My dog died very suddenly and my nervous system feels like it’s been shaken up like a can of Coke. Nearly three months after losing Opal, my system still hasn’t settled. The shock still grips my chest, elevates my heart rate, and braces me against feeling too much, too fast. My nervous system’s internal map of safety, predictability, and how my world works has been totally destabilized.

Interwoven with the shock is the grief, which feels completely different. I’m used to a baseline of sadness and deflated energy now. The grief has settled into my body and made a home there: the heaviness in my chest, the crumpled posture, the puffy eyes. Sometimes I notice that my neck has wilted off to the side like a week-old flower. I cry on planes, trains, in my car, on the bus. Something about moving vehicles seems to loosen the seal and release all the waterworks. Streams of tears in public is the norm now.

I feel exposed and raw, overstimulated much of the time, I have brain fog and weird dreams, my system is cycling through every layer that still needs processing: the suddenness of what happened, the profound loss of love and companionship, the disorientation of losing so many of my daily rhythms and routines, the guilt that I could not do more to help her, the impossible end-of-life decisions, and the pain of holding her as she died. It’s f*****g brutal.

The days after Opal died felt apocalyptic. I canceled everything on my schedule for a week and mostly just stared off into space. But life does not stop when catastrophe hits. Emails still arrive, bills still need to be paid, people still need things from you. There are pet insurance claims to file, cremation arrangements to make, all of her accounts to close. Somehow, you keep moving while your entire internal world has collapsed. I’m incredibly lucky to exist in environments where my grief has been met with care and grace, but “going through the motions” while feeling completely internally disrupted is insane.

Then there’s Opal herself and all that she meant to me over the last nine and a half years. That part has been harder for me to access, too painful to fully touch, still held at a distance by the shock. I’m hoping that by writing about all the layers that are protecting me from feeling the love of Opal they will start to move. I want to be able to write about her and all that I have learned from loving her. I am trying to stay as present as I can with all the pain so that it will metabolize and not get stuck or buried so I can get back to the love.

She’s starting to feel farther away from me now, and that’s its own kind of grief. I knew everything about her: every inch of her body, her personality and preferences, her fears and triggers, her routines, and her favorite spots to be pet. She occupied an enormous amount of space in my consciousness for nearly a decade. I can feel that all fading and I don’t want it to.

Opal was so alive and getting to witness that aliveness was one of the greatest gifts of my life. She loved to swim, run, roll in the grass, and sleep curled up beside me. She ran to greet the many people she loved, instantly lighting up their faces and making their whole day (and mine). She was incredibly joyful, deeply sweet, and insanely smart. I taught her all kinds of tricks and made her perform them constantly. She understood every single thing I said to her.

She also did a lot of stupid s**t like rolling in decomposing skunks, chasing deer into the street, challenging coyotes, disappearing into storm drains, she ate marijuana buds, chicken bones, and horse s**t. But she did all of it with so much joy, completely immersed in the moment and unapologetically herself. Even though she scared the crap out of me with some of her antics, I still made the choice daily to let her be a dog. I wanted her to live the fullest, freest, most joyful life possible. I knew that at some point she would probably get hurt or sick because of it. I just thought I’d be prepared to handle whatever came.

I tried to protect her from everything I could possibly foresee: extensive training, bi-annual check-ups, the best dog food out there, a wellness plan, pet insurance, tons of exercise, my full presence and attunement. But at the end of the day, none of that mattered. I could not do s**t to protect her.

I always felt like it was my job to protect her and I took that job very seriously, but in the end, protection looked very different than I imagined. My final act of protection for Opal was to let her die. It was putting my own heartbreak completely aside because what was best for her was simultaneously what was worst for me.

This has been the single hardest thing I have ever had to do. I was her protector, her guardian, her kahu, and in one instant, I was not doing that anymore. I was being asked to let her go. The cognitive dissonance there has been the greatest mind f**k that I have ever experienced.

In Hawaiian, you don’t call yourself your pet’s owner. You are their Kahu (ka – hoo). Kahu has many meanings: Guardian, protector, steward, beloved, and attendant. Someone entrusted with the safekeeping of something precious, something cherished.

