A place for all the hard pet convos no one prepares you for.
Resources for every brand of grief
(even when no one died).
The Backstory...
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Having simultaneously been entrenched in various forms of grief related to pet loss over the years, I initially became fascinated with the pet loss as a desperate attempt to help myself.
My story began in 2018, after the death of Tovi, whom I endearingly call my "soul dog."
When Tovi came into my life, I was 24, in graduate school, and living alone for the first time in a studio apartment the size of a shoebox. He died a few days after I turned 37 and, by then, had walked me down the aisle at my first wedding and served as my second husband's Best Dog at the next. We experienced countless moves, milestones, and ordinary moments in between the bookends of his life.
When he died, I felt like life split into Before & After.
And I hated life in the After.
Just when I thought things couldn't get worse, they did. I found myself experiencing an entirely new type of grief over my struggle to connect to the dog I adopted after after Tovi.
Both were tremendous losses—the loss of what was, and the loss of the life that would never be again. Let's just say it was a bad time in my life, and I didn't feel safe talking about it outside the walls of my therapist's office. Now, I can't stop talking about it.
I never intended for pet loss to become my passion, but here I am.
And I love being here.
Academically, I hold a Master's Degree in Counseling Psychology with a focus on grief - both death and non-death losses. While my clinical background informs my writing, in this space I am not acting as a mental health clinician, nor do I offer professional counseling services (see support to locate professionals who can). My writing draws most heavily from my experiences and those I have witnessed in others.
Over the past 20+ years, I've been involved in the animal welfare community in various capacities. Within the past few years, working with people, I encountered an entirely new aspect of loss: The grief around rehoming a pet and the stigma and misunderstanding surrounding behavioral euthanasia. Today, I volunteer as an Intake Specialist at a municipal shelter, where I work with pet parents to connect them with resources to keep their families together and, when rehoming is necessary, compassionately support them through the process.
I live in Maryland with my husband, a cat named Mou, and two dogs, Fred & Ethel. They enjoy hiking, indulging in Bully Sticks, and are avid Lambchops collectors. In my free time, I enjoy Bikram Yoga, hiking, reading, writing (clearly), the thrill of thrifting, making lists, and intimate coffee-shop conversations.
Elizabeth Weiner