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Thanks.
The universe has good news for the lost, lonely, and heart-sick.
The sugars are here, speaking straight into your ears.
I'm Steve Allman.
I'm Cheryl Strayed.
This is Dear Sugars.
Oh, dear song, won't you please share somebody?
Hi, Steve.
Hi, Cheryl.
So today, the much anticipated episode on cats and dogs.
Yes.
We promised it because, you know, whenever we do those pet questions, we get a lot of mail.
And I'm sort of famous for always siding on the side of the cat.
Whoever loves the cat most to me is just always right.
I am an absolutely unrepentant cat lady.
And, as longtime listeners know, grew up poor many years of my life with a single mom for a big chunk of my childhood.
And my house ever-changing as it was, from my mom and dad being married to my mom being the single mother, to my mom being with my stepfather.
The one thread was that we always had animals.
And the reason we always had animals is because my mother was the person who took in every animal that she came upon.
Any animal that needed help or veterinary care or love ended up living with us.
And it was really a great gift of my life for a couple of reasons.
One the love that animals bring into your life, the adventure.
You know the funny things that happen.
But also, you know, I will say, because my mom did pick up a lot of, you know, weak and injured animals and sick animals.
Sometimes they would die.
And from a very young age, I was seeing this, witnessing this. passage too.
So I feel like I learned a lot through animals.
And when my mom was dying, you know she got cancer and there were those few days before she died that she was not in her right mind, or at least not part of, I would say, the rational world.
She was having deliriums and delusions, and And the thing that she was absolutely sure of in her final days is that the room was packed full of her former pets.
So she would do things like say you can't sit on the bed Cheryl, because Miko is there or Max is there.
You know, she was naming and these are the names of cats and dogs and And also horses.
She thought her old horse was in the room with her.
And she imagined they were there.
And I cannot even begin to tell you how profoundly comforting that was to me.
Because her best friends were her pets, for sure.
I mean, my mother had deeper bonds, really, with her animals than she did with her human friends.
And my mother believed that those animals she loved, who had passed before her, were there to help guide her out of this world.
And that was a very powerful thing for me.
It still is when I think about it.
I think if I'll be so lucky to have those friends there with me in spirit when I die.
And so, you know, I love my cats.
I love my dogs.
I love my pets.
And we're going to talk all about that sort of love today and also the complexity and the conflict that having pets can bring about.
The scene in Wild that I still remember giving me shivers is having to put that horse down and the violence of that scene.
And it's just wrenching.
And it put me in mind of what we really want to get at, which is that animals pets, and in the wild, they have a psychic weight in our lives that people trivialize.
Your mother's experience where she conjured that ark full of animals who would see her to the other side.
That's not trivial.
They occupy a deep place within us.
They're in our literature.
Where are you going with that axe, Papa?
That's the beginning of Charlotte's Web, Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grows.
My friend Flicka.
I mean, all the horse novels of YA literature.
Black stallion.
All right, so we won't go, but the point is that there's really something deeper that's going on, which is that we have a deep psychic connection to the animal kingdom.
Well, and you mentioned that scene in Wild where my brother and I shoot our mother's horse, Lady.
And this is a horse who had been in my life since I was five or six.
And this is the horse who was my mother's best friend.
And it is the worst thing I've ever done in my life.
And it's the worst thing I've ever written.
And I hope I never have to write anything ever like that again.
It was the most brutal, ugly, awful, sad, painful thing I've ever written.
And I do think it is with our animals that some of our deepest, most profound moments occur.
I mean, I certainly know a lot of people who are like my mom, who they would prefer to be in the company of a cat or a dog or a horse or a goat than any old person any day of the week.
Okay, do you want to read the first letter?
We knew that taking on the responsibility of an aging dog meant that at some point we would see her health deteriorate and ultimately she'd die on our watch.
Unfortunately, over the past few months, that dreaded decline has begun, and this is where the problem begins.
What a lovely literary way to begin.
Tilly has lost a lot of motor function in her back legs.
This makes going up and down the stairs of our two-story house very difficult and dangerous for her.
