Episode 28
Welcome to the Healing Pod!
Week 2 of Kasie filling in for Jess and week 2 of massively annoying errors. It was going really good, and then Kasie’s alarm went off and we lost the last bit of her video. I tried…I think I recovered everything for the audio of this one so yay me!
Maybe we’ll just redo this topic sometime with Jess as well since she also has a lot of experience.
In this episode, Kasie and I talk about grief and pet loss and our experiences with it. Breathe. Give yourself space for it.
Grief is a memory of the love we still have, and it will be different for everyone. The rules we have about how to grieve are made up. Use the rituals that support you, but do not feel obligated t
We talk about our own experiences, how we process having to lose both personally and publicly as our dogs are working dogs, and the anticipatory grief as you watch the decline and mourn all the pieces while worrying about the final loss.
Kasie also brought up a good point of the loss of our pets symbolizing the significant change in our life as well. We lost the “dog that you have as a 20 something,” and the cat that got me through college. The horse that got me through high school. All of our NY and VA origin pets.
I went looking for the study and found a plethora of ones instead. The tricky part seems to be what is tricky about grief in general, each person experiences each individual loss different. There are a lot of similarities noted between loss of pets and loss of human relationships. A lot of this has to do with factors such as how bonded individuals are to their pets and how integrated the pets are into your lives.
It is interesting that the data seems to show more similarities in more recent times, mirroring what we were noting about the improvement in our care for and engagement with our pets.Which is definitely something Jess and I notice in our equine work as well.
If you want to join the pet grief Facebook (Northern New York Pet Loss), just reach out to Kyle Stevenson or myself on Facebook or email me here at PeasInTheHealingPod@gmail.com and I will give you Kyle’s email. This is a closed Facebook group to allow for safety in talking about our grief so you do need to contact one of us before being allowed to join. We have a zoom meeting once a month on Wednesdays at 6:30 as well for anyone that wants to drop in.
As always, thank you to the wonderful Miki Anderson for our intro and outtro music. She can be found under Pax Minerva on Apple Music and is all around a wonderful human being.
Come join us and chat, complain, or send in what mental health you would like to hear us ramble about!
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