Dear Jack,
I am heartbroken. My friends are so insensitive and it makes me so angry. They say, “He was just a dog” when he was my everything and I don’t know how I will live without him. My life feels out of control. I feel better staying in the dark with him than living in the light with the living. I don’t think I like people anymore.
The anger of grief is like an enemy in hiding while it determines its victims and plans to strike out. Sometimes anger is directed at God, sometimes it’s directed at the veterinarian. A popular target is the insensitive family member or friend who makes the careless comment “…it was just a dog.” A person can say the wrong thing at the wrong time and can find themselves quickly and vehemently abandoned and ostracized forever more.
It's a natural dynamic and anger is a part of grieving. On top of this, many of you have been controlled for so long in your family, your marriage, your workplace that you don’t realize how much control you have over your very own lives. The reality is that you come to earth to experience all of life. You come to exert your free will and to make choices that help you to grow and create and recreate yourself. Some of you along the way have been dominated by the choices of others who used their will to convince you that you needed to answer to someone else before answering the call of your own heart. Even now you don’t give yourself permission to take control of your own life. What you do is clouded by the fact that others control you -- and therefore you tend to seek out someone to blame when the going gets rough. Again, it’s human nature. Go easy on yourself.
What you don’t seem to realize is that this life is yours. The world is yours for the taking. It is your Master’s gift to you to allow you to experience life as YOU define it, as fully as possible. Too many people allow others to define their life for them and they can spend their entire lifetime being what someone else wanted them to be.
One of the gifts of working through grief is that you can finally see these things more clearly. You have an opportunity to see how you’ve lived and how you want to live and you have this opportunity to move towards the life you want to have. The one that makes YOU happy. Meanwhile your boy is with you every step of the way, cheering you on.
Love, Jack
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