Pet Loss as a Portal for Deeper Healing—if we choose to walk through it.

Losing a pet is often dismissed in our society as a lesser kind of grief—but anyone who has gone through it knows just how deep and life-altering it can be. As someone who now specializes in pet loss grief, I’ve come to see this kind of loss not just as a painful end—but as a doorway. A portal. An unexpected invitation to go deeper into our own healing. But I didn’t come to this realization in the way you might think.

Ironically enough, it was during a time when I was processing profound grief related to the loss of my father and my surrogate grandfather that something unexpected began to stir. Memories and emotions I hadn’t thought about in years started surfacing—not about the humans I had lost, but about my childhood pets.

I grew up on a hobby farm, surrounded by animals. Loss was part of life early on. Some animals passed away, others vanished without explanation. The latter carried its own kind of weight—a grief without closure, the kind that lingers in the corners of your memory. We usually had rituals when one of our animals died—memorials, goodbyes, little ceremonies that made space for our emotions. But not always. And it was those "not always" losses that showed up during my time of deep sorrow. The ones I didn’t know I had buried.

That’s when something clicked for me. I began to wonder: could one of the reasons pet loss cuts so deep be that it touches something beyond the present moment? Could it be that it stirs the inner child within us?

Think about it. Pets connect with us in a way few humans do. They speak to that soft, open, trusting part of ourselves. The part that still believes in love without condition, in presence without judgment. For many of us, especially those of us who didn’t grow up feeling safe or seen, our pets were our refuge. They were the ones who bore silent witness to our joy, our pain, our secrets. When we lose them, we don’t just lose a companion—we lose a connection to that innocent part of ourselves that felt safe in their presence.

And so I began to wonder: what if pet loss is more than just grief? What if it’s a portal—a tender doorway into old, unresolved pain that’s asking to be seen and tended to? What if, in our heartbreak, there’s also an opportunity?

An opportunity to unearth buried grief.

To re-parent our inner child.

To offer love and compassion to places within us that were silenced long ago.

Of course, walking through that doorway is a choice. We can numb, avoid, distract—most of us have. But if we choose to turn toward the grief, even gently, even slowly, it has the potential to show us something deeper. Something healing.

I don’t say any of this lightly. Grief is not tidy. It doesn’t follow a timeline, and it certainly doesn’t need to be productive. But I do believe that when we’re willing to sit with it, something sacred can happen. Pet loss, as heart-wrenching as it is, might just be one of the most overlooked invitations to reconnect with ourselves—especially the parts of us we’ve long forgotten.

So I invite you to think about this, just for a moment.

Is it possible that the grief you're feeling isn't only about the pet you lost?

Is it possible that it's opening a door to something older, something deeper—something ready to be healed?

If so, be gentle. Be curious. And know that walking through that portal doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’re brave.