A fellow animal rescuer and friend of mine asked me a very poignant and thought-provoking question tonight. His text message read, “At the end of the day with all you do and all you see and the stories you hear, how do you sleep at night?”
The short answer was that after all I’ve done and all I’ve seen and the stories I’ve heard on any given day, I am utterly exhausted. The longer answer explains how I go to bed exhausted, but not defeated.
In animal rescue, the work is never done, and often horrific. So do I desensitize myself to the implicit negatives that are the inevitable side effect of caring? No. Because that would mean to deaden myself to feeling. Not just pain but anything. And I am firm believer that we are here – having this sublime and surreal human experience – for the purpose of feeling. Not just something but everything.
What do I do then with the overflow of emotion I feel? I feel it to the fullest, painful or otherwise, and then I use it as fuel. I use what could hold me back to instead propel me forward. I consciously and actively set my spirit free different ways: I run. I dance. I do yoga. I listen to stand-up comedy. I make photo and video art. I skateboard with dogs. I'm becoming a lucid dreamer.
I love every dog that comes into my care - freely and completely - regardless of how long they are with me or how bad the circumstances are that they’ve come from. I try to stay in the moment, which is where dogs are at all times; giving us the gift of presence: theirs and our own.
I allow myself to grieve. I cry…A LOT. I let the sadness of what goes on in dog rescue permeate my whole heart, only because I know I cannot heal without first allowing myself to hurt.
