74: Learnings from Grief & Death: Why Grief Can Lead to Major Life Changes & Grieving the Loss of a Dog
Grieving the death of loved ones is always difficult, but it presents the opportunity to learn more about life and ourselves. In this episode, I talk about my experiences with grief and three lessons grief has taught me in my own life. I also answer two listener questions. One question from a listener who wants to know if it’s normal for grief to cause a person to rethink many aspects of their life and a second question from a listener grieving the loss of a dog. In the second question, I also discuss the 7 stages of grief.
This post contains affiliate links to some of my favorite tools and resources. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Full terms & conditions here.
Recommended Episode 🎙️
03: Grief is a B*tch: Advice on How to Heal from Grief and the Death of Loved Ones
16: Grief Guilt: How to Heal Your Relationship with Guilt Throughout the Grieving Process
37: Healing Your Grieving Heart: Feeling the Feelings of Grief
Free Resources
Apple Music Playlist: GRIEF IS A B*TCH
If struggling with guilt, I recommend: Journal Prompts: Grief Guilt
Timestamps ⏱️
Introduction: 0:00
3 Lessons I’ve Learned from Grief : 3:49
Question 1 (Reevaluating Life After Grief): 13:38
Question 2 (Death of a Pet): 26:20
Outro: 37:11
Learn More About the 7 Stages of Grief
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This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Castmagic. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:01]:
Welcome to New View Advice. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I invite you to join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever problem or trauma is holding you back from living life to the fullest. Let's get started. Hey, beautiful souls. Welcome back to New View Advice. If you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast where I offer guidance for the healing journey. I do not believe I have all the answers you seek. I believe You have all the answers.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:26]:
You just may need a new view and a little help along the way. Thank you for joining me for today's episode. Today, we are discussing grief and how to grieve the death of a loved one, including pets and animal friends, and why the grieving journey can bring us to a place of reevaluating what feels like our whole lives. I'll be answering 2 listener questions today. 1 from a listener who lost a friend to cancer and now feels like their whole life is falling apart and finds themselves in that reevaluation stage of everything and is wondering if this is part of the grieving journey. And spoiler alert, yes. It is. And the 2nd question is from a listener who is healing from the death of a beloved pet and is feeling all the feelings.
Amanda Durocher [00:01:05]:
So today, we are going to discuss these 2 questions as well as at the beginning, I'm going to spend a bit of time talking about 3 lessons I've learned throughout my own grieving journey and healing from the death of loved ones. I find that grief is an invitation inwards, and it's an invitation to get to know ourselves better and to connect back to ourselves if we choose to take that invitation. And if you're here, I think you're already on your journey of accepting that invitation from grief and death. And I know how difficult healing from grief can be, so I just wanna honor anybody out there who's lost someone. I think that grief is such a humbling journey. And for many people who have gone a lot of their lives without feeling a lot of deep feelings or trying to run from them, grief can bring those feelings head on and force us to sit with ourselves, sit with our feelings, and sit with our lives in a new way with a new perspective. And I think that that's a beautiful journey, but I wanna honor that it's not necessarily an easy journey. The human journey is incredible in so many ways, but I wouldn't say it's always an easy one.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:12]:
I think that it's important to debunk that life's supposed to be easy. Life is about learning to flow with the rhythm of life, feel your feelings, honor yourself, and come back home to yourself. And I find grief is a great teacher for that for many reasons, and I'll discuss that in the intro teaching. So today, we'll be talking about how to process our feelings, how to heal from grief, why grief isn't something to be afraid of, and why it's entirely valid for you to be feeling all your feelings as well as a few practices you can start using in your day to day life to assist you on this journey of healing from the death of loved ones. So, again, I just wanna honor anybody here who has lost somebody in the last month, the last year, the last 5 years, last 10 years, no matter how long it is. Thank you for being here. Your feelings are valid. I believe that the grieving journey, healing from the death of loved ones, will be different for everyone.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:07]:
Each death affects us in a different way because the relationship we had with that person or that animal was different, and we were in a different place in our life when each experience happened. So every one of us is going to have our own unique journey, but we will all move through similar feelings. So I hope you find today's episode helpful. I also also wanna mention that I have a few more episodes that you can check out as well if you haven't heard them yet about healing from death and grieving the loss of loved ones. So if you are interested, I will link those in the show notes at new view advice.com/74. So now let's jump on into talking about lessons I've learned on my own grieving journey.
