The Grief Walk & The Spirit Walk

For me, the Grief Walk & the Spirit Walk, have been intertwined walks since Ranger crossed over on September 2, 2020. Below are my experiences with both walks in the time Ranger has passed on...

Grief Walk

I believe the grief walk is a journey of the heart. It is not a mental journey, but a deeply emotional and visceral journey that for me has consisted of shock, disbelief, existential loneliness, the feeling of an actual heavy weight lying over my shattered heart, despair, disillusionment, disorientation, panic, sobbing, crying from the depths of my being, detachment, existential dread, and periods of lost faith...

Along this journey, I have discovered that this path is best not walked alone. Finding others who understand your heart and soul, who can walk beside you, is of utmost importance. Through the work with my pet-loss counselor and the group support meetings I attend weekly, I have also come to understand that there is work we can do while we travel through grief that puts us on a trajectory of healing.

Because grief is a heart's journey, there can be no mentalizing that will restore us to our former selves - we have been initiated on a journey of soul transformation that can only happen via the heart. On this grief journey, I have come to an understanding that part of our journey involves an acceptance of the loss, over and over and in different ways. And this path to acceptance is not a mental construct or some tidily tended pathway towards wellbeing, rather it a tumultuous way strewn with rocks, geysers, waves, and the unexpected unexpected. So many times I have said to myself "I thought I came to terms with this aspect of the grief...", and yet here it is again. At just over 6 month mark after Ranger's crossing over, I found myself confronted with a new type of disbelief that his physical presence was no longer with me. In the early stages of my grief this disbelief was raw, and ripped open my inner being - the return of the disbelief took on a new hue, and it was again, as always is, an unexpected and unwelcome visitor.

I heard somewhere that experiencing the death of our beloved, is the entering of a whole new realm for us. This is what I feel my grief to be, a whole new realm of life - it is composed of coming to terms with the loss and also the realization that there is much much more to life. Grief asks us to feel it, acknowledge it and flow with it - it will not be denied, even if we resist it, grief does not evaporate. Stuck or unacknowledged grief slinks silently into the back room of our hearts and waits to come out at the next opportunity it has to express itself - through our next loss. I think a lot of us go through life with compound layers of grief in our hearts - as our society is not one to allow us to fully inhabit grief, walk with it and heal - rather it tells us that "it is time to move on", or says that "you're strong and we will get through this". Rare are the friends or family members who will just be present for your feelings, especially if the loss involves the loss of our four-legged babies. We live in a world that 'disenfranchizes pet grief', as my pet-loss counselor, Sandra Grossman says.

In order to walk this grief walk authentically, and to grieve well, I believe we need to be surrounded by people who have the same hearts as us and those who can be present for us, and those who can guide us - being beside us, a bit or a lot further along this walk than we are. Below are a listing of the grief walk resources I found and find immensely helpful to me on this walk. As my regular therapist says, "grief is not a neat orderly thing, but it is a progression". Early on she introduced me to the dual-process model of grief (which I included in the resources below). My pet-loss counselor says "part of this journey is feeling the loss, and the other part is doing the work". She also says that "time does nothing (for our broken hearts), it is the courage to make space for our grief, for ourselves and to do the work, that leads us to healing."

When I first found myself in this new realm, after the initial shock, I did not know if I wanted to go on with this life without my beloved Ranger. The dismissal, lack of acknowledgement, and minimization of my overwhelming pain and heartache by society, friends and family members compounded my immense heartache, and led me to a place of feeling deeply alone in my grief, and near suicidal. The reading of certain books, the help of my therapist and the finding of a very special pet-loss group and counselor saved my life - and gave me new life. In time I came to understand that not everyone processes the grief the same way - I came to understand that there are people who push their grief away to be dealt with another day, and there are those who care deeply about you but just don't know the best way to support you through your season of loss. We live in a grief-adverse society as a whole, there is a continuous thrust in the outer world towards positivity, silver linings and 'being strong' - these are the currents that can often be the most hurtful in our time of deep heartache, when we require empathy and presence from others - the offerings of cliched sayings, trite peppy quotes, lack of acknowledgement of our feelings, or people telling us 'to move on' can do an awful lot of damage to our broken hearts. There are those people and resources out there that will help us, sometimes we have to do a little searching and seeking out of them.

