Many people have never heard the term “anticipatory grief” even though you’ve probably experienced it.
If you’ve had a family member fade in front of your eyes with cancer or another debilitating disease, you’ve experienced anticipatory grief. If you’ve watched your cat or pet slow down, struggle to rise to his feet and take his last walks toward the proverbial rainbow bridge, you’ve experienced anticipatory grief.
I didn’t have a name for it until I started studying grief, so it’s OK if you’re unfamiliar with the term. Clinically speaking, it’s the grief we experience in advance of a loss. It’s often associated with the death of a loved one — or pet — who is terminally ill or facing a life-limiting illness.
It’s different because the loss has yet to occur but the grief can be just as intense, if not more so, because there’s an extended period of uncertainty, fear and anxiety. Our minds build up the stories around the impending death and we can be wracked with feelings of guilt, anger and sadness.
While we still have our loved one or pet right here in front of us.
Nancy Gordon wants to change the experience of anticipatory grief and shift our perception of dread to one of a gift.
To experience anticipatory grief, she says, is to see an opportunity to live more in the moment and enjoy every last moment possible with our loved one.
Nancy is a No. 1 international bestselling author, speaker and an expert in how to manage life-changing loss. A car accident upended everything about her life — her practice in social work and her health. Today, she combines her personal experiences with fibromyalgia, a mild traumatic brain injury and loss — loss of her both her parents and her two loves, Toaster and Pink — to offer not only a clinical perspective on loss and grief but also a personal one.
I think, after listening to today’s episode, you might start to see loss and anticipatory grief in a new light, too.
What to listen for
5:30 The emotional, mental and spiritual impact of chronic illness and disability
12:40 The healing power of Toaster
30:20 The cancer diagnosis that transformed Nancy’s life
49:30 How anticipatory grief is different
56:00 Staying present with our pets in their last days
Find Nancy
Angela Schneider
Welcome back to One Last Network and episode 21.
Buckle in, kids … I have a long one for you, but it’s full of really good stuff about those days we face when we know the time is coming near.
I gotta figure a lot of you normal people out there have never heard the term “anticipatory grief” even though you’ve probably experienced it. If you’ve had a family member fade in front of your eyes with cancer or another debilitating disease, you’ve experienced anticipatory grief. If you’ve watched your cat or pet slow down, struggle to rise to his feet and take his last walks toward the proverbial rainbow bridge, you’ve experienced anticipatory grief.
I didn’t have a name for it until I started studying grief, so it’s OK if you’re unfamiliar with the term. Clinically speaking, it’s the grief we experience in advance of a loss. It’s often associated with the death of a loved one — or pet — who is terminally ill or facing a life-limiting illness.
It’s different because the loss has yet to occur but the grief can be just as intense, if not more so, because there’s an extended period of uncertainty, fear and anxiety. Our minds build up the stories around the impending death and we can be wracked with feelings of guilt, anger and sadness.
While we still have our loved one or pet right here in front of us.
Nancy Gordon wants to change the experience of anticipatory grief and shift our perception of dread to one of a gift.
To experience anticipatory grief, she says, is to see an opportunity to live more in the moment and enjoy every last moment possible with our loved one.
Nancy is a No. 1 international bestselling author, speaker and an expert in how to manage life-changing loss. A car accident upended everything about her life — her practice in social work and her health. Today, she combines her personal experiences with fibromyalgia, a mild traumatic brain injury and loss — loss of her both her parents and her two loves, Toaster and Pink — to offer not only a clinical perspective on loss and grief but also a personal one.
I think, after listening to today’s episode, you might start to see loss and anticipatory grief in a new light, too.
So hey, Nancy Gordon, how are things for you today?
Nancy
Really good. Thank you. How about you?
Angela Schneider
I am okay. I’m okay. It’s we’re recording this on December 28, 2022. And I’m really looking forward to this year being over.
Nancy
Yeah. I think a lot of us are for many of the same reasons. It’s been a tough, really three years, but it’s been a tough year, this particular year. Yeah, for a lot of us.
Angela Schneider
Hopefully, there’s some light to come in 2023, hey?
Nancy
Yes, yes. And I’m bringing it and you’re bringing it and that’s, that’s the best we can do.
Angela
Yeah, girl. I love that attitude. So let’s get started by having you tell the One Last Network audience a little bit about yourself and how you got to where you are today.
Nancy
Okay, that’s a big question.
Angela
Isn’t it?
