Chapter 3 • Allowing Ourselves to Be Shaken Awake

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Return to Week 3 Resources • Shaken Awake

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Intense emotional pain has the power to shake us awake to our unique gifts, our intuition, and a clearer sense of purpose. Like a forest fire that clears the way for new life, pet grief can awaken a beginning that could never have existed before the ashes.

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The Day Everything Changed

Ellie, my Rainbow Daughter, came into my life as a tiny, neurologically disabled puppy. For two months and two days, my world revolved around her.

It was exhausting and often heartbreaking, but also one of the most beautiful experiences of my life.

Ellie in the box she was dumped in, 8 weeks old

She’d been dumped at a gas station in a cardboard box when she was just eight weeks old. Rescued by SPARC, the Santa Paula Animal Rescue Center, Ellie was given love, care, and a chance. I began fostering her knowing it wouldn’t be easy. But I never imagined it would be so short.

The day I took her home from Santa Paula Animal Rescue Center • July 1, 2024

I’ll never forget the moment I got the results from her MRI. The neurologist explained that Ellie didn’t just have cerebellar hypoplasia, she also had rapidly progressing hydrocephalus. Her brain was filling with fluid. She was living in constant pain, constant fear. The only recommendation was euthanasia.

Time stopped. I stopped. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even breathe. Everything felt unreal. I was floating outside my body in a parallel world, watching life happen, disconnected from it. And yet, somehow, the decision to let her go came with crystal clarity. Her aggression, her anxiety, and her unexplainable behaviors, they weren’t flaws. They were symptoms of suffering. She was not okay. And it was getting worse.

I asked if I could have one more day with her. To take her home. To hold her. To feed her her favorite treats. To walk her through the garden one last time, suspending her hips so she could sniff and explore like any other dog. But the neurologist gently, but firmly told me: it wouldn’t be peaceful. Coming out of anesthesia would be disorienting. Taking her off pain meds only to bring her back the next day would add suffering, not comfort.

So my husband drove us back to the vet. I sobbed the entire way, cradling her toys and treats. I stumbled into the clinic, a wreck. I didn’t try to hold it together. Those days of abandoning myself and my feelings were over.

We were taken into a softly lit room made for goodbyes. After a few minutes, they placed Ellie in my arms and told us to take our time. We whispered to her. Kissed her face. Breathed her in. Said all the things we wanted her to know. We sobbed. And sobbed.

And then… we said we were ready.

Because she still had a port from her MRI, the euthanasia was seamless. I held her as they administered the injections. I let the tears pour down my face — sometimes audibly, sometimes silently. I felt gratitude and sorrow erupting at the same time. I didn’t hold anything back. I smiled as I breathed in her fur, and I sobbed as I let her cross that Rainbow Bridge.

Holding Ellie in my arms, just before we were ready to euthanize her, and let her fly over the Rainbow Bridge • September 3, 2024

In the parking lot, I collapsed into my husband’s arms. I let myself sob. I let myself be held. I let myself break wide open.

Fenix was waiting in the car. I curled up beside him in the back seat and we drove to the beach, his favorite place, where Ellie had never been able to go. (We tried to take her once but all the sounds, the wind, was way too much for her to handle). When we got to the overcast and empty beach, we watched Fenix run and play, full of life. My husband had shared that’s how he saw Ellie the moment she passed over the Rainbow Bridge. Joyous and free.

That day was a rollercoaster, grief, laughter, surrender, awe. I canceled everything. Clients, obligations, to-dos. I climbed into bed, wrapped in the sheets she and I had shared, and just felt it all. The shock. The loss. The depth of my love. The fullness of our love.

Phase 1: Shock and Survival

For many people, this phase begins the moment their beloved animal crosses the Rainbow Bridge. But sometimes, it begins even earlier, during the heartbreak of watching their health decline, facing the impossible decision to say goodbye, or simply sensing that the end is near. Moments like these can bring waves of shock long before your beloved animal actually leaves this world.

These are the most raw, disorienting, and unbearable moments. It can feel like your world has turned upside down—like you’re outside of yourself, unable to think clearly or even stay in your body. And this experience isn’t limited to the first few hours or days. Grief doesn’t move in straight lines, it moves in waves. Even months or years later, something can suddenly drop you back into that hollow, breathless state of disbelief.

This chapter is here to support you whenever that happens, whether it’s in the immediate aftermath of their passing, or long after, when the shock returns out of nowhere.

Allowing the Initial Shock

The analogy of being in shock when someone passes, is helpful, and is energetically accurate in some ways. This applies to you if your beloved animal died suddenly or tragically. And it applies to you if you knew your beloved animal was sick for a long time, and you mentally knew this day was coming. It applies to us all. Our mind can know they are going to be dying at some point soon, but our body can not prepare for the feeling and experience of their body being taken from ours.

There is a period of shock that takes place. An on purpose period of time where it’s just too hard for us to be completely present in acceptance that they are gone. For some people it’s a few moments. And for others a few weeks or more. Your timing is your timing. And the Guided Experience at the end of this chapter will help you get relief for your nervous system as you recover from the shock.

