Does Your Pet In Spirit Miss You Too?

Does your pet in spirit miss you as much as you miss them? In this episode, we talk about what your pet wants you to know. 

In this must-listen episode, you will learn:

• The real reason why pet grief is so devastating
• Where that "missing you" feeling really comes from 
• What your pet wants you to know about what they remember and how they feel about you and your life together
• A scientific study that verifies our continued connection across time and space
• How to help your nervous system through the pet grief process
• Tips you can use starting right now to keep your bond with your pet in spirit alive after physical death
• And so much more

Resources mentioned in this podcast:

• Research study
• Pet reincarnation guide
• Pet parent grief support guide

Are you animal communication curious? Have I got something special for you! My new Animal Communication Adventure to Mastery student learning program just launched! This program is designed to be a gentle, yet thorough, serious, yet lighthearted path to interspecies fluency that pairs beautifully with my ongoing live Animal Communication Adventure Practice Circle for developing student practitioners. Visit animallovelanguages.com and click on programs to join us.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Let's Talk to Animals
• 1:08 Does Your Pet in Spirit Miss You?
• 5:12 The Missing You Feeling Explained
• 12:29 How Animals Experience Transition
• 24:29 Signs Your Pet Is Still Connected
• 36:58 How to Reconnect With Your Pet
• 48:48 Honoring Your Pet's Legacy

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome back to let's Talk to Animals, the podcast all species can enjoy together. My name is Shannon Cutts. I am an animal sensitive and intuitive, a Reiki master practitioner and an animal communication teacher with animallovelanguagescom and for our purposes here today, I am also your friendly neighborhood hostess and guide through the wild, wise and wonderful world of interspecies communication. Call me crazy, but I truly believe that animal communication has the power to save, heal and restore our planet for all species to enjoy and share. When we learn to communicate with one another, we begin to realize we are so much more alike than different. We care about each other. We become friends. On this podcast we talk about what the animals have to say and share and why our pets truly are our partners, empathic friends and teachers. I am so glad you have joined us here for this fresh new episode of let's Talk to Animals, so let's dive in. Hi Shannon here. Welcome back to let's Talk to Animals, and in this episode I am going to be unpacking what has become one of the most frequently asked questions that you want to ask your pet after they've transitioned out of their body and into what we might call the spirit space or the etheric realm or the light realm, however you like to think about it, or relate to what happens when we leave our physical body to return to our light body or our soul body. And in this episode which I'm calling, does your pet in spirit miss you as much as you miss them? What the animals have told me about how they feel about you we're going to be taking a look at, where does that I miss you so much feeling actually originate from? Where does it come from? Why is it so persistent? And does your pet in spirit feel it too? What do your animals want you to know about? What they remember about you and your life together, and how they feel about needing to after your animal's physical body has ceased to become a safe or comfortable home for them. And before we dive in today, I also want to just give you the blanket disclaimer that what I am about to share with you, first of all, I have not been in some think tank of one, somewhere, dreaming all of this stuff up by myself. Everything that I'm about to share with you today is something that the animals have taught me, either when I'm talking with your pets in one-to-one sessions, when I'm talking with my own animals here and in spirit, and also when I am working with my student practitioners in the weekly live practice circle that I facilitate over Zoom for my animal communication students. So this is a work in progress. Many episodes over the past six seasons I have continued to revisit, to update as the animals teach me new things, and this is no different. So if you've had a different experience or you've had experiences that maybe I could learn from, I always love to hear from you, and I just want you to know that there is more to learn about our transition process, the life between lives, experience, the afterlife experience, and probably our human brains could even ever hold. And so this is just a snapshot in time of what I have learned to date in my day-to-day life as a professional animal communicator and animal communication teacher, talking with pets from around the world.

Speaker 1: 4:29

Now where I want to start for today's episode is to answer the big pink elephant in the room question, as I like to call these does your pet miss you when they've transitioned to spirit? The simple answer is yes. Now, of course, there's a more complicated answer as well. What happens and this again has come from the animals that have taught me. What happens when we enter our physical bodies is we come in with two big agenda items, and I feel like I say this over and over again, but that's just because I feel like it's so essential for us to remember that life here in these physical bodies feels complicated, but it's actually really simple. Our first agenda item is we come here with something to learn. The animals have reiterated over and over again nobody enters into what they call these big physical body spacesuits without needing or wanting to learn a lesson or a series of lessons. When we're wanting to learn a lesson, what we're really wanting to do is to grow and to evolve our soul level consciousness. Even when we're in these physical spacesuits or these physical bodies and the animals have reiterated over and over again nobody comes to what they call earth school without having something on the agenda, on the life path agenda, the soul path agenda of something to learn.