Dual-process model of grief

Pet-loss bereavement counseling and support.

I personally found the group bereavement sessions offered by PetLoss Partners, https://petlosspartners.com/, founded by Dr. Sandra Grossman, incredible helpful. I do the group session and the private counseling with Dr. Grossman. I tried other pet-loss groups when I first lost Ranger, but I have found that there is nothing like the work that Dr. Grossman does.

The right pet-loss bereavement group is immensely helpful on the grief walk, you will find people with whom your broken heart will find comfort with. The group will give you the space to express your deepest feelings in a safe environment, and allow and encourage you to take those baby steps (the work) that lead to the healing of your heart.

Therapy

I found working with my regular therapist of tremendous assistance. She not only helped me with the anticipatory grief I experience during the 6 months of Ranger's illness, she helped me navigate many of the aspects of grief after his crossing over. She is a therapist who specializes in grief work, and since grief is so multifaceted she was instrumental in processing all the other layers of grief I experienced with this loss (the grief I felt around mothering, the loss I was feeling of the role of pet parent, and all the human losses that were tied into the loss of Ranger).

Books

There are a lot of books on the grief process, so this list of books here are just the ones that impacted me greatly. I highly recommend them if you feel they would be helpful to you on your walk:

• Bearing the Unbearable, by Dr. Joanne Cacciatore. This is an amazing book, it is very deep, and I found that I found deep understanding and solace in the writing of Dr. Cacciatore.
• Grief Walk, by Gary Roe. This is book of daily meditations, with quotes from Bible Scripture. As a Christian, I find these mediations give me solace, and hope.

Memorialization and Honoring

It was through my work with Pet-Loss Partners that I found out about the concept of memorialization. I find memorialization of Ranger through creative projects and tributes to be nothing less than transformational in my grief walk. Here are some of the memorialization steps I took and am still actively engaged in:

• Writing to Ranger, and writing about our experiences together - both in my journal and in this blog!
• Talking to Ranger. I talk with Ranger on our morning spirit morning walk, throughout the day, and in bed at night.
• Creating a ceremony and blessing once receiving his ashes. His cremains went into a beautiful Tree of Life rosewood box and were placed under the cab seat in my truck. I took a small amount of his ashes and put them in a Tree of Life silver locket around my neck. My boyfriend and I said prayers for him, and honored out time together by talking about all the beautiful adventures we shared together with Ranger.
• Going to the beach, as often as I can. Ranger loved the beach.
• Creating Ranger's spirit gardens.
• Asking artist friends to paint and draw portraits of Ranger. I find the ongoing practice of this so helpful, as one of the pains for me was seeing in my iPhone the day my photo albums suddenly stopped being full of pictures of my Ranger. Having artwork done and taking pictures of this artwork, keeps images of Ranger presently in my phone album!
• Taking the trip to Norfolk, VA to honor Ranger and my Grandmother. This trip was so ceremonial and beautiful, and it was part of that 'full circle' journey - just so replete with continuing to honor both of them with love, knowing that they are still with in spirit while coming to another layer of the 'acceptance of the loss'.