She also wakes up several times during the night and will not go back to sleep until she's been downstairs to wander around or go potty or eat.
It's become evident to me that it's time to put Tilly down.
Despite my efforts to speak frankly with my husband about this, he's uncomfortable, accepting the situation.
He says that it's our duty to care for Tilly and keep her alive for as long as possible, and that I should suck it up.
He is unsympathetic to my plight, and has even made comments alluding to my potentially being a bad mother, one capable of abandoning a difficult child.
Mind you, we don't have children yet, but plan to start a family soon.
I point out how utterly ridiculous it is that he should compare our aged dog to our future baby, and I'm hurt by his dismissal of my efforts to provide our cherished pet with proper veterinary care and constant attention.
I feel stuck between trying to take care of myself and trying to prove to my husband my worthiness as the future mother of our children by way of caring for tillie.
I can't help but be hurt by his unwillingness to give me permission to lovingly put our suffering dog to rest.
I love this dog more than any one does.
My question for you Sugars, is how do I get through to my husband how completely torn up I am about this decision and how alone he is making me feel in it?
How can I convince my husband that putting Tilly to rest is the compassionate choice?
Thanks, Distressed Dog Mom.
This is a hard situation, and it's one that most people who have pets face at one time or another or, in many cases, several times over the course of a life.
I really strongly recommend Distressed Dog Mom that you get your husband to go to talk to a veterinarian together.
I wasn't in conflict with my husband about this decision.
A couple of years ago, we made the really sad choice to put our dear, beloved Kat Gulla down.
And she truly is.
I miss her every day.
She really, really was one of the best friends I'll ever have in my life.
And it was so hard for us to come to that decision to put her down.
She was getting to a point in her life where she wasn't having any quality of life.
She was suffering.
And It was difficult for us to care for her because she was losing some of her motor functions.
And what I can tell you is the most helpful conversation, the one that allowed us to make this decision and feel like it was the right decision, was the conversation we had with her wonderful doctor, her wonderful veterinarian.
Right.
And one of the things that the veterinarian told us is that this animal Tilly, isn't having the best life right now.
That your decision to put her down is in no way cruel to her, that in a lot of ways, you're putting her out of her suffering by not making her endure what's to come, which is a further degradation of her health, of further opportunities for her to maybe fall down those stairs or reenter herself and get into sort of deeper suffering.
And so I think that your husband is in a different place than you.
He is still kind of thinking like, listen, we've got to do this for Tilly.
And what I want to say is a lot of times when people keep animals alive animals who are suffering or animals who are aged they're doing it for themselves.
Your husband isn't ready to accept the fact that she's ready to die.
And I think a veterinarian can really help you sort of guide him down that path.
Yeah.
I think that's just right.
I think what's fascinating about the letter and somewhat unsettling Distressed Dog Mom is that the pet in this case is being used as a proxy for real human problems.
I'm especially disturbed by the line about your husband alluding to you potentially being a bad mother who would potentially abandon a difficult child.
That's quite a guilt trip.
Exactly.
I think that your husband is acting out of his own sorrow and fear about this, but it's also kind of mean what he said.
And I think that you absolutely need to reckon with that as a couple.
Of course you're not abandoning Tilly by deciding to put her down, and you wouldn't abandon a child in need.
I think that those things are very clear.
And so I'm hoping you can help your husband see that very soon.
Okay, next letter.
Dear Sugars.
My husband and I have been married for five years, although we've known each other for more than 17.
We adopted our cat when I graduated from college and soon after that, we got engaged.
Getting a cat was a shared decision, though I wanted one more than him and he eventually agreed.
At the time, I was working two jobs, since we were so broke, and my soon-to-be husband was studying for the GREs and applying for graduate school.
Uh-oh.
Yikes.
Yeah.
In my opinion, since he was home more than me and always unhappy about the litter box, then he should be the one to clean it as often as he needed in order for him to be able to relax.
I know this wasn't fair, but I couldn't take his constant criticism anymore.
It was exhausting.
This arrangement continued for the next several years, but eventually I assumed full responsibility for all things cat-related, litter box included.