Speaker 1: 5:55

The other reason is we have something to teach, something to share, something to give or offer and because of that there is what I like to call a necessary amnesia that takes place, so we don't remember everything. That's another reason why I feel like there's more to be learned and experienced about the transition to spirit or soul space, the experience of the life between physical incarnations or life between lives, experience and the experience of being in our life body than we could ever hold with these human physical brains of ours. And there's also a necessary amnesia that occurs so that we can actually learn. If we remembered everything that we've ever known about everyone and everything, we probably wouldn't be very teachable. So we can come in with so we can come in with fears, we can come in with insecurities, we can come in with preconceived ideas where we're born, what kind of body we're born into, our gender, all kinds of different things can feed into this necessary amnesia so that we have our best and brightest opportunity to learn.

Speaker 1: 7:02

And that also includes whether or not there is really a separation in our relationships with one another when one of us is in a physical body or a spacesuit and the other one of us isn't. And that also includes a deeper understanding of what missing, or that longing for reunion or that feeling of separation, what that really is. And is it really a missing, is it really a denial of relationship? Is it really something precious that I feel like I can't live without has been taken from me by force? Or is it a lack of remembering what relationship really is, and I realize we're going deep very quickly. In my world, and especially if you are a let's Talk to Animals podcast frequent listener, you know that one of my mottos is go deep or go home, so we always like to jump right off the deep end.

Speaker 1: 8:02

There is no conversation about the spirit, space or transition or pet death or reincarnation. That is not deep and that does not sound a little woo-woo, if you will, on certain levels. But I feel like this experience of dying, what we call dying and what we call being born, these are the two experiences in life that are quite literally common to all of us, and so sometimes I actually wonder why there isn't more curiosity about it, or maybe a better way to phrase that would be why we so often let our fearfulness of the unknown or the not remembered to get in the way of our curiosity. And if you're an animal communication student of mine, you know that we always start with noticing, wondering and getting curious, the building blocks of everything and anything that leads anywhere and everywhere. So that is the spirit with which we approach today's podcast episode topic as well Noticing, wondering, getting curious, and one of the areas of animal communication that I am the most enduringly curious about.

Speaker 1: 9:10

Is this what I call this missing you, feeling this, I can't live my life without you, even feeling. I spent years, in fact all 24 years of my soul birds, 24 years with me saying to him over and over where you go. I go to the point where it appalled my former partner and my parents and people who knew me and loved me during those years, because our soul bond was that of the twin flame soul agreement. And if you've worked with me, either one-on-one or in practice circle, or you've listened to the episode about the eight most common types of soul agreements that we share with our animals which one do you have, which was also earlier this season, season six you understand that the twin flame soul agreement, at least as it has been shared with and presented to me by the animals, is the most intense. It's the kind that can create what we call heartbreak syndrome, which is a very real medical phenomenon that mimics a heart attack. It has sent some of my pet parent clients to the hospital or even the ER when they've lost their animals because the heartbreak is so intensive and all-consuming.

Speaker 1: 10:19

So just understand that this sensation of missing you is worth exploring on multiple levels, because it can even put us in harm's way if we don't fully grasp the nature of what's unfolding in the relationship between ourselves and the animal whom we so love. So this missing you, feeling the animals tell me this is a very unique feeling to being in the embodied life experience. So when we're in these physical bodies and we have this kind of temporary hold on our memories that we're calling amnesia, I just don't remember everything. I don't have access necessarily to the full consciousness that's available to me and the interconnectivity that is my real existence, my real experience of life. Then if I'm suddenly denied the company of the one that I love the most, whom I feel the most dependent on, most reliant on, the most dedicated to, well, I might go a little bit nuts, I might misunderstand and assume that suddenly that relationship, which has felt like my lifeblood, has been removed or cut off from me and I no longer have access to it, and that could very well precipitate some kind of crisis.

