Being with the ones we love
October 3, 2024
Dog-ter Love Ninja in 2018
The definition of compassion is to be with suffering. To be with other beings — people, pets, or even plants — is our essential nature and is essential. Studies show that babies who are not touched with tenderness and care die. We need love to survive! I think the greatest form of love is to truly be with others through the highs and lows of life.
Recently, I lost a dear companion of mine. Love Ninja was not my first dog, but she was my first child. Ninja came along during a very hard time for me. I was deeply yearning to be a mother of a human — my biology had been pushing on me for years, yet I was unable to conceive. It was the hardest challenge I’d ever faced. From my spiritual practices, I knew that I needed to come to a place of acceptance and peace with what was happening — or more accurately not happening — to be free from suffering. As much as I tried, I couldn’t let go as so many well-meaning people advised me to do. As a side note, please do not tell someone in this scenario “You just have to let go, and it will happen.” It’s not helpful. Be with their suffering instead with your attention and affection.
The combo of biology, physiology, and my psychology desperately wanted a baby or three, but despite efforts in clinics and cushions (prayer and meditation), I was left empty-handed when I so deeply yearned to hold. I had started to accept my fate and began to look more seriously into other ways I could “mother” spending a considerable amount of time and money helping neglected and abused kids around the world. Still, I wanted my own.
Ninja sporting the Lead with Love activewear line like a champ ❤️
Ninja filled a huge hole for me at that time. I got her as an 8-week-old puppy and raised her up as my constant companion. I was never happier than walking my dog baby in Hunter Creek behind my house. That place and those four furry paws did so much to heal my heart. I can’t walk there now without seeing her frolicking in the fields as an energetic love beam being with me during so many times of joy and those times of sorrow, too. She was more than a dog to me — she was my dearest friend and became my dog-ter.
I truly believe Ninja helped usher in my identical twin girls Allegra and Bijoux. Through her constant companionship, joy re-emerged for me in a palpable way as we shared mommy dog-ter lunches, snuggles, and miles and miles of smiles in our beautiful backyard.
I believe deeply in the spiritual principle that nothing outside of myself will bring me lasting happiness and fulfillment and that true contentment and peace is an inside job. But, I will say, when I finally got my two tiny miracle babies in 2021, I was incredibly happy and fulfilled, and I continue to be. Now the lesson of non-attachment is even more profound as the two extensions of my heart are out here in the world running free. I want to put them in a bubble to protect them, yet life is about exposure — exposure to love, to beauty, and to pain. I can not fully protect them. I can only walk with them. That’s my promise to you girls. I will walk with you, always.
Losing my dear, young dog-ter from a degenerative and incurable disease a few years after finally realizing the dream of human motherhood is heart-breaking. She was with me on that arduous journey to motherhood hand in paw, and now I know she is walking with me on a very different journey. I have this feeling Ninja is helping to usher in a new lesson for me: How to be with loss and grief.
Grief is such a poignant shade of love. It is so visceral and aching. As many of my dear family members age, I know I must face the scary prospect of one day picking up the phone to call my dad and then remembering, achingly, he’s no longer there. He’s always been there. Just like Ninja was always there with our new family, and now she’s not. Something profound is missing and will be missed as the clock of time ticks with the constant of change. Ninja helped me usher in new life, and she helped me be withdeath in her final days. I know her passing and the grief I am feeling is an important reminder of what’s most essential and dear: to be with the ones you love and not take one moment for granted.
This post originally appeared in my monthly column in The Aspen Times.
