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Say GOODBYE to a beloved fur-baby.
Say HELLO to a junkyard bully named Grief.

If that’s how you feel, we have a lot in common.

Not because grief relief is a one-size-fits-all proposition. (It’s definitely not.)

But because grief is a DIY project. (Magic Grief Eraser? Fuggedaboutit.) Because you might need the same kind of tools I did. Tools to:

• Go to school on grief—knowledge is power. (Nobody ever claimed the same about feeeeeling …)

• Validate pup-love emotions. Otherwise grief is a very lonely place. (Anyone suggested your strong feelings might not be “normal”? Or that you can always “just get another dog”?)

• Create a solid support team. (Hint: Ain’t necessarily a Friends & Family Plan.)

• Soothe your way during the worst of it. (Grief-tamers don’t miraculously appear like little cobbler’s elves. Ya gotta hunt ‘em down and welcome ‘em in.)

• Inspire a meaningful Life After Death. (Yours … after theirs.)

From poleaxed and gutted … to peaceful and transformed:
My belly-crawl to the other side of hurtslikeabitch.

For months after I said goodbye to Bentley and Beemer, I was gutted by grief.

Finally there came a lightbulb moment when I realized that old cliché “time heals all wounds” is total bullshit. That if I wanted to heal—to summon enough lifeforce to shuck my jammies and drag a comb through my cowlick—I’d bloody well better get cranking on making it so.

But how?

My grief/mourning “expertise” was limited to the two boneheaded things I’d learned from long-ago role models:

• What ya tell little kiddos: Ya wanna cry, I’ll give you something to cry about.

• What ya tell us big kiddos: Suckitup, buttercup—nobody wants to hear you whine.

Not exactly kung fu training for taking on the junkyard bully that stranded me in emotional flashfloods in the dog food aisle at the Piggly Wiggly. Or numbed me out with fetal-curl-bawling, bedsheet enshrouding my head. (But it sure as fu*k dented some therapists’ sofas! But I digress …)

So I propped up my tepid determination, fired up my computer and typed in “help for pet loss grief”.

Man, is there a tuuuuuuuhn of useless doggie-doo out there masquerading as assistance!

• Bath bombs and herbal teabags. (Dive for cover, you intimidated grief-gangbanger!)

• Candle holders on which to slap my pooch’s pic so when the candle glimmers it will “animate” her. (Haul out a bottle of Reposado Blanco and a straw—sure way to improve your odds.)

• Mass produced forgettable cliches, toe-curling platitudes, BS shortcuts.

The kind of smarmy twaddle that depressed my depression.

And ya know what? That sh*t really began to piss me off.

I left my search wondering if any of those purveyors had actual empathy—much less respect!—for my pet-loss grief. Were they simply obtuse (as I was) about grief support? Or did they see my misery as a soft touch ka-ching! machine?

Whatever the answer, here’s the unexpected value of my pissed-offedness.

It lit up my sassy-kickassy gene.

Not because I thought I could kick grief’s ass.
But because grief is scary.

It was going to take a speedball of sassy-kickassy to

Peptalk my courage out of hibernation.

Backbone successfully backstopped …

Next thing on my to-do list: try to answer my oodles of doodled questions. Including:

• What is grief, really? (Beyond a sh*tty thing to be drowning in.)

• Was it normal to feel so deeply about “just an animal”?

• When would the hurt magically “disappear”?

So I went to school on the What-Why-When-How of grief.

There actually is useful info out there.

But weeding it out was kinda like picking through a Costco-size crate of jellybeans when all I needed want are the cherry-vanillas.

Except instead of candies, I collected a confusion of post-its.

• Lightning bolt flashes that helped me understand what I was dealing with.

• Breakthroughs for soothing my heartache. Aha! ideas for honoring B&'B’s devotion.

Without those eye-openers I couldn’t have belly-crawled to the other side of hurtslikeabitch.

Without those insights I never would’ve discovered the “gifts” that were hidden in the depths of the pain.

And now, these tools are available in

The GRIEF RELIEF Project’s Pet Loss Survival Kits

If these tools offer the guidance you seek, then I’m especially delighted to have done the heavy lifting. For us both.

Wishing you solace and serenity,

In retrospect, The GRIEF RELIEF Project shook hands with destiny back on September 30, 2006, when Bentley and Beemer first sniffed through the door of our redwood retreat in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

We’d moved there only a month earlier from the urban landscape of San Fran, where we weren’t prepared to homeschool dawgs. But lifelong dog-lovers both, Weimaraners were in our plan.

We don’t know where they spent their first years—the vets guessed 2-4 of ‘em—or what their names were. Animal control found them dumped in a dangerous East Bay neighborhood, contacted NorCal Weimaraner Rescue and said they’d picked up an abandoned pair and were going to euthanize the male because he showed severe aggression toward men. (Likely hard-earned.)

Fortunately, the Weim rescuers took in both of them; but fostered them separately because they “didn’t think anyone would take on two Weims.” (“ … be crazy enough” being the implication.)

