Honoring Our Animals - by Beth Bigler (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Discover a personalized path to recovery with Honoring Our Animals, your daily source of solace and strength throughout the year.

Grieving the loss of your beloved pet can be one of the most devastating and disorienting experiences of your life. When the absence feels unbearable, Honoring Our Animals offers more than solace. It provides a daily space for remembrance, healing, and continued closeness.

This book is a refuge--a compassionate companion where heartache is met with understanding, and your bond transcends the physical. Through meditations, affirmations, and intentional practices, this guide offers a structured yet flexible path to move with your emotions, allowing love--not loss--to shape your journey.

Following the natural rhythms of the year, Honoring Our Animals moves through the seasons--New Beginnings, Awakenings, Abundance, Release, and Celebration and Reflection--offering gentle support through the ever-changing landscape of mourning. Each section invites you to engage with your emotions through inspiring prompts, contemplative exercises, and creative connection. Each day, you're encouraged to cherish your beloved through simple yet meaningful moments--quiet reflection, written expression, and sacred acts that nurture your heart and spirit. This book doesn't ask you to "move on" but instead affirms that devotion endures, and grief deserves space.

Honoring Our Animals redefines grief as an ongoing relationship rather than a finite parting, helping you recognize that your bond evolves, even in absence. It provides gentle tools to steady you in sadness, deepen your sense of closeness, and bring glimpses of peace, even on the hardest days.

Written by renowned pet loss grief counselor Beth Bigler, this book embraces language that honors your lasting tie--using "beloved" instead of "pet" and "transition" instead of "death"--because love never leaves. It also includes a feelings wheel and guided invitations to help you name and validate the full range of emotions that arise in pet loss: longing, guilt, loneliness, questioning, purposelessness, fear, anger, anxiety, shock, helplessness, and sadness.

Grief isn't meant to be faced alone. Whether your goodbye was sudden or expected, recent or years ago, this book will meet you where you are offering reassurance, comfort, and a way to keep your relationship alive.

If you feel lost in sorrow, this book is here to hold you.

If you long to honor your beloved, this book will walk beside you.

If you need a sign that love never leaves, this is it.

About the Author

Beth Bigler is a pet loss Grief counselor, educator, and author. She is recognized as one of today's most insightful and empowering voices for normalizing companion animal grief. She's dedicated to validating, nurturing, and supporting grievers in both her private practice and through content creation.

She's known for her inspiring daily posts in her Instagram community, @honoringouranimals, and is a sought-after expert for TV, podcasts, articles, and other media. She works closely with animal care and veterinary professionals and other pet industry brands for grief training and awareness.

Before she became a grief counselor, she enjoyed a 20-year career as a film/television/stage writer, producer, and college instructor.

The anticipated and eventual death of her soulmate cat, Arnie, transformed her life's mission. Beth is double-certified as a Grief Counselor (GC-C). She is also a certified Pet Loss Grief Support Specialist (PGSS-C) by the American Academy of Grief Counseling, certified as an end-of-life animal companion doula from the University of Vermont, and a trained pet chaplain. She holds degrees from New York University (BFA - Dramatic Writing) and Goddard College (MFA - Creative Writing).

Learn more at honoringouranimals.com.