Today, I again had the privilege of facilitating A Time to Remember. There was no doubt that each understood the power of a deep daily connection with an animal companion. Each also felt the void when the connection was physically broken. Each of us had loved and been loved uniquely in the relationship with the pet being mourned. Love had changed us, as love always does.
So often nowadays, we count on physical presence to feel connected in a relationship. Death then triggers a sense of void that feels intolerable. This is made worse when we say that nothing can be done because we can’t bring them back. We are advised to move on by others or by our own internal voice. If this is translated into “Don’t feel the pain” or “Don’t talk about it,” moving on is accompanied by the baggage of feeling a void. Healing hasn’t yet occurred so we aren’t moving forward. We are born with a GPS to lead us to healing. Sometimes we forget to turn it on. We each turned ours on today. The void shrunk.
If we have learned to hide our grief and to hide from the grief of others, it takes courage simply to acknowledge its existence. A huge factor in healing is that simple acknowledgment. Each person present today felt and expressed grief. These expressions propelled us headlong into healing. Likewise, each person present compassionately witnessed others’ sadness. It was a two-fer: Support for another’s healing and more healing for self. All it took was courage to face the grief.
Once grief was acknowledged and witnessed, we were able to reconnect with the loving spirit of the animal companion being missed. That’s the best part. We recalled tangible signs of love and also remembered feeling loved in that unique relationship. We began discovering how to reconnect to the love which is indelibly imprinted in our hearts by them. Wish you were here.
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Cheers! Sandra. R.
Your blog is so true. I have lost both of my best friends this year. They were my babies and people say “they were just dogs”. I have stop talking to one so called friend because she does not understand my pain. I loved Bull and Rocky. They were both rescues and had so much love even though their lives were hard in the beginning. I am glad to see that someone understands the pain of losing our friends.