Grieving our pets that have passed can be just as devastating as any loved one in our life.
I find it interesting that some people don’t understand the grieving process around losing a pet. I have heard comments like; “it was just an animal or at least it wasn’t a loved one.” This always surprises me because I believe that our love for our animals sometimes can be bigger than our love for the humans in our life. I think this is because they love us unconditionally; they don’t care what we look like, if our breath stinks, and even if we forget to feed them at the exact time there so forgiving. They have such unconditional love for us that it teaches us how to have unconditional love in our lives. This unconditional love between an animal and human is so powerful.
Having animals in your life can be such a great learning; they can really connect us to our feelings. My last cat, Phil really captured my heart because he was so funny, animated and extremely loving. When he passed I remember having deep, deep sadness and missing him so much. It also brought up past sadness regarding losing my mother when I was younger.
My cat now, Milo has always taught me about things in my life. It’s funny how he has tapped into my old belief of me not being important, not good enough, like something is wrong with me. He has always been extremely aloof and now he is living with my neighbor and only comes home to eat. I have the opportunity to shift that limiting belief that nothing is wrong with me, I am good enough and important even though my cat is choosing someone else. I’m just not taking it personally.
I wanted to give you some ideas about the grieving process around losing a beloved pet. Here are a few helpful tips to support you in the grieving process.
Make sure you allow time to grieve. Allow enough time to move through your emotions. With all losses we need to give ourselves time so that we can experience our feelings fully.
Have a ritual around your animal’s life. It’s important to say goodbye through a type of memorial. This also helps you have closure.
Start a practice if you don’t already have one. Grief can be hard on us physically and emotionally. It’s important to go inward with either a meditation practice, journaling or just sitting in silence.
Talk to friends and family. Even if you’re having difficulties in this moment it’s important to reach out and share with people, this process can help heal your heart.
Be aware of other pets still with the family, these pets may be grieving as well. It’s important that you maintain their normal routine this will help comfort them.
Look back on all the great momentswith your special friend. Take time to journal or do a collage. Talking about the funny and interesting characteristics to others helps.
To this day I still talk about my Labrador retriever Jack and all the crazy things he did and he has been gone 9 years. Talking about him keeps his memory alive for me and reminds me of how much I loved him. It also has helped me heal from the loss.
Having animals and losing them is a wonderful time to go inward and process feelings that come up that may not completely be about your loss of the animal but some other hidden issue.
The loss of a furry companion can be as hurtful as losing a human companion, let this be okay.
Most parents believe that they are here to teach and guide their children and because the children haven’t had a lot of life experiences, they have nothing to teach them. Part of this is true we do have a lot to teach our children and guide them through the turbulent years of growing up. But the other part of this that parents don’t recognize is that they are also our teachers. Because they are so new here they haven’t been burdened with all of the preconceived notions about objects, situations or people. They certainly don’t have the judgments that we have because of our entire life experiences. They also have an easier way of expressing themselves because they’re not worried about being judged.
One of the biggest lessons that children have to teach us is the pure excitement about the smallest things, their playfulness and their ability to be in the present moment with all that they do. If we look at all of our enlightened teachers these are some of the qualities they have.
When we look at children as our teachers and what we can learn from them, it puts us in the present moment with them and in our life. We tend to let go of our agenda and give up the lead and let things unfold. When we play as children play we return to innocence, not having to know what’s next and just let go and let it flow.
When we love like children unconditionally, this allows us to drop all of our judgments about how people should be and what people should be doing. When we play like children we also let go of being judged. Have you noticed how children play, they run around, spinning, and doing anything they want and not caring what people think of them. So how sweet would that be to love and play like a child.
My two daughters had been my two biggest teachers in my life. They have taught me patience, non-judgment, how to say no, boundaries and just pure letting go. They also teach me what old beliefs I need to shift because they trigger them daily, so I get a lot of practice on shifting those limiting beliefs.
What a beautiful gift my children have been and what a beautiful learning.
On Children -Kahlil Gibran
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Holding onto the resentment and regret of the past is like carrying all of our baggage around on our backs. It’s exhausting and a huge drain on our energy leaving us empty for the present moment. When we are constantly in the past with our angers, we cannot be fully alive in our present life. When we are clinging to old issues, we are not leaving space for something new and beautiful to grow and be created in its place.
We also know that our current life is created through our thoughts, so if we are always locked into our past we may create the same scenario again and again in our life. I’m not sure about you but I do not want to create the same issues or situations that I worked so hard to move through.
The key to moving through resentment and regret is forgiveness. One way of forgiving is to realize that we are all human and will make mistakes, including ourselves and have compassion for the human condition. Realizing that we are not perfect and that we have probably brought harm to our brother just as our brother has brought harm to us, helps us to forgive.
