keep the body rooted in rhythm and routine, and can in turn, help our mental and emotional selves feel more protected. The age-old adage “The body craves stability; the mind craves creativity,” is a good one to remember.
The Power Of Breathing
At the risk of sounding nerdy, three deep breaths (full inhales and exhales) have been scientifically proven to shift your pre-frontal cortex (the part of the brain where processing happens) out of “narrative” and into “direct-perception” mode. In other words, some good deep breaths from the belly can help you hop off of the mental hamster-wheel that we humans sometimes spin on.
Grief can have a way of pummeling people sideways, and it sometimes does this out of nowhere. If you find yourself in this situation and overwhelmed with grief, three deep breaths won’t fix everything—but they’ll help.
In The Early Stages of Grief…
Psychologists often emphasize how important it is to move toward the pain of the loss and acknowledge the reality of the death rather than push it away or ignore it. For example, the silence in your home after the passing of a pet might seem deafening. The bells on your pet’s collar no longer jingle, the click-clacking of their paws no longer bounces through the space of your home. Dog owners who have spent years taking their pup outside first thing in the morning wake up and suddenly, it’s all different. The absence of this minutiae tends to make us feel the loss more acutely. But simply being aware of this change and the emotions that might follow, is an important first step in moving through the grief.
Reaching Out For Help
On a personal level, we know what it is to feel alone in the loss of a beloved pet. Every person on our team has experienced what it is to say goodbye to a furry family member. That’s why we feel incredibly lucky to have the compassionate insight of two Grief Support Professionals, Ivan Cunningham and Lesley Loughlan, who you can read more about here. Both Ivan and Lesley are available for virtual Pet Loss Support Sessions via Zoom. They’re wonderfully gifted at focusing on healthy coping skills, grief reactions, and honouring the memory of your pet. Sometimes just having another person to speak with outside of your inner-web, can help.
A Reflection From Our Grief Support Professional, Lesley Loughlan:
I lost my own beloved Devon Rex cat, Asha, a few years ago. ‘Asha’ means ‘hope’ in Hindi and he definitely brought hope and joy into my life. He was a spirited and loving daily companion and was with me for 16 years. I still miss the essence of him and the comfort of his presence, his quirky ways, and the very real expressions of affection and love between us. He made my house a home, and after he died, the house felt empty without him. I spent most of his life trying to keep him alive and happy and well—from his days as a wild and wayward kitten right up to becoming an elderly cat with arthritis, kidney disease and lymphoma.
The sudden end to all of that loving care and attention can be overwhelming. It has struck me that the expression “grief is just love with nowhere to go” is very true…
During our first lockdown in 2020, I re-homed a delightful new little Devon Rex cat, who came to me as Coco. In working through my own loss of Asha, I began working with others who have lost their beloved pets too and have often reflected on how unacknowledged losing a pet is in our society. There are some precious people who “get” how enormous our grief for our animals is. However, there are many who don’t, and this can add significantly to the loneliness and isolation that can sometimes comes with grieving our beloved companions.
Occasionally, losing a pet comes as a sudden and traumatic event which adds an enormous dimension to the depth of our grieving process. All the latest research on working with trauma—known as poly-vagal theory—points to working with physical therapies alongside counselling to help change arousal patterns in the body and mind. I have been using somatic (physical) approaches with my clients who have suffered trauma with much success, such as tapping (Emotional Freedom Technique) and many of the traditional yogic breathing and deep relaxation practices, and have found these to be very successful in conjunction with deeply empathetic counselling.
If you are going though the loss of your beloved pet, I would love to work with you.
—Lesley
If you would like to set up a Pet Loss Support Session, please call 0480 022 231, send us an email at info@loyalandloved.com.au or get in touch with us here.
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