03/24/2025
A friend of mine has recently lost a beloved family pet, and so I’m inspired to write a few posts about pet loss this week, focusing on how to support kids with coping with this loss, as it is often kids and teens’ first experience with death. Inevitably though, all of these suggestions will also work for you, if you are struggling with grief as well.
This particular friend had lost a large dog, and the dog’s bed has been a bit of an anchor for the family’s grief so far. I’m sure you can relate. The pet’s bed or favourite spot continues to carry their energy, and every time you pass that spot, that feeling of grief hits hard. This can be a good thing at first. It is important to express grief, and to have a physical representation of that grief is useful for accessing those feelings. All too often we can return to business-as-usual after a loss, unintentionally repressing important emotions like sadness, anger, and loss.
Eventually though, you can transition this “place” to something smaller and more discreet, such as a memory box. This can be a small wooden box that holds your pets’ things that can’t be donated or let go of, such as a collar or tag, their favourite toy, photos of the pet. The memory box can then be the place that everyone goes to remember and to grieve, to touch the items, to look at the photos, to write notes to the pet and keep them inside, to remember the love that was shared and the memories made.
Kids often like to decorate a memory box with paint or stickers or collage, and this can be useful for sitting with feelings of grief. Our memory box gift boxes come with a photo transfer kit, so that they can transfer favourite photos onto the wood box. Kids will often share more about their thoughts and feelings when their hands are busy, so be sure to pull up a chair and sit with them as they are working! You might be surprised at what they understand, and the curious questions that they have.
I hope this helps! Stayed tuned for more...