We're now living in a different city where we both have jobs we love and an adopted dog we both adore.
The cat remains a part of our family, with the understanding that I am the litter box cleaner for the rest of his life.
I'm perfectly fine with that.
I'm about to enter my 30s and I'll be ready to have a baby in the next couple of years.
My husband will soon be ready too.
But he has one caveat.
He wants me to assume the primary caretaking responsibilities of our child.
He claims I abused him by forcing the litter box chores on him for the years that I did.
So now he won't agree to a 50-50 split of parenting chores, given that he can't trust me.
He also repeatedly states something that makes my blood boil.
He says, since I'm the one who wants the kids the most, I should assume the role of the primary caretaker, in the same way that he thinks our cat is primarily mine, so the cat chores should naturally fall to me.
I have no interest in being a stay at home mother and sacrificing my career to have a family, or in having children with a partner who doesn't want them as much as I do.
I'm a firm believer that we could be parents with both of us working full time.
We make close to the same salary and I refuse to give up the career gains I've made in order to conform to his antiquated ideas of what a family should look like.
And here's a more complicated question.
Is it possible for two parents who work full time to equally share parenting responsibilities?
I know this all sounds a bit ridiculous, but I'm afraid that we're nearing a place in our marriage where we don't want the same things.
Please, sugars, can you provide some guidance?
Signed, Kat and the Hypothetical Cradle Here's the deal, Kat, and the proverbial cradle.
I cannot make more clear than you have already made to yourself that there's a real problem.
The realization that you and your partner are not into shared goals and shared duty.
Marriage and love are not an equitable arrangement.
But to the extent possible, you have to say to your partner and say to yourself I'm not okay with having children with a partner who doesn't want them as much as I do and who doesn't agree to.
Work with me around who's going to care for the children and in what way.
You can't game plan all of it.
You can't know for sure, but you have to agree to certain basic parameters.
And I say that because the history of your letter is the history of shifting rationale, blaming excuses that are manufactured and justifications for why you should have to clean up the poop and the mess.
Because you think cats are messy?
Wait till you meet babies.
That's the truth.
And, you know, I just running through this.
I mean, it is really interesting.
You know, let's just start with that litter box.
You know, I get it that he's like, listen, this is you wanted it more.
You deal with it.
But it's just not really the way it works when you're two reasonable adults who love each other.
It's not just the way it works when you live together.
You're part of the same team.
You help each other out.
What happens over a long relationship.
As you probably know, you've been married five years.
Is there really is this kind of ebb and flow?
If you do this, I'll do that.
Some months I'm doing more on the domestic kid front than my husband.
The other months, it's the reverse.
And if you can't even do this with a cat, you're in real trouble with the kids.
And especially when you have a partner who's going into it saying, I won't agree to 50-50.
And I
I can't even begin to tell you how terrified I am for you contemplating the notion of having a baby with somebody who's explicitly telling you I don't care about your career.
I don't care about your wishes.
I don't care that I'm the father of these kids.
I'm not going to do my part.
I'm not going to be there as an equal team member.
It's your job because you want those kids.
I really, really, really don't think that's a good plan.
I think the message got through.
Okay, next letter.
Dear Sugars, My partner and I have been together for almost five years.
We have a wonderful connection.
One of the many things we had in common is a love of simple living and animal rescue.
We both bought a dog into the relationship and found the merger of our canine homes a joyous one.
We then started adopting special needs and geriatric dogs.
We're sort of a doggy hospice.
About a year ago, we purchased a small property with five acres in pursuit of continuing this work, which is near to our hearts.
Since then, we have adopted more animals in need.
We now have five dogs, a pregnant cat who gave birth to four kittens, two unwanted goats and a pair of pigs who are bound for slaughter.
Taking care of these animals was a dream for both of us until my partner took a much more demanding position at work.
Now I find myself in the position of being totally overwhelmed with the animals and our home.
I also have a demanding job at which I work more than 50 hours per week and many days I spend almost all of my free time just trying to keep our animals fed, attended to and loved.
Added to that is the maintenance of the house and land.
It's a real struggle.