Speaker 1: 11:33

So this is very serious and I want you to understand this, that this is another reason what makes this so worth exploring, so you can keep yourself safe and sane, especially if you're walking your beloved soul pet through their transition right now. It can give you a little bit of a safety buffer for your emotional life and your bond with your pet and give them a little bit more comfort of knowing that when they do need to leave their physical body for real, for good, that you'll be okay. So they're saying this missing you, feeling that we feel so strongly is a part of this necessary amnesia, so that we can learn and grow. And one of the big lessons in this necessary amnesia is to transcend this feeling of being so limited, isolated and cut off from the ones that we love who do not have physical bodies at the moment. So what the animals are really saying is it doesn't matter if I have a physical body or not, we are still connected.

Speaker 1: 12:34

And for this reason, this missing you, experience this tremendous, what I call the grief firestorm, where we have this biochemical physical reaction where our body, our sympathetic nervous system, is full on fight, flight, freeze mode and we are pumping out adrenaline and cortisol like nobody's business for days and then weeks at a time, because our primitive survival system doesn't understand the difference between the loss of our pet's body and a saber-toothed tiger attack. So it's like we're under attack Like a saber-toothed tiger, has been stalking us for days and then weeks and sometimes months, and I've even seen it last into years, and we cannot shut off that sympathetic nervous system response that is the grief firestorm. We've got to detox our physical organism from all of those stress hormones before we can even approach creating a new foundation and a new sense of self. And some of this does belong in a different episode and I have addressed it before in pet grief and the episodes on what it's really like to live with your reincarnated pet while you're going through grief. And there's another episode on five tips for moving through the grief experience faster. And those are really designed to address this biochemical reaction that is unique to those of us who are inhabiting a physical body.

Speaker 1: 14:02

Our body does something when we lose quote, unquote someone. Really what we're losing is their physical body. But in our pet's case, those physical bodies are especially cute and cuddly and soft and warm and furry or feathered or shelled or finned or scaled, and we just have physical reaction to not having access to them. When my soul bird Pearl died, I shared an episode about what that was like and I carried his little feathery body around in my hands for hours, hours. I didn't want to let his body go, even though he came and he broke through within an hour of me finding his body and realizing he had passed. Suddenly he broke through my grief and talked to me. I still carried his body around for hours. I would still have it. If my mom hadn't helped me through the process of burying him. I would probably still have it in my hands right now.

Speaker 1: 15:01

So there is a very real biochemical connection that we create one body to another and our body goes into sudden, dramatic withdrawal. No matter how extended your pet's end-of-life transition and or hospice process has been, when we suddenly lose access to their physical body, we go into sudden withdrawal and a portion of the oxytocin that has kept us feeling so deeply bonded it is cut off. And we have to understand. Our brain pumps out chemicals all day long and when we are suddenly denied access to them, that is like being denied access to a drug that we are now dependent on.

Speaker 1: 15:41

So just understanding this missing you feeling in as much depth and respect as we can, realizing that we are going through something life altering, and this missing you feeling it has a biochemical, physical component. It has an emotional, chemical component and it has a soul level component. And the lesson lies here. We can't do a whole heck of a lot about the biochemical or even the emotional firestorm level, other than to drink lots of water, to breathe and extend our exhale and to move our body. That is what keeps our lymphatic system moving and detoxing our body, detoxing our body and detoxing our body. And the other thing that we can and must do if we ever want to move through the grief firestorm is we must address the soul level lesson that we're here to learn, which is that the body may die. The body may die over and over and over again.

Speaker 1: 16:37

My petal pearl, who is the reincarnation of my soul, bird pearl and I have a whole other episode on that as well, if you want to reference that and take a listen to what that process was like but my bird, my love, has had four bodies. She's on her fourth body with me in this lifetime. So bodies will come and bodies will go. The relationship remains and that is the lesson. That is why we feel this missing you, feeling so strongly, and no amount of time or detox can fully ever take it away, because there's this portion of our brain that says you, the one that I love, I no longer have access to and it feels so unfair and it feels so powerless. Somebody took you away from me and I can't live without you.

Speaker 1: 17:27

And I've had many pet parent clients say I have had animals all my life, but this one, this relationship, this bond, is different. This one I don't know if I'm going to survive it. I cannot live without this animal. Trust me, I understand as much as one soul can ever understand the experiences of another. I identify with what you are describing and there's an aspect of me in this necessary amnesia that still feels that way about every bird I've ever lost, even understanding that my Perky and my Jacob and my Pearl are now back as Miss Petal. Because we have relationships, we have memories of ourselves learning and growing through those time periods with those other bodies that don't look exactly like this one and don't sound or act exactly like this one. And if you want more information on that, this episode very nicely dovetails with the one about the similarities and differences in our reincarnated pets and why those exist. So that's another episode you might want to take a listen to, but for our purposes here, our missing you experience is fueled by these three levels this biochemical, physical reaction, the emotional reaction and also the mental understanding.