When we refuse to forgive we keep people locked in the space of our judgments and this energetically does damage to both of us. When we realize that their actions aren’t about us, they are more about their own woundedness, we are better able to have compassion for them and forgive.
Keeping our energy and our mind in the present helps us with our healing both emotionally and physically. When were able to do this we can be in a place of love and not fear. So I encourage you to look at all the places where you’re holding onto resentment and replay how you will let go and forgive and bring yourself into this present moment.
How hard is it to find strength through our everyday trials?
We have all been in a place where the pressures of life have been insurmountable and unbearable. We find ourselves wondering if we will have the strength to make it through. Sometimes we notice that as we are just making it through some major difficulty, there is another obstacle right on its heels. How do we endure one loss after another or withstand several health issues right on top of each other.
I remember a neighbor when I was younger going through one tragic loss after another with her family. Her family of eight dwindled down to two within a three-year period of time. With every loss of her family members, this mother seemed to have a resilient quality about her. All I kept thinking about was how, how can she make it through this.
When we look back at our lives, we see that we have survived many tribulations and often wondered how. It always amazes me the strength that we have. Just when we thought we couldn’t handle any more, we seem to. Sometimes we make it through by just putting our heads down and barreling through and other times we just sink into deep compassion for ourselves and let go.
I look at each obstacle in my life as an opportunity for me to go deeper into my learning and also know that when they are piled on top of each other there’s going to be a huge breakthrough. When I’m deep in it sometimes I can’t see it unless I quiet my mind and look at the deeper meaning of the obstacles. This helps me move through challenging situations with greater ease along with surrendering to what life is and not pushing up against it.
If you are having a hard time with challenges and moving through them, I urge you to check out my Personal Retreats. If you are going through tough times with the partner maybe couples retreat would fit your needs better. Either way you will learn the tools you need to learn to accept life as it is and learn to grow through tough situations.
We live in a world that promotes escaping our feelings. If we are depressed, doctors give us pills so we don’t feel the deep sadness. When we have physical pain we also get pills to take away the physical pain. I understand why being with feelings is so difficult. In the midst of the trigger where feelings come up of anxiety, anger or deep sadness our first reaction is to do something to not feel it anymore.
Also who wants to feel physical pain, this is why we work so hard to alleviate it, this I understand. But when feelings come up it’s critical to sit with them and explore them and not medicate them. So many times the minute we feel anything, our reaction is either to fix the situation creating the feelings, or to shut down or even to the blast the person that triggered us. It’s so important to realize that these are our feelings that have nothing to do with them.
When we stay with our feelings we are able to examine them and shift the old limiting belief that is creating them. This way we do our work instead of projecting our feelings outside of us. This is an inside job.
If we just stuff our feelings we will end up storing them in our minds and in our bodies and this is when we will hold anxiety that will create other health issues. This is why it is so important that no matter how big our feelings are, the best thing we could do for ourself is to be with them.
Unfortunately we live in a culture that doesn’t support emotional awareness this is why we tend to push away our feelings. However I believe things are shifting. The more we look at mind, body, and spirit, the more we become aware of the importance of our feelings. There are so many retreats, workshops, and books that help us deal with our emotions. My personal retreat is all about looking at what feelings you have and why they are there and handling them in a healthy way.
When we allow ourselves to feel fully when our feelings are present, we tend to move through them with greater ease. This isn’t so easy when you don’t have the tools to be present with them. This is by my personal retreat is so critical.
Most of the time we look outside of ourselves at the world full of chaos and we feel compelled to transform that situation so that we can have inner peace. We often become very disappointed because our attempts to change the outside world only bring us frustration and more friction inside of ourselves.
Finding peace within our self starts inside our own heart and inside our mind. It is not an outer journey. When we truly look inside ourselves to find peace this is how we bring peace to the world. Imagine if everyone was doing their inner work and shifting them selves to become more calm and peaceful. If we are full of anxiety and friction our outside world will show up as a mirror.
So the first step to creating the world that we want outside of us is to go inside and do our work. People who create peace internally are not really different from us, they have the same ego mind talking to them, the only difference is they’re not listening or acting out of those thoughts. We’ll have the choice to buy into that chatter of old beliefs or recognize that the chatter is not true and move through life being who we truly are.
This is what meditation teaches us, to just recognize our thoughts and bring it back to the present moment. Our chatter, old believes keep us from being in this present moment. So when we recognize the chatter instead of going deeper into the story line we can wake up and recognize that this is just chatter and to bring ourselves back to the present moment.
Being in the story of the old beliefs keeps our vibration lower, when we start to recognize how buying into the untrue story line hold us hostage, we are better able to let go of it.
The possibilities in a Adult Mother Daughter Retreat of growth are huge!
