I still remember how it felt in the first few days after losing my heart dog Georgia in 2006. We said goodbye on the grassy area outside the hospital with her oncologist by our side. It was a beautiful spring morning and as she left this world, my heart shattered into a million pieces. The guttural cries that poured out of me quickly turned into a numbness that felt like sleepwalking. I was a zombie living in my worst nightmare and I just hoped that soon I would wake up and this would all be part of my imagination. But it wasn’t. It was instead one of the defining moments of my life. Everything since has been a matter of Before and After.
If you have ever had to say goodbye to a heart pet, you can probably relate to the level of heartbreak and emptiness that follows their death. It can be especially difficult to navigate life ‘after’ if you had been doing a lot of caregiving for them in the time leading up to their passing. You suddenly feel out of place in the world and untethered from everything that kept you grounded and feeling safe and loved.
I won’t lie to you. Losing a beloved pet can be hard. REALLY hard. And for many, it’s more difficult than losing a human in our life because the relationship we share with our pets can be so multidimensional. They are often our best friends, our surrogate children and partners, our therapists and our co-workers. We care for them and protect them in every way we can and we often feel like a failure when they die – no matter how it happens – because somehow we should have been able to know more, or make different choices, or do something different to change that outcome.
The good news is that as long as we stay open to the idea of healing from grief, it will eventually find us and the intense pain felt in the moments right after a loss can be replaced by a much more enduring feeling of gratitude and joy for every moment spent together and for getting to share part of our own life’s journey with such a special furry soul. The love our pets share with us is SO much stronger than even the worst pain and grief.
But how do you get from here to there? Below are a few ideas to help you navigate those early days of grief when the pain can feel overwhelming and it’s hard to imagine that it can ever get better.
1. Give yourself time and space to feel your sadness.
It’s okay to take some time to sit with your grief and sadness. It’s important to allow yourself time to cry or be angry and work through those common feelings of fear or regret or to play out all of those ‘what if’s’ in your mind for a while. If you need to take a day or two off of work or postpone a social event, or just focus on what absolutely needs to get done around the house for a few days, that’s okay!
When a loved one dies, we not only mourn the loss of their physical presence, but also all of the little things that defined our life together. If it is a sudden loss, or the loss of a younger pet, we also mourn the future with them that we had imagined. It takes time to process all of this and you’re not being selfish or dramatic or unreasonable by creating space in your life to focus on these feelings for a bit.
2. Write ABOUT them or TO them.
You’re thinking of them all the time anyway, right? So use that as a tool to help preserve your most precious memories or to connect with them in a new way by writing about them, or directly to them. People can often be intimidated by the idea of ‘journaling’, but it doesn’t have to be that complicated. One of my favorite ways to start out is just by making lists that pop into your head. Favorite foods, places you visited together, describing how they would curl up when they slept, funny personality quirks, etc. Not only will this help reassure you that no matter how much time passes, you won’t forget them, but this exercise can also help trigger memories and remind you of some really happy moments.
Writing TO them can also be a great way to feel more connected to them and to help you start building a new type of relationship with them. A ‘virtual’ relationship, so to speak. This can be especially helpful if your loss was sudden or traumatic and you didn’t get a chance to say the goodbye that you would have wanted to. Telling them everything you wish you had gotten a chance to can help provide some feeling of resolution and peace.
3. Find something to cuddle.
One of the toughest things after the loss of a pet can be missing that feeling of physical contact with them. That’s especially true if they liked to curl up with you on the couch or sleep with you in bed at night. Our pets can give us such a sense that ‘everything’s right in the world’ with their quiet, warm presence, all pressed up against us, making us feel so loved. If you have another pet at home, they may be able to fill this void and they may even benefit from some extra cuddle time if they’re grieving the loss of their companion too.
If you don’t have any other pets at home, then you may want to consider getting a stuffed animal that resembles your pet, or even cuddling up with one of their stuffed toys or blankets for a few days to help you feel closer to them. Those personal items will even smell like them, which can help with that feeling of connection. This can be especially beneficial at night, which is often the toughest part of the day during grief. There are also custom photo pillows and blankets that can be made to help give you something soft and warm to cuddle with when you’re feeling lonely and missing your loved one.
4. Reach out for pet loss support.
Grief can feel very isolating and sometimes it can be hard to find people in our lives who truly understand the pain of losing a special pet. Or maybe we just aren’t comfortable with reaching out to someone we know and opening up face-to-face. Luckily, there are LOTS of ways to find support and connect with others who can relate to your feelings and who want to help you through your pain. Online pet loss chat forums, such as through the Association for Pet Loss and Bereavement can be a huge help and are easy to participate in from home, there are Facebook groups where you can post about your loss and find community with other pet parents going through similar losses.
There are also individualized support resources and real-time video based support groups like those offered through Sirius Wellbeing that can give you more personalized attention and support. Your community may also have local in-person pet loss support resources that you can connect with. Ask your veterinarian if they have any recommendations or do an online search for pet loss resources near you.
5. Give yourself some TLC.
All that love and care that you had always poured into your furbaby? Give some of that to yourself right now. You need it and deserve it, and it’s actually one of the ways that we can honor our angel pets. Grief is one of the most stressful life experiences that a person can go through and it can take a huge toll on us mentally AND physically. Grief often disrupts our sleep patterns, our eating habits, our exercise routines and can be devastating to our immune system if we’re not careful. So in these early days of grief, even if you’re not feeling like it, be sure to try to get some sleep (I highly recommend using an App such as Insight Timer for some guided meditations or sleep music to help you at night), take in enough hydration and nutrition (even if it’s just in the form of protein shakes or a meal-replacement bar), get outside for some fresh air and exercise (even if it’s just sitting outside at lunch for a few minutes or taking a leisurely walk around the block), and finally, remember to BREATHE.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the emotion of Grief is closely tied to both our Lungs and our Immune System. And if you’ve experienced intense grief, you know why this is. When we are grieving, our chest often feels tight and our breaths are shallow. This decreases our ability to oxygenate our bodies and tanks our energy levels. So even if you can’t find the motivation or energy to do anything else to care for yourself right now, find at least 5 minutes during the day to Just Breathe. Deep, slow breaths. For those 5 minutes, try not to think of anything else other than just breathing slow and steady and then see how you feel afterwards. You may be surprised at how something so small can actually help so much.
It WILL get better.
Healing from grief after the loss of a beloved pet can be a rollercoaster of emotion and we all have our own timetable for how long it takes us to work through the process. Getting through those first few days of intense grief are a start, and will set you on the right path so you can continue the journey and eventually find your way back to joy and peace – always holding tight to those happy memories and all of the love that was left behind.
If you are struggling with the loss of a pet, please REACH OUT to set up a one-on-one pet loss support meeting or to learn about group support options. And if you feel that you are experiencing a mental health crisis or are contemplating self-harm, please dial 988 to contact the National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You are not alone.
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