Speaker 1: 18:46

Of course, my animal communication students all come in with the understanding that we have two brain hemispheres, not just one. We have our right brain, which is highly intuitive and very connective, and we have our left brain hemisphere, which is not intuitive at all and very individualistic. And since we are educated and trained to live primarily from the left brain mind our whole lives, we seldom even question why do I even have a right brain hemisphere and what is it there for? And part of the reason it's there, why these experiences are so challenging for us, is because we're being invited into our right brain hemisphere, because that's the only place that's linked in with our heart and our sensory system and our gut and that's where we can feel the continuation of the relationship that we have with our soul pet, even though their body is gone. So, those of you who welcome to soul pet back I've worked with many of you and you welcomed one of your soul pets back.

Speaker 1: 19:38

Through pet reincarnation you can feel the continuation of what I call the energetic signature of your animal. This is how you know. This is your animal returned to you reincarnated to you versus some other animal. It's the energetic signature. That's a huge part of the lesson when we, as pet parents or animal guardians, we say I choose pet reincarnation rather than I choose to adopt a new. I want to wake up, I want to remember, I want to relearn how to use my right brain hemisphere. I want to shake off this amnesia and reconnect to all that is in the universal consciousness and the fact that our relationships never, never sever, but our bodies wear out when our pet transitions out of their body.

Speaker 1: 21:35

What they have told me again and again, as I've talked with your animals, is I leave my body when my perception is it is no longer a safe, comfortable or reliable home for me to dwell in. And they're making a very clear distinction between my home, my temporary physical home that allows me to exist in earth school as a physical organism alongside you. That's my body, and me. I'm living in my body. So that's why they often call them the space suits. Of course, I was born here in Houston, texas, and grew up here, and this is space city Houston, so of course they would use a space suits analogy with NASA, just around the corner from me.

Speaker 1: 22:17

But just know that that's the reference and they're letting me know that, from the physical side you still being in your physical body, with this necessary amnesia and this over-reliance on the very individualistic, non-intuitive left brain hemisphere, you are going to most likely experience this as a loss. You're missing someone who was here yesterday and isn't here today, and the data that you're using to support your experience and or prove your belief that you have lost a relationship is the absence of their physical body. Now, from their side, from the animal's side, the missing you experience also exists, but it is quite different. They do not have truly have never had the level and the extent of necessary amnesia that we do. This is why, when I asked the animals what does the word pet mean? Why do we use this to describe you?

Speaker 1: 23:14

They said we are your partner, empathic friend and teacher. And empathy means to feel as if, or to suffer with, and it implies and requires living from our right brain hemisphere and our heart and gut. So we feel, rather than think, our way through life, and our animals are exceptional at this. So, unlike us, they never really lose their sense of interconnectivity, and that includes in between different states of consciousness. So if I'm in my physical body versus I'm in my light body and the etheric or the soul space. I still remain connected. I don't forget that the connection has nothing really to do with the physical body. That's functional for the purpose of allowing us to share a set of lessons here on Earth School, where we learn from each other and we teach each other, but it's not necessary for the relationship. It's actually an optional add-on that we can have but don't need to be connected. But we humans especially feel like we need it in order to. We think rather that we need it in order to be connected.

Speaker 1: 24:14

And a big part of our animals' feelings when they transition to spirit, a big part of their experience of the missing you, I miss you. There's really two main facets to it. Number one is sure they miss being in a physical body because it offers some perks that you don't get in the light body. You can't slurp peanut butter or dive into a plate of pasta when you don't get in the light body. You can't slurp peanut butter or dive into a plate of pasta when you don't have a physical body. You can't snuggle together when only one of you has a physical body anymore. You can't go on long walks and sniff. You can't perch on their head when you don't have a body to perch with.

