05/05/2026
There are some decisions in life that stay with you.
Years ago, when my daughter was 5, we brought a puppy into our home. Like so many families, we thought we were getting a pet, but what we found was my daughter's best friend.
Of course, at that age, much of the responsibility fell to us as parents, and when our fur baby was 9, everything changed.
He became very unwell and was in pain and I had to make the decision no pet owner ever wants to make. To let him go.
It broke me.
It broke my daughter.
It broke our family.
And if I’m honest, I carried that grief for years. I didn't carry that grief loudly or in a way anyone else would necessarily notice, but it sat quietly shaping some decisions in my life.
One of those decisions was simple:
“I’m not getting another dog.”
For a long time, that felt like the safest choice. But life has a way of gently bringing things back around when we’re ready.
Now, my daughter is 21, and over the years, she’s asked me more times than I can count…“Mum can I please have a dog?” My answer "no".
Recently, something shifted. I could see what it would mean for her.
The comfort.
The companionship.
The grounding and I realised something important.
Avoiding the pain had also meant closing the door on something good. So, I said yes.
We now have an 8-week-old puppy in our home and already they’re inseparable.
Watching them together, I’m reminded of something I see often in my work:
We don’t move forward by pretending the pain never happened.
We move forward when we’re willing to feel it and still choose life anyway.
Grief doesn’t mean we stop loving. It means we loved deeply.
Sometimes the next chapter asks us to open our hearts again, even when it feels uncomfortable.
Because on the other side of that there is often something really meaningful waiting.
If you’ve been holding yourself back from something because of what happened before when the time is right, it’s okay to take that step forward.
Sometimes the smallest decisions are the ones that quietly change everything.