3 Lessons I Learned from Grief
Today, I wanted to start the episode with 3 lessons I've learned from grief. I think that the feelings that go along with healing from the The loved ones can be so overwhelming and painful that we can lose sight that there's a reason for feeling all these feelings and that there are lessons and beautiful insights within this journey of healing from grief.
Amanda Durocher [00:04:10]:
So I just wanted to offer these 3 lessons that I Learned through my journey of healing from grief as well as hold on to throughout my day to day life and try to remind myself of regularly. So I do an episode on grief every year around this time because my healing journey started 8 years ago When I lost a very close friend unexpectedly, Michael Dolan. And through Michael Dolan's death, I awoken, for lack of a better word, to so much more to life. I understood all of a sudden that the life I was living was not the life I wanted to be living and that a lot needed to change and that I hadn't been happy. I feel like I was living on autopilot, and Michael Dolan's death were the catalyst to take me out of that autopilot and start living my life consciously. So have the past 8 years been easy? No freaking way. They've been an absolute roller coaster, But the truth is I wouldn't have it any other way because when I was living on autopilot, I was very unhappy, and I was living a life that Wasn't mine is how it feels. I was doing what other people wanted me to do.
Amanda Durocher [00:05:17]:
I was following the guidance of others, the words of others, and I wasn't connected to myself. And by healing from grief and the death of loved ones, I learned how to connect back to myself, and I feel like that's such a gift I received from Michael to Dolan's death. So that leads me into my 1st lesson, which was that grief teaches us that all we have is the the present moment. All we have is the present moment. We as humans are always trying to control life, and we're trying to plan ahead and Control situations and relationships and jobs and homes and just always trying to control things so so that we feel safe. But grief snaps us out of that and reminds us that we are not in control of life. There is a greater cosmic force at play, and it decides when our time here is done. Not us.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:05]:
Not our minds. We're not in control of that. All we have is this present moment, and I have found through healing from the death of loved ones, that it's so important to remember that. Because whenever I remind myself to go back to, oh my gosh. Right. I don't have forever. I don't know how much time I have. What do I want to be doing right now? And that doesn't mean that we don't show up to our responsibilities.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:29]:
We don't go to work, and things like that. But it's a reminder that life is all we have. How can we enjoy it? What do we need to do to enjoy it? Do we need to heal something from our past? Do we need to finally look at that trauma that we've been avoiding? Do we need to maybe align ourselves with a job that feels better for our hearts. You know, it's a reminder that we take so much of life so seriously, but all we have is right now. So what can we do to enjoy life and enjoy life moving forward? And I know for me when Michael Dolan died, I was miserable. I was Such an unhappy person, but his death was what showed me I was so miserable. It was what showed me, oh my god. I'm so unhappy.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:12]:
What am I doing? I don't have forever. Why am I doing what my parents want me to do? Why am I doing what my partner wants me to do? Why am I doing what society's told me to do? I could die tomorrow. Holy shit. Oh my god. What am I doing? And this journey of understanding that took me a long time to get where I am now, but through each and every moment, my heart is showing me how to get closer to my life's intention, which has been happiness. And the realization I had recently was that not everybody wants to be happy. That's okay. I expected because that's my intention for my life that everybody else wanted to be happy.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:52]:
So I would find these spiritual teachers or I'd read this book, and I would Think they were the way to happiness even though they never used that word happiness. But I think death shows us what we really want in life. So I invite you to explore what is your life's intention. Is it to be of service? Is it to be creative? Is it to be successful? Whatever that means to you. Mine is to be happy. Mine is to just freaking enjoy life. That doesn't have to be yours. But what I understood through my journey of healing from the death of a loved one was that all we have is this present moment, and my god, am I gonna work my hardest to enjoy it.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:31]:
The second thing grief has taught me is that my feelings are my superpower and that the more I lean into my feelings, the more free I become. As I mentioned in the intro, I believe that grief is an invitation inwards. And through healing from the death of Michael Dolan, I realize now that this was my invitation to get to know myself better and to feel all my feelings and to begin to honor and understand what my feelings were telling me. I believe grief can stop us in our tracks and force us to look in the mirror and to see who is truly staring back at us. Many of us ignore ourselves for so long that when grief arises, it can be a hard moment to realize how much we have ignored or maybe, like it was in my case, how much we don't even like or recognize ourselves anymore. And through learning how to feel my feelings, I learned how to love myself. And for me, my feelings were punished for all my life. I was always told I was too sensitive, too dramatic, too emotional.