Speaker 1: 24:54

So there are tangible physical experiences that are beautiful and wonderful to have that can't be experienced in the same way when you're in your light body. It's more like the essence or the outline of the experience. If you've ever looked at the sun and then closed your eyes and you could still see the shadow of the sun around the edges of your inner vision, that's what it's like. It's the impression, a thumbprint, or see the shadow of the sun around the edges of your inner vision, that's what it's like. It's the impression, a thumbprint or a paw print of the experience, not the full contact sport that it is to be here in a physical body. So that's one aspect Many animals do miss, that it's the icing on the cake, if you will, or the carrot at the end of the stick, depending on how difficult the lessons are that you have chosen to tackle from one lifetime, one embodied lifetime, to the next.

Speaker 1: 25:40

But the other element is genuine concern for us and frustration because our animals, when they transition to spirit, their big objective is to make that reconnection as quickly as possible, to let us know that they're still with us and that the relationship continues, and so that's where we see so many signs and symbolism that tugs at the edge of our intuitive awareness. That's why I'm so passionate about doing my free webinar series Intuitive Development for Pet Parents and if you haven't been a part of that yet, be sure you're on my weekly love letters email list so you can get notified the next time I do it. You can just head over to animallovelanguagescom and click on the little pink bar at the top to get added. I am so passionate about helping pet parents wake up to your inbuilt intuitive operating system, what I call your iOS, because the moment your pet transition, their number one priority doesn't change. It's still a focus on you as your partner, empathic friend and teacher. They are desperate to let you know that they're okay. They are desperate to feel that reconnection and the relief that comes from knowing you're going to survive this and you're not just going to be an empty shell walking around unwilling and unable to love again because you're so distraught and you, they can never open up again, they could never love again and they just haven't recovered. And your pet doesn't want that for you. They want you to know that you're still together.

Speaker 1: 27:25

Body optional. It's always been optional. That's why you recognized one another the first time you met, because you already had a relationship. This is one of the things that I teach inside Animal Communication Adventure to Mastery. My signature student learning program is the presence of energetic signatures how you know it's your animal and not somebody else and how they know it's you and not somebody else. If you didn't have that preexisting relationship, you wouldn't recognize one another in bodies you've never seen before. So the relationship existed before you met one another, body to body, and it continues to exist after one or both of the bodies are no longer available, and this is the missing you sensation.

Speaker 1: 28:05

This is also why I get a lot of questions every week from pet parents who've lost an animal and they say is there a waiting period before I can talk with my animal? And my answer is no. If we're talking about a waiting period for the animal, there can sometimes be a waiting period if you are in so much grief and distress that you are not in a place where your nervous system is even willing to entertain the continuation of the relationship, and that's a very individualistic experience. So no two humans are alike that way. But for your pet the moment they enter the spirit dimension. Their number one concern is that, making sure they do everything that they can to reconnect and continue their relationship. That's how much they're devoted to us and to our well-being and our growth and our continuation of our life lessons and our life path.

Speaker 1: 28:58

I've had pet parents send me images. One last week sent me an image of their pet's face as an outline in the TV screen. I had another pet parent a few months ago who told me that every time she sat down on the couch at night at the same time that she and her dog and spirit used to cuddle together, that the lights would flicker and the TV would go on and off. So electricity is one of the easiest ways for our animals, who are in their energetic or light body state, to manipulate frequency and get our attention. For me, the little kind of shadowy picture behind us right now, if you're watching the video version, an outline of my soul, bird Pearl, appeared on that painting that I've had for years the day he passed and has been there ever since. So there are all kinds of ways that our animals will let us know. I've had pet parents tell me I was out walking and I saw an animal who was the exact spitting image of my animal who just passed. And I've walked this way all the time. I've never seen an animal that looked like that before. So there are all kinds of ways they can send animal messengers. They can temporarily appear in a physical body manifestation.

Speaker 1: 30:11

There are all kinds of mysteries as to how exactly's strong enough to override your sympathetic nervous system saying relationship is gone, I have no access to it. I have to wonder and wait. If I go to some place after my body dies, I might see them again. Someplace after my body dies, I might see them again. And so your grief and agony is being suddenly cut off from this relationship that is part of your lifeblood, and their grief and agony is I'm trying to get through. I'm trying to place a call, I'm trying to send a text, I'm trying to reconnect in some way, and I'm not getting through.

