Dear Jack: Who Can I Turn To? No One Cares for Me

Dear Jack, 

Since my dear girl left me I've been very sick both emotionally and physically. Life has no more meaning to me because my sweet girl was my life and I feel so lost without her!!  I'm very very depressed and sick please help me. I need to know that someone cares for me.

Betsy

Dear Betsy, 

     You have written me many times and, despite my sensitive recommendations and encouragement, your pain and suffering continue. 
     Maybe you are looking for support in the wrong places. Many humans are very surprised when their old friends and family members don't understand or honor their grief. They need the love and care and it just isn't there. It's not that they don't care; it's that they don't really understand the level of grief and love experienced with a Heart and Soul pet. This is why it is good to seek out a support group like mine and become acquainted with similar and like-minded others who are grieving too. 

     That aside, do you know who cares the most for you? Do you have faith? Do you know that God is taking very good care of your little girl? He is taking good care of you too, but you can't seem to see that now. These times are designed to take us to the very bottom of depression and loneliness so that we become desperate enough to turn to Him. Most of us forget Him most of the rest of the time! Kate learned this and many other people are learning this too.

     What do people do without faith?  Kate has it now. She hit bottom when she lost me and her father the same day. She felt she had no one to turn to and when you have no one, you turn around and there He is. He is waiting for you! God is ALWAYS there.  24/7. He is waiting for you to ask HIM for help and it's my responsibility now to redirect you to Him. This is how much I care about you. The greatest gift you can possess is that of knowing that God is waiting to comfort you in your time of need and that He is waiting for you to ask Him to do that. 

Go be quiet with yourself. Get in a space where you can have a conversation with God and just see how it goes. I can pretty much guarantee that it won't get worse! Bless you Betsy. You'll get through this and when you learn all you need to learn here on this earth, God will bring you back together again with everyone you ever loved...and if you haven't read my book yet, you need to. This is why we wrote it -- to help people just like you. 

Love,

Jack

Do Not Read This if You Aren't Serious About Healing

This post contains the key to all healing. Are you ready to accept it? Can you bear to read the truth when it is looking right at you? Perhaps you can. Perhaps you can't. Perhaps you will close this up with a grumpy "Huff!" and continue to do things the way you've always done them. What you do with this post is totally up to you.  If you are grieving you will understand a lot of it. If you have faith in something greater than you, will understand all of it. 

Over and over again I hear about it. The guilt. The shame. The feeling like you didn't do enough. Or maybe you even think you did too much!

Over and over I hear how you thought I was the only one. I was the only one who would comfort you and listen to you and watch you and stay with you and not judge you. You thought I was the only one who really truly unconditionally loved you. You didn't think anyone else could accept, and perhaps even love, your quirks the way I did. And now you feel you are alone with no one. Now that I am gone, you feel there is no one who loves you more than anything else on earth. No one who can watch you without judging you. No one who can listen to you without interrupting you.  No one who is there for you to comfort you and stay with you.

When you receive your first pet, no matter how old you are, you are being entrusted with a gift from God.  He is the one who arranges the gifts of life and love and He arranges this opportunity for you to live and learn to love and be loved. He sends you the greatest gift he has to give; the love of another being who loves you more than anything else in the world. This is the closest He will ever get to being in the physical realm with you.

When it's time for that pet to leave, it usually doesn't take too long to get another because when you learn to live with that kind of love, you come to believe that you cannot live without it. So you often dive in and get another pet and once more you learn to love and be loved unconditionally...in a different package with different lessons this time. But the bottom line is that the ultimate lesson is love. Life is the school, love is the lesson. The bottom line is always love.

When you find yourselves alone after your pet has gone you often are surrounded by people who don't understand what you have lost. There are many people who have not experienced love like this with a pet, or with anyone else, for that matter. These people are not capable of understanding. Sometimes they are even afraid of it! Meanwhile you are devastated. You have had love. You have loved beyond love. Now you are alone and you think the light of love is gone from your life because your beloved pet has crossed the Rainbow Bridge. You are desperate for comfort. You long for that love.

Love is not gone at all.  The love you gave and received remains inside your heart for all time.  You know the love you felt for your best friend? Feel it now. Can you feel it?  You are probably crying now because your friend is gone and you think your love is gone too.  How can your love be gone?  It is YOUR LOVE you feel!  YOURS!  You can never lose that. EVER. It's yours.  What you are missing is the love you received in return.

No doubt you remember quite clearly the love your best friend gave to you.  Feel it now.  Can you feel their love?  Once again you are crying because your friend is gone from your sight and you think they took the love with them when they left.  They did not take the love with them. Their love remains inside your heart.