Amanda Durocher [00:09:34]:
I made people uncomfortable with my comfortability crying in public. I always had too many damn feelings, but But through leaning into the grieving journey and healing from the death of a loved one, I learned, 1, my feelings are a superpower. I learned, 2, that my feelings are always Right? Tell me something. 3, my feelings are always valid. And 4, I learned that the more I feel my feelings and release myself of the Stuck feelings in me, the more free I become. And my life has become about happiness and freedom because I didn't realize how trapped I felt for most of my life because I wasn't listening to my own guidance. I wasn't listening to my own heart, and that is a gift I received from grief. And the 3rd lesson I have, I've already touched on, but the 3rd lesson that grief taught me is that we are not in control of life.
Amanda Durocher [00:10:22]:
We were never in control, and we are not going to suddenly be in role, and grief taught me how to flow with life rather than try to control life. Do I remember this every day, though? Of course not. I constantly wish I was in control, but death and the passing of loved ones always has a way of showing us what really matters and that we were never in control of anything and that the things we're often trying to control aren't actually what matters. Grief teaches us what matters. Grief teaches us to reprioritize. Grief teaches us to reflect on what is important to us, and we do this by recognizing we're not in control of what we thought we were in control of. So what are we in control of? What are we able to do with each and every present moment? And what we're able to do is act on the wisdom of our hearts. We're able to show up each and every day and honor ourselves and life and our friends and family and our loved ones in a different way, in a new way, in however our heart wants to express that day.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:22]:
But grief reminds us that we are not in control, and that can be really, really scary. Oh my god. I'm not in control of anything. That's, like, mind blowing for, like, type a people. But There's also this huge release when you realize, oh my god. I'm not in control. Okay. I don't have to run at life anymore.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:43]:
I can relax into life. I can learn to trust myself. That is a journey. That doesn't happen overnight, and it doesn't always feel easy. As we've talked about, life isn't easy, But we're not in control, and that's okay. And I found that to be such a beautiful gift I received through my grieving journey. So So I share these with you today because I think it's important to remember that what we're moving through when we're healing from the death of a loved one is a process, and it has the possibility of teaching us so much. I keep saying it time and time again, but grief is really one of our Our greatest teachers, and I know how painful this process can be.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:21]:
I've gone from wanting to die, honestly, from struggling with suicidal thoughts to thriving because I've allowed grief to show me, rearrange me, and change me. No matter where you are on your grief journey, I promise this too shall pass. It will get better. Your feelings are valid, and you are so strong. And I am so grateful you are here, and I'm grateful you are choosing to heal and honor your experience rather than ignore it or try to shove it down. I think when we try to shove down grief, it just creates more fear or more disconnection from life. Feel it all, baby. I invite you to just feel it all.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:58]:
It's okay wherever you're at today. You could be listening to everything I'm saying and thinking Keen to yourself, god. This woman sucks. Fuck off. Totally fine. Honestly, that's totally fine. I know that on my healing journey, I thought to myself, A lot of people should fuck off. I was so freaking angry.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:18]:
So if you're angry at me today, I'm okay with that. And I just invite you to honor yourself wherever you're at, angry, sad, depressed, neutral. Whatever you're feeling today is okay, And I hope something in there was helpful, so let's jump into the 1st listener question.
