The Journey From Pet Loss Grief to Inner Peace: Letting Go of Pain Without Letting Go of Love
Inner Peace Coach Arthur shares his pet loss story.
One of the biggest challenges we face in losing loved ones is that it is simply not talked about enough. And especially in the case of the loss of a pet, it has historically not been taken seriously, with comments such as “it was just a pet”. This also means there have been very few outlets or support systems to help people overwhelmed by grief.
Fortunately, things are changing, and the dangers of suppressing emotions are becoming known and increasingly addressed. In this post, I would like to briefly share my own journey of dealing with grief and how my wider journey of personal and spiritual growth has helped me and many others manage our mental chatter and emotional overwhelm to achieve increasing levels of inner peace and feelings of freedom.
Although I never had the benefit of a pet growing up, as an adult I have had prolific experiences as a pet parent, especially over 9 years, in my 40s, when I shared a house with many furry friends, mostly stray cats and rescue dogs, as well as their human minions; at one point there were 7 cats, 2 dogs, a pair of rabbits and two gerbils! Not to mention all the hedgehogs in the garden who would come to eat the dry cat food. Even animals like fast food, it seems!
Inevitably, we lost some along the way. The one which hurt the most was one of three brothers, two of whom - both identical black cats who used to sleep on my lap as I read and meditated. It is probably the hardest decision I have had to make in my life, following being run over outside my front door - a black cat on a black night in the fog.
Living with cats and dogs taught me so much about unconditional love. Dogs teach you to receive it no matter the mood you’re in and how much you may have ignored or even got angry for chewing your fifth pair of slippers, they will still love you, sense when you are sad and crave your attention.
Cats, on the other hand, teach you to give love unconditionally. They are fiercely independent, ruthless hunters and knockers-off-of-breakable-objects-for-fun, but you cannot help but love them (especially when they choose you as their favourite bed or snuggle up to your ear and purr gently as you fall asleep).
When this is taken away from you, it is a blow that feels like a part of you has been taken away. Yet we are taught to rationalise and not “get emotional” - especially as a man. For years, I shut down my emotions, so overwhelming and painful they were, and so hard were the consequences of showing them. I don’t think I cried for 15 years in my 20s and early 30s.
By the time I lost Xispi (“Sparky” in English) for his yellow eyes and determination to live after being very sickly as a kitten, I had reconnected with my emotions and felt the loss deeply. But I was also more connected with something greater than me. Along with years of study and personal growth, which equipped me with knowledge and tools for my human side (neuroscience, emotional intelligence, personality types…) I had begun to make sense of my own Near Death Experiences, which “lifted the veil” between the physical and non-physical.
What follows is an attempt to answer some of the biggest and most common questions people ask about how to deal with the grief of losing their fur babies (no offence to Sphynx cats).
1. Why do I feel like people don’t understand how much this hurts?
The first thing I’d say here is that everyone is on their own journey in life, suffering their own pain and absorbed in their own story. As Dire Straits sang, we have just one world, but we live in different ones. It is important to be aware of this so we can both have compassion for ourselves and avoid the trap of looking to others for validation.
This also hints at the most important thing we can be aware of to move through the emotions of grief and loss (and any heavy emotion): the peace we seek is within us, not outside of us. Clearly, having the understanding and support of others helps enormously, which is why a safe space like the Pet Loss Support Group is so powerful. We also need to foster our own inner strength, instead of dependence on others, by connecting to our own power, and so to the Source of infinite love and understanding.
2. What if my grief feels overwhelming or doesn’t go away?
Sometimes it feels impossible to do anything, to function normally - or at all - amid the grief. I cannot over-emphasise the importance of giving yourself the space to break down, fall apart and detach yourself for a while from the world. Any denial of these feelings, whether this extreme or not, will only move the thoughts which sustain them out of the conscious mind to the non-conscious and that suppressed energy will ultimately have a (potentially equally extreme) impact on your body through the proven somatic powers of the mind. So we do well to listen to our body to see where we may be avoiding emotions.
And we need to listen to the conflicting voices in our mind, which both distract us continuously with painful thoughts and tell us to “buck up” and get on with things. (Let’s just lose the pretence of society that we don’t all have voices in our heads.) One of the most effective things I have found in this situation is negotiation. By listening, the voices (different aspects of our personality, programming, ego…) are often surprised and calm down.
