Today I’d love to welcome Marianne Soucy, author of “Healing Pet Loss – Practical Steps for Coping & Comforting Messages from Animals and Spirit Guides”. My blog post is a stop on a Marianne’s virtual book tour celebrating the launch of her new book.

I’m so excited to welcome Marianne. I was going through an extremely tough time when my cute Jack Russell was very ill during March, and as I was reading Marianne’s beautiful book, I found profound relief, healing and peace. If you’re still grieving the loss of a pet, or if you’re currently going through a tough time with a sick animal, I cannot recommend this book highly enough!

Over to Marianne!

As I start writing this post that Liesel has kindly agreed to host, I go within with the intention to write an article specifically for Liesel’s blog. Join me as I start on this journey towards healing and peace.

Becoming present

I become present right here where I am, filling out my body with my awareness. Getting grounded by focusing on my feet and their connection with the Earth. I am supported and nurtured by this magnificent Earth we live on, and I am filled with gratitude. As I focus on the top of my head, my awareness stretches upwards and I experience the vast sky above and around me – infinite space, and a feeling of freedom and expansion. As I then go into my heart center and from there experience my whole body. I am whole.

I find myself in a beautiful nature landscape – so much life around me; animals of all kinds, trees, and big open areas like the magical African savannah. To me who doesn’t live there, it’s an awesome experience to sense and see all the animals characteristic to that place in their natural environment – even though we’re only on an “imaginal” journey and not a “real” one.

The healing power of nature

Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness.

 ~ Eckhart Tolle

Spending time in nature can be one of the most healing things you can do for yourself, if you allow yourself to really be present where you are and notice everything around you. Animals, plants, and the rest of nature have kept the ability to simply be – unlike most of us humans who are mostly anywhere but in the present – we live in the past or in the future, which basically means we’re living in our minds. And since the Now is really all that is, we have a constant feeling of incompleteness; a feeling that something is missing. It is only by returning to the Now, to being present in your body with what is happening in and around you that true peace – like the peace you experience and see in nature and animals – will be yours too.

Returning to peace after losing an animal companion

That peace, or that ability to be in the present, is part of what makes our animal companions so important and precious to us. If you have ever had a dog or a cat, for example, you will have experienced how present they are. And when you are with them, they let you tap into that presence too. That is one of the great lessons our pets can teach us.

And when you lose that animal companion, the grief and the emptiness is huge and can be difficult to deal with, but it is that same ability to be present that can be part of your healing process after their loss.

While you might feel most inclined to resist the pain of the grief, it is through allowing your grief that you will heal. A quote I am reminded of as I write this is:

 “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

~A.A. Milne, Winnie The Pooh.

Action step

Spend some time in nature and let the beauty and peace you find there also be part of you. And then carry that peace and beauty with you when you return to your daily life.

A question

How can you express the beauty and peace you experienced in nature: perhaps you took photos you can now put up or use in a journal – or in a blog post. You can draw, paint, sew, quilt, or perhaps sing out what is waiting to be sung? In which way can you best ‘capture’ or express the beauty and peace you connected with during your time in nature?

A bit about Marianne Soucy

Marianne Soucy is a Healing Pet Loss Guide, life coach and the author of “Healing Pet Loss – Practical Steps for Coping & Comforting Messages from Animals and Spirit Guides”. If you wish to learn more about coping with and healing after the loss of an animal companion, check out Marianne’s book on Amazon and see the whole book tour schedule on her website www.HealingPetLoss.com.