I’ve been working just about everyday on the fourth draft of my new book, Wisdom Found in the Pause. It’s in part, about my second dog in a wheelchair, Joie, who I adopted from Oregon Dachshund Rescue in 2012.

Joie, while a beautiful gift in itself when I brought her home that fateful day in October three years ago, would be short-lived. But the lessons that continue to unveil themselves have been openings of deeper understanding and healing for me. So while the book is about Joie, it’s also about what I learned about myself after she passed.

I was mad when Joie died. Mad at God that I couldn’t have her in my life longer. I just couldn’t understand why she was called home so soon after I opened my heart wide open to love another.

A heart that was still tender from the loss of Frankie. It felt so unfair.

But as often happens from painful experiences, we don’t see the gifts or blessings until years later.

I see them continually as I work through finishing this book revisiting my life with Joie on the written page. But I also see the gifts in where I am heading in terms of new opportunities and new projects/ideas I’m investing my time in.

I also see it most clearly in the gift of Gidget. It flashed vividly through my mind again last night as she lay tucked under her blanket on her bed in the living room.

If Joie hadn’t passed away, I wouldn’t know Gidget. Each dog that has entered my life has changed me in different ways. Gidget is now doing this for me with lessons she is teaching me. Just like Joie did and Frankie and Cassie Jo before her.

Each sweet dog, a magnificent gift that I got to open my heart to and in return those gifts live on forever within me.

To hold onto grief or guilt because of their passing’s would serve no purpose. It would only shut down my heart and joy could never enter again.

It is in this awareness that I see their true beauty and that loving again is what they teach us so brilliantly. And that love is the answer.

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