There are so many shifts possible in a mother-daughter retreat. As long as the mother and the daughter are both in a place where they can commit to their own personal development and owning their part. The one obstacle that cannot be overcome is if one of the parties is deep in an addiction. Whether it is an alcohol addiction, prescription drugs or any other addiction, it’s impossible to look at yourself when you’re medicating to such a high degree.
Unfortunately I get calls from adult daughters wanting to create a healthier relationship with her mother, but their mother is wrapped up deep in her addiction. As long as the mother isn’t willing to look at her addiction and go to recovery, the only advice I have to the daughter is to stop trying to fix your mother and set strong boundaries and go to Al-Anon and Co-da meetings.
Whether it is the mother or the daughter that is the addict, they are both participating in the addiction. The problem is the person that doesn’t have the addiction doesn’t really see how their behavior is playing out in the addiction as much as the addicted party. They are working on changing the addict and being very codependent. Most of the time they are living with another addict and playing their behaviors out there as well..
Because I’m not able to work with the addict, I work with the one in the addictive relationship to see if we can shift their perspective so that they can shift their behaviors. Otherwise if they don’t look at themselves and do the necessary work they will continue to be in relationships with addicts.
To be a part of the amazing shifts that a mother-daughter retreat provides both people have to be really willing to be honest and authentic and unfortunately if you are using in any way you are not capable of being honest with yourself or others. So to participate in any type of self-development is a waste of time until you are clean and sober.
What is the message we might be missing when we try to get rid of our physical or emotional pain?
When we feel pain whether it is physical or emotional, our first impulse is to get relief. When we are feeling emotional pain we tend to medicate with drugs, alcohol, shopping, fixing others, complaining or a multitude of other ways to get relief. When we have physical pain we try to move away from it through medication, massage, or other alternative resources. We have a hard time being with pain, we are in a big hurry to get rid of it.
We forget that pain whether emotional or physical is a way of letting us know something needs attention. When something triggers us emotionally we know that this is an opportunity for us to look at ourselves in a deeper way and change limiting beliefs. When it is a physical pain it could be something as simple as a headache telling us that we haven’t eaten or something more major that is letting us know of an emotional issue that hasn’t been dealt with. In both situations if we pay attention we will know what to do to heal ourselves.
I remember quite a few years ago when I had a neck issue and was really working hard to get rid of it through aspirin, heat, chiropractic care, etc. When I was talking to one of my teachers, she asked me if I was willing to explore the pain. What this meant was to not try to get rid of it and just be with it. So what I did was I leaned my head into the pain and when I did that I remember so many emotions coming up. I continued to just be with it and cry. I believe that I was releasing old trauma and exhausting karma. This lasted about an hour and after leaning into and being with the pain, I noticed that there was huge relief.
It’s important to pay attention to wherever the pain is so that we can grow and evolve through it, not get stuck in it. I teach the importance of being with our emotional and physical pain in my personal retreats.
Is it possible to break through our fears and make healthier choices in our life?
I have a client that is totally debilitated by her fear. The decisions that she mostly makes are based on making sure she doesn’t touch up against her fear. The problem with that she’s in a pattern of doing things where she doesn’t take care of herself thereby lowering her self-esteem and keeping her in dysfunctional situations.
Anything worth doing will have some fear attached to it. It could be a new career, getting married, or getting divorced, speaking your truth, or making a decision to change locations, like moving. So obviously there is good fear and there is fear from our childhood wounding. We are not talking about valid fear where you’re afraid to walk down a dark alley. I think we know the difference between valid fears and fears that keep us from moving forward
Fear can make us feel totally off balance with insecurity and uncertainty. It’s important to look at where this fear is coming from and work through it so it doesn’t stop us from doing the things that we would like to do or should do in our life. In regards to my client above she is in a very dysfunctional marriage and the fear of not being taken care of financially is keeping her in this relationship. Now, I totally understand a fear of not being able to financially take care of yourself, I was divorced when my kids were four and five and had no idea what I was going to do for a living. I had to make a decision at that time to either stay in an unhealthy relationship or plow through my fears and create a healthier situation for my children and myself.
Fear is Only as Deep as the Mind Allows!
To understand fear we have to be able to allow our self to feel it, then to know that its purpose is to notify us that we are on the edge of our comfort level. Whenever we face our fear, we overcome an inner obstacle and move into new and life changing space. The more we learn about our fears and start to embrace the fears, the more will be able to hear the wisdom of the fear. When we face fear it seems to lose its heat, at least in certain situations.
I believe when we don’t address fear; it owns us and creates havoc in our life. We seem to be in chaos when we don’t face it head-on. The best thing we can do with situations that create fear is to really explore what we are afraid of and if it isn’t a valid fear, to do our best to take the action that moves through the situation even though were experiencing fear.
