I am an introvert who has always felt more at home with animals than with people. In 2002 when Charlie, my beloved standard poodle, died, my grief was excruciating. His death shook my Buddhist foundation and propelled me to deepen my faith and life experience with years of trainings and certifications in Reiki, animal communication, shamanism, Healing Touch for Animals®, Toltec wisdom and Life Coaching. Ultimately, Charlie’s death was a gift to my spiritual awakening. (Explore my Healing Arts Education below)

These wisdom traditions helped sustain me when my mother died in a car accident. I was suddenly faced with inheriting her farm with a large number of dogs, cats, horses and cattle.  Adding to my grief, I had to make heartbreaking decisions of which animals to re-home so that I had a cohesive, manageable animal family. Within a span of 12 years, I hospiced and euthanized 16 animals.  Selling mom’s cattle herd, an estate business transaction of taking money for sentient beings to be sent to slaughter, raised an ugly ethical and moral dilemma for me, a vegetarian, to reconcile. Also during this time, I suffered shattering splits with 2 close family members and deaths of 4 very beloved people in my life. After most of the animals had died, I decided to sell the farm. It broke my heart to say goodbye to the home that was my mom’s pride and joy and had also utterly captured my heart. At times during all this, I was laid bare, twisted in numbing grief.

My only option, I found, was to surrender and allow grief to be my teacher. Over time I learned how to be in relationship with it, to navigate it graciously. It was an odyssey of acquiring self compassion. Grief taught me that while we will always miss the physical presence of a beloved, grief is bearable once we are able to find peace and love within ourselves so that we can continue to feel the reciprocal love that always remains. And so it seemed a natural step to become certified in companioning others through their grief with animal loss. For me, holding space for others while they grieve is a sacred honor because grief is love. And what’s more sacred than love?