Spirit Walk

My pet-loss counselor, likes to repeat a saying that she heard somewhere that "Death doesn't end the relationship, it just changes it." In my walk, I have found such comfort and resonance in this sentiment, over and over again. I have been blessed with many messages of love from Ranger from the other side. The spirit walk started while he was sick and I continued to receive immediate messages of him comforting and being with me from the other side once he crossed over. Not everyone experiences these afterlife messages and visitations, although I believe that everyone can if they are open to them. It has also been my experience that it is more difficult to receive these messages and visitations when one is deep within the early grief experience. The energy level of fresh grief is very different than the energy level of spirit - so they are with you always, but you just may not be able to feel it when you are experiencing the depth of your grief. This is not written so that you will push your grief or way or dismiss it, as we must authentically experience and process our grief in order to heal, it's just written so that you will know that if you are not experiencing signs or messages from the other side - that your beloved may send messages to others around you, who are able to receive the signs, or it may take some time to receive the signs yourself. Some of these people who can receive the signs and messages of your beloved can be friends, family and or pet communicators or mediums. During the times you surface from the deep depths of your grief, you may receive these messages or signs, as your spirit and soul begins to come into awareness of the energy of the dimension of spirit. This is what the experience was like for me. In the early stages of my grief, Ranger's spirit revealed itself to my boyfriend first. My boyfriend was grief-stricken but he wasn't as disabled and heart crushed as me. He is also very in touch with Ranger (he's able to communicate directly with animals), and the spirit world in general (he also is a medium - even though he doesn't really want to embrace this gift.) Over time, I started to have more direct experiences of Ranger's spirit.

My experience of the spirit world, is that it is asking us to be in a position of openness, receptivity and patience. A spirit doesn't have a body, so the type of responsiveness we had from our beloved fur baby to our gestures of love when they were alive, changes - responses from the spirit world are not immediate, nor on command. We miss so much their kisses and licks and hugs when we tell them we love them. When they are in the spirit world, we express our love to them verbally, in writing or with gestures and acts. Most of the time immediately after our love messages, there is silence and emptiness. But stay open, because they look for ways to return our love message - it can come through signs in the natural world, or through another pet or animal, or through beings that come into our experience (seemingly out of the blue). I had lots of and still have experiences with the natural world, including insects, butterflies and dragonflies. Sometimes my two cats will display behavior or postures that are pure Ranger - it is so obvious that for that moment Ranger has spoken to them or is coming through them. I believe that other animals in our family often act as 'channels' for our pets that are on the other side. Just recently, I have started to walk a dog who looks very much like Ranger and although she is completely different in character than him, I feel like he is communicating through her sometimes. I have experience clairsentience (feeling) and clairalience (smelling) with Ranger, and my boyfriend has experienced clairalience (smelling), clairvoyence (seeing), and clairaudience (hearing) sensations of Ranger. I have never 'seen' Ranger out of the corner of my eye, or heard him, but I have a very strong connection to his spirit through feeling, knowing and smell.

I will make no bones about the hardship of the fact that we miss hard their physical presence. The coming to acceptance (over and over again) of the loss of their physical presence in our lives is part of the Grief Walk, the coming to acceptance that they are still with us in spirit and communicate with us from that place is part of the Spirit Walk.

It has been and still is my experience that messages and visitations from my sweet Ranger seem to come in little clusters. There are these spaces of time when I don't feel his present at all, and receive absolutely no messages. An example of this recently is prior to our trip to Norfolk, VA to honor Ranger and my Grandmother. Two week prior to the trip and up until the day of the trip, my boyfriend and I were receiving lots of signs from Ranger. During the trip, we didn't feel his presence at all and there were no signs from him. We talked about this, and through my discussion with my boyfriend, my pet-loss counselor and my therapist I came to the realization that there are times that the spirits stand back, they know we need to live through these experiences that will help us come to the acceptance of the reality of the loss.

My boyfriend has recently come up with a concept about spirit communication, that I really relate to - he calls it Spirit Wifi. Sometimes the spirit connection is at 1 bar and sometimes at 4. The times the connection is at 1 bar are difficult times for me, during those times I try to lean more heavily on my faith. I wish I could feel Ranger all the time, just like I did when he was alive - but I take it that this is just not the way the spirit world works.

