‘Disenfranchised grief’ is a term used to describe grief that isn’t fully or sometimes even partly acknowledged by society. There are several types of grief that fall into this category: the death of a friend, a miscarriage, giving up a child for adoption, and the death of an ex-spouse are just a few examples.

Pet loss is often experienced as a disenfranchised grief too.

An unseen pain

If you’ve recently lost a precious pet, you may feel that your own grief is not being recognised in the way it would be if a human family member had passed away. Or if a loved one has recently lost a pet, they may be struggling with this hidden sorrow right now.

This can be incredibly upsetting.

Many pet carers feel isolated and unheard at a time when they need support to cope with their loss.

As we’ve talked about in past blogs, pet loss can have a huge impact on your routines including the friendships you’ve built up around your lost companion. The end of a pet’s life may be far-reaching in terms of how it changes your own life.

Pet carers can even feel disenfranchised within the animal-loving community. For example, people who’ve lost a young pet in traumatic circumstances can be unintentionally dismissive of the pain of losing a very old animal – “They had a long life and it was to be expected”. Or dog and cat lovers may struggle to understand someone who is grieving for a small pet such as their rabbit, hamster, snake or cockatiel.

It can be a difficult arena to navigate, especially as everyone brings their own experiences to the table!

The challenges of disenfranchised grief

Research has shown that disenfranchised grief often results in complications that aren’t present during other more socially recognised times of grief.

You may feel more depressed or angry because you don’t feel able or ‘allowed’ to express your emotions about your loss.

You may not have been through the rituals and ceremonies usually associated with a bereavement. Milestones such as funerals are built into the grieving process for emotional reasons, rather than just the practical ‘disposal’ (to use a brutal term) of the physical body, but we often skip them with animals.

The rituals and ceremonies we have around death are about acknowledging the importance of the life of the deceased. They’re a way of saying goodbye and remembering the being who will no longer have a physical presence in our lives.

Of course, this doesn’t guarantee closure but it is a way of telling the world that the deceased mattered. And that your relationship with the deceased was important to you.
People sometimes feel that they have to say goodbye to their pets alone and without the support of their wider community.

Knowing this, it makes sense that disenfranchised grief is sometimes described as ‘paradoxical’. It’s intensified because of the issues mentioned above and yet made smaller by society.

Coping with our own pain

If you are reading this article because you have lost a beloved pet, there are steps you can take to help you go through this difficult journey, even if it feels like our wider society doesn’t recognise your loss.

1. Acknowledge that your love for your lost pet is true, valid and significant – Your pet mattered to you and your grief is real.

2. Remind yourself that you are allowed to grieve – When we lose someone or something we love in life, it’s OK to ask for time and space to grieve their passing.

3. Create your own rituals – A growing number of pet crematoriums are offering pet lovers the opportunity to say goodbye to their pets and to keep special mementoes such as paw prints or locks of hair. With or without this option, you may find it helpful to create your own memorials and rituals for your pet.

4. Reach out to your support network – Your friends and family may not realise how much you’re suffering right now. By asking for support, you may find that it comes from someone within your circle who has been through their own pet loss.

5. Look for ways to express your grief – Even if you feel you can’t share your grief with your wider network, many people find it helpful to write about their pets, create photo books, draw or paint, or create in some way.

6. Know that you’re not alone – I created The Ralph Site in memory of my cat, Ralph. Very quickly, people started coming forward to share their own experiences of pet bereavement and to give and receive comfort. It confirmed what I had always known – that we pet carers are not alone in the love and grief we feel. We are a community. People are always there to listen on The Ralph Site’s Facebook page and in the private Facebook pet loss support group.

How we can help others deal with disenfranchised grief

There are steps we can take to support others during their time of grief and to model a better way for how society approaches pet loss.

• Be sensitive to another person’s loss

Whatever the cause of a person’s grief, it’s not really for any of us to judge how ‘real’ or ‘appropriate’ it is. People feel what they feel. Love is love and loss is loss. We might not share the same feelings but empathy lets us recognise and understand when another person is suffering.

We must also be careful to acknowledge that, even if we’ve experienced a similar loss, other people’s grief won’t automatically look the same as our own.

• Provide validation

Validation is about letting someone know that their feelings count. Again, we don’t have to share the same feelings but it can be hugely healing to let someone know that we see their pain and understand that they have lost someone very special to them.

• Name their feelings

With disenfranchised grief, people often feel that they aren’t allowed to express their emotions. And yet naming your feelings is one of the first steps towards recognising emotions and dealing with them.

It’s important to acknowledge that there is no such thing as good or bad feelings. Grief can take us through every emotion from shock and denial to anger, guilt and fear or sadness, relief and release. There is no order to what we feel and no right or wrong thoughts.