Nancy
Like, okay, how do I tell my life story? And like a short vignette? I would say I guess starting as a very young child, I was always an empath. I was always a nurturer. And that all developed throughout my childhood to the point where I became the dear … it was instead of Dear Abby, it was Dear Nancy at the age of 16. For our community, I grew up when we had community developments that had names you know, so mine was Green Acres, like, like the show. And my mom was one of the writers for the cooking session section of this newsletter for this community. And I got to be the Dear Nancy, where literally, other teenagers would write into me their problems. And I would, I would answer them. And then those answers, the question and answers would be published in the newsletter. It was. I still have a copy of one. So yeah, so I was, I was born into this. I tried to be a nurse, I think around maybe 16. I was looking at college and thinking about my career, and I thought, well, maybe I should go into nursing because I, you know, I’m kind of like that prototype but a caretaker, caregiver. But I volunteered as a candy striper. And the first time I saw this guy in a hospital room in his bed, with his leg lifted up and hoisted from the ceiling, I went, I almost vomited. I like I can’t deal with the physical pain and then I realized, Oh, well, I can deal with the mental and emotional so I guess I’m gonna be a psychiatrist. That’s where I started out. And then I wasn’t good enough. And that I’m really, I’m disclosing a lot here. I wasn’t good enough at math, to be a psychiatrist. So I ended up, you know, going into psychology. But it was actually the right direction, because I wouldn’t have been happy doing medication stuff. Mostly.
Angela
You know, I didn’t major in psychology in university because I didn’t want to do a stats course. So I took English instead. And then I became a sports writer and my life revolved around stats.
Nancy
Around stats! I know sometimes we’re faced with our challenges whether we want them or not. Yeah.
Angela
So yeah, you went into social work and you built up a really thriving practice in Portland. A car accident changed everything.
Nancy
Everything in a nanosecond, life defining moment in a nanosecond that the middle, the minute, the nanosecond, really, that our, the metal of our cars collided. My life was never the same. And for a long time, that was a horrific, angst, emotionally, and mentally, and certainly physically because I’d never been in a car accident. Other than a fender bender, you know, but this was devastating. My car was totaled, and I was totaled, and didn’t even know how totaled I was and didn’t have a diagnosis for three years to know what I was dealing with, which was fibromyalgia and a mild traumatic brain injury, which that didn’t even surface for 14 years. Yeah, yeah. So you know, there is there is so much power and knowledge, especially in healing, when you know what you’re dealing with. You have so much more ability to, to deal with it to, to know what to do and to know the right resources. And I didn’t have all those resources or understanding of what was happening to me. And so my type A personality, you know, was still in the driver’s seat, when it should have been in not even just the passenger, as it should have been in the backseat might not have even belonged in the car. But it was definitely I was definitely in the driver’s seat. And so for six years, after my car accident, I was trying every which way to fix my problem physically. And I only got worse. And I got so disabled that I got to the point where I realized I can’t continue like this, or I will become an impaired professional, and that’s not going to happen. So I set a plan, I made a decision, and I set a plan to close my business and to go on to disability, and try and heal my body. And in that process, and that whole journey, I discovered that really, it wasn’t just my body. And in fact, in some ways, my body was almost easier to deal with than the emotional, mental and spiritual impacts of chronic illness and disability. So that’s where I incorporated my professional skills with my personal journey. And I wrote, well, I didn’t write it first. But I developed a sort of methodology to heal myself on all those levels, which then became my first book, which didn’t end up getting published because of some copyright issues. But I mean, the book wasn’t published with my copyright done right, correctly. But that was called Seven Steps of Hope: Healing the Emotional, Mental and Spiritual Impact of Chronic Illness and Disability.
Angela Schneider
To the point of your car accident, had someone with that experience sat in a chair next to you, at your practice, would you have understood the trauma and grief and loss around your experience, but seeing it in another person. Like where I’m going is the education that we often receive for certain professions, like in counseling, doesn’t always include grief and loss, does it?
Nancy
No, but the way I practice was to recognize early, early on really, even in undergraduate school, that death and loss are such an integral part of life, you cannot separate them. And that there is such a, there’s no language for it, there’s not a really good language for it. People don’t even know what to say, when someone has experienced a grief, a loss. And they Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s another whole subject, but what I realized early on … from some of my childhood experiences with my own loss, but mostly, I understood every single person that ever came to me had underneath whatever presenting problem was some loss and grief. So I understood that, no, it wasn’t necessarily taught, although, you know, it was addressed in graduate school to a to a degree, to enough of a degree, but when you see people coming in with divorce issues, job loss, kids going off to college, empty nest, I mean, just so many of our life experiences that we that we have to one degree or another. Within that experience, there is some sort of loss and therefore, some sort of grief.
Angela
We typically do default to loss as death, but certainly there are all kinds of losses that someone can experience that results in grief. I remember when I got laid off from the Calgary Sun in 2006, I thought it was the worst breakup I’ve ever had. Yeah, it’s my identity.
Nancy
Yes, absolutely. That’s, that’s, that’s what I recognized very early on, in my practice that it didn’t matter what presenting problem someone brought in, there’s loss in it, you know, you have health loss, you know, you become disabled. All of that is loss and grief.
Angela
So you closed your practice to center your work more on yourself.
Nancy
Right.
Angela
Which I think a lot of us need to do more often.
Nancy
Yes, yes. That was one of my lessons about my own type A and being a perfectionist and being so invested in fixing this, like not giving up. I didn’t know how to, really is call one of my practices surrender without giving up. I didn’t know how to do it. And in fact, even closing my practice, I thought I was surrendering. I thought I was oh, okay, you’re letting it go. You’re seeing, you’re accepting it for what it was, what it is what you need to do. And that was really not, not the whole story. I really wasn’t … I closed my practice feeling I had no choice. I literally physically could not continue to work. And so it wasn’t really true surrender, which I learned within the next couple years after I closed my business what surrender really was. It was humbling.
