Forces Discounts: I offer a £5 discount off of my usual hourly rate of £40, giving a hourly session fee of £35 for British Forces members.
I offer counselling support - a quiet room, and a listening ear, and an opportunity to talk, explore, or just sit with your feelings following the death, or the lead up to the death of an animal. With any bereavement, if we are grieving, whether this be from the death of a human or animal, often those around us will not be able to understand the depth of our emotion.
With the death of an animal, people will often respond by saying things like:
'you can always get another one'
'they had a good life'
'you did the right thing' - if you have had to make the decision to 'put the animal to sleep'
Often it is the case when an animal has died, that those around us do not understand that the attachment and love that we felt for the animal may have been, and may continue to be, as intense or more so than it might have been for a human being.
This can make grief from the death/loss of an animal harder to work through - and difficult to understand by both ourselves and those around us - because it is not seen as valid as much as if we had 'lost' a human being.
As a student, I was an OTC cadet, subsequently serving as a mover at Nr 4624 Movements Squadron, RAuxAF, at RAF Brize Norton. Whilst I was at college, my partner at the time also joined the TA, continuing to serve when we left college and afterwards - so I am very familiar with military life (as a reservist).
Why come to see me ?
I am a qualified counsellor, having worked as a school counsellor, and provided bereavement support for Cruse Bereavement Care. Over the years, like many people, I have experienced the death of loved ones - both human and animal. With the death of my pets, when I was in the depths of despair with my grief, and desperate for support, I couldn't find any counsellors locally who specialised solely in pet bereavement (aside from the telephone support offered by Blue Cross).
The grief I felt for the death of each of my cats was horrendous. Towards the end of their lives, I nursed each one - from a few weeks to a few months, and had to make, what I felt to be that horrible decision for each of them, to end their life. When I 'lost' the second cat, I sat with the vet at 3 o'clock in the morning, with my cherished cat lying in front of us - the vet had just put him to sleep, and I thought about my life - for me there is nothing clearer than death - what was right and what was wrong with my life. It was enough for me to resign from a well paid job. I then focussed on bringing up my children for a few years, latterly deciding to offer counselling support to those grieving from the death or loss of their own pets - if I can help other people live through what I found to be such difficult days and months, then I will have done a good thing.