Question 1
Dear New View Advice, my friend recently died of cancer. We were close, and I loved him, but it wasn't unexpected. I had plenty of time to say goodbye and to grieve before he passed. But I'm surprised how hard I am taking it. I allow myself to feel my feelings, but since his death, I feel like my whole world has been turned upside down.
I really hate my job. I'm not happy in my relationship, and my husband and I were trying to have children, and now I'm unsure I even want children. I don't know what's happening, but I think it's all connected to the death with my friend. Any advice on what to do? Is this all part of grieving? Do I just give it time? Am I going crazy?
Thank you so much for this question. This is so real, so I thank you, and I honor where you are at, and I honor all your feelings. You are not going crazy. I consider this that you are coming online. I completely understand how you feel because I have been here as well.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:31]:
When my friend Dolan died in my early twenties, I was not only grieving his loss, But I also had the stark realization that I mentioned earlier that I wasn't happy in my life, and so much needed to change in order for me to be happy. It was overwhelming, and it honestly felt like it came out of nowhere. When I talk about grief and I talk about Dolan dying in my life, I view it as I was in this dark room with a bottle of wine. Let's be real. And when he died, the lights got turned on. And when the lights turned on, I realized I was in this really messy room with broken glass and shattered windows, And I didn't like what I saw, but I didn't know how I got here. And there was so much to clean up and fix. I didn't know what to do.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:20]:
But that's how stark of a transition it was for me. It was, like, overnight, the lights got turned on. I was living on Autopilot beforehand, I was just absent. I've been working on a memoir, and, honestly, I think about my life before Michael Dolan died. And it's like, I don't know where I was. I was living somewhere in between here and somewhere else. Like, I wasn't here. And then all of a sudden, I was forced to Be here, and I didn't like what I saw.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:49]:
So I think this experience I described happens for many people that we go from living on autopilot, and living in the dark to all of a sudden having this lights turned on moment. And I think this is because many of us have built up a wall of armor around ourselves. And when somebody dies, there is a crack put in the armor, or and we can't put it back together, so this armor we've created starts to crumble and fall. And this armor we had was there to keep us safe, But it can no longer keep us safe because often this was the armor that had that belief that we were in control of life or that everything was going according to plan or just Keep moving forward. Keep moving forward, and death and the death of loved ones stops us in our tracks. We all of a sudden see life in a new way. We all of a sudden can't tell ourselves that life is forever or we can't ignore the impermanence of life. We have to see things in a new way, and this to breaks that outside armor, which causes us to begin to feel things we haven't felt before.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:51]:
I think a lot of us put armor around us to keep us from feeling. And then all of a sudden, when somebody dies, we're left with all these feelings, and those feelings can be more than just the grief of losing someone we loved. It can be the grief of the life we've been living. Like with your question, you say you're not happy in your relationship. You may not want Children and you're not happy in your job, that involves more grief to be felt. It doesn't mean you're going to leave your job or leave your husband or not have children, but you're grieving something you thought you had that you likely never had. So you're grieving the perfect life or the perfect relationship or the job you can just hold on to. You're grieving that you can no longer do that.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:32]:
You can no longer be in a job that makes you incredibly unhappy. You can no longer Continue ignoring the problems that have probably been in your relationship for quite some time, and you can no longer tell yourself you want with children without understanding why you want children. And I think that's beautiful. I think so many people go through life, and they're like, I'm gonna get a job. I'm gonna get married. I'm gonna buy a house. And then one day, they're like, why? Why did I think that was how my life should go? Why did I think that would make me happy? Here I am at whatever age, and I'm still not happy, or I have nothing to work towards anymore. I kept having these goals, and now I have nothing.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:12]:
And that's because society will tell you that that's the path to take as an adult. Get a job. Get married. Buy a house. Have a child. And if you get stuck in one of those phases, like, oh my gosh. I can't find somebody. I can't get married.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:26]:
