A Message To All Who Grieve

Dear People,

I am relatively new to this site. I happened upon it by accident recently.

When time allows I go through it and try to address each person's loss. By posting this message, I hope to reach all of you in some way.

This is a wonderful place. Many come here out of desperation and near breakdown. To lose a beloved fur child is one of the most painful experiences life brings to us. No one can really understand the intimate relationship each person has had with their baby. We can only express as best as we know how the feeling we've experienced, the love and caring we feel for the person who is hurting so.

From my own experiences, it is so comforting to receive kind words from people who dearly love animals. I am firmly convinced that people who love animals tend to feel on a deeper level than those who have never opened their hearts to an animal. I know how difficult it can be when others--friends, co-workers, and even family-- lose patience quickly and tell you to try to move on with your life. They mean well, but they just don't understand. That's why it's so important to be able to share here.

We have no way of really knowing how much of a difference our message of sympathy and love may have on another person. Perhaps that person was so despondent that they were entertaining thoughts of ending their own lives. Through a twist of fate, or the gentle guiding of their own guardian angels, they found their way here and received the needed reasurrance and hope that they desperately were searching for.

People all grieve differently. There is never a time frame attached to grief. There is never a right or wrong way to grieve. Whatever helps you to hang on, gives you solace,
holds you up, is good and right. No truer words were spoken than those of a wise Native American when he/she said, "Until you have walked a mile in the moccasins of your brother, you cannot know what they feel." Feelings, though similar in many aspects, are as different as snow flakes.

What is so important is that we open our hearts to those who are reaching out in pain, who are suffering the tortures of the damned after experiencing the unfathomable void of losing their precious fur babies. When you feel so utterly despondent that you cannot eat, sleep, and lose your desire for everything normal, you are hurting deeply. Time will help, but comforting words, expressions of love and sympathy, even a loving, humorous tale of someone's treasured experience with their pet, is sometimes just the soothing salve that binds the aching wound of loss.

May all who have loved and lost realize that your loss is only temporary. That your beloved pet has simply changed from physical to non-physical and that one day you will be reuinted with all those you have loved so deeply.

With deep sympathy for all who are hurting and wishes of comfort and peace, and the glorious reasurrance that love never dies,

--Susan
~ a voice for the voiceless ~