Speaker 1: 31:05

So the missing you experience is the same, and what I want to emphasize here is that the intensity that you feel, it's only part biochemical. Definitely, there's the biochemical part, because when we're in a physical body, our physical body does certain things in order to help us survive experiences that are catastrophic to us that are extremely dangerous to us, that are potentially life ending to us, and one of those things is to pump out a certain series of chemical messengers that we call hormones. And we've got a detox from that, and we've already talked about how primitive our survival system really is and how it hasn't evolved with our times. It doesn't understand the first world dangers we live with today. It only understands Sabertooth's tiger. So there is that level, but there's also the level of understanding that, since the relationship itself continues, whether your pet has a physical body or not, only half of that intensity of missing you is yours, the other half is your pets.

Speaker 1: 32:02

And this is actually science supported and it's pretty amazing. And I'll put a link in the show notes to the study that I'm about to reference. And I'm doing that for two reasons One, because it would take too long to explain the full study on a podcast episode, and two, because I don't know all the science-y terms that they use in that article and I'd rather you read it directly. But just understand, there's something called non-locality theory or quantum entanglement theory and what scientists have been able to prove down to the level of atoms and protons tiny, tiny, tiny, infinitesimal little building block particles. Once there is a direct energetic connection what we're calling a relationship, in this case between two separate particles forever after anything one does affects the other, they can share energy back and forth, they can borrow and give energy to each other. So this is the very microcosmic level of the theory of when the butterfly flaps its wings on one side of the world, a tsunami may happen on the other.

Speaker 1: 33:07

Now we're talking at the quantum level, where in the spirit space, in the etheric space, all the way up to the highest vibrational frequency, there is a reverberation when one physical body shuts down and essentially dies, becomes non-habitable, and the relationship that you share with that other light source, that other energetic being who once inhabited that body, that continues and it can follow you. It does follow you both, regardless of what vibrational frequency you are existing on. So obviously we access a higher, lighter vibrational frequency when we are not lugging around one of these heavy spacesuits. These spacesuits are like what the astronauts have to wear on the moon in order to keep them from floating away. And when your animal sheds their spacesuit, that's in essence what they do they float into a higher, lighter vibration frequency. So it's a temporary mismatch we have to recalibrate in order to be able to sense their energetic signature when there's no body present. So, given the quantum entanglement theory and the fact that scientists have been able to replicate and duplicate these experiments in their big science-y space labs with these tiny little microparticles, we can understand how intense that missing you experience can be, even at a quantum level, and how we can continue to exchange energy with one another and share experiences emotional, mental, physical, soul level, relational experiences across space and time and in multiple dimensions simultaneously. We can also work with this.

Speaker 1: 34:52

I don't want you to be listening to today's episode and think, well then I shouldn't be grieving. No, you should. That's what your body is designed to do. After the emergency passes, you will have to detox. And because for most of us, we have zero training on how this super groovy, super complicated spacesuit works, what it's designed to do, all its different parts, how to work with it, we don't know how it responds to different situations. We don't understand what the different hemispheres of our brain do. We don't understand that we have brains all throughout our body. We have a brain in our heart, we have a brain in our heart, we have a brain in our gut and we don't understand the timetable for different experiences that our body will go through with us. And because we don't understand any of that, grief often takes a lot longer than it should, which means we're dealing with much larger quantities of adrenaline and cortisol in our body. Because we don't understand how to start shutting our sympathetic nervous system down. We don't know how to tell our sympathetic nervous system hey, that was my pet passing out of their physical body, not a saber-toothed tiger attack.

Speaker 1: 36:00

The way that you start shutting down your sympathetic nervous system response is what I mentioned earlier. You drink a lot of water. You take that deep, parasympathetic breathing, extending your exhale beyond your inhale. I like to joke that nobody ever stopped to extend their exhalation as they were running away from a saber-toothed tiger. So this is your easiest hack. If you could just remember to extend your exhale past the length of time you inhale. This is the easiest, fastest way to start shutting your sympathetic nervous system response down, telling your body it may not be pleasant right now, but it is safe. Nobody's coming to eat me today.

