You're holding a HELD card — the front is a card to hold, the back is a lesson, and this room is yours forever. New here? How this works →
HELD · for the loss of a pet · every card is a room
✦ Sit with Kelly — she’ll hold this card with you in the press →
There is no correct way to do this. However you're grieving is a way of grieving.
Grieving styles — Doka and Martin's research identified intuitive grievers, who process through feeling and expression, and instrumental grievers, who process through action and thought — building the memorial, organizing the photos. Most people blend both; neither is superior. Pet grief adds pressure to grieve 'proportionately,' which is a myth atop a myth. However you are doing this is a style, not an error, and it does not require an audience's approval.
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FEEL · II

Lesson XV of LII · the FEEL course
The idea behind this card — Grieving styles

Doka and Martin's research identified intuitive grievers, who process through feeling and expression, and instrumental grievers, who process through action and thought — building the memorial, organizing the photos. Most people blend both; neither is superior. Pet grief adds pressure to grieve 'proportionately,' which is a myth atop a myth. However you are doing this is a style, not an error, and it does not require an audience's approval.

Voices — this card, in use

Teaching vignettes: illustrative voices showing the practice applied. The living candle wall grows below.

Mara — 'my husband built Rufus a memorial planter. I cried for a month. the card says both are grieving. we stopped grading each other.'

P.J. — 'I organized every photo of her by year. that WAS my crying. instrumental griever. it counts.'

…people sat with this card this month
…

Whatever is coming up

This room is open every time — tonight, the anniversary, years from now. What's here right now?

The practice

Name your style without judgment: are you crying it out, or building the photo book and planting the memorial rose? Do one thing today in YOUR style and call it grieving, because it is.

When it's yours

If it's early daysIf you went straight to organizing their vet records, you're not cold — you're instrumental. It counts fully.

If it's been a long timeStyles shift: doers eventually feel, feelers eventually build. Follow the current, not the old pattern.

If the ending was hardHard endings sometimes lock people in doing-mode for months. The feelings queue politely. They'll present when safe.

Sit with this

What have you been doing since they died that you haven't been counting as grief?

Grief literacy

Term to know: Grieving styles — intuitive (feeling) and instrumental (doing) are equally valid. Yours is a style, not an error.

If this card holds you

FEEL · XI  ·  REMEMBER · II  ·  TEND · VIII

This room doesn't expire. Grief isn't a one-time event — anniversaries, ambushes, the good years, the hard ones — and the card in your hand is a permanent key. Come back for whatever is coming up.

This card lives in the deck — 52 companions, on a nightstand near the people you love. Buy the physical deck — $35.00 · free US shipping

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