The SUN is SHINING Again! | The Healthy American Peggy Hall

Hey friends, Peggy Hall back with you from the healthyamerican.org. As we close out the week, I wanted to share with you some good news. Yes, the sun is shining once again in the Hall household. I want to thank all of you that have sent me your prayers, your words of encouragement, your letters, your gifts. So many of you have shared in my sorrow of the devastating grief that I’ve been experiencing over the loss of my two precious family members, Elsie and Teddy. I’ve shared photos with you before. So many of you have enjoyed that as well as some of the videos.

And I wanted to share some good news with you, but I also wanted to just take one moment to also share a little memory of my whole pack, I guess you could say. So this was Itty and Itty Bitty here and Elsie. I’m sorry, it’s backwards here. This is Itty Bitty. I know they look like sisters and this is Elsie. And they were just in line to be euthanized at the place where the animals were taken in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And I was assisting there in the animal rescue. And so I took them home and Itty Bitty was a beautiful kitty cat, lived to be 17 or 18 years old.

And then our little Elsie Kins went over the Rainbow Bridge just a couple of months ago, they had a little sister and this is Gypsy. And sadly Gypsy passed away from oral cancer and we miss her terribly. And then Jasper was the Pasha, he was also a rescue kitty, all of these came to us via rescue. And he was a precious boy, who also left us some years ago, my one of my soulmates here, Shabekia, was a tiny little puppy that I rescued in Morocco. She was big enough to fit in the palm of my hand, she still had her eyes closed.

And some kids were tossing her around like a bean bag, I literally bottle fed her. And she let’s see, I don’t have the tiniest picture, I’m trying to find that. But this is me in my youth. And there’s a little Shabekia as a tiny puppy. You know, we didn’t have cell phones back there back then. So all I have are actual photographs, I’m still trying to find the one of Shabekia that fits in my palm. And this one is a little hard to see. But there’s Jesse. And Jesse was Shabekia’s pal, this was in Morocco.

And she was a lovely girl. I’ve had probably, oh my gosh, there were previous dogs that I’m not even showing you here. So in my family, we probably had, I mean, over the years, maybe 12 dogs altogether. And then my teddy bear, who many of you know, because you would hear her barking, sometimes either she is in her prime, my beautiful, gorgeous girl. And there she was out on a walk, my beautiful Roddy Shepherd mix, just gorgeous. And sadly, she passed a week, just a week after our Elsie went over the rainbow bridge.

And there’s Elsie again. And my lovely animals that just will live in my heart forever. And Elsie, of course, got Teddy’s bed, Teddy always relinquished to Elsie. And there they are in their senior years, it was a privilege and an honor to take care of these lovely ladies, as I called them. And I love this photo of the two of us together. And let’s see, do I have any more for you? Yes, there is Teddy as a little tiny puppy. So I wanted to share with you the news, the happy news in our life.

And again, I want to thank all of you who have shared your support, your encouragement, who understand this type of indescribable pain of the loss of a furry family member. It’s not a human relationship. So we don’t grieve as we lose as it’s not a human relationship, it is a very unique special bond and the grief is unique. And in my case, very deep and unrelenting. However, I want to share with you a bright spot. So give me just a moment. All right. Here we have our little kitty. Look at these belly beans that he has.

Oh my goodness. We don’t have a name for him yet. I want to tell you the story. I just wanted you to meet him. He has not been on camera before. So I don’t want him to get restless. Give me just a moment. He’s going to be my new little production assistant. Oh, there you can see his tail there. And I wanted to tell you the story and how I have been dealing with my deep grief. And I never would say for anyone to rush through their sorrow, everyone grieves differently. And I even did a video for my Living Swell, which is my other channel here on YouTube.