Speaker 1: 36:41

And then you're drinking the water and moving your body because your lymphatic system does not have a pump of its own. It's a shadow, a mirror to your cardiovascular system, which is pumped by your heart, but your lymphatic system is pumped by physical movement. So when you drink the water and you move your body, that's what activates your lymphatic system to excrete all that excess adrenaline and cortisol that's produced by the sympathetic nervous system response. So that side, we just need to walk through it day by day. And if you're doing all of this, and you're doing it consistently, you can still expect a grief firestorm period of three to four weeks minimum, and a lot longer than that on higher level, like emotional, mental, relational levels, because you become a stranger to yourself and you have to get to know yourself all over again as this new being who has a different set of daily routines and experiences than you did when your pet was in their physical body, alongside you, and that's normal and natural. So I'm not at all saying you're not going to grieve, you are going to grieve. This is part of what we do. This is part of what we come here to do and experience and to learn how to move through. But with that recognition in mind and that tacit acceptance that, yes, grief is going to be a part of life, we're here for all of it, even if we only remember signing up for the good stuff.

Speaker 1: 38:06

But there are some things that you can do to make your pet's job easier from the etheric or the light realm and facilitate that reconnection. One thing you can do and I recommend this for all of my pet parent clients is keep something of your animals, something that they were in contact with daily, if that is a lead or a collar or a tack or a blanket or a toy. Or I kept my pearl bird's old feeding dish and that little battered up spoon that I used to dish out his seed. That was very meaningful to me because I wanted to replace it for years and he liked it and didn't want me to get rid of it. So I kept that and it holds a tremendous amount of his energy. I also have some of his feathers, thank goodness. Those definitely hold his energy. So a little snippet of fur or mane or just a little tidbit, something, a scale, a feather, something that reminds you of them, that holds their energy. This makes it easier for your pet to bridge that energetic gap from the light's realm to the physical earth realm and start to reconnect.

Speaker 1: 39:15

Another thing you can do is continue to include them in your life. I call this taking truth serum. Talk to them just as you would if you would have had a bad day and they were in their body waiting for you at home and you would just talk to them and say, gosh, I had such a crappy day, I'm so glad that you're here. You love me unconditionally, I'm so grateful for you. Anything you would have said and you can tell them it sucks without you. I used to take my dark glasses and a big jug of water and go walk a three-mile loop around a park near where I lived when I was in a different place than I am now, and I would just talk to Pearl and I would tell him exactly how I felt lonely and abandoned and not sure I wanted to be here anymore. And just the physical act of talking to him and sometimes I would do it out loud released something in me. It gave me an acknowledgement and it helped me feel peace because I could feel the beginnings of that energetic reconnection.

Speaker 1: 40:13

We behave as if the relationship itself has ended. We become very stern and very harsh with ourselves and we try to cut ourselves off and say well, you can't talk to your pet anymore, they're not here anymore. They're in spirit. That is the biggest disservice that we do to the love that we share, because as long as the love is still there, the relationship is still there. It doesn't matter if they have a body or not. So talk to them. If you would go on walks every day in a certain park or a certain street, continue, go on those walks and talk to your pet in spirit. They are desperate to hear from you. They want to reconnect.

Speaker 1: 40:51

You can also create a special area in your home. Find a favorite photograph and put that item in that area and make it private. You don't have to put it in a public area. We're not talking over the mantelpiece here. We're talking about an area close to you, on your bedside table, in your closet, a private area. That is emblematic of the private depth of connection that you and your soul, pet and spirit shared and understand that when you visit that area, their energy is very concentrated there because they know exactly what you're doing, concentrated there because they know exactly what you're doing and they feel your intention to reopen the line of communication.

Speaker 1: 41:34

Something else you can do, if you're open to it, is to explore the question of pet reincarnation. It's not always appropriate to do it up front. I was lucky when my soul bird, pearl, passed. I was already a professional animal communicator. Even then it was difficult for Pearl to break through, but he was always very, very strong and very determined and being little in size had nothing to do with his mighty power and he managed to break through the same day and let me know that he was coming, he said I'm rushing right back and he gave me the clues. So when and if you feel moved to explore your curiosity about pet reincarnation, that is another incredible way and I will put a link in the show notes as well to my free pet reincarnation guide and my pet parent grief support guide, which puts into kind of a summary form some of what we've touched on today, as well as some other elements from different episodes that can support you through this entire process.

Speaker 1: 42:34

The other thing that you can do that is so powerful that can really help to keep the connection, the sense of being connected, alive, is you can find ways to honor them. I have had pet parent clients who've sent me pictures of beautiful altars they've created with crystals and flowers and essential oils. I have seen pictures that pet parent clients of mine have sent me where they have made a donation in honor of their animal or they've planted a flower garden for their animal. I've had emails from pet parents telling me they have started volunteering with animals. I volunteer at a local cat sanctuary every week in honor of my rescue kitten, momo, who didn't transition into spirit but definitely transitioned out of my life, and I share more about that story in a previous episode. But I now volunteer every week with cats in honor of Momo's impact on me, and that keeps our relationship alive, even though he is with a different family, living his best life in a way he could never have lived with my family.

