- Today, we're gonna be talking about
the three steps you can take to help you
with the loss of your pet.
(pleasant music)
Hi, my name's Danielle MacKinnon.
I'm an animal communicator and
a lot of people have emailed in and YouTube in
and texted in and everything elsed in,
and said, "What do I do?
I just lost my pet."
In fact, I was just looking at one of my videos
and it's a week old and there's 105 comments on that video,
which you can see here. (laughs)
There's 105 comments on that video
that are all talking about I'm so sad,
I'm missing my pet, I don't know what to do, I'm at a loss.
So today I'm gonna give you the three steps
that you can take to help you navigate the grieving process.
And those steps are steps that I've learned
because I'm an animal communicator.
That means I talk to animals psychically,
and I can share with you what they've shared with me.
So the first step to take is to start
looking at the feelings that you're having.
Now, grieving is a very normal process.
We're grieving the loss of our beloved dog, cat,
horse, Guinea pig, rabbit, whoever it is.
And when we're grieving, we feel sad.
We feel lonely. We miss their presence.
We wanna share with them and we can't.
They're physically no longer around.
And this is, this is really what grief is. We feel the loss.
However, when we bring animals into the situation,
there's a bigger piece that comes up for a lot of people.
And especially looking at those YouTube comments
on that other video,
one of the things I saw is that
so many people feel guilty.
They feel guilty about their animal's life.
They feel guilty, like they didn't do enough.
They feel guilty, like they should have done more.
They regret their decisions.
They should've listened to their gut.
There's so much guilt that comes up around our animals
crossing over, our pets crossing over.
And so the first step that I encourage people to take
is to start looking at the feelings that they're having
and separating them out.
Those feelings of loss and missing their baby
and missing the time together, all of that.
These are so healthy and normal feelings of loss
that it's really great to experience.
No one's gonna not experience these
when they lose someone they love,
whether it's human or animal, we're going to feel this.
But there's another grouping of emotions that we have
that can get us stuck, that can make us feel upset,
that can actually add to the grieving process.
And it's really hard.
And those are those guilt feelings.
And so starting to kind of look at that,
go, "Okay, yes, this is my loss feeling.
I understand I'm missing versus
this is me beating myself up.
This is me thinking I'm not good enough.
This is me telling myself, I should always be doing more."
Those types of feelings are the feelings that come up
that actually your animal wants you
to start looking at an understanding.
And in my book, "Animal Lessons,
I help you understand that as well.
Our animals are always teaching us.
Plus they come up in step two.
The next step I want you to take
around moving through the grieving process
with your pet is not exactly a step
as much as it is an understanding.
And then one more step after this.
And that next step or that understanding
is actually understanding that animals plan their passing.
So this comes into play with all those feelings of guilt
and beating yourself up.
What animals have told me is that they plan
when they're gonna go, who's gonna be around,
what they're gonna die of,
exactly when it's gonna happen in your life.
They figure all this stuff out,
including if they're going to be hit by a car,
if they're gonna die of natural causes,
if that's gonna be euthanasia, whatever it is,
they plan this whole thing out.
So here we are as humans and we are beating ourselves up.
I should have done more.
I should have listened to my mother.
I should have not trusted that veterinarian
or whatever it is, when really
at a big picture, spiritual level,
your pet has planned the passing in exactly this way.
So all of those guilt feelings that are coming up
are coming up for you to deal with them,
not because they are, they mean you're a bad person
and that's why your animal crossed over.
So separating out the feelings in step one,
to understand the loss feelings,
the versus the beating myself up feeling,
and then knowing that these beating myself up feelings
are coming up because of what's happening in the next step,
which is understanding that your animal
planned their passing so you could learn,
so you could grow and evolve your soul
kind of brings everything together and may actually help you
move through the grief in a different way, in an easier way.
I'm not saying not have grief
because that's a totally normal thing,
but that brings us to the third step.
And the third step is
when you're finally understanding that hey, this was planned
and I'm supposed to get something out of this.
My animal wants me to grow.
My animal wants me to become a better person
through her passing.
When you understand that, it can alleviate
some of those guilt feelings,
as well as create a stronger connection
between you and your pet.
And when you have that stronger connection,
the grief is still there.
But that stronger connection allows you
to open up so that you can actually
connect in and receive messages.
Now, what does that mean?
So step three is connect to your pet
that has crossed on the other side.
So of course that means you can hire
an animal communicator like me
and you can do something like that.
But that's, you don't have to at all,
what you can do is you can lay down in bed at night
before you go to bed and before you go to sleep
and say, "Hey, would you please connect with me?
Would you please show up in a dream?"
You can write a letter to your pet.
Now I know that one seems really weird
because we're like, "Well, my dog doesn't read.
My cat doesn't read."
But (laughs) from the other side, they do,
even when they're alive, they do.
They know everything that's going on.
So you taking the time to set your intention.
I'm gonna write this letter to my dog. Here I go.
You can bet that your animal is clued into that,
is feeling everything that you're writing,
is knowing everything that you're writing,
but you can't get to that connection place
where when they're knowing everything you're writing,
they're gonna show up and give you a message.
They're gonna send you a message over the radio,
their collar's gonna show up on the floor.
You're gonna smell them go by,
even though they've crossed over.
None of that can happen unless you've done
step one and step two.
So these pieces all come together
to allow for you to connect and feel close to in a new way,
your pet that has just passed.
Just because some people don't understand
our feelings about our beloved pets passing,
know that I do and there's a whole lot of people out there
who do as well.
(pleasant music)