I don't want to imply my partner doesn't contribute.
My partner does.
But I've started to feel like we're going underwater and cannot keep up.
I also can't bear the thought of giving up any of our animals, all of which deserve a safe and loving home they previously lacked.
We both feel strongly about honoring our commitments to these rescues and are very attached.
Plus, in a rural area like that in which we live, rehoming them would be almost impossible.
Still, i find us being in constant turmoil about the demands at home, and it's taking a toll on our emotional well-being.
How do we solve this problem?
I know we may have overcommitted, but now we're here, so what next?
Signed, The Rural Savant.
I actually think this should be The Rural Servant, but okay.
The good thing about this one is that I see a very clear solution.
First of all, it sounds to me like you're at maximum capacity, a little beyond that, but maximum.
I agree with you.
Don't try to get rid of any animals.
But for now, don't take any more on.
Talk to your partner as much as you want to.
Open your home and your heart and expand that sense of shelter and love to as many animals as you possibly can.
You are part of the equation, and you are already doing more than you're really capable of doing.
Yeah.
One of the great things about the labor you describe is these really are things that you can find really pretty inexpensive helpers.
Pay somebody a certain amount per hour or per week and task them with being the one who comes and does one of the feedings, or somebody who helps maintain the yard or another set of hands, for who can help you and your partner see to the needs of these many animals?
So I don't know, rural savant, if it's financially feasible for you to get help five days a week.
It might be.
But even if it isn't, my goodness, a couple days a week, somebody else relieving literally every hour that you can enlist somebody else to do the work is an hour that you get back in your life and an hour that that you won't hold against your partner who's not doing that.
So the two of you need to talk about this.
You need to say, I love our life.
I love our home.
I love our animals.
This isn't working for me.
Neither one of us has enough time.
So let's come up with a solution.
And the solution really is hiring help.
I love and applaud your compassion for these animals and the care that you give them.
What animals do and our relationship to them is really give us some clarity on what our human stuff is.
And so now you know that you're both really do-gooders and sometimes you get overcommitted and that causes you to turn against each other or reveal certain tensions that already existed in your relationship.
And it means you have to be a little bit less noble to the animal kingdom so that you can be a little happier in the human kingdom.
Well said.
Okay, next letter.
Dear Sugars, My ex moved out a year ago.
During our five-year relationship, we got two cats together, and when she left, they stayed with me.
I've been allowing her to come over to see them every couple of weeks, but I'm at the point in my life now where I can see how toxic she is, to my happiness, and I don't want these visits to continue.
There's a catch.
Based on several extreme events that have happened through our time of knowing each other.
I'm afraid that she may dramatically react to my decision to stop the visits.
She's very emotionally unstable.
She regularly self-harms, and to my knowledge, she's not in counseling.
I don't want to cause something horrible to happen to her.
She had a kitten early on, and due to an accident, the kitten died.
When she found out, she got to such a bad state that she was talking about suicide.
That cat was with her for a short amount of time.
I can't imagine the potential reaction she would have to hearing that I don't want her around the ones she's had for years.
On top of that, out of guilt, over this past year I've regularly reassured her that she would have access to see the cats.
I don't want to be unkind.
At the same time, she was emotionally manipulative throughout our time together and I want nothing more to do with her as I pursue my own happiness in the beautiful new life I've made for myself since she left.
My therapist and friends tell me I need to cut her off, and whatever she does is on her.
I understand that point of view, but I'm also having trouble reconciling what I want for myself with the hypothetical worst-case scenario that could arise due to my actions.
Please give me your thoughts.
I've done so much healing with your help, and this is something I can't figure out how to handle.
Signed, Cutting Ties Look, Cutting Ties, this is a difficult one.
And yes, it's about the animals.
You know, can she see the cats?
But it's really about how you disentangle yourself from somebody that you know is both a fragile person and also is toxic in your life.
I think the easy thing to say here would be, yeah, go with your therapist and your friends.
If she's trouble, if she's manipulative, it's not your responsibility.
It's her life.
You did what you could.
You got to lead your own life, dot, dot, dot.