Some of the ways that I find myself most open to Ranger's messages:

• During meditation
• In the early morning (2am-5am), dream visitations or sensations of his presence
• At the full moon (this is an incredibly potent time for me to receive visitations from Ranger, I find that at each full moon I have very clear and direct experiences of his spirit)
• Walking in nature
• Communicating with my other animals and the animals who come and visit me
• Being receptive to and open to messages of 'play' and 'fun'
• Learning to trust my intuition and inner senses

My walk these days often look like the counterpoint of sadness of missing Ranger and our life together, and then feeling a gush of playful energy come through me. All along this spirit walk, I have received the message from Ranger that he is playing and he wants me to play too! Currently I'm exploring this playful energy by walking (and running, laughing and jumping!) with my neighbor's pitbull, Cinnamon, creating Ranger's spirit garden and joining in on play activities with my two cats, and exploring activities that give me a sense of pleasure. Pleasure and play do not come naturally to me, so Ranger's message of play is something that challenges me and takes me outside of my comfort zone.

Early on, some video resources by the pet communicator and psychic, Danielle MacKinnon, I found to be extremely helpful and confirmatory of my spirit walk journey. I highly recommend watching her videos on YouTube. For me, all of her videos confirmed that which I already knew or experienced with Ranger's spirit since he crossed over. I found the validation, deeply helpful. I look forward to continuing to doing deeper work with Danielle MacKinnon and her pet communication programs. When you do start to have experiences from the spirit world, it is another huge paradigm shift - and much like the grief walk, you will need those around you who are able to understand this world and validate your experiences, as well as serving as guides. Here are some of the resources I found most helpful:

Pet communication

• Danielle MacKinnon

Books

• Never Letting Go - Mark Anthony
• Some Dogs Are Angels - Mark Stamford
• The Amazing Afterlife of Animals - Karen Anderson
• Signs from Pets in the Afterlife - Lyn Ragan
• Cold Noses at the Pearly Gates - Gary Kurz (This is a wonderful book for Christians - complete with scripture)

Nature

I have found being in nature deeply healing and part of my spirit walk. I take a regular morning spirit walk through nature with Ranger's spirit, and try to get out and be in nature as much as possible. I personally believe that nature is one of the portals for the spirit world, and that animals in nature, the wind, the sun and all the elements of nature can heal us, speak to us and open us to joy and renewal.

Spirit gardens

I can't say enough about the beauty of creating a spirit garden for our beloved animals. Creating a beautiful garden with momentos from our pet's earthly life interwoven with elements from the spirit world is an amazing way to both honor their lives and pay respect to their ongoing spiritual presence.

Prayer & Meditation

My faith in God and Jesus has been an inextricable part of both Grief and Spirit walks. I know in my heart that I will come face to face with my beautiful and beloved Ranger again one day. I pray often to God about my broken heart, and ask to find refuge under His feathers. I pray for Ranger everyday.

Meditation is a daily practice for me in the mornings. I believe that meditation allows us to open to the realm of the spirit, as well as inviting calmness and a sense of balance into our lives.

Reiki & Yoga

I took up both these practices after Ranger crossed. I don't think I would have ever bothered to explore Reiki before, but Ranger being in the spirit world has opened me to wanting to develop my intuitive energy and insight gifts further. I received a Reiki I and II level training, and am mainly doing Reiki self healing and Reiki on the dogs who come and visit me. Yoga is a practice now that I integrate daily, with a 15 minute flow, as well as weekly Zoom class. This daily flow reminds my body that life is a flow with integration of the breath, and it instills in me that courage, ease, self awareness, strength and body awareness are all things I seek to practice in every area of my daily life, and especially important while flowing through the grief process.

Update (April 5, 2021): I am now at just over 7 months after Ranger's passing. I find myself coming into a deeper awareness of the contrast between the fulfillment I had when he was in my life physically, and the lack of that fulfillment now. I experience joy and happiness in my day, but that fulfillment I received from wholly embodying being Ranger's mama is distinctly absent, and I feel that distinction now more than ever. I am also coming into an awareness of just how much I have always associated being home, with being with Ranger. Being in his physical presence was always my sense of home, now that he has passed on I am experiencing both the loss of home as I knew it and the reorganization of what home really is for me. Home, I am coming to realize, is not a physical location, home is the love I have in my heart for those I love. I can honestly say, living at this time in my RV, that home is with my animal and human family I love - those both here and those on the other side.