when you call your pet your baby
Seven months after I said goodbye to Moxy’s physical form, I moved from our home in Seattle to Salt Lake City and started participating in a local women’s writing group. It was spontaneous writing, completely off the cuff, where you respond to a poetry prompt and write continuously for several minutes without picking up the pen from the page. As if that wasn’t scary enough, we then had to read it out loud to the rest of the group (an introvert’s nightmare.)
Even though it was a long time before I stopped shaking through the sessions, the benefits of this method are myriad because you’re bypassing the critical side of your brain (there’s zero time to edit or plan or know what’s going to come out) and allowing yourself to connect to all the good stuff underneath—call it your subconscious or “heart mind.” Generally, what comes up is what’s most pressing for you in that moment.
What came up most often for me in the first several sessions was (no surprise) Moxy—out poured my grief, my guilt, my seismic longing. I’m sure my participation was super fun for the other women, who often wept right along with me.
Some time later, the facilitator, Mila*, who’d become a friend, asked me how I lost my baby, and I could tell from her phrasing she’d assumed I’d suffered the loss of a human infant. That’s when I realized every time I’d written about Mox in our circle, I’d said “my baby,” because that’s what I called him when he was alive, and it’s how I really feel—my dogs are my children. I set the record straight, and before I could feel too alarmed that the others might think I’d purposefully misled them, Mila said something like, “The way you write shows how real your grief is—none of us could tell the difference between you writing about a dog versus a child.”
There’s something quite powerful about this observation when you think about it. In essence? Grief is grief, and love is love. The truth registers in our bodies, which can’t distinguish between grief (or love) for a human versus an animal—we simply feel what we feel. And this group of women, without knowing all the personal details, could feel the ferocity of my grief, the veracity of my love. Words themselves were less important.
“We have evolved to look after, protect and care for those we have made social bonds with. We recognize our [pets] to be ‘ours’ and someone we have made a social connection with. This can trigger a similar brain bonding network to a maternal one. This mechanism could find its basis in oxytocin—a hormone that has a key role in maternal bonding, lactation and is a chemical messenger involved in recognition and trust.
One study carried out at Massachusetts General Hospital involved women looking at pictures of their child and their pet dog, and using functional MRI showed similar responses in the area of the brain related to reward and emotion and bonding. They found that the pictures of the dogs triggered similar brain responses in mothers’ brains to pictures of their children. Areas of the brain known to be important for functions such as emotion, reward, affiliation, visual processing, and social interaction all showed increased activity when participants viewed either their own child or their own dog. It seems like we really do love our dogs like we love our children.”
Language, by its very nature, is limiting. Each word acts as a symbol, a guidepost; a word is never the thing itself. And we have only so many words available to us that describe our close, familial relationships; thus, we defer to analogy when words fall short (or don’t exist). We say, “He’s like a brother to me” or “I love her like she’s my own daughter.” This applies most easily to human relationships, of course, but when it comes to interspecies bonds, the communication chasm widens considerably.
Our beloved animal companions depend on us for survival, and within the context of a family unit, the dependent is called the child. The baby.
“Psychologists are only just beginning to acknowledge the comforting, reassuring response in us that is actuated when we speak to pets. It is akin to the positive feedback that mothers experience when they sing and talk to their babies….Because of their complete dependency on us for every physical need, we develop a heightened sense of responsibility…the pet responds to this, just as a baby would—naturally and with complete innocence and loving trust….But this baby-like kinship is different, in that a pet does not grow up and leave us, as a child would. Companion animals are always dependent and constant, while still embodying total love and dedication to us. And who can be immune to that?”
When you call your pet your baby, what you’re really trying to communicate is the depth of your bond, how intensely you feel love and affection for and from them. When you call your pet your baby, you’re claiming them as part of your family. You are expressing an emotional truth, for which there is currently a stunning lack of language.
You are saying, There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my little one.
You are saying, I couldn’t possibly love this being any more than I already do.
You are saying, This being (who happens to be an animal) is as important to me as these other beings (who happen to be human)—I don’t feel a difference.
Here’s what you’re not saying:
My pet is more important than a human child.
Taking care of my pet is the exact same as raising a human child.
Grieving the loss of my pet is worse than grieving the loss of a human child.
“In addition to this emotional closeness, many of us experience a degree of physical closeness with our pets that goes well beyond what we share with most people in our lives…The only parallel that comes to mind is the way parents care for their infants….With our pets, however, intimate bodily care continues throughout their lives and, because we can never exchange words, our intuitive bond continues to grow.”
I don’t have human children. So, I cannot speak to the nature of that particular experience, or the loss of it. I can only speak from mine. While I’ve often said to family and friends that if I could’ve given birth to Mox and Ted, I would have, what I’m really saying is these little boys are of utmost importance to me, and the level of care I’ve strived to give them is what I’d give to any dearly loved one. I love them with everything I am.
This is my reality, and the reality for many others. And my hope is that even if it differs from your reality, we can find a way to allow this difference with no judgement or agenda, to give each other grace and accept the emotional truths we offer each other—with open minds, and open hearts.
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
— Mary Oliver
Come tell me about your reality. What does the “soft animal of your body” love?