But I think it's a little complicated by the sentence.
I've regularly reassured her she would have access to the cats.
That does sound something like a promise.
And whether she's unstable, self-harming, volatile or not...
You did tell her that.
If you're going to change those terms, you're going to have to expect that she would be upset about that.
I would also ask you to think a little bit about why did the cat stay with you when she moved out and how did that play out?
Because people find a way to stay involved in relationships that they're not fully resolved emotionally with.
And so maybe that's what's happening here.
But I think it's important to think about how did you reach this point?
Is there another way to allow her to visit the cats that doesn't involve bringing her back into your life and all the drama and complication and sorrow that you're trying to move past?
Yeah, those were my questions too, Steve.
I've imagined a couple of scenarios.
One is kind of like.
What Steve is suggesting is finding a way to allow her to visit the cats, maybe not every couple of weeks, maybe a little less, but in a way that she's not interacting with you.
Perhaps you have some mutual friends from your relationship.
You were together five years where you know it could be like by appointment with that friend.
You know, if you don't want her alone in your space without you there, a trusted friend to you know sit there for an hour while she visits the cats.
You know, there's a difference between saying it's over.
You're I need some more space.
After our breakup, I'm feeling like we're not so great together.
Having to interact every two weeks over these cats has been difficult for me.
Can we have a four-month period where you don't visit the cats?
Can we just take a break and see how that is?
Part of her connection to these cats is It might be about that she wants to see them every two weeks because she used to live with them.
They used to be in her life every day.
And I do think that you know over time she could maybe move on from them.
You know, wish them well and ask you for occasional updates.
And maybe it's just that, you know, she's not there yet and you need to start that process again.
Well, here's the question that might be underneath here.
I think your therapist and friends are saying she's trouble and she's using these cats as a way of staying in your life and agitating you and keeping you from moving on.
And we totally hear that.
But again, the sticking point for me, and the reason I think this is a hard decision for you to actually make, is the way that the decision was made originally was.
I've regularly reassured her that she would have access to the cats.
That promise was made maybe as a way of you not ripping the Band-Aid off and cutting her out of your life.
And it might be that you're at a point cutting ties where you have to be unkind because the toxicity of her in your life causes you to go back on a promise.
And then you are going to be a bad actor in that.
These are the risks that we find when we get into deep and meaningful human relationships.
And we then realize there's no good decision here.
There's a bad decision and there's a worse decision.
And I hate saying that because I know you want us to give you clarity and give you a solution.
But this is one of those letters where we can only tell you that there are options that aren't so great.
And it's not anybody's fault, but it is the circumstances.
Right.
We both think, yeah, cut her out.
But to say, listen, I need to not have you in my life.
And so we need to come up with a solution with the cats, and maybe enlisting her to present some ideas as well.
And even if in the end you're like, no, I do want to cut it off.
At least you've consulted her before you've made that announcement, after having made promises to the contrary.
We wish you luck.
I really want to know what happens with this.
So please write to us.
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We are back and we're going to actually call one of our favorite animal lovers, the wonderful Julie Barton, who is just a beautiful writer and a beautiful human.
We adore her and the beautiful story that she told in her memoir that was published last year, called Dog Medicine.
It's about her really profound relationship with her dog Bunker, who's now dead, but she spent many years with him in a deep friendship.
And you know, just because we're both lit geeks, I just want to read a little tinge of Julie's prose from Dog Medicine.
This is a moment where she's just The book.
Spoiler alert is about struggling with a serious depression and the manner in which Bunker really was integral to her recovery.
So this is just the moment where Julie first encounters Bunker as a puppy.
We said goodbye to the breeder and I held the puppy close to my chest.
Thank you, mom, I said, for paying for him.
I couldn't adequately express my gratitude.
She watched me, pausing, probably because I actually appeared happy.
It was as if the moment I picked him up, I felt lifted.
Already, I couldn't fathom the thought of ever letting him go.
I felt a perceptible shift the moment I met him, a reuniting, a lifting, a glimpse of hope.
So let's give her a call.
Let's do it.
Hello?
