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A Journey from Medical Sales to Healing Hearts
My path to founding Healing After Pet Loss began in an unexpected place, the world of medical sales. For years, I worked as a medical sales professional, witnessing firsthand the intersection of science, compassion, and human need. This experience taught me the importance of listening, understanding individual struggles, and providing solutions that truly make a difference in people's lives.
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But my true calling was lived out through two decades of counseling work, where I've had the privilege of walking alongside individuals through their most challenging moments. Whether helping people navigate relationship difficulties, career transitions, family conflicts, or profound losses, I've learned that healing happens when we feel truly seen, heard, and understood.
A Daughter's Heart Opens a Door
The path to specializing in pet grief began with a conversation that changed everything. My daughter-in-love, a veterinarian, shared her frustrations with me: "I can heal their bodies, but I can't heal their hearts. I watch clients leave carrying overwhelming pain, and I feel like I'm abandoning them."
Her words struck deep. Here was a skilled professional who spent her days saving lives and easing suffering, yet she felt helpless supporting the human side of the human-animal bond, a struggle shared by veterinarians everywhere who experience compassion fatigue from witnessing so much love and loss while trying to maintain professional composure.
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Recognizing an Overlooked Grief
My daughter-in-love's concern illuminated what I'd been noticing in my counseling practice. Clients would mention pet loss almost apologetically, as if this profound grief was somehow less significant. Society often dismisses it with phrases like "it was just a pet" or "you can get another one."
As a pet lover who's experienced this pain personally, I knew better. These weren't "just pets.” They were family members, sources of unconditional love, often the most consistent relationship in someone's life.
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Creating a Bridge from Clinic to Healing
This recognition led me to create more than individual support. I wanted to build a bridge veterinary practices could offer when medical care ends but emotional support is desperately needed.
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The Love, Loyalty and Loss course was born from this vision. Initially designed for veterinary offices, this program provides immediate access to compassionate, expert help precisely when clients need it most. Instead of sending grieving pet parents home with only memories and pain, veterinarians can now offer a structured path toward healing, complete with understanding, guidance, and community support, ready to access at their own pace.
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I founded Healing After Pet Loss to ensure no one navigates this profound grief alone, and that veterinary professionals have tools to extend their care beyond the examination room.
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Pet grief is often our greatest loss because it represents losing pure, unconditional love; love without judgment, grudges, or conditions. When we lose that, we lose something irreplaceable.
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