When my girls were four and five I became a single parent. I had no idea what was ahead of me, the difficulties I would face. I was single for 14 years, through their teenage years. The most difficult part of being a single parent for me was the lack of support. Their father barely took them and the grandparents weren’t available as well. I depended on babysitters for when I was at work or for any social life.
I mentor a few single moms and have such compassion for their situation. Even though the two moms that I mentor have participating exes, it is still a stressful situation. When all the responsibilities fall mainly on one person and they still have to work, and take care of the household duties, it can be a lot.
I believe support is the key to not losing your mind while you’re a single parent. If you don’t have an ex or grandparents that are supportive, find outside sources. Maybe there are single parenting groups or another single parent that would trade watching the kids and also be a support system to talk to.
The beautiful part about the two single mothers I talked to is that they are so interested in their self-development to be the best parent they can be. I remember feeling so overwhelmed that it would’ve been nice to have a mentor that totally understood. I believe it’s important as a single parent to make sure you are taking care of yourself physically and spiritually. My biggest Savior while being single was that I was doing my spiritual work.
Doing my spiritual work was a life or death situation. Six months after I became divorced I lost my mother who was my only support system, besides close friends. So for me not doing my spiritual work was not an option. I believe that a lot of single moms could lift some of their stress if they decided to implement a mentor to help them through difficult times.
Unhealthy relationships are everywhere. Look at your relationships with your primary partner, in the workplace, on social media, with your family, and of course with your friends. Being in an unhealthy relationship can look different ways. Unhealthy can be abusive verbally or physically, being shut out, or if the other person doesn’t do their work and projects onto you, and neediness can also be unhealthy. There are many other ways that relationships can be unhealthy.
There are two ways of looking at unhealthy relationships, the first one is if you are in a primary partnership and you both trigger each other and just have work to do through those triggers, this could be a good thing. The other situation is when you are in a relationship with someone that isn’t doing their work and projecting their fears on to you and they aren’t going to look at themselves. Unfortunately this situation is difficult. You can choose to stay in the relationship and do your trigger work around it but if it feels abusive you may have to leave the relationship.
What if the abusive relationship is a family member? When I was 32 I decided to remove myself from my relationship with my father because he was an alcoholic and said he wouldn’t even leave an hour to get together without drinking. I have actually walked away from several relationships with friends that were acting out in an unhealthy way in our friendship. I tried to resolve the issues but their inability to see their behavior made it virtually impossible to stay in the relationship.
It is also important to look at your behavior in the relationship, are you too needy, are you codependent, are you shut down and unable to open up, or are you projecting your fears onto them. It’s important to know yourself really well so you can decipher if you are projecting or they are projecting. If you are not doing your spiritual work it will be pretty tough to tell if you are aiding in the relationship being unhealthy.
This is why my personal retreats are so important, because they teach you how to know yourself deeply. If you don’t know yourself deeply it will be tough for you to see your own behavior. You will think that it is always the other person’s fault.
If you truly want a relationship that has the capacity to go deep and do healing, you have to know yourself. In my personal retreats you will learn how to know your true authentic self, allowing you to be in healthy relationships.
Why rushing through life doesn’t work for most of us.
Throughout our life we are taught that getting things done quickly is important. “Don’t waste time, time is money,” etc. So we find ourselves racing through our lives trying to get as much as possible done. Yet as we hurry through our day in search of a sense of being productive and being fulfilled, we find ourselves feeling anxious and disconnected. More importantly, we don’t notice the beauty around us. When we learn to slow down, we get to see the significance of all the aspects of our lives. When we slow down we actually will get pleasure from what we’ve done, not just be racing on to the next thing to do.
Another thing that happens when we are racing through our life is when we are triggered we are not conscious enough to recognize it, therefore we are more apt to react. Moving slowly throughout our day allows us to savor the beautiful moments and stop and process through our triggers. Pacing ourselves during urgent matters, we can stay centered before forging ahead.
Something that I noticed when I get to moving quickly is, that I make more mistakes and sometimes I don’t even recognize them. I also notice that I seem to get more done when I am moving more consciously rather than frenetically. It may be challenging to avoid rushing, especially if you live in a world of split-second decisions with cell phones, emails and work deadlines.
I find that I can slow down and move more consciously and get as much done if not more. As we practice slowing down we will realize that by eliminating unnecessary friction from our experiences allows us to live a more fulfilling and calm life. We will be more connected to what we are doing and obviously more connected to the people in our lives.
When we relax the tempo in our movement and our mind it allows our heart to go into deeper levels of awareness that truly connects us to the beauty of living.
In my personal retreats you will learn how to pay attention and be more intentional in your life, allowing you to enjoy life to it’s fullest.
To this day I still talk about my Labrador retriever Jack and all the crazy things he did and he has been gone 9 years. Talking about him keeps his memory alive for me and reminds me of how much I loved him. It also has helped me heal from the loss.