Angela Schneider
Yeah, as professional women, we’re not really allowed to give up, are we?
Nancy
Mmm mm. Mmm mm. No, the standard …
Angela
It’s exhausting, isn’t it?
Nancy
It is exhausting. I know when I when I just thought about that. I just went uh yeah …
Angela
I saw it in your face and your shoulders.
Nancy
Yeah, there’s, there’s so much pressure. So much pressure. Yeah, it’s really hard to feel successful. At the same time, you are letting go. But the truth is, that is success; when you can let go when you truly can let go, that is success.
Angela
Oh, that’s beautiful. I’m gonna have to sit with that later. So now some of that pressure and including some of the pressure in your body was alleviated by a four-legged critter. Tell us about Toaster.
Nancy
Toaster, Toaster was my first dog. She was my first love, my first doggy soulmate. Well, my only doggy soulmate.
Angela
She was an angel.
Nancy
She was, she was an angel and actually my logo for, I created out of, one of the ways I was trying to reinvent myself when I went on disability of like, okay, how, how am I going to still serve and help people without working in a brick and mortar private practice. And so I discovered again, no words and no way to support other people with loss and grief. So when I quit my practice, I realized nobody was sending me any kind of like greeting card or any support message, you know, and I looked in the stores and the cards are all get well. Well, what do you send someone who isn’t getting well and may never get well? And so I started this greeting … actually Toaster started this greeting card line. So can I share that story? It’s …
Angela
Absolutely, please.
Nancy
Okay. Yeah. This is like one of the most … Oh, you’ll just love this story. It’s it was one of the most profound experiences of Toaster taking me by the leash, in this case by the photograph, down a path of transformational work. Unbelievable. So when Toaster was about less than three months old, somewhere around there. I was in, I had just gotten her at … she was I think around six weeks when I got her … so a little early actually, I didn’t know, I didn’t know that at the time. But so I had her and I was in Oregon at my friend’s house. And I was writing on my computer. And I was facing a wall and Toaster was to the right of me on a futon bed. And I, all of a sudden, I’ve never had a puppy before, so all of a sudden, I realized, there’s quiet, you know, like, what is Toaster doing? Because I’m realizing, I don’t hear her.
Angela
Oh silence is not good with puppies.
Nancy
No, but in this case, it was, it was one of the most powerful experiences I’ve ever had. I turned to her. And there she is on his futon bed. And I have a picture of this, which I’d love to, if you can include it in the show, it in the show notes. Because then it will give people a context. So I looked over and on, on this futon bed toaster turn turned her so she was facing forward. But she turned her head towards me. And she was holding and get this … this was an empty yogurt cup she retrieved from a recycling bag on the floor, unbeknownst to me. This was Nancy’s yogurt brand. And I mean, yeah, I don’t know if you know about Nancy’s yogurt. Oh, yeah, it’s a brand. It’s been around for decades. Yes. So on the front of this cup is Nancy’s yogurt. And she’s looking at me and I thought, Oh, that’s so cute. And then I’m thinking, Oh, that’s really cute. I wish I could get a picture. But I’m sure she’s gonna move in a second. She’s still, she doesn’t move. She’s staring at me. And finally, after I don’t know how long I realized, well, I’m going to try and get a picture of this so I go, I get up from the chair, she’s still holding this cup in her mouth. Then she’s moving her head towards where I’m walking, which is … she’s exactly facing a closet where the camera is. And, and so I opened the closet, she’s still holding the cup, I get my camera out, she’s still holding the cup, I get my camera turned on and focused, she’s still holding the cup, I take the picture, she’s still holding the cup. And then this is in, this was in 1999, before the digital age. So I had to get the photos developed. So when I got them back, I opened them up. And I looked at this picture and I said, oh my God, that’s a greeting card. And that is how she birthed another mission for me, which became, I named the business Paws, P-A-W-S, for Comfort. And they were a series of greeting cards that were designed with Toaster and her puppies. The text was, the message was a combination of my professional skills of what people need to hear, and don’t know how to, and for people who don’t know how to say what people need to hear when they’re in a health crisis, where they’re, they’re not getting better. And they’ve lost themselves. They’re not who they were. They’re not functioning as they were … this was all my journey, of course. And so with my personal journey, I combined what I knew people needed to hear and there’s nothing on, in a store that said anything like what I wrote. So, so yeah, this was very, a very powerful path. And I was and I actually got those cards, I did nine designs, and I got them into five hospital gift shops in San Diego where I was living at the time. But then my dad got … had an accident and then he was in the hospital for about five months, six months and I couldn’t keep up with the marketing … You know, I’m still healing. I was still healing from my own car accident and all that. So it never, it never went very far. But I want to get back to it.
Angela
Yeah, it’s brilliant. It’s brilliant. I love the idea. Toaster was a very rare breed of Mexican dog. I’m not sure I can say it.
Nancy
Xoloitzcuintli.
