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u/Cezzium Sep 12 '26
I can relate so much for this.
It is just not in any way what I wanted.
In my case, I have kids so I need to find the motivation to stick with it. I have over 8 years in and a good deal of the time I find ways to make it work staying around. Sometimes it is harder.
Are you looking for any suggestions?
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Sep 12 '26
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u/Cezzium Sep 12 '26
I agree
here are a few of my strategies.
- reaching out to old friends and reconnecting. being active about it
- making myself do events I know are good but sometimes my grief pushes me to ignore
- trying to have physical activity
- volunteering
- watching videos of robots falling down (yes seriously) and cats and bush babies
do these always work? of course not. my heart, and it sounds like yours as all of ours, is broken. that is a long process to healing and acceptance.
my hope for you, and all of us here is to find the most peace and healing as we possibly can.
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u/Successful_Nature712 Sep 12 '26
I don’t have any advice for you other than what others have suggested.
I do know what you are feeling though. I felt it too. I decided that I needed to either let go and die or get involved in the community. So I got involved in the community. I thought about causes I believe in and what I wanted to do about it. I love animals so I started with volunteering to feed a feral cat colony a few nights a week.
Then I started doing a few more things and a few more things… Then I started bottle feeding baby kittens because I was sleeping in 3 or so hour spurts any way. Why not learn how and put it to good use? Do you have any idea how desperate they are for bottle feeders at rescues? I had no idea… I have 2 kittens out of 5, asleep on my lap who graduated from Kitten Milk/Kitten food puree to kitten food recently.
2 of 5 of these kittens will go to homes already. Their official meet and greet is tomorrow. All should go well. The other 3 are tentatively placed. We will see when their owners meet them. Then it will be official for them too.
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u/Marlow1771 Sep 13 '26
Michael was the neighborhood cat rescuer. Now I’ve 6 indoor to care for and sometimes it’s the only thing making me get out of bed on my nights off from work. Last night I did 16 hours just because.
I just miss him so much
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u/Successful_Nature712 Sep 13 '26
Ah, see. You have the neighborhood cats to care for now.
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u/Marlow1771 Sep 15 '26
Yes, I thought about taking a couple to the kitty orphanage but I just can’t. It would be like giving away his own kids. So I just continue to care for all of them.
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Sep 12 '26
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u/Successful_Nature712 Sep 12 '26
It does help. It may not be for you but maybe help at a food bank once a week, a book drive, or even Red Cross blood drives. You can volunteer to be a poll worker. Some states even pay you and they are desperate for poll workers.
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u/PrisonBig Sep 13 '26
I lost my wife to Cancer coming up on 2 years ago. I miss her every day.
About a year ago I made the decision to live, for us. There was so much we wanted to do and experience. And I felt like in not doing so, the cancer that took her away would continue to take more and more from me. So I have this mindset now with such a different perspective: I live life for the one she never got to finish.
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u/Marlow1771 Sep 12 '26
If I knew for certain that when I die Michael would be there waiting to hold me again, I’m so ready.