You can think there's something wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you, and that is not everybody's life plan. If that is your life plan and you like it, Awesome. Just be intentional with it. That's how I feel like we should be with life. Just be intentional. You wanna get a job at 22, at 18? Why? Because you have bills to pay? Awesome. Just be intentional with it.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:47]:
You wanna get married? Why? Because you want a loving partner or because society told you you need to get married? Just be honest with yourself. You want children now? Why? Just ask yourself why. And what I'm thinking from your question is that you haven't Been intentional with your decisions for a very long time. You've just been doing what you think you should be doing, and all of a sudden, you're like, Why am I unhappy? Or why do I feel this way? Or why is none of this working anymore? And it's because you're coming online, the lights are turning on, and you're likely realizing that so many of the decisions you made were never really your decisions. You were following a road map that wasn't your road map. It's like you had this map leading you home, And you are following this path, and then you get to what the map considers home, and you're like, wait. This isn't my house. Where am I? And so now you have to look for your map, and that's the journey of life.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:46]:
Everybody has a different map. Everybody has a different purpose. Everybody's life plan's different, And your life plan may be what I described, but it's just about being intentional and understanding why. Why do you want these things, and why do you want it now? And so it's just about being intentional with your life. So I think that you're finally being honest with yourself, and I think that's a gift. I think the box you were living in was unfortunately built on lies, defenses, and a false sense of safety, and now it's unraveling. Again, this is a super uncomfortable process, but also really necessary for you to come home to yourself and for you to get to know yourself. And from your question, it sounds like you don't know what's your intention right now, and you don't know what you want right now, and that's totally fine.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:35]:
Acknowledging that you don't know what you want is a great first step to eventually getting connected to yourself to knowing what you do know is a great first step in getting connected to yourself to eventually know what you want. But sometimes we have to admit to ourselves for the 1st time, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I want. I don't know how I got here. Admitting acknowledgement is the 1st step. Another analogy I like to use for what it sounds like you're going through is that There's a container of water and sand, and the sands at the bottom of the container, and that is all the hard stuff, hard feelings, hard emotions, traumas, hard truths. And so we bury them at the bottom of the container. We shove all that sand down, and it settles at the bottom of the container.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:22]:
And then when somebody dies or we experience intense grief, the container gets shaken up, and now the sand is everywhere, And it's impossible to put every speck of sand back exactly where it was. So your inner world is currently being rearranged, shaken up, and it will not settle the same way. Your life is different now. Welcome. That's life. Life changes all the time because we're not in control of it, so change is inevitable. As many people say, change is the only constant. So let's talk a bit about some of these things you mentioned.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:57]:
So you mentioned being unhappy in your relationship, and my guess is that you have some needs in in that relationship that aren't being met. Maybe you haven't been speaking up for yourself. Maybe you aren't communicating with your partner. Now all of a sudden, you're like, wait. Why am I unhappy? And likely, you haven't been happy for a while, but you were able to shove that sand down, and now you can't because you're asking yourself to look at it. That's not a bad thing. It may be uncomfortable, but you deserve to be happy. And through allowing these uncomfortable feelings up, you will begin to see the since you need to take in order to come back into alignment with who you really are.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:32]:
You also mentioned not wanting children now. I find that interesting. Continue looking at this. Why did you want kids 4, was it because someone else told you you should have a kid? Are you at the age where you feel it is your next step, where you feel like you have to? Are you afraid of your biological time clock? Or do you have a fear of losing your child now after losing someone? Do you have a new fear you didn't have before? What are the thoughts arising around children? Be honest with yourself. Is this fear based, or do you feel you need to heal a bit more first? There is no right or wrong answer here. There is just your truth, which will be different from my truth, which will be different from other people's truth. Coming back to your own intention is learning to be honest with yourself. So to your question, yes, this is all part of the grieving process, and, no, you are not going crazy.
