If your pet has received a health diagnosis, a terminal diagnosis, or is facing challenges that come with being a senior, you know what an overload of emotions it is. Navigating caregiving and anticipatory grief for your pet can leave you feeling overwhelmed and isolated.
When faced with an illness or health challenges you’re often instinctively ready to go to battle, to fight for your pet’s health and quality of life. But there’s also a deeper layer. The fear of the unknown; of what tomorrow will bring. Is this the beginning of the end? And how could you possibly envision life without them?
Caregiving is hard. Anticipatory grief might be even harder.
Managing medications, supplements, comfort needs, environmental needs, feeding requirements, bathroom schedules – all require significant commitment and diligence. And it comes with a heaping side of anxiety.
To care for someone’s needs so meticulously without them being able to speak is a testament to the bond we form with our pets. You rely on your instincts, veterinary guidance, and your innate understanding of your pet to navigate these days, weeks and months. Sometimes even years.
The role of caregiver becomes both a privilege and demanding responsibility, though others may see it only as a burden. Often, your social life changes, finances are affected and your identity becomes largely colored by this profound role.
While I don’t think there’s a foolproof recipe for coping well through caregiving and anticipatory grief, there are some things you can try to help fortify self-compassion and wellness while you’re caring for someone else.
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Plan and Prep Your Meals
While caregiving, your pet’s meals can be a big source of anxiety. Will they eat today? What will they eat today? Sometimes days are faced in increments of meal to meal. The stress of mealtimes can overtake your day.
When you’re so focused on what they’re eating, there might not be time or energy to think about your own healthy meals – seven days a week. This is where a little planning and prepping can help reduce daily stresses.
Pinterest or Google can be very helpful here. Find a few ‘easy’ recipes that you can prepare in batches and have leftovers for a few days or the week. Employ those ‘make life easier’ tools like the crockpot or air fryer.
If you have eight recipes or meal ideas, you could have a couple meals a week for the whole month.
If your budget permits, you might even consider a meal delivery service. The goal is to take some of the daily planning, thinking and anxiety off your plate (no pun intended).
Create a Daily Checklist
Of course structure is always important when you’re taking care of someone, but you can use checklists for your own micro-bursts of self-care too.
- Drink enough water
- Stretch or walk for 5-10 min
- Listen to a meditation
- Track your pet’s medications/times/feedings (especially helpful if brain fog is something you’re contending with)
- Social/Emotional daily check-in with a friend or support person (A text is fine! Just some touchstone with the world outside your home.)
Having boxes to check things off can help you feel accomplished, on task, and organized while knowing that you’re doing your best to care for them and you
Delegate Tasks Where Possible
If you have family and close friends around this one can be easily doable. Tasks like laundry, cleaning, taking out the garbage can be delegated to someone else if it’s not already.
But if you don’t have anyone to delegate to, it can be hard to see where there’d be any reprieve.
Get creative. Delegate to Amazon, Chewy or even Walmart or Target delivery instead of always needing to go to the store or your vet to get what you need. Plan ahead a few days and it can show up on your doorstep.
Pay a neighborhood kid to mow the lawn or shovel. Maybe you have other pets to walk or enrich and you can ask a neighbor or friend if they could help with that a couple times a week.
A little thinking outside the box can help reduce some of your obligations.
Build in a Daily Break (or Breaks)
A break doesn’t need to be an hour, although it could be. Even 15 minutes is a well deserved break. Scroll through your phone, read a chapter of your book, draw, take a little walk, sit in the sun.
Whatever you want to do with your 15 minutes. What fills up your cup?
Remind yourself regularly that you literally can not pour from a cup that is empty. And while your proverbial cup doesn’t need to be full to the top, it must have something in.
Find a Relaxation Ritual
A shower before bed. Tending to a special plant or flowers. A YouTube video of an aquarium and music that just runs in the background. Taking one creative photo a day with your phone. A one-sentence passage in a daily gratitude journal. Lighting a candle.
Relaxation rituals help promote a sense of calm, balance, and well-being. It should be something you look forward to and come to rely on as something that helps you feel grounded and lighter. Even if just for that moment.
It’s the practice of relaxing that is helpful. In caregiving and in anticipatory grief, a relaxing feeling can often become a foreign concept. Small bursts of these relaxation rituals can help you feel grounded and as ready as possible to take on the next challenge.
Journal
I saved ‘journal’ for last because it can feel like it takes a lot of effort and sometimes might not feel natural to you.
The beneficial part to journaling while caregiving and in anticipatory grief, is that it gives you private permission to name and claim everything you’re facing. A journal can be considered a wonderful support, as it just accepts where you are and doesn’t talk back.
You don’t have to write cohesively or like you’re trying to get published. Your handwriting doesn’t have to be neat and you can scribble out words you want to re-do.
It’s about getting what’s inside your mind, out. Sometimes you might not even realize how holding all the weight, anxiety, ups and downs, fears, and emotions inside adds to your overall stress.
Putting some or all of these strategies into practice can help manage the demands of caregiving while maintaining your own wellness. This not only helps you thrive as a caregiver to yoru pet but also nurtures your own physical and emotional resilience.
As your journey with your fur baby continues and you start to approach the wind down of their time with you, having some of these practices under your belt will be coping tools you can utilize throughout all of your journey, through deep anticipatory grief and even after you’ve said farewell.