Speaker 1: 43:41

So there are all kinds of ways to keep the energetics of the relationship alive. One thing that my mom chose to do to honor her soul dog, jp Morgan, when he passed was to gather up all of his things and donate them to a local dog charity that she supported. That was personally very meaningful to her and my dad and that was one of the things that we did, and so when we do something, take a physical action to honor our pet in spirit, we open up a little part of that channel of communication again and recognize that their energy and impact in our lives continues and anything we can do to recognize that the energy and impact that they have on us is continuing is, at its core, a recognition that the relationship itself continues. When we get there in our own time, at our own pace, we can't push through our soul awakening and evolution process the way that we often see in movies, where it happens in 10 minutes, a sped up version of a life being lived. We get there safely on our own time, but every little recognition really helps.

Speaker 1: 44:57

Talk with your animal and ask them to send you signs, especially when you're falling asleep at night. Ask them to visit you and be open, become aware If something crosses just your peripheral vision or you feel a temperature shift, or you wake up in the middle of the night and it's warm in a place on your bed that was only warm when your pet was with you. Accept those, welcome your own curiosity and your own noticing and validate them and thank your pet. Even if your left brain mind screaming that's just a coincidence, your right brain mind knows something that your left brain mind will never know because of how different their functions are, and the more you acknowledge your pet's efforts to reconnect with you, the stronger those signs, symbolism and synchronicities will become. So, to summarize today's episode does your pet and spirit miss you and if yes, do they miss you as much as you miss them?

Speaker 1: 45:59

The answer is yes, and it can take some time for our human brains, with their necessary amnesia, to wrap themselves around this quantum level information. So I encourage you to give this podcast episode a re-listen in a week or two and just allow these new neural connections to begin to form, where you begin to interact with and experience your relationship with your soul pet, as if the body is optional, because that's really what they're asking us to do and that is also what's required to keep the relationship itself alive. Whether you're open to pet reincarnation or not, whether they're planning on pet reincarnation or not, whether that's something that's even of interest or possible for you at this time in your life, just understand that their primary message to you through this episode is my body was always optional. We knew each other before we ever incarnated into these spacesuits that we call bodies, and we continue to know one another now and we will always be in love, and I hope that, wherever you are in your process with your soul pet, if they're transitioning right now, if they have transitioned to spirit, if they've been in the spirit space for a while, I hope that this episode meets you with a message of comfort, encouragement and rekindling of the deeper, ongoing, ever-present, unbreakable relationship and connection of unconditional love that always is and that is proven through the presence of your continued love for them and theirs for you.

Speaker 1: 47:41

So again, thank you so much for joining me for this episode of let's Talk to Animals. It's always such a privilege and honor to pass along every new tidbit of information and every new learning that the animals offer to me, and it's always meant to be shared. So thank you for sharing it with me. I look forward to any questions that you have about this episode, any experiences you would like to share with me, if you'd like to drop a review, it sure does help as well, and it encourages me that I'm on the right track in terms of what the animals are asking me to share and what you'd like to hear about. So thank you again for joining me today and just know that I'm sending you and your animal family, here and in spirit, all my love. Okay, bye for now. I have so enjoyed sharing this episode with you.

Speaker 1: 48:28

If you're new to the let's Talk to Animals community and you've enjoyed this episode, please do leave us a review on your favorite streaming service or drop a comment wherever you'd like to listen. I love to hear from you and your feedback truly helps me shape future episodes based on your interests and needs. If you're not already in my weekly love letters community, head over to animallovelanguagescom to opt in. Your welcome email will include $25 off your first pet session with me and you'll be the first to know when a new podcast episode drops. If you're interested in learning more about the work I do communicating with animals, offering pet Reiki and teaching animal communication, please visit me at animallolanguagescom. Click on schedule for pet sessions and programs for all the information about my new animal communication adventure to mastery student program and the live animal communication practice circle I run for student practitioners and I look forward to welcoming you back here very soon for a fresh new episode of let's Talk to Animals. Okay, all my love. Bye for now.