You've heard this all before no doubt.  But have you thought about this?  Do you believe in God?  Do you have faith in a higher power?  A universal life force?  God is the absolute force of love.  God is behind everything.  God sent you a pet to teach you how to love and be loved.  That pet was God Manifest in your life. God lives and breathes through everyone who loves you and through even those who don't love you because even they can teach you what love is and what love isn't.

You think when you lost your pet, you lost the love? You did not lose the love.  God gave you your pet to know what love is so that you would again seek love when love seemed to go away.  He is happy when you seek another loving pet to love.  He is particularly interested however, in the times when you have no pet at all, when you feel lost and lonely; abandoned and alone.  It is these times that are designed to remind you that He is there. He is there when no one else is there; when no one else understands. God is there in the lost and lonely moments and He offers you everything and more.

It saddens your pets and it saddens Him when you cry and wail and dwell on your loss and feel unloved because in reality YOU ARE NOT ALONE AT ALL.  He takes you to the bottom so that you are forced to look up. He allows you to drag yourself through the shadows of your tears so that you get so tired of crying that you will try to find the light again. It's totally up to you how long you stay in the shadows avoiding the light that is meant to be yours.

LOVE IS HERE. LOVE IS YOURS. God's unconditional love surrounded you before you ever came to this place and it will surround you when you leave and return to Him.  God's love is with you every step of the way and He designs your life so that you are reminded of this each and every day.  But some of you don't even think about Him. You don't remember Him. Some of you don't even believe in Him. You don't thank Him for anything. You gripe and grumble and cry and complain about what you have lost rather than looking at what you've been given. While you are seeking love when your best friend leaves you, He is waiting for you to seek Him and His love.

Try to get your Heart and your Head on the same page and everything will be Okay.  

Please think about this as you move forward. Listen to how you talk about your pet. Everything you are saying and feeling is what God wants you to be saying about and feeling for Him. The God-Dog reversal is no mistake.  It is all God's Grand Design to teach you how to love. He brings the gift of love into your life so that you will want to seek it again. You are not alone. You are never forsaken. You are loved unconditionally and without judgment.  He wants to give you everything! All He asks is for you to believe in Him, to notice Him, to make Him important to you too. Bring Him into your world and let Him love you and it will make no matter what happens on this earth... you will know you are loved and this knowledge will bring you the strength and faith to get you through anything and everything.

Love is the most powerful force in the Universe and God is love. When you feel love, you are feeling God. When you see the love pour out of the eyes of a person or pet that you love, that is God's love pouring forth.  He comes to you in your pet so that you will know how much HE loves you. HE.  He is the ultimate Lover!  He loves you. He wants you to notice him. He wants to rescue you. He wants you to adopt Him into your life. He wants your attention, your love, your care, your loyalty, your compassion. He will heal your heart and He will continue to bring you what you need if you can only keep your heart in the right place with faith that everything will be OK. Like a pet, He only wants your love.

This post is a response to those who grieve who keep dwelling and dwelling and dwelling on their "guilt" and their "shame".  Some of it comes from past life experiences that victimized them (then) and makes them believe that they are not worthy (now). If you learn what life is supposed to teach you, sometimes you find out that you not only learn, but you learn that you need to UNLEARN some of the things you learned the hard way. 

I have said it before and I will say again. I will keep saying it and saying and saying it until maybe you will believe it:

Getting Back on Track Is Ultimately Up To You

I know it doesn't seem this way, but pain and suffering are the choices you make. You often tend to feel victimized and paralyzed by your loss. You can feel out of control. When you finally begin to heal, you have a little more energy and clarity to choose a better thought. You know what it is like to watch your best friend suffer? Your best friend does not want to watch you suffer either. You have the power to turn it around, you really do.

Guilt. Shame. Loss. Bereavement. Loneliness. Depression.  

When you start feeling sick enough long enough about it, you will change. Loss of someone we love will make us take a good hard look at our behavior. Everything in life is preparing us for our future life Over the Rainbow too. Guilt does not exist there and none of our pets are hung up on it (or anything else for that matter), so it's about growing and learning to live our lives in love. We've been focused for so long on someone else, and it takes us awhile to learn that It's about learning to love and accept OURSELVES too.

Louise Hay 2015 Day At A Time Calendar

If you have been struggling for awhile and cannot see the way out of the dark, contact someone to help you. Surround yourself with positive people. Seek help from a counselor, therapist, minister or community agency. Most communities have a hospice program and most hospice programs offer free bereavement support to people in the community. Don't be afraid to reach out and get the help you need.

We Cannot Be Separated

"...Like the cat who finds her way back home over a thousand miles, like the dog who waits for his master to arrive on the train that never comes, like the one who keeps a vigil at her master’s grave until she too can cross the bridge, some people and their pets are woven together by threads of life and they cannot, and will not, for long be separated." 

~"Jack McAfghan: Reflections on Life with my Master" Chapter 48