You thought you were doing better.
You were feeling lighter. Calmer. Maybe you even had a few days where you didn’t cry.
And then suddenly, there it is again.
A photo. A video. The sound of your pet in the background of an old recording. A familiar place. A memory you weren’t expecting.
And for a moment, it feels as though you’ve gone backwards.
The pain is there again. Fresh again.
This is normal.
When you lose someone or something you deeply love, logical thinking doesn’t always make sense.
Because grief is not logical.
The process of healing grief is not a straight line from A to B to C. There is no point where you can confidently say, “I’ve completed this stage, so now I move on to the next one.”
Grief is a journey.
It’s a process.
And sometimes you will feel better, stronger and more at peace, only for something small to bring the sadness rushing back.
That doesn’t mean you’ve lost all the healing you’ve already done.
It simply means that you loved.
Grief Is Not a Mathematical Equation
One of the most important things to understand about grief is that it is not a mathematical equation you can solve.
There is no perfect recipe.
There are no exact steps that guarantee that after a certain number of weeks or months you will feel better.
Grieving the loss of a pet is an individual journey of awareness, time, love and healing.
And every bond is different.
That is why comparing your grief to somebody else’s – or even comparing how you feel today to how you felt last week – doesn’t always help.
Some days will feel easier.
Some days won’t.
Both can be part of healing.
Give Yourself Something to Reach For
You cannot always control when grief appears.
But you can give yourself things to reach for when it does.
Something that grounds you.
Something that reminds you of the love rather than only the loss.
Something that helps you sit with what you are feeling instead of trying to push it away.
This is one of the reasons I created The Luna Deck.
The Luna Deck is a set of 37 wisdom cards created after losing my own beloved cat, Luna.
It is not about forgetting your pet or trying to make grief disappear.
It is a gentle, healing and grounding tool for the moments when you need a little support.
And because the deck is small and easy to carry, you can keep it close to you and reach for a card whenever you need one.
At home. Before bed. While travelling. Or on one of those days when grief suddenly catches you by surprise.
The Luna Deck can become a lifeline for the moments when grief appears when you least expect it.
Because healing doesn’t mean never feeling the pain again.
Sometimes healing simply means learning how to meet those moments differently – and remembering that underneath all that grief, there is still an extraordinary amount of love.