Deep Grief Can Be Experienced as Trauma

The loss of someone we deeply love isn’t just emotional, it can register in the body as a survival threat. And when that happens, the brain and nervous system respond accordingly. We shift into “fight, flight, freeze, or fawn”, not because we’re overreacting, but because on a biological level, we’re trying to stay alive (see References: The Neurological Effects of Grief).

This is why grief can feel so disorienting, exhausting, and even paralyzing. It doesn’t just break our hearts, it shocks our entire system. And that shock can interrupt our ability to think clearly, sleep deeply, regulate emotions, or feel safe in the world. When we lose someone we love, especially a beloved animal, our brain often perceives that loss as a threat to our very survival. And so, without meaning to, we default into protection mode—shutting down, numbing out, running away, or trying to over-function. These aren’t character flaws. They’re trauma responses.

That’s why grief requires more than time. It requires tenderness, safety, and space—space for the pain to move through, rather than remain stuck in the body. When grief goes unacknowledged or unprocessed, it can linger and quietly reshape our lives, sometimes contributing to long-term disruptions in our mental, emotional, and even physical well-being.

Research continues to show that grief affects the brain. It changes our neural activity, impacts memory and focus, and can temporarily alter our stress responses, sleep patterns, and even personality.

But here’s what’s equally important to remember:

in the first phase of grief, especially when you’re in shock, there is absolutely nothing you need to do.

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This is not the time to expect anything from yourself. Your only job is to be—to survive the moment. And if you can surrender, even just a little, to the wave that is moving through you… if you can soften into the support of someone who loves you, or even allow yourself to rest without guilt, you’re already helping your nervous system begin to recover.

Grief is Here to Wake Us Up

We all want to feel okay. We want to seem strong, like we’ve got it all together, and that’s completely normal. But what if falling apart is just as important as holding it together? What if letting ourselves feel deeply isn’t weakness, but strength, and a vital part of life?

Grief has a way of shaking us and waking us up to what truly matters. That may sound intense, even impossible to believe when you’re hurting. But at its core, grief is Love. People often say, “Grief is just love with nowhere to go.” And I understand the sentiment. Because when the pain of missing our loved one feels overwhelming, it does feel like too much—too much to feel, too much to share, too much to carry. In that illusion of “too muchness,” grief does get stuck. It has nowhere to go. But the truth is, grief dissolves gracefully when it’s seen, heard, and loved.

When we allow ourselves to grieveal, we aren’t just feeling pain. We’re opening to more Love, more connection, and more life. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary. And it begins with a willingness to be vulnerable. To feel. To allow ourselves to be shaken. Because in that shaking, something sacred is revealed. We remember what matters most. And more than that… we begin to awaken to the fullness of Love, in all its rainbow glory.

Grieving, Growth, and Healing Start with Vulnerability

Have you ever noticed how freely children express their emotions? They cry when they’re sad, laugh when they’re happy, and don’t second-guess their feelings. But as we grow up, most of us learn to suppress our real feelings, and we become less and less vulnerable and therefore, less authentic.

We learn to guard our hearts instead of expressing them. And we do it for a good reason, because at some point, it really did hurt too much to feel. The people around us didn’t always meet our authentic expression with love, safety, or support. Sometimes, we were even punished for having big emotions. So we figured out it was safer to shut down than to stay open, safer to stay quiet than to speak our truth. Bit by bit, we trade authenticity for protection. Not because we were weak, but because it was the best we could do at the time. We were surviving.

But in order to grieveal, we need to be vulnerable. There is no growth, no healing, no authentic connection with our Rainbow One if we’re not willing to be vulnerable, not willing to be open and honest with what is present.

“Vulnerability is necessary for growth, without vulnerability there is no growth.”

Dr. Gabor Maté

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We learn, often the hard way, that without vulnerability we can’t truly experience love, belonging, or joy. And what I’ve seen again and again in my clients, and what was absolutely true in my own life, is that deep grief often becomes our first real invitation into living vulnerably. When the pain is so intense and so consuming that we can’t manage or contain it anymore, something sacred happens: we surrender. Not because we want to, but because we have to. And in that surrender, something begins to shift.

For me, the pain was so crippling that I had no choice but to let my guard down. I didn’t want to become more vulnerable, I wanted to be strong. But the walls that had once protected me were now suffocating me. So, brick by brick, I began to let them fall. And as I did, I found myself living a more connected, more intimate, and, ironically, a more joyful life. Because when we allow the fullness of our grief, we make space for the fullness of love, too.

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity.”

Dr. Brené Brown

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If We Allow Ourselves To Be Shaken, We Find What Can’t Be Broken

Grief shakes us. It pulls us apart in ways we never expected, making us feel lost, vulnerable, and raw. But if we allow ourselves to surrender to the depth of our loss rather than resist it, something surprising happens. We awaken to the part of us that’s unshakable.

“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.”

Pema Chödrön

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Grief has a way of breaking us open. But in that breaking, we uncover the deepest parts of ourselves—love, compassion, and a strength we may not have known before.

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