Angela
Xoloitzcuintli.
Nancy
Xoloitzcuintli. Yeah, Xolos for short, or if you’re desperate Mexican hairless for English.
Angela
That’s what I’m gonna go with, Mexican hairless? Yeah. You researched that breed?
Nancy
No, not actually, not until after I got hurt no. So how I got Toaster again was some amazing divine intervention. So I had a friend who knew the breeder, Toaster’s breeder. And she had Toaster’s half-brother. She came to visit me in California. This is right after, you know, within a year of my going, quitting my business and going on disability, she, she brought her dog who was hairless — Toaster’s coated, and then went on to have puppies which two were coated and two were hairless, Pink being one of them, the female hairless. So we were sitting at a conference. And she brought her dog, who was her service dog. Now, because she had cancer and chronic pain, I had wrist pain at the time so I put her dog on my lap and my wrist underneath the dog’s belly, and then 15 minutes, my wrist pain, the muscle pain was gone. And I went, oh, I’m going to get one of these toy-sized dogs and put her around my neck and call her Toaster. And that’s what I did. That’s how I found Toaster. Then after that I learned all about the breed and how far back they go to the ancient Aztecs over 3,500 years ago and probably in other countries as well and continents was this this breed maybe named something else. But yeah, the Xolos were used in the ancient Aztecs as spiritual, mystical healing dogs. And this breed is the 24/7, n- microwave hot dog. So I replaced my microwave neck wrap, which I had almost 24/7 for so many years with such terrible pain from my car accident around my neck. Yeah, that they were known to alleviate pain. And they were also believed to have such healing powers that they were actually buried with their masters, you know, like the kings and queens, buried with their master to help them cross over safely to the other side to heaven.
Angela
Wow
Nancy
That’s how they got their name.
Angela
So she was your squirmy little heating pad?
Nancy
Yep. Yeah.
Angela
That’s amazing.
Nancy
And she, I have pictures of her not even being trained. She instinctively knew, you know, I believe dogs have purpose. Well, all animals really have a purpose. But dogs have a certain kind of purpose. I think, for humans that’s a little different than cats, just because of the language ability, I think, and the and that you can take them everywhere. Whereas you know, but I mean, cats are very healing. I think all animals are healing so I’m, I’m, I’m trying to retract making, making it sound like dogs are the best healing animals, which is not really what I mean to say it again.
Angela
You’re not going to get any argument from me.
Nancy
Yeah, so dogs. So where was I going with that?
Angela
So Toaster’s abilities to …
Nancy
Oh, yes, she taught herself. So this, this is goes back to A Dog’s Purpose, which is a great movie, by the way. A Dog’s Purpose and A Dog’s Journey. So I have pictures of Toaster before I got her, but we picked her, picked her out sight unseen, just the breeder said, this is your dog Toaster. I mean, she didn’t name her Toaster, but this is your dog out of her current litter. And this man who was taking care of Toaster was sitting in a chair and Toaster instead of sitting on his lap or something crawled, literally crawled all the way up his arm, curled herself around his neck. And that was that.
Nancy
She knew that’s what she was going to be doing for me.
Angela
Wow. I feel like there’s going to be a whole movement out there of people walking around with their dogs around their necks after this.
Nancy
Well, they’re already … there already has been because Animal Planet did a documentary on this, on my story with Toaster. When Toaster was, when Toaster was pregnant. And so they filmed her pregnancy, the whelping and then my placement of her, the first placement of her puppy, Senor Hefe, who was the first to bark in the litter. That’s how he got his name. Senor Hefe, the big chief. Yeah, so that did start a movement for the Xolo breed, they really resurfaced, because they were not part of, I don’t think they were part of the AKC at that time. But then they got, you know, this Animal Planet video went, you know, global I mean, I got emails from people in Canada and Sweden and England, asking me to help them find a little Toaster of their own. Because they’re a rare breed and they’re expensive. So yeah, so that birth why you …
Angela
That’s why you had Toaster bred, right?
Nancy
Why did I have Toaster bred? I don’t know. I just thought I was … I think that was part of the deal with the breeder that I would breed Toaster.
Angela
Mm hmm. And I just realized I said Toaster bread.
Nancy
Yeah, I never honest to god, I never put her in the toaster. Never put her in the toaster oven.
Angela
Shortly after you got Toaster, something else happened in your life that was again very life defining for you … your mom.
Nancy
Yeah.
Angela
Can you tell us about that?
Nancy
Yeah, so I got toaster three weeks before my mom was first diagnosed with terminal illness, terminal cancer of a rare kind. And the really sweet spot of this story with my mom and Toaster is that my mom had a dog when she was young, adolescent, or maybe under 18, who got run over in the street and she never was able to get another dog. And my dad wasn’t in favor of dogs. And so my mom never got another dog. But when Toaster became part of our family, my mom — and this was in her last two years — my mom was again, sort of vicariously having a dog in her life and Toaster loved her and she loved Toaster and petting her all the time that she was going through because now the cancer the whole cancer journey had begun already, three weeks before or three weeks after I got Toaster. And I have a picture of — and I don’t know if this is too TMI, but it’s the truth — I have a picture of Toaster … My mom’s on a hospital bed in her, in her home sleeping. This was very late in the game, I think. And my mom had a rare vaginal cancer. Toaster got on her hospital bed, got in between her legs and laid there healing my mom. She could have gone anywhere on the bed.