She died only ten days after I found out she was sick. Those ten days were like a time warp. I had to process the impossible, make agonizing medical decisions, witness her rapid decline, and attempt to metabolize the massive shock and fear in my body so that I could be a source of comfort and love for her at the end.

I was desperately casting wishes out into the universe, trying to figure out how to do that while time was waning more each day. I wanted to freeze time so I could memorize every inch of her, make sure I had videos of all her tricks and quirks, I frantically wrote down all her funny idiosyncrasies, not wanting to forget them. I sat with her in the sun and took her for one last walk. My closest friends buoyed me through all of it. Their ability to meet me in my darkest hour was an absolute godsend.

Then she couldn’t breathe anymore. My lively, athletic, vibrant dog who three weeks prior was running up cliff sides with no issue was dying. I stayed up with her all night, not knowing it would be her last night. She couldn’t sleep because she couldn’t breathe lying down. She was exhausted, in pain, and suffering at a level I had not previously witnessed and could not tolerate. I called around and made an appointment for 11 am at a clinic we had never even been to before. It was time.

My huge-hearted friend Sarah sent Opal voice memos from Hawaii, telling her goodbye and to go find all of our other spirit dogs across the rainbow bridge. That was the last video I ever took of her. The next photos in my phone are screenshots of urn options I had to choose from.

Her passing was peaceful and it was absolutely the right time. In her final seconds, she looked directly into my eyes while I told her I loved her and that she was okay. The people at the clinic could not have been kinder or more compassionate with us. My parents came and I will forever wish that my mom had not pointed down the hall just as they were carrying Opal’s body out of the room. I hate that I saw that.

The rest of that day was a blur. I remember feeling a strange sense of peace and relief. I think I was feeling some of what Opal felt as she transcended her cancer-ridden body and became free.

She sent me two hummingbirds that day. I sat in the grass beneath the potato bush, her favorite spot in the yard, and a hummingbird flew directly up to my face and hovered there, staring at me. A few hours later, I was sitting at the dining room table when I looked out the window and saw another one suspended perfectly still outside the glass.

The next day, the sky was completely gray and overcast, and then suddenly the clouds parted, revealing a patch of bright blue sky. One after another, ten distinct heart-shaped clouds drifted across the opening like a scene from a movie. Then the clouds closed again and the sky returned to gray. It felt completely surreal. Opal would have turned ten exactly one month after she passed.

She has sent me other signs too: ladybugs landing at my feet, black dogs, uncanny song lyrics, and crystal clear insights that could not have come from me alone. A stray Siamese cat with opalescent blue eyes showed up the day Opal died. He’s part of the family now. His name is Jules, and as I write this, he’s sleeping in Opal’s spot beneath the potato bush. Multiple hummingbirds have also appeared while I’ve been writing this piece.

I miss her so much it’s actually unbearable. My routines are completely disrupted and my nervous system still cannot fully settle because it oriented so much around Opal for co-regulation. The constant reminders of her absence feel like death by a thousand paper cuts.

My identity has been destabilized, for the first time in ten years, I am no longer a dog mom. I still constantly think that “I need to get home to Opal” and realize that I don’t. I think of her every day at 3:00, the time she insisted that I feed her dinner. I have not washed or put away the sweater I was wearing when she died, it’s just sitting there, I haven’t donated her last bag of dog food yet or put her bowls away, I have not cleaned out her mess of sand, dirt, and dog hair in the back seat of my car, every time I find one of her dog hairs, I have the urge to keep it. I have not been back to the park where we walked almost daily for years. I’ve stopped eating some of her favorite foods because they remind me of her, and every time I wash a dish she would have licked clean, I feel a wave of sadness. I know that there’s no timeline for any of these things, but they are looming over me nonetheless.

