animals: as healing
This is the first writing of a series called: as healing. A little more backstory here, and here. We all walk through some weary places and need reminding that even if healing doesn’t show up like we think it will, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t shown up at all. Out of necessity, desperation, I have started to pay attention to the ways healing meets me right where I am. These posts are an acknowledgment that many things, concepts, creatures can show up in our lives and offer us doses of beauty and comfort, they show up as healing. This healing may feel small, incremental, but if we miss it or minimize it, we may pass up on a life raft to help us survive today and float on to an even deeper healing tomorrow. If every good gift is from above, then even a tiny thing offered by a grand, imaginative Creator is worthy of our attention.
I am starting this series with a soft pitch. Anyone with decent aim could knock this right out of the park.
Animals as healing.
In the creation story, our initial responsibilities and interactions were with animals. Deep set in the heart of a human is the desire to connect with living things. Animals can be kept as pets to bring comfort and playfulness, or remain wild and create in us a sense of awe. Some animals are trained to carry out tasks, learn skills. They offer us healing through companionship, assistance, and even wonder at the many shapes and colors they put on.
Also, animals quick break our pride.
Here is the scene. Tonight there is a work function at the home of your boss. You try to remember if you have been there before, maybe to drop off a usb drive from her top right drawer that one week she had the flu. It was a big home, right? Kind of formal. You try on an outfit range from lazy Saturday brunch all the way to Grandma passed away, and start panicking because underdressed just concretes that millineal stereotype while overdressed and you may as well have worn a Halloween costume. Text work BFF. “Casual but nice” she says and sends you a quick photo of her striped top with dark wash skinny jeans and you feel some relief and solidarity. Nice blouse, black tights, check. You don’t want to get there too early, you can’t handle the anxiety of being the first one responsible for full conversation so you drop off last nights movie to the Redbox on route as a buffer. You finally arrive. House seems bigger than remembered. There are already 3 cars in the street and 4 in the driveway, one belongs to Frank who also watches “The Office,” so now at least you can hull up together in a corner entertaining each other with “that’s what she said” grenades dropped into conversations at the worst time with intention. You stand around uncomfortably and try really hard to remember the name of Sheila’s oldest son so you can ask about his transition off to college when you see it. Curled up and napping by the fridge, on best behavior by either old age or training, a dog. Setting a coaster-less drink on the table without hesitation, you missile your path to it and drop down. After shamelessly checking the undercarriage you begin a narrative, out loud, mind you.
“You are a lady aren’t you? The classiest of ladies and your name is,” [grab collar] “Lady! Of course it is,” [formally extend hand] “well it is an honor to meet you Lady. I work with your mommy,” [the babiest of baby voices] “yes I do! And she has a picture of you on her filing cabinet and I sneak in when I am sad or mad at Frank to see your little angel face! But you are even prettier in person,” [as she is licking your face] “mmmmmm yes get it all! That is Taco Bell, I ate before I came, get it. Help yourself to whatever is leftover” [from behind, the jingling of another collar, you turn back to see] “A SECOND PUPPERS???” [you don’t say this, you scream it while actually starting to cry a little] “I didn’t know there was a SECOND PUPPERR” [burying your wet face into its soft body] “RRRSSSSS!” This continues for around 17 minutes 24 seconds and we know this because Frank clocked it all on his watch starting at the time you said “Taco Bell,” and for weeks he will not let you forget that your black tights were covered in white fur and your pale face streaked with dark mascara from the actual real self demeaning tears you cried on the tiled floor of your bosses home while in a dog pile. With dogs.
And the craziest part of this whole scenario? You do not care. Released into a room of your peers, same ones whose opinions you work hard to maintain and have imaginary conversations with in your head so the real thing doesn’t come out gibberish, you choose in their presence to wad up all ego and reputation, throw it in the trash, and drop down to the filth of a floor, all for the love of an animal. [Or two].
How many of us have been on that floor? We stoop over for them, get dirty with them, take naps with them. When we talk about them, we use language like “family member,” “best friend,” “literally saved my life.” The solace of a creature we love crawling in our lap after a heartbreak is so relatable an experience that it has television episodes, novels, and entire movies dedicated to reliving it. We are soothed by the presence of our pets and pay money to gaze upon species too wild for us to get close to. We love animals, and in spite of ourselves, they seem to love us back.