Julie, it's Cheryl.
Hi, Cheryl.
How are you?
Good.
How are you?
I'm here with Steve.
We're so excited to talk to you.
Hi, Steve.
So Julie, I just read the little beautiful bit from Dog Medicine.
That is the moment that you actually get Bunker as a puppy and feel that glimpse of hope.
Will you tell a little bit more of the story since it's a bigger, more complicated story?
Yeah.
I was 22 when I got him, and I had graduated from college the year before and moved to New York because I wanted to write, and that's where I thought writers went.
And things went from not great to really bad.
And I didn't know what was happening at that point.
It was 1996.
And depression was not something that people really talked about then the way they do now.
But I had a massive depressive breakdown.
I mean, I was suicidal, absolutely.
But I finally just gave up in my apartment.
I was lying on my apartment floor crying. just saying, I can't do this.
I can't, I can't do this anymore.
And my mom, I called my mom and I said, mom, something happened.
And she said, stay where you are.
I'll be there in nine hours.
I'm coming to take you home to Ohio.
And she did.
And I went home and that was fine and good, but you know, I felt like a real failure.
I really just thought, well, I can't even survive in the adult world.
What, what chances do I have of making it any further?
I did take medication and I had therapists and psychiatrists and nothing really helped.
I just felt very hopeless until the moment I met this dog who walked up to me, sat down at my feet and looked at me like he's like.
There you are.
I've been waiting for you.
Come on, take me, take me home.
We're going to do this together.
And, and you know, At that point, I thought, well, yeah, there I go again.
I'm totally off my rocker, not well anthropomorphizing this dog.
But I got in the car to go home, and the thoughts come.
What a dumb idea.
Why did I ever do this?
I don't have a job.
I don't know where I'm going to live.
Why am I getting a dog?
This is such a big responsibility.
And then I put my hands on him.
And the simple act of touching him and feeling him literally brought me back to earth.
And my thoughts just kind of, you know, they became less urgent.
They became less catastrophic.
And I thought, you know, with this guy, maybe I could be okay.
Yeah.
Obviously, our listeners have to read the whole book for the full story.
But what do you think happened between you and Bunker that gave you that sort of way out of the hole that depression was and can be?
I think there were many reasons.
One of the major ones was that he was not human.
I didn't trust people.
I felt like anybody could turn around and really hurt me, just gouge me with words or worse, you know, and I just didn't feel safe with people.
And I also felt, like you know, when I would interact with somebody.
You know, my brain was a really destructive machine in terms of well, they said that because they think you're dumb, or they said that because they don't like you, or they said that because they actually just really want you to leave.
You know, all of those things that went on in my mind with a person never happened with my dog.
My dog was so happy to see me.
It was so genuine.
I knew his every nuance.
I knew what a lift of one ear meant, you know, and we were so deeply connected that, you know, on a bad day, when you know I couldn't really keep hold of my thoughts and I get home, I would go.
At least I have that to go home to and I'm going to go home and it's going to be fantastic.
And I would go home every day from work.
I would take off my shoes.
I would put on my tennis shoes and he knew he grabbed the leash and we'd go out and we'd walk.
And it was the most healing relationship of my entire life.
And another part of it was that he didn't have words.
As a writer, I'm so into words and I'm so stuck on words and I listen to every word.
And yet he didn't have those.
And so I was able to live outside of that with him in this place.
That was really more about listening and being quiet and being together and feeling safe.
Wow.
So we have a letter that we would love to hear from you, your thoughts on it.
Steve's gonna give it a read?
I will.
Dear Sugars, I'm 31 years old and two years ago I adopted an adult dog from a shelter.
For the majority of my life I've struggled with clinical depression and anxiety, but since I got my dog I've been almost entirely asymptomatic.
It is with no hyperbole that I say he saved my life.
He's been with me through romantic heartbreaks, financial struggles, lost friendships and professional disappointment.
These are all episodes that previously would have derailed me, but with my dog by my side, rock bottom isn't as low and I don't stay there nearly as long.
I'm the healthiest and happiest I've ever been.
Here's my conundrum.
