I have to remember that even though the pain of my grief is still great, the level of that pain, the sheer greatness of it, is in direct correlation to my love and happiness and joy that I had with Ghengis. Few people get to find so much happiness in such a short time and I should be grateful.
I know people who have lost pets or lost relationships and refused to do it again. They refused the risk of almost certain pain. Pets will always dies, relationships will end or the person you love will die. That is not me. If my dog dies, I will get another and I will simultaneously grieve and find joy. If my relationship ends, I will not reject another out of fear. I will move forth and put a on a brave face. I do these things because I have no choice. I am hard wired to seek out joy and contentment even when things feel hopeless and by adding the joy, I am erasing the hopelessness.
I do regularly feel despair over the loss of Ghengis, I doubt I’ll get over that any time soon, but I have to remember that I also have happiness. I have Maddie who loves nothing more than to curl up next to my belly and have me wrap myself around her as we sleep. I have Chester who seems to be trying to master the art of language so he can talk to me.
And I have David who will wake me up at 3am to tell me I’m cute, who puts blueberries on our pizza, who understands that snowboots must be pink and sneakers can’t be blue, who makes sure I get enough fruits and vegetables AND enough burritos and who accepts that sometimes orange sherbet is an excellent source of vitamin C.

Vulnerability, he said, has its own sort of power. It allows you to love even when you have every reason not to, to keep your heart on fire even when you have every excuse to let it go cold.

From Sweet Juniper
I’ve had my reasons to go cold, but I haven’t. And I don’t think I could.