Angela
She just kind of knew where she was supposed to be.
Nancy
Absolutely. I’m so glad that I have a photo of that. I mean, it’s like there are times where I think of that and I think did that really happen? Yes. Toaster was trying to heal my mom. She was trying to comfort my mom. And in the most unbelievable, empathic, intuitive way. That’s the power, the healing power of dogs.
Angela
This all builds up to where you are now in helping people manage their anticipatory grief, especially around pet loss. You’re specializing in pet loss grief.
Nancy
Correct. Yes.
Angela
What did you learn about yourself and anticipatory grief in undergoing your mom’s illness and death? And then your dad followed shortly after that, and then both Toaster and her daughter Pink within months of each other.
Nancy
Dying months … yeah.
Angela Schneider
How did that all come together to bring you to where you are, to where you are now?
Nancy
Yeah. Well, again, my mission is through that whole journey that you just described. with my parents and Toaster and my own health, all, all of it, I’ve been immersed in loss and grief in one form or another since 1992, when I had my car accident, that long ago. And now I’ve told you approximately how old I am. But with age comes wisdom. Yeah. So. So what happened for me was my mom was my very first real loss, real family loss. We had, you know, my grandmother had died when I was young. You know, in my, in … still in high school, my, but I wasn’t really close to her, but she was like, my first family loss. And it was really I, you know, I probably now that I think about it, I hadn’t thought about this before. But that was one of my first powerful experiences of grief and loss, was watching my mom grieve. I haven’t thought about that ever. But, but it just came to me, I remember going with my mom through her jewelry, that was some of my grandmother’s and her saying how sad she was and how much she missed her mom. And this was many, many, many, many, many years after my grandmother died. And my mom was still grieving. But I was learning about that long journey, almost never-ending in the, you know, completely with a profound loss, you know. And so, from losing my mom, what I learned about anticipatory grief, and I had really unbelievable parallel experience around loss and grief, and some of the most extreme forms. So there, there are many ways that we lose people, some is sudden, unexpected, some is sudden, unexpected before your very eyes, some is long and protect, protracted like a cancer. And there’s everything in between. So my mom’s cancer took two years, and she was actually, wasn’t in a lot of pain. And even though she went through chemo, and that all that, you know, kind of treatment. It wasn’t until about the last three months of those two years where my mom was really clearly showing she was on her on her way out. And it was gut wrenching. It was heartbreaking, and it was almost unbearable. Sshe had a stroke, I think about a month or so before she actually died. And that’s when I really went through the sort of that last stage of anticipatory grief with her … because the whole two years was anticipatory grief. My mom’s got terminal cancer. We’re in anticipatory grief.
Angela
You don’t know you’re in … I mean, you probably knew
Nancy
I did know. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I did. I did know. And I knew that it was, it was worse. I think anticipatory grief in some ways, depending on how people navigate it, and resist it or embrace it. It’s, it’s the most gut-wrenching part of the whole grief journey.
Angela
Yeah but that’s the, that’s one of the problems though, right? Is that normal people, the people out there who haven’t educated themselves on grief — because why would you have to or want to …
Nancy
Right.
Angela
We don’t know that there is this thing called anticipatory grief, and they don’t know what they’re experiencing necessarily, and it’s really really confusing and complex.
Nancy
Yes. Not only confusing and complex, but when you don’t know what you don’t know, you’ve got the problem of not being able to resolve it. You’ve got no way to navigate it because you don’t even know there’s something to navigate.
Angela
And you don’t have a way to express it.
Nancy
And you have no way to express it. So you know how it comes out, over-eating, addiction, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, irritable state of being, loss of joy in life. All those are signs when you’re in the in that phase of, not phase, stage of anticipatory loss. And that’s part of my mission. And that’s my mission in writing this book about pet loss and in particular framed in the context of anticipatory grief journey, called I Miss You Already: Bearing the Unbearable Loss of Your Pet.
Angela
When you are experiencing anticipatory grief, particularly around pets, it becomes even more of a burden because it is also a disenfranchised grief.
Nancy
Absolutely.
Angela
It’s a grief that society doesn’t necessarily accept as real because it is, quote, just a dog, end quote, I would never say that to anybody.
Nancy
Right? First of all, let’s backtrack a little, grief, in general, human loss is not well understood. It’s not well validated, it’s not well supported, people still don’t know what to say to someone who just lost someone. And they certainly don’t know what to say, to someone who’s in that anticipatory grief with their loved one who’s still alive, but maybe in a coma who’s still alive, but maybe can’t even … has ALS and can’t do anything for themselves. That people don’t know what to say. And so they avoid, they avoid it. Or they say things that try and that, that they’re trying to make themselves feel better by trying to make somebody else feel better. And that usually comes out in the form of … they don’t even know what to say, I’m not. At the moment. I can’t even think of what somebody says that so inappropriate. Or after, they’ll say he or she’s in a better place. Yeah, that drives me nuts.