Ask what they need and do your best to provide it; you’ll be surprised how the tone changes and the wounded child reaches out for help. Remind them that you are “all” on the same team and want the best - to get through this. If you have responsibilities you want to meet and have trouble focusing, agree on a time where you can stop, break down, cry, punch a pillow or whatever, but until then, you need some time to get shit done. If you keep your promise, this will become easier, and you will have some quieter time.
3. How do I let go of the pain without letting go of the love?
My answer to this question follows naturally on from the last one. One of the things I find myself saying most to friends and clients about dealing with emotions is that we need to “let it in to let it go”. I always say that Disney didn’t have it quite right when Elsa sang Let It Go - you can’t let something go that you haven’t first accepted. Anything else is just avoidance or suppression; even in spiritual practice, we have the concept of spiritual bypassing, where we fall into the trap of using these practices to convince ourselves everything is wonderful and avoid actually shining a light on a painful issue, so we can heal and grow, what Carl Jung called shadow work.
I recently read a quote that speaks to this: “Emotions expand in the darkness, and fade with the light”. This very much echoes one of the most effective techniques I have encountered in overcoming pain and suffering and creating the life we want. I have been using variations of Dr David R Hawkins' Letting Go for years, along with the Sedona Method and my own Emotion Switch. As a clinical psychiatrist, Hawkins conducted many trials that proved not only our mind’s somatic power to both harm and heal, but also the seemingly miraculous effects of allowing oneself to feel everything and let it go.
You see, those feelings don’t go away by pushing them away (or, for that matter, by expressing them unconsciously, for example, as uncontrolled rage directed at others or “being brutally honest” as a cover for unrecognised feelings). In my experience and, it seems, millions of others, when you allow yourself to feel - even to welcome the feeling - without judgement, it seems to lose a lot of its power. Some weaker emotions can even disappear completely, very quickly, especially with practice.
It’s like the old saying that you don’t remove darkness, you shine a light on it. There is no “dark switch”, our minds keep us in the dark. But the moment we shine a light on it, it loses its power over us, or at least begins to loosen its grip. Feeling the physical sensation in the body, without labelling it or judging it as good or bad, helps detach from the mental processes that keep us stuck in negative emotion. This is the basis for my own technique I call The Emotion Switch, developed during a painful period in my life when no single technique seemed to quite do it. I was able to use the energy in the physical feeling to transmute pain into power and, in appreciating that power, redirect it to positive feelings, which in turn gave rise to more positive thoughts.
But I do want to answer the specific question of how to let go of the pain without letting go of the love, and I will tackle it head-on with this simple statement:
“Love is the only real truth, so you cannot ‘let it go’ so much as resist it. Therefore, once you are able to let go of pain, what remains, precisely, is love.”
Since animals operate on a frequency much closer to nature and the universe, they help us form bonds that operate without ego and connect us to a consciousness beyond what our minds can comprehend. You may have even felt the presence of your pet after they’ve passed, validating the feeling that love never dies.
This begins to answer another common question about how we can feel or stay connected with our pets after they’ve gone. That could be the subject of a whole other post, but what I would say here is that, if we can learn to calm the loud voices, we can tap into what I like to call our Soul’s Own Signal - the calm, quiet voice below the storm. The instincts and intuitions that tell us we are not alone and what to do. We will find signs all around us that will reaffirm the relationship that we will always have with the soul who shared such an important part of our lives - and continues to do so.
Meanwhile, on a human, yet still visceral and instinctual level, we still crave community and the support it offers, especially during times of loss and grief. This is why I support the Pet Loss Support Group and the incredible work it does for grieving pet parents.
And I couldn’t end this piece without a personal note of admiration and love for a beautiful soul who, for the last two years, has poured her heart, her everything, into creating this safe space in honour of her own, dear Tilly and that special relationship that meant so much to her.
It is incredible to see Sonia stepping up and moving her whole life around to focus on building the group so that more people can access the support that has been so needed and underserved (at best). I have loved being part of her journey as she has been part of mine, and it touched me that she felt that I might be able to offer some answers and words of comfort to her growing community. I hope you feel that trust has been validated.
Tapping into the knowledge of who we really are, how everything is connected and infinite, is like a crack in the universe that lets the light in. Remembering we are more than our physical bodies, more than our emotions, more than a distinct personality, however important that unique expression of consciousness is, brings us to the realisation that inner peace is not something we search for, it is something that we remember - our natural state. Like the unconditional love we feel for a pet, which is also infinite, by letting go of the pain, we can reside in that state, connected and whole, at peace and in oneness with All That Is.
Want to find peace and heal after losing your beloved pet? Join a support session and connect with others who ‘get it.’