Warning: This post discusses a heavy topic.

It’s a sunny Saturday morning when a blurry pixelated picture of my Mom on a video call says, “We have sad news at home… Last week… Mickey passed away without warning. I’m so sorry. It’s heartbreaking… He left us before you could make it back home.”
This catches me off guard. I open my mouth but no sound comes out. There’s nothing to say here anyway. 
“I’m sorry,” Mom repeats with an apologetic expression, clearly expecting some kind of reaction from me. 
But there's nothing in my chest but numbing shock, and my head is empty, without a single thought. 
“I… I need to digest it,” my lips are moving, time seems to draw out as pain slowly makes its way through the numbness in my chest. “I’ll talk to you later.”
My Mom silently lets me end the call.

Mickey was my cat. He was my family. 

It’s been a few days but I’m still struggling with my emotions. I want to cry but I can’t. For some inexplicable reason, I feel guilty. I have a lot of regrets, and the pain washes over my chest in waves, graduating from a dull ache to sharp and overwhelming sorrow at the most unexpected moments. I feel lost and hurt. Most likely, I’m already in the process of grieving. 

But I’m grieving not only the loss of my beloved cat. 

I’m grieving all the precious moments I had with Mickey. The moment I picked up a tiny, sleepy gray kitten from his sellers' apartment and soothed his meows the whole way home. The feeling of warmth and comfort when he came to sleep at my feet or curled up in a purring ball on my chest. Those sleepless nights when I cried, hopeless and sad, but the sight of him by my side made me feel less lonely... I'm grieving my very hope to see him again when I finally come back home. I’m grieving my happy version of a future where Mickey was alive. And on top of that, I’m grieving my home as I remember it because now it will never be the same. Sounds like a lot, isn’t it? Grieving is indeed a lot of work that we do. 

At the Peer Support Centre, we say that grief is a reaction to a loss. A loss is inherently connected to change. When we experience changes, we also experience losses. It can be not only the death of a person or a pet, but also the loss of a friend when we drift apart, the loss of our home when we move, the loss of identity during significant transformations in our lives, or even the loss of the expected happy version of a future... People grieve those losses in their own ways, with their bodies, minds, and souls. Grief might look like headaches with a constant feeling of exhaustion or insomnia with loss of appetite, tenseness, and aggressive outbursts. It might be excessive crying or a silent shutdown. When grieving, some people can’t stop thinking about the loss while others might try to numb the pain by retreating into their dreams or turning to substances. Grief can manifest itself in searching for meaning in the loss or seeking spiritual activities to restore our shattered beliefs… It is a complex process. Grief affects not only emotional, but the physical, behavioral, cognitive, and spiritual aspects of our lives. 

As a volunteer at the Peer Support Centre, I’ve learned about five aspects of grieving that some people, including me, may experience when processing loss: 

1. Grief is like a rollercoaster or it comes in waves.

When grieving, our emotions can be unpredictable. Grief might feel like a rollercoaster with sharp ups and downs, or like a steady stream of emotions with abrupt outbursts and periods of numbness... For me, it looks like a sea of ​​pain with sudden storms and waves crashing against my ribs.

2. Grieving is a very individual process.

There’s no right or wrong way to grieve. We’re all different, and we grieve in our own way, in our own time, and on our own terms. Every way of grieving is valid. 

3. One hour of grieving can feel like eight hours of physical labour.

Grief can affect our physical body just as much as it affects our emotions. It might be knots in the stomach, tiredness, insomnia, or even nausea people feel when they grieve. It’s important to recognize that our body is doing as much work as our mind trying to process the loss. 

4. “A loss is a loss is a loss.” 

There’s no hierarchy between losses. No one’s loss is more or less important than someone else’s. For example, my loss of my pet doesn't mean that I suffer more than the person who might have lost their scholarship or cut ties with their friend. All losses are painful for the people who grieve.

5. When we experience a loss, we often experience secondary losses as a result.

The primary loss is like a thread intertwined with many other threads in the fabric of our lives. If the primary thread is ripped off, it affects all the other threads it was tied to. To break it down, my loss of Mickey is my primary loss, but my losses of the hope to see him again, the home from my memories, and the happy version of a future I had are all resulting from his death—they are my secondary losses. 

Losses are a natural part of life, and grief is the natural response to those losses. It’s okay to feel whatever we feel in our hearts, minds, and bodies during grieving. It’s always valid to process our losses in a way that feels right for us. It’s important to be kind to ourselves and take proper time to heal our invisible wounds.

And it’s always okay to ask for help and support if we need it.   

Author Bio:

My name is Tetiana Polishchuk (she/her), a third year PhD student in Educational Psychology and a second year volunteer at the Peer Support Centre. In my free time I enjoy listening to music, writing fiction, cooking, and watching movies. 

This post is dedicated to my cat Mickey because one of the ways to process loss for me is a creative way.