“Pets come in to this life to support us, and what we need to learn.” ~ A Dog Whisperer friend of mine

In September, I was walking my two dogs at the top of St. Mary’s in North Vancouver and our little dog, Scooter, died suddenly. He saw a dog, barked, and I pulled him back and he rolled over and died in seconds. I thought I had killed him by reigning him in too strongly. I called my family on my cellphone, and carried him back to the car. We took him to the animal emergency, but he had indeed passed. Heartbreaking. He was 7 ½ years old, and in excellent health. I know many of you have had pets who have passed. It’s the toughest part of being a pet owner.

We were all broken hearted. I experienced intense grief, and also guilt that I had done something wrong. I was assured that it was simply his “time”, and there was no known cause unless we wanted an autopsy. We decided to just let him go, and sadly move into acceptance.

Grieving is a tough part of life. No words can change the flow of life and death. It can all feel so very unfair. We all have our own ways of navigating through this.

As I was dealing with my own grief, and the grief of our family and our other dog, I became very aware that embedded in my feeling of grief were feelings of guilt. I felt that if I had done something different, he wouldn’t have died. If I had chosen a different path, not sharply reigned him in, not met that particular dog, been more aware, etc. It is not uncommon in grief for all of us to have a guilt component. I went through the whole process.

I am always taken aback at how much grief hurts. Regardless of our philosophy, we are all human, and there are feelings to feel. The guilt component really was present for me. It had happened on my watch, when I was responsible.

One of the first things I did was recognize the feelings of guilt, and then because I am committed to personal expansion, I asked myself whether this feeling of guilt was an isolated experience, or whether guilt was one of my “default” positions. Default means a coping pattern or way of thinking that has been around for a long time, and is one of the filters we use when we process events. It is important when we look at our feelings to know whether we are dealing with a pattern of thinking, or a specific feeling in the moment. If it is a pattern, then we are being controlled by a style of thinking that interferes with our ability to process the truth of all possibilities.

Knowing this both professionally and personally, I began my own inquiry as to whether the guilt component of grief that I was experiencing was just specific to the event, or whether I was dealing with an aspect of myself that has a pattern of relating to life from a place of guilt.

So I went into my, “here we go again” reflection. Often we think we have done enough to clear something, and then it pops up again. It’s part of being human.

When I sat with all of this, I realized I was dealing with a pattern. I tend to feel guilty and responsible when something “bad” happens, and then I go into self blame. I felt I should have been able to do something, or caught it before it happened. I should have been able to control the outcome. It’s the “God Complex” in us which thinks we could have stopped the flow. Many of us do this. Reflect for yourself as to whether you have guilt as one of your default patterns. It was helpful for me when I took the time to really reflect on this. I asked myself if there were other times in my life when I would feel guilty… and I looked at this theme from a place of patterns, rather than isolated vignettes of feeing guilty. I didn’t realize before this incident that guilt was one of my defaults. I began to work at addressing it and challenging it, seeing it for what it was – a way of thinking and processing, rather than a truth. It took me a week of focusing, but I was able to uproot it as much was available for me at that point. It was a good feeing to go deeper.

It is so important to know what is a pattern of thought, and what is a response to a particular moment. Both need to be faced, but the pattern of thought is more limiting to our lives and needs to be uprooted.

The exercise I describe called The Matrix was really helpful when I realized that I had done nothing wrong, and it was a matter of it being his time. I stayed focused on this exercise. I also gave myself permission to be “in grace”. That to me meant that whatever role I played, it was not a purposeful one. I granted myself grace in the moment by quietly whispering to myself “I grant myself grace”.

Because I am interested in always moving to the bigger picture, I have a lot of commitment to unhooking myself from anything that limits me. I love Bryon Katie’s work because the unhooking is related to finding what the truth is. I don’t want to just make myself feel better. That is a band aid solution that doesn’t interest me. What I am interested in is the bigger truth. Only then do we move into personal expansion.

If guilt is a strong theme for you then I encourage you to do some inner cleaning. Guilt takes us off our game and off our highest place of being. Remember there are two aspects to guilt – making ourselves wrong, and therefore “lesser”, and blaming others and having them be wrong, guilty and therefore lesser. We humans can learn a lot through processing guilt.

So now, when I think of Scooter, I smile. Still sad, but I smile. This is what I remember:

“Oh, my toy, this is the favourite part of my day.
Oh a walk, this is the favourite part of my day.
Oh a pat, this is the favourite part of my day.
Oh playing with my family, this is the favourite part of my day.
Oh food, this is the favourite part of my day.”

So I am reminded of the joy that is part of every moment.

What you focus on expands. A gift to us all.