“When you lose a dog, you not only lose the animal that has been your friend, you also lose a connection to the person you have been.” —Jennifer Finney Boylan

I’ve been grieving for the past three weeks, on and off. But when did my grief truly begin? Was it the day Ozzy died? Or was it earlier, when his cough began and no medication could help? When he stopped walking years ago, and I first saw the signs of aging? Or perhaps it started the moment I got him, when he was just two months old, and I felt the raw vulnerability of loving something I knew I could one day lose.

When does grief really begin, for a pet, a person, a relationship? Is it only when they leave us? When we realize their loss is inevitable? Or does it exist even in our most joyful moments, a quiet whisper reminding us that everything changes, that all form eventually dissolves, back into energy, into the universe itself?

And what is it we’re truly grieving? Is it only the being we lost? Or also the version of ourselves who existed with them? The rituals, the rhythms, the shared world that shaped our identity? The parts of us that feel unreachable now without them?

This morning, during my tarot reading, I pulled the Nine of Swords, a card of grief and mourning. Then came an oracle card about transformation, and another about love, divine union, and infinity.

Grief is overwhelming, unpredictable, exhausting, and tender in ways words can’t always hold. But it’s also a privilege. To grieve deeply means we loved deeply. It means we let someone in, fully, without reservation. Grief is the echo of that love. And while it hurts, it’s also a sacred reminder that we had something real, something that mattered.

Grief, overwhelming as it is, is also alchemical. It asks us to take our sadness, our longing, our loss, and transmute it into something vaster. It calls us inward, to remember that everything we’ve ever loved still lives within us, into  our hearts. Nothing truly loved is ever truly lost.

Love is one of life’s greatest blessings, whether shared with a person, a pet, or the divine. Love is a miracle, a fusion of energies creating something entirely new, something neither could have formed alone. And when one of those energies leaves, we don’t just lose them—we lose the unique presence that was “us together.” That’s why loss feels so disorienting, so deeply painful.

But as we breathe, as we return to the heart, as we soften from the mind’s logic into the soul’s knowing, we begin to feel again. And there they are. Right there. Always.

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry