Not Rushed. Not Forced. Just Met.

Jul 11

There's a moment I see over and over again, in my sessions and in my own life with animals.

An animal is aging. Or ill. Or slowly declining. Not eating the way they used to. Not bouncing back the way we hoped. Not "themselves" in whatever way we've quietly decided that should look like. And their person, who loves them with everything they have, starts trying to help them through it. Maybe it's more supplements. More vet visits, or seeing other practitioners. More food options to entice them at the food bowl. More watching of them. More wanting and willing for them to be okay.

All of this is from a place of love. And all of it carries something underneath that we rarely stop to notice.

When our animals are sick or fading, something in us reaches out. Even when our words are soft. Even when our hands are gentle. Underneath our care, there is often a silent energy saying:

Please eat something.

Please get better.

Please hold on.

Please don't decline yet.

Please show me you're still okay.

They feel this. Not through our words. Through how our body naturally braces in uncertainty. Our hovering. Our sighs at the food bowl. Our watching. The way we search their face and body for signs. Animals are constantly reading the relational field between us. They feel when our care carries our hidden urgency. Often before we know or feel it ourselves.

I learned this long before I knew anything about animal communication.

Hana with her younger brindle Boxer dog named Nikko

Nikko was my first dog as an adult, a brindle boxer. After her stroke, I cared for her for eight months before her death. Her swallow reflex had been affected, so we changed how and what she ate. We gave her Sub-Q fluids regularly to keep her hydrated. She had many TIAs, mini strokes, and aspirated pneumonia 6 times, and I rode every up and every down with her.

I felt helpless. There were many times I wanted to let her go because watching her struggle was so hard.

In those months, I only knew what to do for her. The feeding changes, the fluids, the appointments, the watching, the managing. I had no idea how to simply be with her. Let alone how to be with myself and everything I was feeling. I believed that if I cried in front of her, I was being weak, so I hid my tears from her. And underneath it all lived a quiet magical thinking: if I just kept doing enough, somehow I could fix her, save her, and Nikko would become the only dog in the world who would live forever.

And then Nikko would rally. She would bounce back, again and again, and each time she taught me a little more about what this journey actually was. She was preparing me the whole time. She was the one showing me how to be with her.

And when she was ready, she made it clear after a restless night during which she could no longer lie down. There was no mistaking it. It was now time.

(The photo below was taken 3 days prior to her passing)

Looking back now, I can see what I couldn't see then. So much of my urgency in those eight months, the wanting her to eat, the wanting her to stabilise between her bouts of pneumonia, the wanting her ups and downs to stop and just stay up. It wasn't only about her changes; watching what I saw as her suffer was unbearable to me. Some of what I was trying to fix was her pain and discomfort. And the other part of it was my own suffering. My helplessness as I watched all this unfold was that I couldn't stop or change it.

That's the tender place this blog is asking us to look at, together.

The care is real. The love is real. Nothing about it is in question.

And woven into it is often a thread of our own need. The need for relief from the helplessness. The need to feel like we're doing something. The need for them to be okay so that we too can be okay. And this thread holds our tender fears of the time we have left, and now the reality of the bursting bubble that protected us from having to think about their mortality and impending death.

Our heart and nervous system are reaching for certainty and comfort in a situation it cannot control. And in the uncertainty of it all, the most natural place we reach is toward our beloved animal in front of us. If they would just eat. Just rest. Just stabilise. Just give us a sign. Then we could finally exhale, and all would go back to normal, and we would have more time.

Here is what I want you to know, from the animals themselves.

They understand.

In my sessions, animals share this again and again. They know why we hover, why we push, why we try so hard. They feel the love inside the urgency and fear. There is no judgment on their side of the relationship, and no disappointment. They see us fully, and they hold us in the same unconditional love they always have.

And here is what most of us don't realise as we pour ourselves into their physical care. They are caring for us right back. Quietly, in their own way, they are working to emotionally prepare us, just as we are working to physically support them. This journey was never one-directional. It is something you are walking together, each of you tending to the other.