If you know someone who has lost a pet, they might find it helpful if you give them the opportunity to name their feelings.

• Recognise that grief is a journey

Whatever or whoever the cause of someone’s grief, the bereaved will find themselves on a rollercoaster of a journey that has no set timeline.

People often expect that the journey will end at a definitive point with a feeling of detachment from the loss and closure. In reality, this is rarely the case.

Instead, people find that their feelings soften with time and they learn to live a new life born out of their loss.

Grieving serves multiple purposes. It lets us acknowledge the loss, express our emotions, adjust to a changed life, relocate the loss to a more manageable space in our minds, and adjust our philosophical beliefs.

It is important to understand that grief doesn’t stick to a schedule and to be open-hearted about the highs and lows the bereaved may go through even years after their loss.

And always remind someone who is grieving that they are not alone.

Until next time, very best wishes from Shailen and The Ralph Site team
The Ralph Site, non-profit pet loss support

Although all pet loss is traumatic, it can be especially hard to cope with when the death of your pet is sudden and unexpected. Tragic accidents such as being hit by a car or attacked by another animal, or a fatal stroke or seizure out of the blue can be almost impossible to accept.

People often talk about grief as a time for finding closure but, when a death is sudden and has occurred in traumatic circumstances, it can be very hard to find peace.

If you have recently lost a pet and it was unexpected, you may feel that life is very unfair. There’s a sense that your companion’s life was unjustly cut short – a life half-lived – with all of that wonderful potential extinguished in a moment.

These are natural, completely understandable feelings.

Symptoms of shock

Sudden and unexpected pet loss can cause pet carers to exhibit physical and emotional symptoms of shock. If your bereavement has just happened – or you’re reading this on behalf of someone it’s just happened to – you may find yourself shaking, experiencing palpitations, headaches, stomach aches, sleeplessness and more.

Some people even show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is defined as ‘recurring memories and a heightened state of arousal that lingers for more than a month after a traumatic event’. You don’t even have to have witnessed your pet’s passing to feel traumatised. Sometimes not having been there can be just as painful.

Even without symptoms of shock, you may find that you’re experiencing repetitive thoughts, a loss of appetite, guilt, anger, sadness, and that it might be hard to function at the moment.
Again, these feelings are to be expected.

Making sense where there is none

As we discussed in a previous article about pet loss guilt, repetitive thoughts and blaming yourself or others for your pet’s passing are usually a way of making sense of what has happened.

In the case of a sudden and traumatic death, you may feel that you could have done more to stop it happening. It is also devastating to not have a chance to say goodbye.
If you are struggling with these feelings, there are few exercises you can try that you may find helpful.

1. Break down the event

Sadly, accidents and unexpected illnesses can happen. Animals – just like humans – can die long before their time. Guilt and blame are about trying to understand what has happened and why.
If you’re stuck in a cycle of repetitive thoughts, try breaking down the event that lead to your pet’s passing. The aim is to see your role in the event within a larger context.

For example, if your cat ran into the path of a car because a sound frightened it, ask yourself:

• Did you make the sound that frightened your cat?
• Were you able to prevent the sound?
• Could you control the direction your cat ran in?
• Did you have control over the car driver, including what time they left their house and the route they were taking?
• Did you have any control over the injuries your pet sustained?
• When you let your cat out, did you intend to do harm?
• Can you see into the future?

In most cases, the answers to these questions will be ‘no’. If you had the power to change what happened, you would have done.

Please remember that you did not wish harm on your pet – you loved them and they had a beautiful life with you.

2. Think about quality of life

Right now, you may be telling yourself that you shouldn’t have let your cat out or taken your dog for a walk or put your rabbit in their outdoor run (whatever the circumstances around your pet’s death).

However, it’s important to think about your motivation. You did these things to enhance your pet’s quality of life.

The only way to completely protect a pet from external harm is to keep it shut in a padded room away from all danger. But would that give any quality of life?

And what about the internal harms that we can’t control such as heart disease, cancers or epilepsy? Nothing can protect a pet from these hidden dangers.

It helps to remember that animals live in the moment – they don’t measure time the way we humans do and they don’t worry about the future or their mortality. During the life your precious pet lived, they were loved and happy. Maybe it isn’t the quantity of a life that really matters but the quality of the life.

3. Honour your pet’s life

As we mentioned above, one of the worst parts about losing a pet unexpectedly is the feeling of a life unfinished. You have probably always imagined your pet growing old with you and years of companionship together.

One exercise that can help with these feelings is to write a letter to your pet, telling them about the life you had hoped for them. You could also write about the special memories you shared and the big impact they made on your life, even if you only had a short time together.

Some people find it helpful to talk to their lost pet or to memorialise them in some way. You could create a photo book of their life or a special site to visit and remember them.
Hopefully, you have supportive friends and family around you who will be happy to hear about your pet’s life rather than focusing on the events that led to their death. If you do need extra support, there are some excellent pet bereavement services.

