Understanding the grief you feel too embarrassed to share

There is a particular kind of grief that does not get a card.

It does not get flowers, or a casserole dropped at the door, or compassionate leave. It gets something far more complicated than that. It gets silence, or worse, the wrong words from people who mean well and have no idea how much damage they are doing.

This is what grief specialists call disenfranchised grief. It is grief that other people do not recognise as real, or at least not real enough to warrant proper support. And when the loss is a pet, it is everywhere.

The things people say

Most people mean well. That is the hardest part to sit with.

The dismissal rarely comes from cruelty. It comes from people not knowing what to say and reaching for something that sounds reassuring. When I lost my dog Buster at age 18 I got these comments. 

“He had such a great life.”
“At least he lived to a good age.”
“You should be grateful for the time you had.”

And I was grateful. Of course I was. But gratitude and grief are not opposites. You can hold both at the same time and still be absolutely floored by the loss.

The length of a life does not determine the size of the grief. If anything, a long bond means more years of routine and companionship woven into your every day. Losing that is not softened by how long it lasted. For a lot of people it makes it harder.

If someone has said something like this to you and it hurt,that makes complete sense. You are not being oversensitive.

When the pet is small or a non-traditional companion animal

If your loss was a rabbit, a guinea pig, a hamster, a bird, a fish, a reptile……the dismissal tends to be even sharper. These animals are often treated as less significant, as though the bond formed with them is somehow less important but It is not.

What a lot of people do not realise is that rabbits in the UK can live anywhere between 8 and 12 years with proper care, though research from the Royal Veterinary College found the average across veterinary practices is actually much lower at 4.3 years. That means many rabbit owners are facing a loss that comes earlier than expected and with very little acknowledgement from anyone around them.

A guinea pig can be the first animal a child ever loved and the first loss they ever feel. A bird can be a companion through some of the loneliest years of someone’s life. The size of the animal has nothing to do with the size of the grief. 

And horses are regularly forgotten when talking about the loss of an animal. Humans form beautiful tight-knit bonds with horses, with horses often providing a source of therapy. Saying goodbye to a horse is intense and has the added challenge of the difficult aftercare arrangements. 

And for some of us we form bonds with other animals, sheep, donkeys, pigs ….. Sadly our grief for these non-traditional animals is just dismissed, and most often we just feel too ashamed to admit that we are grieving for them. 

Cats, dogs and the phrase “it was just a pet”

Even for those who have lost a cat or a dog, that phrase still gets said. Sometimes by family, sometimes by people who genuinely cannot understand what that animal meant to you.

What they do not see is what the pet actually was day to day. The one who got you out of bed in the morning. The reason you came home, the warm body next to you at night when the house was quiet. The constant presence that asked nothing of you and gave you everything.

That is not just a pet. That is a relationship. And losing it leaves a gap that cannot be explained away with good intentions.

What happens at work

This is where a lot of people feel it most acutely, and most alone.

Most workplaces do not offer bereavement leave for pet loss. Some do now, and it is growing, but the majority still do not. Which means most people are expected to show up the next day as normal, hold it together in meetings, answer emails, make small talk, and not mention why their eyes are red.

Some people do not tell their colleagues at all. They have already guessed how it will go. The awkward pause. The four second “oh no, how sad” before the conversation moves on. The well meaning colleague who says “you can always get another one.”

Others do mention it and then wish they had not, because the reaction confirms exactly what they feared. That their grief is being quietly assessed and found to be too much.

Going through that on top of an already painful loss can leave you feeling like you are grieving wrong. Like you should be over it. Like there is something disproportionate about still thinking about them three weeks later (or longer) at your desk.

There is not, grief does not clock off because you have had to.

Why the shame makes everything harder

When grief is not acknowledged by the people around us, we tend to turn it inward. We tell ourselves we are being silly. We stop talking about it. We grieve in the car on the way to work or late at night when nobody can see. That isolation makes grief harder to move through. It does not go away because we push it down, It just sits there with nowhere to go, getting heavier.

You do not have to justify your grief to anyone. You do not need permission to miss them. Whatever anyone else thinks about how long ago it happened, or what kind of animal they were, you are allowed to feel this.

If this is you

If any of this sounds familiar, whether it is the comments, the silence at work, or the quiet shame of grieving an animal others did not take seriously, I want you to know you are not alone in this. You can join a support group online, reach out to a pet loss support line or if you need more individual support send me an email. I will always listen.

My guide, Loving and Losing a Pet: One Day at a Time, is also available if you are looking for something to work through at your own pace.

When it feels like too much to handle on your own.