Valuing Silliness, Sentiment and Science

You'll find all three on our grief support site, especially on our boards.

Let's start with the most serious one first.

Science: It helps to have information about research on grief and emotional states. And since so many of our members have other pets, information on pet care and health is important. We're also very interested in research that supports a belief in an afterlife we share with our pets.

Sentiment: We're unabashedly sentimental. We create a safe place for people who miss the pets they've lost to grieve openly. We love our pets, and we also know that people who try to suppress their feelings about losing their pets (especially out of fear of criticism from people who don't understand) will be postponing grieving but not escaping it completely -- and the result of suppressing that grief can be emotional and physical health problems later. We're also very sentimental about the pets still with us, sharing both joys and worries, asking for prayers for them when they're ill, and celebrating every new adoption in our online family.

Silliness: How do you cope with life without humor? How do you relieve stress without some silliness to offset it? We believe you can't, so we welcome silly pet pics, whether from our own members or from a site such as the Lolcats site, ICanHasCheezburger. We post jokes, and we talk about silly subjects. And when we picture our pets in heaven, we may imagine them having parties and doing other things that they didn't do here. That's fine -- it helps us heal. And who can say that our pets aren't having those parties we love to picture?