Many people on The Ralph Site’s Facebook page and in the private Facebook group have experienced a traumatic loss too and can offer a sympathetic ear.

The main thing is to celebrate the life your pet lived and their unique personality. Instead of letting their story be about ‘the animal that died a tragic death’, tell the story of the animal that loved their belly tickled or had a favourite toy or who made people laugh with their funny quirks.

And always know that you are not alone.

Until next time, very best wishes from Shailen and The Ralph Site team
The Ralph Site, non-profit pet loss support

Sadly, the question of whether someone should be allowed time off work to grieve following the death of a pet seems to be a divisive one.

People are often afraid to ask for much-needed time off because they’re worried that their colleagues won’t understand the depth of their bereavement. Many non-animal lovers or people who don’t have pets may struggle to be sympathetic, but that doesn’t take away from the reality of your loss.

Those of us who have lost a beloved pet understand that the grief can be as distressing and life-changing as the loss of a human companion.

That isn’t something you can file away in your mind and get straight back to work as usual.
So where does the law stand on pet bereavement leave?

Time off for dependants

Employees in the UK are entitled to take time off for dependants, including time for emergencies and unforeseen circumstances. A dependant could be a spouse, partner, child, grandchild, parent, or someone who depends on you for care.

Some employers will count pets in this category – after all, your pets are dependent on you to meet their needs. Unfortunately, this provision isn’t written into any legislation. It will depend on the policies and attitudes of individual employers and/or organisations.

Taking time off for dependants would usually apply to a situation where your pet is still living but needs emergency care that you couldn’t have foreseen.

Compassionate leave

If your employer doesn’t view your living pets as dependants but they are very unwell or need emergency care, you may be allowed to take some ‘compassionate leave’ from work.
Whether this is paid or unpaid leave will depend on the terms of your contract and your employer’s policy towards compassionate leave.

Bereavement leave

Interestingly, according to research by Petplan, one in 20 people now take time off to settle in new pets at home and say that their employers are understanding of the need for what the media dubs ‘paw-ternity’ leave.

Sadly, this understanding doesn’t always extend to end of life care for our pets or the subsequent grief that can turn our world upside down.

Currently (March 2018), there is no legal obligation for UK employers to provide compassionate or bereavement leave as standard, paid or otherwise, even in the case of the death of a human family member or close friend.

The Employment Rights Act 1996 gives employees the right to take time off to deal with an emergency situation, including the death of the dependant, but it doesn’t make provisions for after the death, including time that can be taken to grieve.

An increasing number of employers are choosing to add terms for bereavement leave to employee contracts but it’s still a grey area, even more so when it’s a pet that has died.
Many employers feel that if pets were included in the terms for time off for dependants, compassionate leave or bereavement leave, it would be open to abuse or lead to too many pet-related absences.

What can you do if you need time off work for a pet bereavement?

We really mustn’t underestimate the impact of pet bereavement. Some stats suggest that a third of pet carers report grieving for at least six months after the loss of their companion. In the beginning, working may simply be impossible.

The best advice is to talk to your employer about your individual circumstances as soon as you can if you feel they will be receptive. You might want to point out that you will be distracted and not as productive as usual and that you need some time to grieve.

Many employers will be willing to offer one or two days’ compassionate leave. Others may be more sympathetic, some less.

Many people choose not to disclose their circumstances and opt to take paid holiday leave or sick leave instead. This is an option you might want to consider if you feel that your employer or colleagues will not understand your loss.

Gradually, attitudes towards pet bereavement are changing. In the US, at least three national companies now allow staff to take compassionate leave following the death of a pet. Hopefully, more will follow suit throughout the world.

In the meantime, it’s worth reviewing your contract, talking to your manager or HR department, and drawing on the support around you at this sad time.

If you are struggling following the death of a pet, you might find it helpful to talk to a pet bereavement counsellor or seek support through The Ralph Site Facebook group where people will be sympathetic to your feelings.

Above all, do know that you’re not alone.

Until next time, very best wishes from Shailen and The Ralph Site team
The Ralph Site, non-profit pet loss support

If we’re lucky, our pets will live long and healthy lives but, sadly, the end must come eventually.
If you have a terminally ill or elderly pet, the grief can start a long time before you actually lose them. This is known as anticipatory grief and can bring its own particular pain and heartache. Continue reading →

One of the toughest aspects of grieving for a pet is that people often feel very alone and unsupported in their loss.

Sadly, a bereaved pet carer might be given a day off work and receive a few sympathy cards before they’re expected to put their loss behind them and get back to normality. Yet, in reality, the loss of a pet can be as devastating as the loss of a human companion.
Continue reading →