Angela
At least you got to spend a lot of time with him.
Nancy
Yeah, right. Right.
Angela
At least you got to spend a lot of time with your mom while she was …
Nancy
Dying. Yeah, right. Right. Yeah.
Angela
You know what that means to me? I got to watch my my mom die. Thank you.
Nancy
Right. Right. So I think that, you know, what we are faced with, and some people may not understand this way of thinking, but one of my, one of my seven practices that I, that I developed and used on myself through my whole chronic illness journey, with Toaster and Pink and through Toaster and Pink, teaching me — especially Pink, teaching me so many aspects of these seven practices. So one of them, in part is about seeing the glass half full and being grateful. So when, when you can, I think one of the biggest problems that we face, and the benefit of COVID is that it brought grief, loss and grief, ex … excruciating loss and grief, both human to human and both pet to human, when we were not allowed to be with our loved ones, through the dying process, through the COVID illness and then through those last moments, those last seconds, we couldn’t be with our dogs or cats, like that is just a nightmare. But the good thing about COVID is the entire globe has had to face loss and grief, whether they face it, or whether they still don’t understand it or suffer, stuff it, they’re faced with it. They’re faced with it in ways that nobody on this planet is able to avoid completely. And therein is the door that opens the possibility of grief education, of grief healing, of the whole world coming together with a common grief. It’s shared grief. And we gain empathy. We have the ability, we have the opportunity to gain the empathy that we so lack globally, with all the wars between all these countries and continents, we’re given the opportunity to meet, to meet in the heart, to meet really in, in the in combining the mind and the heart and understanding and developing empathy and love and caring. We have that possibility through this pandemic.
Angela
I’m training under David Kessler. And the one thing that just keeps coming back to me is to just listen and be present with people who need to be listened to. And I often find myself crying on the inside. Because I don’t feel like I have anyone necessarily to listen to me around my, the grief over my mother’s death times. Because people, people don’t want to listen to us talk about death.
Nancy
Especially well, especially after a couple of weeks or a month, people disappear, because it’s like, shouldn’t you be over it? And if you’re not over it, something seriously wrong, and therefore I don’t want to hang out with you, or I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to make you feel better. I feel so sad you’re suffering, but I can’t handle it.
Angela
Yes. And they have to move on with their lives. You know, I always understand that, that other people have to get on with their lives.
Nancy
Well, yes, but they don’t have to abandon their friend. No, they have, they can’t maybe be there for overnight. So the first week that you’re alone when your partner dies, let’s say, but no, and they don’t have to continue making, you know, meals two months later, when you’re better able to make your own meal, or at least a sandwich. But … but they can still be there. And that’s, that is my most heartfelt mission in my work, is to help people have a language, know what to say, know how to say it, know when to say it, know why to say it. And with that kind of education. It doesn’t become so scary. I mean, who was it that had that famous quote about there’s nothing to fear except fear Itself. I forget who that was. But it’s a famous quote, we all know it. And it’s really true, because people are afraid of what they don’t know. They’re afraid of what they don’t know how to deal with. So if, so knowledge is power, if you give people the knowledge, then you are giving people power to help heal and be supported and be supportive.
Angela
When you started to see the signs in Toaster, were you able to do work on yourself, too?
Nancy
Absolutely. I had to. So my anticipatory grief journey with Toaster was about a little over two years. When she was about 14, her compressed discs really became more of a debilitating experience. And she was also having other health problems that were serious. So her health was really declining. And I could see in the far distance at that point, the beginning of my anticipatory grief, I could see in the far distance, that rainbow bridge, that it was going to be … it was going to happen. And it was going to happen sooner than I thought. But I didn’t know when and I didn’t know how. But that began my anticipatory grief. And so what I started doing at that time is one of the things that I so recommend people do when their, when their pet is still with them is develop some rituals and develop some of those rituals or experiences with their pet that will become what’s called a continued bond, that after they’re passed, they will find comfort in those continued bonds. So for me one of my continued bond that I created with Toaster and with Pink, first because I saw Toaster on the horizon of that rainbow bridge, I would say to her every morning, we have another day. I’d whisper in her ear, we have another day. And at night, I would say we had another day and I could not love you more.
Angela
Oh that’s lovely.
Nancy
I don’t always get teary like this when I say that. But there are times in this whole grief journey where, there are times where for one reason or another, and some reasons we don’t even understand. We miss them more than others. We feel more than others.
Angela
Yes, absolutely. I agree with that. What are other ways that people can develop those rituals?
Nancy
Photography. As in your business.
Angela
Yes, ma’am.
