Learning to Grieve What I Loved

 My first experience of unconditional love came on four legs.

As a little girl, I did not feel safe in my home, but I felt safe with my dog. She was my companion, my comfort, my refuge from a world that often felt frightening.

When I left home after high school, I was told she could not come with me.

I had to let her go.

I don’t know that I ever truly grieved that loss.

Years later, life brought me another beloved dog. By then, I had spent years caring for my grandmother with Alzheimer’s and walking beside my daughter through her addiction. I was exhausted in ways I didn’t yet understand.

When it came time to move, I made the painful decision to rehome my beloved friend.

At the time, I had many reasons.

I told myself I was doing what was practical.

What was necessary.

But years later, a deeper truth surfaced.

I had done to myself what had been done to me as a child.

I had taken away something I loved.

Something that brought me comfort.

Something that made me feel safe.

Not out of cruelty, but out of a lifetime of believing that love was something to be sacrificed.

The grief of that decision still lives in me.

Not because I made the best decision I could with what I knew then, but because I never allowed myself to mourn what was lost.

Perhaps that is what is asking for my attention now.

Not judgment.

Not guilt.

Grief.

A grief that has been waiting patiently for many years to finally be felt.

And maybe healing begins by letting my heart break for what it loved.