LOSS Is A 4-Letter Word

Loss. It touches everyone, at some point or another. No one is immune. So why do we feel so alone?

It's a surreal feeling, when you are in the depths of grief and the world around you, unintentionally insensitive, just keeps turning around you. Time for you feels like it suddenly stops, and yet it keeps ticking onward. There's a strange feeling of watching everyone around you from inside a different dimension, where you are all alone in your sorrow and no one understands. But everyone has touched loss, so again I ask, why do we feel so alone?

GHRS suffered a huge loss four days ago. It's only been four days. It feels like four years, four decades...and it feels like four minutes at the same time. Our first blind horse, Duncan, lost a fast but furious battle with what we believe was most likely cancer. He was happy, and healthy. The life of the party. And then he was gone. The loss is palpable. His horse friends look for him. We accidentally still make his grain. His halter and feed bucket hang on a hook with his name, a painful reminder every day that there is a hole in our sanctuary that can't ever be filled, because Duncan - he was a presence. He was the center of attention, but not in a nasty way. In a sweet and gentle way that love sometimes comes to you, whether you want it to or not. Our Diva Duncan.

We will always miss Duncan. He started something beautiful here at GHRS that we will continue for as long as we exist - the special needs rescue part of our mission. That legacy, that's what makes loss so hard sometimes, don't you think? It's the memories: who they were, what they did for you and the world they created around them, all the things you miss the most. Big things, of course, but really the little things get me the most. A special expression, a gentle touch, a certain phrase or sound, a signature smell; these are the things that elevate you into their presence, and can tailspin you back into grief when you least expect after their gone. We all understand it, but it's such a lonely place.

Maybe it feels lonely because, in a way, it needs to be a lonely place. Because here's something really important: no two losses are ever the same. So although people around you might "understand," it is never exactly the same and all the ways one loss is significant must be processed individually. Even two people touched by the same loss will experience it differently. Grief is a fog that encounters everyone, yet it may envelop you completely and shake your grounding, it may be warm and gentle, it can be cold and unbearable, or it might just pass by overhead. It is contstantly moving, transforming, re-shaping, and you can never really get your hands on it. So maybe we need to feel a little bit alone in our grief, but we can walk with one another. We can hold space for the fog, we can listen, we can be a sense of safety for those grieving around us to feel and process their emotions. We can help each other stay grounded. Animals can do this for us, too. The night that Duncan died, we stood out by his body and cried. We held each other and just cried, and then the most magical thing happened: the horses made a circle around us and stood with us in our grief. They were grieving too, you know. A gentle nudge here and there to let us know they were there, and they just

stood around us and held space. We mourned in the moonlight together, all of us, and the walls that separate humans and animals blew away in the night breeze leaving just grieivng souls who saw each other. It didn't stop the sadness, but it eased the ache of lonliness that comes with grief. No one's grief in that circle was exactly the same and yet, there was space for everyone there that night. And everyone was seen.

If you are experiencing loss of any kind, and you are curious how the therapeutic spaces animals create can help you in your journey, please reach out. Free sessions are available to anyone who is interested. Be loved, be grounded, be seen.