And it turned out to be not a video, but an audio besides some problem with the video. I will leave a link for you because I was speaking about my grief and my loss and how I was trying to cope. And I share ways that didn’t work and ways that did work. One thing that has really worked for me is to get on a grief share group. And what I did, I actually went on my phone. There is an app called Reddit. I never really participate that much in social media, aside from doing my YouTube videos, although I wouldn’t really call that social media per se.

But this Reddit group has a, there he is, the Reddit group has a sub Reddit for pet loss. And I wanted to share with you a recent post. And then this will answer some of the questions in terms of what I’m going through here. So I was responding to someone who wrote and said that he wrote and said, I have a hole in my life. I had to send my 16 year old girl over the bridge, the sadness of never seeing her greet me again, snuggle. It’s like a thousand bricks on my chest.

Daddy couldn’t fix it this time. Wherever she is, at least there is no pain, no fear, no sadness. I miss her and it hurts. So you’ll be seeing our little boy there, our little man, you can let me know names. We have several names that we are trying out. And yes, he’s very curious and very smart. So what I wrote was, I am so sorry for your loss. I wish I had words to help. Hubby and I lost our precious kitty cat, our 19 year old girl, about two months ago. And I’m sorry to say that over these two months, my grief seems to have gotten worse as the reality sets in.

Adding to the anguish is that a week after our kitty cat passed, we also said goodbye to our 14 year old Teddy girl who was truly my baby. There are times when I feel that I just am unable to cope. In the meantime, I have filled notebooks with memories and emotions as I’m trying to make sense of it all. The photos and videos I have are helping me stay close. Just recently, we adopted a new little kitty cat, and it does give us another heartbeat in the home, which we missed so desperately.

The emptiness and the loneliness were more than I could bear. I know it takes time to get used to having a new animal who will never replace the previous ones. But it seems to be the only thing that is really helping me in the storm. Everyone grieves differently. And I just wanted to let you know that I completely understand the devastating pain of this heart wrenching loss. Coming on this forum and reading other people’s stories also makes me know that I’m not alone in my sorrow. May God bring us peace and healing in the days ahead.

So I’ve done a lot of posting on this site, and helping to comfort others has been a comfort for me. And many of you have been telling me your heart wrenching stories of your animals, your family members, and all of the grief and sorrow and pain that you are experiencing. I just want to encourage you to get on some type of grief share network. You can do it like I’ve done it on Reddit. There are others that are specifically there are websites that are specifically related to grief for pet loss.

And then I’ve also shared on this channel books that have helped me. I will leave a link for my living swell audio that I played because I also have some tips on what I’ve been doing to try to cope things that haven’t worked and then some things that are bringing me a little bit of relief. So we found out that someone we knew knew someone who was fostering a little kitty cat. And that’s when we went to go meet our little fella. And we just fell in love. And we decided that the time was right.

And we invited him into our family. So my heart is still broken, I believe that some hearts will only be fully mended in heaven. But this does give me a brightness in my day, it gives me an opportunity to get back into that rhythm, which has been a part of my life, all of my life for caring for animals. And I just felt like I was living in a home without a roof. I felt bereft, I felt empty, I felt like my life had lost its rhythm and a very important purpose. So I just want to bring you this message, because so many of you are sharing your heart wrenching stories.

And I hope that you are going to find some breath of relief, some moments of sanity, where you will be able to look forward, ideally, to a time where you will obviously never forget your beloved family members, but you will be able to welcome more into your life if that is something that you feel is right for you. I appreciate all of you so much. And I hope that you have a weekend filled with joy and optimism and hope and you have something to look forward to, and that you’ll stop looking at the headlines and take a break from all of the dread and fear mongering and the spin cycle out there.

Do things that bring you joy. I certainly will be spending time with our new little fella here. Let me know your ideas for names for this sweet little kitty cat. He is playful, he’s friendly, he’s intelligent, and he is helping to heal the hole in my heart. Thank you, everyone. And I look forward to seeing you back here on your Monday through Friday, 4 p.m. Pacific, and I appreciate having you on board. [tr:trw].

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