I’m slowly integrating this new reality as my brain and nervous system update their internal maps. It’s a slow, painful, and exhausting process. Each trigger, each moment of remembering, each instinct to reach for her and realizing she’s gone is another painful correction between the old reality and the new one. Over time, I know the grief waves will soften, the shock will settle, and my system will stop expecting her to still be here. Eventually, I will find solid ground again. I will orient to new sources of stability and regulation, rebuild my routines, and learn how to carry this loss without it breaking me open constantly.

For nearly ten years, Opal shaped my days, my nervous system, my sense of home, my understanding of love, presence, joy, and care. Of course it’s painful and disorganizing to lose her. Of course my body is struggling to understand where she went. Grief has taught me that love does not only live in the heart. It lives in the nervous system, in routines, in muscle memory, in the unconscious turning toward another being a thousand times a day for comfort, grounding, companionship, and care.

I am grateful when people ask me about her even if that means instant tears. I want to talk about her and keep her memory alive. I appreciate when people acknowledge that of course, I am still in it and ask how it’s all going. I appreciate my friends who get me out for walks, that’s the daily routine I miss the most. I am building up the courage to go donate her food to a local shelter and see if maybe I can help walk some of the dogs there. I scheduled a pet loss reading so I can learn how to stay connected to her. And of course, I’m caring for my nervous system, honoring my reduced capacity, riding the waves, and letting the net catch me right now.

It’s all terrible, grief is obliterating. I’m bitter that my dog died so suddenly and so soon. I’m bitter every time I see someone else still walking through the world with their dog beside them. I want my dog back.

And while I won’t attempt to tie this neatly up in a bow, there are some things to be grateful for in grief. Reduced capacity has made it impossible to ignore what is essential and what is not. It has shown me where all the leaks are and who my ride-or-dies are. I have felt the love of my village of people coming out of the woodworks to catch me as I was free falling, and I have been reminded of how many wise, compassionate people I have in my life. It’s such a gift to be able to sit with someone in their grief, and you can only do that if you’ve been brave enough to sit in your own.

I’ve binged Anderson Cooper’s podcast, All There Is, and my TikTok feed is now mostly videos about grief and pet loss. As painful as all of it is, it has also reminded me that grief and loss are among the most universal human experiences there are.

Moving through the world with a broken heart means connecting with people without the normal filters, defenses, and polish. Writing honestly about my pain has opened the door to deeper connection, compassion, and courage in others too. I appreciate the honesty grief insists on and the deeper glimpse it gives us into one another’s hearts. Sitting intimately with our own pain expands our capacity to understand the suffering other people are carrying and to show up for one another with more skill. Sharing what hurts creates connection in experiences that can otherwise feel profoundly lonely. In time, grief gives us the opportunity to be expanded by love instead of crushed by loss. It’s terrible and also transformative.

Welcome to The Drop

Exploring the hidden patterns shaping modern life, the gap between what we know and how we live, and what it takes to return to ourselves.

We all have a gap between what we know and how we actually behave.

For some of us, the gap is narrow and we are in relationship with it. For others, it’s wider, and relegated to the shadows.

Here are some shapes the gap can take:

The person who values honesty but shrinks when asked to tell the truth.

The person who is exhausted but can’t stop to rest.

The self-aware person who knows all their patterns and is still stuck inside of them.

I’ve become obsessed with these gaps and the strategies we use to avoid dealing with them.

Relief over reality.

Coping and numbing over real resolution.

Escaping discomfort rather than leaning in long enough to find out that you could handle it.

Collecting insight rather than building capacity.

Some of these patterns are so ingrained we do not even realize we carry them or we think that this is simply who we are.

They’re not who we are and if we’re willing to lean in rather than dip out we can free ourselves.

What we won’t face, on the other hand, doesn’t disappear. It shape shifts—into our relationships, environments, and our work. The people closest to us have to carry whatever we are not consciously dealing with.

Avoidance isn’t neutral, there are stakes.

We can understand ourselves all day long and still not be able to live differently. Insight does not translate into action, capacity does.

That gap between knowing and living is at the center of my writing. We can handle more than we think, we are always capable of growth and learning, so many of our strategies are no longer necessary.

As a coach and teacher, I see first hand where we are all getting stuck and what helps us change.

These essays are an attempt to look at that honestly.