Amanda Durocher [00:23:21]:
And I wanna end this question with, I am really sorry your friend died. I think that grief is so painful sometimes, but I also think this situation is happening for you, not to you. And the more we learn to look at life as if it's happening for us, the more we begin to see the lessons and the learnings in life and the more we begin to honor our painful experiences rather than feeling like a victim of life. Life is working for you. And through looking at life happening for you, you'll begin to see life in a new way, and you'll begin to honor your own experience and your hard feelings. And I understand how hard the feelings can be attached to everything you mentioned, attached to the grief of your friend, The unhappy relationship, the questioning the children, and I honor all the feelings you're having. And I invite you to feel those feelings and also to connect with what those feelings are communicating with you. If you find yourself really angry one day, why are you angry? Allow yourself to feel the anger, move the anger, process the anger, but then ask yourself, why are you truly angry? If you feel sad one day, allow yourself to just feel sad.
Amanda Durocher [00:24:35]:
You don't have to attach a story to it either. Maybe one day you just need to be angry. Maybe one day you just need to be sad. That's the grieving journey. It's not worrying about if where you are is right or wrong. It's not about trying to rush it. It's just understanding life is what it is right now, And grief is going to put you on your knees and ask you to be present with it. Nothing wrong with that.
Amanda Durocher [00:24:59]:
It's not easy, but there's nothing wrong with that. I think so often we struggle through grieving and struggle through our hard feelings because we label them wrong. There is nothing wrong with wherever you are. It just is. And I just want to say that I think where you're at right now is beautiful, and you are on your healing journey. You are currently in it, and you are doing the work. And you may be like, Amanda, I don't know how to do the work. You are literally doing or that is the work.
Amanda Durocher [00:25:29]:
We live in an instant gratification culture. The work takes time. Feeling the feelings, having the questions, bringing awareness, turning your own inner lights on is the work. And it's a beautiful journey, and it's courageous and humbling, but it's liberating and fulfilling, and it brings you home to the truth of who you are, which which is different than the truth of who I am. You're incredibly unique. You're incredibly fantastic, and this journey is going to help you to see that. It's a journey where you get to know you, and you are damn worth knowing. A part of you does not wanna hide anymore, and I love that for you.
Amanda Durocher [00:26:04]:
You are incredible. You are doing the work. There is nothing wrong. You are not crazy. You are courageous and inspiring, and I honor you. I honor your path. Thank you so much for this
Question 2 - Grieving Loss of a Dog
My dog recently died, and I am devastated. I feel like no one understands the grief I'm going through.
I had my dog for over 10 years. He was my best friend and my closest companion. My heart hurts, and I don't know how to move on. Everyone says I should just get a new dog, but that doesn't feel right. Any advice on how to grieve this loss? Thank you so much for this question. I am so sorry for your loss. The loss of an animal friend is always heartbreaking and painful, so I just wanna honor this loss. There is nothing wrong with you.
Amanda Durocher [00:26:49]:
Your feelings are valid. Losing an animal friend can be just as painful as losing a human being. So I just honor that this experience is very difficult for you, and That is very understandable. You lost your closest companion. Oh, I'm so sorry. I know as humans, It can be hard to put our trust in people, and animals can be such loving and helpful beings to help humans learn to trust. And they show us unconditional love so many times, dogs and cats and animals and pets. And I just wanna honor that because losing unconditional love is incredibly painful because it is something that So many of us are craving every day, unconditional love, and so many of us haven't even experienced it from other humans.
Amanda Durocher [00:27:37]:
And that's for many reasons. It can be from our own fears or from our upbringings or because the people in our lives aren't capable of unconditional love. But your experience is very real, so I just wanna honor the pain you're in and how hard this feels. So My first piece of advice is to honor your pain, not to judge your pain, and not to look for other people to validate your pain. Because it sounds like you may be trying to talk about it with people who don't understand. So I invite you to continue to honor yourself and to not look outside yourself for people to understand it because they just may not. And that doesn't make your experience invalid. It just means they're capable of understanding.
Amanda Durocher [00:28:19]:
And that's okay. That's not a judgment. Everybody's at a different place, and the people you're talking to, maybe they've never had a pet before. They've never lost a pet, so they don't understand or they don't understand your relationship with your dog. And I believe that your dog is still with you. I don't believe our loved Loved ones cease to exist. I believe that there is a spirit realm, and our loved ones are on the other side, and I believe our animal friends are as well. But it can be really painful to not have them here with us in the physical.
