Hi Meri, first I wanna say thank you for everything you do and all the resources you provide. Plz don’t feel obligated to respond if this is a personal or sensitive question but I experienced my first pet loss this year and i am still struggling to cope with it and all the feelings that come with. In your rescue work I know loss is another part of it, do you have any words of advice for keeping your strength to continue caring for animals when dealing with grief at losing them?
Hmm....it is exceedingly difficult. It is very hard to not have it impact you. As I frequently say, grief is the price of loving them. There are various ways I do cope.
I try to settle my feelings with closure. Like shrouding my babies. Making mememtos, Having a ritual so they keep dignity in death and allowing myself to cry. Never ever bottle it. You deserve to feel. You have the right to feel.
On a personal level, some strength frankly comes from my religious belief. And I am not pushing my beliefs in saying this, please do not get me wrong or misunderstand. You can absolutely disagree that's your own way, but here I intend to just merely state what it is that keeps me going personally:
To preface: Muslims believe in accountability for actions. Humans may seem to escape accountability in this life which we see as a test (hence why some evil people seem get away with it) but no one escapes it in the next. We believe in a day of judgement where it is then that accountability is presented. The abusers will be shown the sheer weight and outcome and effect of what they did to others. Those who were kind will get to see everything that kindness lead to, compounding good upon good. Why? One of the names of our God is The Merciful. The embodiment of mercy itself. And thus, for the kindness you showed, you get rewarded with beautiful things even if you never saw it immediately in the life you lived. Its not what goes around comes around. Its what goodness you gave comes back to you multiplied. Its the fact that even if you did it for no visible reward, it will come back in ways more beautiful than the mind can conceive.
Thus every smile you gave someone is a reward, sparing a bug instead of killing it is a reward, loving and being kind is rewardable. Even enduring anxiety, depression, the loss of a loved one, it all comes back. Braving on is reward able. Shedding tears is not lost.
But for these little lives you loved so much and cared for there is something else that is special: they also get summoned before you to testify for you. To say "this person held me when i was cold, this person mothered me when I was orphaned, this person took care of me and fed me when I was hungry, etc" and humans can vouch for each other in this way to increase one another in goodness. It becomes a beautiful chain of love that was never lost. A love that returns in the form of mercy and goodness. This aspect of my faith keeps my will to go on
We believe this is also not limited to Muslims either. Everyone's mercy will be rewarded. The love is never lost.
And knowing ill see these little faces again, and speak to them...that is what keeps me going. My love will never be lost, their little lives are not gone they are just saved for a little later.
Until that later, ill keep going.