Nancy
Pet photography. Yes. I am so blessed that I have had so many photographs. And a lot of them professionally done. Because, you know, Arthritis Today did a magazine article with me in 2014, that was the year that Toaster really started declining. And so I have all these beautiful photos professionally done that were put in that article of Toaster and I, they’re on my website now. They’re some of my … part of my logo. And one of the things in particular, and you probably would understand this, about grief is that when we go through the loss, and so after they’re gone, this is after anticipatory grief, if you’re lucky enough to have that experience to take advantage of … the mind … first of all, guilt with pet loss is almost inherent in every situation, even not deserved, almost never deserved, but almost always omnipresent. And so I experienced that, especially with Pink, which is another story. But I experienced … I didn’t experience guilt with Toaster, because of how I went about … which was, I think, your beginning question like how did I deal with? That’s a long story. But anyway, because it starts at the two years, and then it goes to when I actually lifted her up.
Angela
Yeah, of course.
Nancy
So …
Angela
To be clear, lifting her up is the way you’re shifting the language around …
Nancy
Yes …
Angela
Euthanasia …
Nancy
So quick aside about that, about that term. When I was really much closer, like within the last eight months, let’s say six months, or somewhere in there, of realizing that Toaster is unable to go the bathroom without me holding her hips. She’s having trouble getting on the bed. She can’t jump anymore. And I’m realizing, Oh, where are we on that tightrope? What I call the tightrope between discomfort and suffering, because I don’t want her to suffer. How much discomfort can I allow her since I have the right, the legal right, to make the decision for her, which was another whole part of that anticipatory grief journey. When I saw that tightrope, it was unbearable, it was that part of my title with this book on bearing the unbearable. It was so unbearable. At that point, six, eight months, whatever it was, before I … when I knew it’s coming sooner. And I may have to assist her. I couldn’t use those terms put down, put to sleep. I don’t think I was even able to use the term let go at that point. But I certainly couldn’t use the word dying, die, put her to sleep. All of that spelled to me I’m killing my dog. How can I do that? How can I do that? I literally asked myself, are you talking about killing your dog? How … do you even have the right to do that? I went through the whole moral … I was so surprised because I never really thought about it. And I never judged anybody for putting down their animal. But for me to be able to get myself through that whole thought process, that journey of coming to terms with letting my dog go and assisting her, I had to find a different word. And so the opposite of putting down is lifting up. And that’s what came to me. So it’s like, okay, I think I was actually having a conversation with somebody about it, that term came up, we’ll lift, lift up Toaster. And that changed everything for me. Changing what we say to ourselves, and how we frame, how we … our mindset, how we perceive it. I was perceiving it as killing her. And that was like not, not ever gonna happen. But could I lift her up? Yes. Could I help her when she really needs me? Yes. And so that’s how, that, that’s how I coined that term.
Angela Schneider
And we’re going to have you back on another episode because we’re, we are going to dig into the language around grief and loss and death because it’s a super fascinating subject for me, as a writer. One of the things you said, just in that description, was that you were lucky to be in the anticipatory grief stage.
Nancy
Yes, yes.
Angela
Let’s talk about that, and why we’re going to call it lucky.
Nancy
So that’s a very, that’s absolutely one of the most powerful questions to ask me about grief education. Because what happens when we actually lose someone, human or pet, we often feel regret, we often feel guilt. And it’s almost unspeakable sometimes for … people can’t even talk about it, can’t even think about it with themselves. And so it stays locked in your heart. And I, I believe this is sort of another term I coined that unhealed grief puts a lock on your heart. And so the way to look at anticipatory grief, with a different mindset is you can prevent, you can actually prevent, as I did with Toaster, so much trauma and so much guilt and regret by facing the loss, when you are in that anticipatory grief stage, whether it’s two years, four years, five months, one day, when you can face it, then you can change the effect on you, anyone around you, anyone in the family and your pet. Most importantly, your pet’s goodbye is totally different. When you are facing anticipatory grief instead of resisting it, hiding it, denying it, being depressed, being anxious, being unable to create those bonds, those continued bonds, being able to create those memories, and like one of which I started to say, I didn’t finish this part earlier. But about photography, when you asked how to, how to create a continued bond, what’s another one … photography because I myself experienced when I look, when I in my mind, I thought about Toaster in my mind … after she was gone, and I’m grieving, and I’m just beyond myself. I’m seeing toaster as a younger dog.
Then I discovered looking at some of her recent pictures or the day … I have pictures and a video of the day that I lifted her up that night. Our last hurrah was at Mission Bay, the beach, in her … her stroller with Pink, one of their favorite places. I have pictures of that and I look at them one day when I was just feeling so distraught, like, did I do it too soon? You know that question, even though I thought I did it perfectly with Toaster and I really think I did. But, but I still had yet still that question. Did I do it too soon. You know, she wasn’t on her deathbed, quote unquote. It wasn’t a vet saying to me she’s going to be gone in a matter of hours or days. It wasn’t like that. But then I got to look at some of the pictures on the last day or the last month or whatever. And I saw the cataracts in her eyes. I saw the grey shrunken face, the loss of weight … the … even some degree of maybe discomfort or little pain she might have been having. I saw her as she was at that point. In those moments when I looked at those kinds of pictures, I realized, oh, you loved her into death.
Angela
Oh. Beautiful.