I have an opportunity to go to new zealand for several months for a short-term job later this year.
Due to quarantine laws and other obstacles, taking my dog with me is not an option.
However, i have capable and adoring parents who are willing to take care of him while i'm away.
At this point they are even looking forward to it and would be disappointed if i didn't go through with the trip.
My dog has no separation anxiety or other issues that would cause him distress if I left.
In fact, he'd probably be happier, since my parents are retired and could spend more time with him than I currently do.
There is no logistical or financial reason why I could not go.
Sounds like a no-brainer, right?
But when it comes right down to booking a flight and committing to leaving, I simply cannot do it.
The thought of something happening to him while I'm away triggers that old anxiety and I worry that if I go I will become a despondent mess.
I can't imagine not being with him for so long.
Thinking about it brings me to tears.
It's worth mentioning that I spent most of my twenties traveling the world on my own, working in various countries and backpacking for months at a time.
Travel is a part of my identity and I'm beginning to feel antsy about not having been on a trip in two years.
How do I reconcile the pain of leaving my dog behind for something that otherwise is a great once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?
Should I stay in my happy bubble at home and leave my days of travel behind?
Please help, Sugars.
Sincerely, Conflicted Fur Mama Julie, I thought of you as I read this letter.
These words, it's with no hyperbole that I say he saved my life.
And you say that, too.
Did you relate to that?
I mean, do you relate to this letter?
And what are your thoughts about this letter?
I so related to it because I know exactly what she's feeling.
The thing that really struck me about this letter was She is trying to convince us, to convince her to go.
And yet, because she says, travel is a part of my identity.
Once in a lifetime opportunity.
My dog's going to be completely fine.
She knows all these things.
But when it comes time to make the reservation, brings her to tears.
And I would say that's okay.
It's okay that the thought of something happening when she's away triggers anxiety and she thinks I can't do it.
What I would say in those moments is think about what you're telling us.
Your identity is traveling.
You love adventure.
And what your dog has actually shown you is that, away from the cloud of sorrow and anxiety, you actually are truly a happy person.
And her dog's a mirror.
And those tough moments are okay.
Yeah, they're going to come.
And if she does go on the trip, she's going to get on the plane and she's going to go.
Oh my God, I miss him.
The longing is terrible.
How am I going to survive this?
And in those moments, what I would encourage her to do is almost embody him and think what would he want me to do?
What would he want me to feel right now?
Joy.
He would want me to be curious.
He would want me to stop and listen.
If she's someplace where she can go outside, he would want me to go on a long walk.
And those things are really going to help her.
And I honestly think that you know, if travel and adventure are part of her identity, she kind of has to do this.
And can I tell you a story that is similar to this one?
So my husband and I got married when I was 26 and Bunker was four years old.
And our in-laws offered to pay for our honeymoon.
And they said, anywhere in the world you want to go.
And you know, at that point we were young grad students and, and you know young, young kids, and we couldn't afford anything.
We thought, well, wow, what an amazing opportunity.
Where should we go?
And the thought of going anywhere absolutely froze me because I didn't want to be that far away from bunker.
And so we got married on an Island Northwest of Seattle called San Juan Island.
And I thought, well, What if we just go to Vancouver?
What if we just go to Victoria?
Because I thought, well, maybe if something happens to him, then I can be home in a few hours.
This was my thinking.
What I told Greg, my husband, was that I was really scared of flying, which I kind of was at that point.
But really what it was, was I didn't want to be far away from bunker.
I realized that I had, out of fear, chosen to not spread my wings and go with my new life partner on some grand adventure.
And I'll tell you, you know, we've been married for 17 years.
I still kind of regret it.
The thought of being an ocean away was very scary to me.
And you know, if I could go back to that young newlywed, I would say you've got to go have an adventure.
It's going to be okay.
And you will feel these feelings of fear and anxiety and that's okay.
What you got to do in those moments is treat yourself the way your dog would treat you, with absolute, utter kindness and acceptance.
And whatever it is you're feeling is fine.
Do what calls you.
And what I think calls conflicted fur mama is New Zealand.
