Anne Altamore

Dear friend who rolls your eyes when I talk about my pets or as I prefer to call them –my furbabies.

I see you roll your eyes and flash the quickest of a sarcastic smile when I relay a funny story about my darling girl, or the latest thing my beautiful boy has learnt. I can almost hear your thoughts. In fact, you did verbalise in a group setting while looking directly at me, that you just “did not get people who make a fuss of their animals.”

I understand that you have never had the relationship with a pet that I have with my furbabies. What I would like you to also understand is that not only do these beautiful dogs represent extremely significant relationships in my life, they are also the healers of my heart after the painful devastation of loss during my fertility journey.

Each loss held a ton of hopes, dreams, and love that had nowhere to go. Dreams of holding a baby and feeling its heartbeat against mine. Dreams of teaching, nourishing, playing, learning, feeding. Of creating recipes and watching my babies enjoy their food.

Of unconditional love given and reciprocated. Of having life and joy in a house that had grown cold and distant as each of us grieved in our own way without communicating, with no common focus on which to lavish attention, hope, and joy.

For you see, my friend, you will never understand the deafening silence of a house soundlessly screaming with the pain of childlessness. 

My furbabies bring me all the joy I feel in being able to make tangible the long-lost dreams of what being a mother would mean. That painful silence is now no more as these furbabies run around, barking and growling, as they fight each other for toys and favourite spots on the couch, or as they nuzzle each other with love. My dream of a home filled with noise and scattered with toys is now a reality which makes me smile. I love teaching them new words, new games, and watching their delighted faces when they do it right. I love feeding them, walking them, feeling their warm little bodies against mine as we sleep. I love seeing their faces first thing in the morning as they wake me up. I love the way they respond to my moods while I am working and remind me that I need to get up and move if I have been sitting at my desk for too long.

I am also acutely aware that their time with me is limited and so I make the most of every minute I have with them. I love them in a way I never thought possible to love anything or anyone.

The first day I held my girl and felt her heart beating against mine, the healing of the void in my heart was tremendous and impossible to describe. The feeling of my boy lifting my arm over his head so that I can wrap it around him as we watch TV, fills my heart with peace and contentment.

There are a myriad of academic papers, books, and articles citing evidence of wellbeing that pets bring to one’s life from providing emotional support, to releasing endorphins, reducing stress, encouraging exercise,and many more benefits. So, I will leave it to you to do your own research and reading about pets contributing to improved mental and physical wellbeing.

But what you may not know and what is rarely written about is what I share with you now. It is the healing of identity that my furbabies have given me.  Do you know that when I call their vet or naturopath, being able to say “this is Anne, Viva and Joshy’s mom”, also gives me the opportunity to say silently to myself, “and Chloe and Claudia’s mom.” For when I lost my twins, I forever lost the opportunity to say their names out loud, and when my life became one of being childless not by choice, I was no longer ever going to be able to identify as anybody’s mom. To be able to say the twins’ names is to now breathe life into the void. To say I am somebody’s mom, even if that somebody has fur and paws, is to defy the silence of identity as a mom that childlessness demands. 

In this rebellion, I create a tribute to joy, love, and identity which is a balm to my pain.  

So, my dear friend, the next time you roll your eyes at one of my stories, I encourage you to see me through the lens of a warrior and a survivor.  I am someone who has grown and thrived despite my childlessness and all of this has only been possible because I have two beautiful, intelligent, loving furbabies who bring me indescribable joy every minute of every day.

They are the healers of my heart yesterday, today, tomorrow, and forever.

#healersofmyheart