Nancy
And I had no regret, no guilt, no nothing because it was a reality check. And that’s one of the reasons why photography is so powerful. For the whole time you have your, from the puppy, from … through the adulthood, through all the stages of your dog’s life or your cat’s life. That those are actually almost scientific measures to help you get clear when you feel those moments of grief and those moments of loss and guilt and regret and missing them. That oh, I can see from this picture it was good that I let her go.
Angela
Yeah. As a photographer and a writer, I have attached myself to the Continuing Bonds theory as well. It’s part of my mission to encourage people to create those memories to hold on to and have as comfort in the days, months and years following. I think it’s also very important to write down our stories of our pets and our family members as well, of course.
Nancy
Yes.
Angela Schneider
What are ways that we can stay present in the moment with our pets, while we are also in the phases of anticipatory grief?
Nancy
The ways to stay present really start with you being present with yourself. That means staying connected to your feelings. That means facing that depression, facing that sadness, facing the anxiety, facing all the questions and finding resources to help you answer them. That’s how you stay present.
Angela
Wow. Okay. Can being present and preserving these moments help us in the days after?
Nancy
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I have clients recently who went through this. And they say one of the best nurses in their early grief — and this is like a day later or a week later or two weeks later, two months later — they’re saying, I’m so happy that I can look back at how present I was for my dog. And that I was there. I was really there and … and … big A-N-D … my dog knew it.
Angela
Yeah, of course they know.
Nancy
That’s the healing. When you that’s the benefit of facing of going through what’s unbearable, and making it bearable. That’s the gift is that you look back after the loss. And it’s a comfort to know you did right by your dog. You, you did right by your parent. I mean, it’s not just animals. I mean, this is everything I’m saying applies to human to human loss. But in the context of what you can do with anticipatory grief, it’s a window of opportunity for transformational growth. It’s a window of opportunity to make a difference in your own life and your own … the way you live your life that honors, absolutely honors your pet. That’s your gift back to them is to grow through grief. I talk in my book about going from grief to growth and rising to resilience. That’s the work. And that’s the gift of anticipatory grief if you embrace it. And in embracing it, I don’t mean do it by yourself. I mean, get help, get support, get with people who can listen to you, who can witness as it’s unfolding, as it’s happening, who can tolerate you saying I can’t bear this? And sometimes even just saying I can’t bear this helps you bear it. Because you’re acknowledging your reality.
Angela
Yes.
Nancy
And as I keep saying, knowledge is power.
Angela
Is it possible, then, that we can reframe the death, especially the death of our pets, because we oftentimes have a hand in it with euthanasia, reframe it as a celebration …
Nancy
Absolutely.
Angela
Instead of a horrible moment in my life.
Nancy
That’s my mission is to help people do that, and understand why and how to do that. Because, and this is true with, with people too, it really is as powerful and potent, and necessary, to end relationships in a way that you can feel good about. And not have regrets. And so by, by this kind of education, by getting the tools and the skills through professionals like me, and photographers like you, to transform how grief is experienced, and that only, only is a gift to your pet.
Angela
And that’s my mission, with the training that I’m providing for pet photographers, is to allow our clients this space and comfort to feel support from someone who understands what they’re experiencing.
Nancy
That’s right. That’s right. And that’s, that’s …
Angela
Sometimes that’s all we need.
Nancy
That’s exactly right.
Angela
So this is why we needed to split this into two episodes, because we’ve been going on for an hour now. And we still have so much more to talk about. So we’re going to wrap this up for now. Nancy, thank you so much. I cannot wait to have you back on again and talk about the language around death and loss and grief.
Nancy
I can’t wait either. This has been really wonderful and I feel so heard by you and so grateful to, to you for helping me get my message out.
Angela
Thank you so much for sharing it. I’m going to hit stop recording now.
Both Nancy and I mention the Continuing Bonds Theory.
The theory, which intends to explain the nature and impact of grief, was developed by psychologists Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut.
They posit that people who have lost a loved one continue to maintain emotional and psychological connections with them, even after their death. These connections are called “continuing bonds” and Stroebe and Schut suggest that maintaining these bonds can provide comfort and help individuals adjust to the loss, and is a normal and natural part of the grieving process.
The bonds can be emotional, like feeling the presence of our loved ones and having chats with them; social, such as including our passed loved ones in important events (sidebar: my older brother Kevin had a white rose at the head table at his wedding in 1996 in memory of our dad, who had died earlier that year); and practical, which is where I come in as a professional pet photographer. Practical bonds can include the act of maintaining your loved one’s or pet’s memory and preserving their legacy.
The Continuing Bonds theory acknowledges the importance of maintaining connections with our loved ones or pets as a way to cope with the loss, that the photos I and my fellow photographers can bring comfort and peace in your grieving process.
That the memories you have of the adventures you take with your best fur friend can help you heal and someday smile again.
Next week, I turned the mic over to my good friend Darlene Woodward of Pant the Town Photography in Georgetown, Massachusetts. She’s interviewing Jennifer Lyons of Paw Mobility Animal Rehabilitation and Wellness.
Jennifer is a licensed physical therapist and a certified canine rehabilitation practitioner, and she and Darlene are talking about senior dog health and mobility.
