Pet grief is not linear.
There is no timeline for how your grief or your healing will unfold.
While there aren’t fixed stages or timelines, there are distinct phases you’ll move in and out of over time.
And this matters.
Because the kind of support that helps in one phase can actually be unhelpful in another.
You will not move through these in order.
Grief is more like waves.
Like unpredictable weather.
Sometimes you’re in the storm.
Sometimes there’s space to breathe.
The key is learning how to care for yourself in each moment.
When you’re in the storm… how to hold yourself through it.
And when things feel a little more peaceful… how to gently anchor into love, and reconnect with your soulmate animal in a new way.
This is often the time just before and just after your loved one crosses the rainbow bridge. It’s raw. Unbearable. Disorienting. But it can also be experienced during anticipatory grief, or decades after your pet passes from this world.
This phase feels like having your heart ripped out, your bleeding, and you’re in shock.
In this stage, my most important advice is: Let go of external direction. Trust your body.
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These guides will be supportive in your own timing:
Guided Experience 3A • One Day to Reset Your Nervous System and Guided Experience 3B • A Simple Nervous System Reset
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If possible, take time off from work, responsibilities, routines. Let yourself drop the “shoulds” and just follow your body moment to moment. That might mean curling into a ball and sobbing. Or it might mean lying on the couch and watching trash TV. It might even mean laughing with someone you love and letting yourself feel joy for a moment.
This isn’t the time to process. Not yet.