Amanda Durocher [00:28:45]:
And that's the grieving journey is learning to live our lives after the loss of are physical loved ones. And as I mentioned, part of grieving is learning how to be here without them, and this includes pets and animals who we've loved. Animals become so intertwined in our lives and become part of our families and our daily routines, and it can feel like there's a hole in our lives when they leave. You probably went on walks with your dog. You fed your dog. You took care of your dog. Your dog was always excited to see you. As I mentioned, That unconditional loving presence that animals bring is missing now.
Amanda Durocher [00:29:20]:
It's okay to feel heartbroken about that. It's understandable. I think it's incredibly painful to lose anyone who's ever loved us. One of the reasons, if not the only reason, we're here as humans on Earth is to experience love, To love ourselves, to love others, to love nature, to love animals, and to do acts of love and to be loved. Love is the purpose of life. When we lose that physical manifestation of love, it hurts. It pains us. And so I just invite you to honor yourself in this journey and to be with self.
Amanda Durocher [00:29:58]:
Because as I mentioned, other people may not understand it, and they don't have to. So this is really a journey about you being with you and allowing yourself your own feelings. And your dog was a really important part of your life. Of course, that's not forgotten overnight. And, no, you don't have to rush and get a new pet. That's somebody trying to fix your problem, trying to put a Band Aid on your problem, and not understanding the grief you're feeling. And people do this all the time. They try to give us actions to fix our pain because they're uncomfortable with our pain.
Amanda Durocher [00:30:29]:
But you'll know when it's time for you to get another dog, and That's a decision only you'll know when you're ready for. So before I wrap up this question, I just want to Give some advice on how do you grieve this. Right? What are some action steps you can take? So I've mentioned a lot of these throughout the episode, but I just want to do this final I'll wrap up. My 1st piece of advice is to feel your feelings. Feel the heartache, the loss, the loneliness, and it may help to be aware of the stages grief. So I often talk about the 5 stages of grief, which are denial, bargaining, depression, anger, and acceptance. But in this episode, I also wanted to mention that some people go by the 7 stages of grief model. I've always found the 5 stages resonate for me, but neither model is right or wrong.
Amanda Durocher [00:31:16]:
It's really what is helpful for you. So I've talked about the 5 stages of grief in other episodes that I've done about grief. So today, I just wanted to Talk a bit about the 7 stages of grief in case somebody finds this model more helpful for them. But the 7 stages of grief is a model about grief that extends off of the 5 stages of grief. So the 1st stage would be shock and denial. So this is a state of disbelief and numbed feelings. The 2nd stage is pain and guilt. So you may feel that the loss is unbearable and that your Feel guilty for still living or for making other people's lives harder because of all your feelings.
Amanda Durocher [00:31:53]:
I do have an episode called grief guilt that you can listen if You feel like you're in a guilt stage of the grieving process. The 3rd stage is anger and bargaining. So in this stage, they put the anger and the bargaining together. So this is All those angry feelings as well as trying to bargain with the universe about your healing process. So saying things to the universe like, I'll only heal if you give me this or If you give me this, then I'll do blank. So that's really what the bargaining phase is like. And the 4th stage they have is depression. This is self explanatory, but they're really those lonely, sad, depressing feelings that arise naturally throughout the grieving process.
Amanda Durocher [00:32:31]:
The 5th stage is the upward turn. So this is when the stages of grief like pain, anger, and depression have died down, and you start to become more calm and relaxed. The 6th stage is reconstruction and working through, and this is where you begin to put the pieces of your life back together and move forward. And the 7th stage of grief is acceptance and hope. This is a gradual stage, but it's the moving on and feeling like the possibility of in your future. So to put those really simply, it's stage 1, shock and denial, stage 2, pain and guilt, stage 3, anger and bargaining, stage 4, depression, stage 5, the upward turn. Stage 6, reconstruction and working through. Stage 7, acceptance and hope.