Ha! Hadn’t been our plan, either!

On the adoption questionnaire it asked about other dogs in the household. [None.] And our plans for future pets.

I wrote that we wanted to adopt one Weim; but might, at some point, get another dog to pal around with the first.

After the rescue worker grilled me about our suitability (whew! she had me convinced we’d be rejected!) she dumbfounded me by asking, “Would you consider adopting two Weims?”

She filled my stunned silence by explaining about the bonded pair … Yeah, you get the pic.

How could we let two pups who obviously belonged together be ripped apart for the rest of their lives? We had the property and resources to forever-home them together.

Our introduction took place in a park with their fosters. Beemer was panting/trembling and flabby from being overbred. Bentley so thin you could count each rib. So traumatized he walked away from a liver doggy-biscotti. [That’s an effing traumatized Weim, food whores that they are!]

A week after our initial meeting we brought them to their new forever home. (Nicknamed Bentley Mr. Death Row.)

Shell-shocked, mistrustful, and clinging to each other with a bond rarely seen in dog or man, they would crawl into the darkness under Russell’s desk and sleep spooned together. (After the 9-5 he focused on cementing their confidence in their new pack. Or maybe just napping …)

Bentley soon attached himself to me like a Secret Service Agent. For nine years I couldn’t take a pee without that little face peeking around the bathroom door, ears cocked, like, “Relax, Mom, I’ve got your back.”

He was my shadow—had beds in my office, by the TV room sofa, at the foot of my reading chair, and beside my nightstand. (Beemer, being a California girl, preferred to sun her belly on the deck.) Even when his body was failing Bentley would hobble to the bathroom door, insistent on waiting for me.

Weimaraners are known for separation anxiety; but Beemer’s panic attacks were Code Red. The most minor new experience set her trembling and drool-panting and trying to disappear behind my legs.

A vet said of Beemer early on, “How horrible must it be to go through life so insecure, so terrified of being deserted by your pack.” Beemer was a great teacher of patience and compassion.

In the natural course of events, B&B’s “forever” was always going to be shorter than mine. Intellectually, of course, I knew that. But that didn’t make it easier when, in December 2015, we knew it was time to let Bentley go.

Two years and seventeen days later, Christmas Day 2017, we said goodbye to Beemer.

For more than a year I zombied through life in a fog of grief.

I missed B&B’s vibrating stubby tails thwacking my leg … Their long velvety ears tickling my nose when I nuzzled them … The woodland smell of their toes … And most especially, I missed their inimitable innocence and enthusiasm for life.

“You know what bothers me most?” I asked Hales, my wise adult granddaughter, on a particularly gloomy winter day. “I promised B&B a forever home. But these polished boxes with the shiny brass nametags? Ya can’t stuff their essence—the joie de vivre that made them uniquely B&B—into a box of cold, dead ash.

“I feel like I’ve betrayed them. Broken my promise of a forever-home. Because where’s the forever-home for their little wandering souls?”

Hales had the answer.

“Dogs like snug, cozy spaces where they feel safe, right? So get a couple of nice wooden boxes and personalize them to match their personalities. You can stash their collars and favorite toys in there.” (She knew I would never throw them away.) “You can keep them on your desk. Then their wandering spirits can spend their days exactly where they would want to be: tucked right up beside you.”

And voilà. The first seed of The Grief Relief Project was planted.

With this project I’m not only fulfilling my forever-home promise to Beemer & Bentley. I’m plugging what I found to be an unacceptable void in a pet-loss grief support niche.

Sassy*
Kickassy
Get smart and take heart

[*Facing down Grief with mousy and meek is like taking a soup ladle to a knife fight.]

It’s my aim that the Gutsy Guides to Grief and the Survival Kits help grievers like you chart your own unique path to the other side of hurtslikeabitch.

Head on. Hands on. One meaningful action at a time.

Sending heartfelt sympathy and healing vibes,

(Not sure who certified them “experts”, but in deference to that mystery cert…)

You’ve now likely read my grief-relief story, above. Which, from my perspective, is the relevant bit.

But if you’re curious what skills/experience/background equip me to turn The GRIEF RELIEF Project into an actual biz … Yeah, not much.

In a previous life I was a corporate IT headhunter and a manager of large and innovative projects. Have written three books: a) Karma, Deception and a Pair of Red Ferraris: A Memoir (2015, a journey to believe myself worthy of love); and two suspense novels, now out of print.)

In other categories, yeah, I’m a Boomer and proud to own it. Married to the love of my life.

So definitely not interested in squandering my remaining years building a corp empire. I just want to put out into the Universe these kickassy*-sassy, trail-blazing Survival Kits … and hopefully grievers in need will find ‘em. (Soon I’ll get cranking on Gutsy Guides for other grief categories from my own grief repertoire. Like the grief that comes from loving addicts.) 

[*Cuz when you’re lost in the murk of heartsick and hurt,
forgettable/toe-curling/bs aren’t gonna light your way through.]

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