Whilst my illness was debilitating, especially as I was misdiagnosed for decades and I had no idea what was actually happening to me, I am keenly aware that life could be a lot worse and that being sick has given me the opportunity to spend more time with my pets, and to make me realise and remember what is really important in life and the dreams I've always wanted to achieve but had forgotten about along the way.

I know from personal experience that when you lose someone you love it can seem like your world stops turning. Everything can seem like it is suddenly crumbling around you, and whilst you may be surrounded by family and friends and work colleagues, it feels as though their world's continue turning unabated, whilst your's grinds to a sudden and screeching halt.

Despite the presence of all those of people around you, it is very easy to feel completely and desperately alone, and ironically it is usually the friend you have lost that you feel most like turning to. It can feel like you are frozen in time whilst everyone around you carries on as normal, and once the initial period of loss has passed, many people expect you to carry on as normal too.

But grief is not that simple, and why should it be? You have probably spent years together, pets have often been with us through key events in our lives, and often we find ourselves spending far more time with our pets than with anyone else, so why would we just move on so easily after their passing?

Grief is really a representation of our love. The deeper and stronger the love for your pet, the deeper and stronger your grief is likely to be. Your grief reaction to losing any important relationship is measured on the part the one you have lost played in your day to day life, the time spent with them, the significance of the relationship and your strength of attachment to them.

"Death ends a life, not a relationship."

(Jack Lemmon)

Remember the special bond you shared with your pet IS significant and valid, and worthy of understanding, and your grief is an understandable reaction to those precious bonds being broken.

All my life I have wanted to help both people and animals and through this site and now the community I am building to work alongside it, I hope to do both by providing an ever growing source of reassurance and mutual understanding where feelings can be expressed and shared for the benefit of both those expressing them, and those who read them.

Whilst I have been running this website now for over two decades, approximately a decade ago, I was attacked, and whilst my gutless cowardice attacker was well aware I was already seriously ill. This led to my becoming even more sick, developing PTSD, and then collapsing and being told I would need a heart bypass. This was a very worrying and stressful time, particularly as being without any family to speak of, I had to worry about what would happen to my pets if I did not survive. 

At that time, I was so sick I had to give up the other websites I was running altogether, but I refused point blank to give this one up, even if I could not run it for a while. It took me a long time to recover, particularly as my attacker and accomplices continued to harass me and attempted to bully me in to suicide. It is sad to have to write that, but that is what they did, and openly admitted they were doing, and they tried incredibly hard, every day, for months and months, in every way possible.

But I recovered, got treatment for the PTSD they had caused, and fought my way back up again. As soon as I was able, I got back to running this website. I can't magically make up for the time I wasn't here, which was sadly beyond my control, but I can make improvements going forward.

I realise a lot of people dislike AI, for various reasons. However, AI has been the thing that allowed me to fight my way back to being able to have a voice again, a voice these people actively wanted to take from me, and frankly, by attempting to take me down and with me this entire website, from You. I would not let them make all of your stories, tributes, poems, diaries, experiences and memories, just disappear. AI, for me, has been a tool that has allowed me to get more done in less time, it has allowed me to create new things for this website, and new resources I always wanted to create, which I would never have had the time, energy or funds to create otherwise.

When I first began this website, there was a man called Ed Williams running another pet loss website, and I used to link to his Candle Ceremony from my site for years. Late last year, all of the links on his site just stopped working. Every post on his FB page were just deleted. All the tributes, stories, memories people had shared and posted over years, were just gone. The forum and chat room, which were always busy with people looking for support, and looking for people who would understand what they were going through, were gone. I do not know what happened. I know his content was stolen and copied some time ago, and that he clearly and understandably was not happy about that, and I tried to contact him, multiple times, but everything was just gone. 

I discovered this, because on Christmas Eve, grieving people started to write to me, asking me if I knew anywhere they could go, because they had tried to follow the links to Ed's forum and chat room from my website, that people had always followed, for years, and suddenly they were no longer working. 

This made me sad, wondering what had happened, it still does, but it also made me think about what else I could offer from my website. If all of these resources that people had relied on for so long were gone, and I knew people relied on them and needed them, perhaps as part of rising back up phoenix like from the ashes, I should build something that incorporated all of this and more into Pet Loss Matters. I had always intended to offer more and build more into this resource, I had just been interrupted when I was attacked. Perhaps now I knew they were needed even more, I could build something even bigger.

This is how and why I decided to build my Pet Loss Matters Skool Community, a pet loss support group where people can gather and share their experiences, check in, support each other, and where I am currently building a video course which will provide an Emergency Care Kit, for those grieving, and a video course that guides you through the science of grief, in a practical way, because understanding it - even a little - can make it so much less bewildering. Over the coming weeks and months, I will add more and more resources.

I hope this page has given you a little more information about me and why I built this site. Remember I am always very happy to receive your emails and if you would like to hear more please sign up to my Newsletter.

Wishing you and your pets a wonderful life,

Bunny Hankers xxxxx

"Keep what you've got, by giving it all away."

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