Amanda Durocher [00:33:15]:
So I share that because I think a lot of people on the grieving Journey, judge themselves for where they're at. And by outlining these stages of grief, I think it becomes clear that wherever you're at is normal, and and wherever you're at is valid. And I like to view the stages of grief as waves in an ocean. They come and go, but they don't come in a particular order. I find that we move through different stages multiple times as different layers of grief occur. So it's just my way of saying wherever you are at is Okay? And please do not judge yourself. It does not help your healing. So my 2nd piece of advice for healing from the death of your beloved pet would be to acknowledge the gifts that your dog brought into your life.
Amanda Durocher [00:33:57]:
You can do this through journaling, through meditation, through walks in nature, or just being present with yourself, but asking yourself, how did your dog change your life? How did your dog show up for you in good times and bad? How did your dog help you to grow into the beautiful soul you are today? What lessons did they impart on you? What can you still learn from them even after they're gone? Bringing this awareness can help to bring some peace to your heart and also can help you to move through this grieving process. And my 3rd piece of advice, if you haven't already, I invite you to find a way to honor their life and all the gifts they brought to you in this life. I think with pets, we may think having a funeral or an honoring ceremony is silly. It is definitely not. Animals show us how lovable we are. They so often come into our lives when we need love the most and when we are broken and weary and when we need that unconditional love and support. So I believe that relationship with your pet is worth honoring through a funeral or an honoring ceremony, whatever you'd like to call it. Maybe you have the Ashes of your beloved pet, and you could spread them somewhere.
Amanda Durocher [00:35:01]:
Maybe you could bury them outside in nature at your home. Maybe you keep them inside on an altar. But finding a way to honor this pet, honor your pet's life, and this is a really helpful practice because it can help you to honor your own experience, to to slow down and remember that purpose of life and to remember all the gifts that this animal brought to you. And as I mentioned, I believe the purpose of life is love to love and and to be loved and to embody love, to love ourselves and one another. And grief reminds us to slow down to be with each other and to be with our hearts. And so I think through ceremony, we're able to slow down and be intentional, and healing really happens in stillness and in the present. And when we create Time to be present. Healing happens.
Amanda Durocher [00:35:46]:
So by creating these moments where you honor this life, the energy and the pain can begin to move because so much of our experience, so much of our pain, so much of these hard feelings want to be witnessed by us. They want to be seen. That is such a deep human need to be seen and to feel seen. And, unfortunately, a lot of people Whole in this world do not see themselves, so they are unable to see us fully. So part of the human journey is coming home to self by seeing ourself and our pain fully. So I find these moments of funerals and ceremonies to be a real honoring of self and a moment where we can see ourself and where you can fully see your dog, and the gifts that dog brought into your life. Once again, I am so sorry for your loss. Your dog loved you as much as you loved them.
Amanda Durocher [00:36:33]:
I know that for a fact. Dogs love us for who we are, and it's painful to lose someone who loves us on the good and bad days, who sees us in all our messiness. We don't let a lot of people see us like that, so honor that that but this animal who was your closest companion is no longer here. And I just keep asking you to honor that because I really want you to just fully lean into this experience because I think that through that, you will connect back to yourself fully. I honor you. I honor your dog's life. Thank you for this question. I am sending you so much love.
Outro
Amanda Durocher [00:37:12]:
Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of New View Advice. I always enjoy talking about grief. I know that may sound odd, but I really, as you can probably tell from this episode, am passionate about the gifts that grief brings into our lives, and I know that life Life doesn't end after this human experience. I don't have all the answers. I don't know the mysteries of the universe, but I do believe that life continues on. And I think that through grief, we begin to understand that life is much bigger than we often see it here on Earth. So I'm just grateful to continue having this conversation with you, and I just want to take one more moment to honor my friend, Michael Dolan. I know he's still my guardian angel.
Amanda Durocher [00:37:52]:
I know he's still watching over me. Dolan, I love you. Thank you for guiding me here. Thank you for supporting me, And I am so grateful that though your time on earth was short, that you were part of my life, and Your death opened my heart in a way that I didn't know I needed, so thank you. And thank you for everybody who listened to this episode. I hope I was able will to offer you a new view on whatever you may be going through. Sending you all my love. See you next