In one of my Social Work classes, we discussed the common occurrence of elderly individuals living on a fixed income who regularly purchase food for their pet in lieu of nutrition for their own bodies. My heart broke, but I understood. We care well for the things that care for us. Having a pet keeps some people alive. Service animals who are trained to carry out tasks as clinical as alerting for low blood sugar, or placing paws on someone in mid panic attack to bring them back to reality, are indispensable to the owners they protect. Other animals, by just sheer presence, convince their human with tender affection to please hold on for one more day. “If I was gone, no one would be here to take care of Buzz. Buzz needs me and I need him. Ok buddy, I’ll stay.” You may flinch, but let’s go there. Many have been so wounded, abused, or hurt that the deepest bond they will let themselves form is with an animal. The drive within us to be loved and have relationship is so strong that if we cannot find connection with other people, we reach to animals to close the gap. Even if we do have a really great community of love and support, we may feel misunderstood or trapped in shame, perhaps lonely even when surrounded by those we know. We may have conversations with a horse or a bird that we would feel terrified to speak in the presence of a person. Often we pray with our animals, not to them, but out loud and somehow as we rub behind ears and kiss furry foreheads we feel heard and seen and a little less alone. Animals show up for us as healing.
These are my babies.
Not the only animals I have loved in my life, but the two I am responsible for and who scratch the itch of motherhood. Linus is 2 and excited about life every day and loves to watch squirrel videos on youtube and after being shaved for the summer, grew back the fluffiest coat of feathery chicken fuzz from front to bottom. Jovie is 10 and the boss and she lived with Chase in this house long before I ever did and on my sickest day I can see her eyes and the way she follows me from room to room and I just know that she knows.
They both give beyond what they take. After returning from this most recent surgery, I have spent more time with them than any of my people people. They are my nearest companions in the recovery process, loving me on my quiet sleepy pajama days, offering me a ball to play with, or curling up to join me in a nap. Healing.
GIVE IT A TRY
It likely won’t cure a diagnosis and can’t reverse a loss, but maybe it will lower your blood pressure, pump some serotonin into your body, give you permission to cry and process with another living creature who looks at you like you hung the stars and moon. If you have a pet, spend some time with them today. Go for a walk, write a little poem about them, show someone a picture of them and tell the story of how you found them. If not, hop on youtube for a video montage of baby goats, call a friend with a gerbil and ask if you can gerbilsit, volunteer at an animal shelter. If you are close enough to the zoo, explore and marvel at the wonder of creation. Just go find and hug a puppers, ok?
Also, how has an animal helped you heal? Do you have a story of finding some bravery from saddling a horse or swimming with a dolphin? Has a pet been with you in a crisis, kept you company in loss? Did you wake up to wonder at being introduced to the marvel of a kangaroo and think “if something this incredible exists, then I am glad that I do too?” We all need to hear, and pictures make it even better.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
Article on pets & feel good hormones
“How to Be a Good Creature,” a memoir by Sy Montgomery, both cover and content are remarkable
An article about Dr. Bill Thomas, Geriatrician. This one is worth explaining. The segment below from the article describes an incident, or adventure depending on perspective, when Dr. Thomas introduced a cluster of animals into a nursing home with the hopes of bringing some life back to the residents.
“They ordered the hundred parakeets for delivery all on the same day. Had they figured out how to bring a hundred parakeets into a nursing home? No, they had not. When the delivery truck arrived, the birdcages hadn’t. The driver therefore released them into the beauty salon on the ground floor, shut the door and left. The cages arrived later that day, but in flat boxes, unassembled. It was ‘total pandemonium,’ Thomas said. The memory of it still puts a grin on his face. He is that sort of person. He, his wife, Jude, the nursing director, Greising, and a handful of others spent hours assembling the cages, chasing the parakeets through a cloud of feathers around the salon and delivering birds to every resident’s room. The elders gathered outside the salon windows to watch. ‘People who we had believed weren’t able to speak started speaking,’ Thomas said. ‘People who had been completely withdrawn and nonambulatory started coming to the nurses’ station and saying, “I’ll take the dog for a walk.” ’ All the parakeets were adopted and named by the residents. The lights turned back on in people’s eyes. In a book he wrote about the experience, Thomas quoted from journals that the staff kept, and they described how irreplaceable the animals had become in the daily lives of residents.”
Parakeets as healing. I love it.