What they wish for, what they express to me again and again, is to be seen as more than their decline. More than the ailing body, the missed meals, the medications, the symptoms we track so carefully. Their essence hasn't gone anywhere. They are still in there, whole, and what they long for most is for their person to spend time with them simply being. Not doing. Being.

With Nikko, I could only do. I didn't yet know there was another way. And it was Nikko herself, through all those rallies and returns, who was teaching it to me.

I'm walking this now with Ceelo, my thirteen-year-old cat.

These past 6 ½ months, he's been on a slow decline with lymphoma. He's on his medications, doing well, with slow and gradual changes. And he is gifting me something that so many of my animals, between Nikko and him, did not; most of them left with little time after a diagnosis. Ceelo is giving me time. He is giving me the whole journey. We presently have more good days than bad, and the bad ones become my reminders to savour even more of what we have.

I'm in a different place in this dance now. There is less pressure on him. More acceptance in me.

Ceelo also carries much of my history of the life losses he has held me through in his 13 years with me, and I work, yet again, to find my inner anchor and how to be my own for myself when he is gone. Being truthful. The helplessness is still the hardest thing to sit with. Loving him and not being able to change what's coming, that feeling doesn't go away with experience.

What's changed is what I do with it.

Now, when the helplessness rises, I give it space instead of handing it to him. I don't rush to a decision or an action just to relieve the feeling. I let it be here. And when the panic and the worry come up, and they do, from time to time, I give them space too.

Because I've learned something in this dance. When I make room for what I feel, I remove the pressure from Ceelo to be anything other than himself, in his own experience.

Then I can come back to what's actually here. The snuggle. His purr. This moment, where he is still with me.

Acceptance doesn't mean giving up. It doesn't mean we stop caring for them, advocating for them, supporting their comfort.

It means meeting them where they actually are. Instead of where we need them to be, so we can breathe more deeply without bracing our bodies.

Less pressure. Not less love.

There is a profound relief an animal feels when they sense:

I am allowed to be where I am. I don't have to be okay for you.

Not rushed. Not forced. Not pulled toward better before their body is ready, or held back from leaving when it's time.

Just met.

And it is often from that place, presence, pacing, softness, that the most meaningful moments of this journey emerge. Not because we did more. Because we finally let ourselves, and them, simply be in it together.

If you recognise yourself somewhere in this, at the food bowl, in the late-night watching, in the ache of wanting them to just be okay, I want you to know that what you're feeling has a place here.

The helplessness, the urgency, the fear, the love, all tangled together. All of it is allowed to be part of this, because this time is all of this.

Society hasn’t taught or prepared us for walking this journey of loving someone through their decline. There is no set map, and every journey with every animal is different.

Give yourself the same gentleness you are trying so hard to give them. Make a little more room inside you to acknowledge what you feel, so it doesn't have to travel in energy through your hands, your hovering, your watching, into them as a silent wanting for them to be different, to be better. And in the space that acknowledgement creates, acceptance of what is can quietly take its place. Your animal will feel the difference.

You are learning this as you go. So am I. Every animal I've loved has taught me another piece of it.

And wherever you and your beloved animal are in this dance today, may you find a moment to set the worry down, even if just for a breath, and simply be with them.

This is the salve. For both of you.

An Invitation to Walk This Differently: Learning to Be, Not Just Do…

If something in this piece stirred a longing to walk this journey with your animal differently, with more presence, less pressure, and a deeper way of being together, this is exactly what I created Embracing Deeper Connections for.

It's an eight-module course for pet guardians navigating aging, illness, anticipatory grief, and end of life with their beloved animal. It will meet you wherever you are in your journey and gently show you how to be with your animal and with yourself through it all.

The online version is available now, ready whenever you are: EDC ONLINE

And twice a year, I offer it live, where we walk through it together: EDC LIVE

Both are here when you're ready.