Yeah, I do, too.
I think you're right that she wants us to tell her to go, because she knows that she should go, that she needs to go.
And you know for a mama, you're coming home, you know, and you'll be back with your dog and everything will go back to the way it was.
But you'll be somebody who got to go have an adventure, while your friends stayed home and had a little vacation with the grandparents.
And I think that that's something to remember that part of what you learn from this relationship is that you're strong enough to go off on your own.
You don't need to use this relationship as a crutch, but rather as one of the many good things in your life that supports you in your independence.
Yes.
So I want to respectfully not disagree, but I want to reflect a little bit differently.
I don't think the conflicted firm Mama, that you should feel like you need to go, that you need to prove something by taking this opportunity.
And I think that Julie speaks very eloquently about this idea of how do other people see me and how do I then start to see myself.
I think it would be great if you decide, in the face of real fear about losing that mirror, that you're going to do it anyway, because you want to do it.
But it also is true that you've struggled with clinical depression and anxiety for the majority of your life and that you've also spent a lot of that time traveling and that in some sense I don't know this for sure, but I'm speculating that the travel and that sort of adventurism and that idea of yourself might have been in a way kind of a version of the dog, a way of dealing with the symptoms of anxiety and depression that really were always there the whole time and were kind of underlying.
And now you've created this scenario in your mind, where everything's at stake, and you either choose to be a terrible, cowardly person who's dependent on this dog, who doesn't take this amazing once-in-a-lifetime opportunity which, by the way, that phrase is a setup.
There are no once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
There are just a series of different opportunities, but who puts onto this decision a kind of identity pressure that I think is symptomatic of the kind of pressure that leads to depressive thoughts and anxiety.
It would be great if you want to take this trip and if you decide to do that and do everything that Cheryl and Julie have wisely counseled you do.
But it would also be okay if you decided at this moment in your life That you don't want to take that trip and you would suffer some regret.
But you would also say you know what I need a home base, and this relationship is sustaining for me.
And if I'm crying and weeping enough then I know that I'm not quite ready to make that trip.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Hey, you live with those regrets.
But, you know, that is 2020 hindsight.
We always are doing this in our life.
And another way I would say it is at that moment, as a 26-year-old, having gone through a debilitating depression, for which this animal and the compassion and courage that that animal relationship summoned within you was able to really make you feel alive again in the world and allow you to get married and enjoy the joy of that relationship.
Hey, it's good that you had loyalty to that important relationship and maybe some part of you needed in that moment of your life to stay a little closer to that relationship.
I'm not trying to muddy the waters.
I think it's true that she's trying to convince us, to convince her to go, but I'm trying to convince you not to put so much pressure on yourself around the decision.
Either way.
Whatever you decide.
That it's going to be okay.
It would be okay to do either thing.
And what these animal relationships do is make you realize that within you was a happier, stronger person.
And for however long you need that relationship to hold up that mirror to that stronger, more able person great.
And at a certain point organically, you might be afforded an opportunity in a year or two where you say yeah, I think I can make this decision without bursting into tears or breaking down, because I'm thinking about situations in my life where I had that kind of powerful reaction.
And it's fine to talk about overcoming it, but it's also fine to listen to a reaction that's that extreme.
I'm so glad you said that, Steve.
That's fantastic.
I agree.
I think that whatever she decides, there are going to be pros and cons to both.
I can tell you, speaking from if I was 31 and that I still had bunk.
I don't know that I would go because I'm not much of a traveler.
But based on her letter, it just felt like she was trying to figure out how to go without feeling fear.
And that was where I wanted to say to her, it's okay to feel a little bit of fear.
And when she says that travel is part of my identity, I don't want her to deny that because of depression.
And if this is something she really wants to do, maybe what it is is.
It's not the best timing, but maybe it is.
Maybe it'll be several months.
I don't know how long that really means.
But you know, I think you're absolutely right in saying that either decision she makes is going to be the right decision for her at that point.
And she's going to have second thoughts no matter what.
Yeah.
And can I just say one more thing to the caller?
Sure.
To the letter writer, yeah.
I'm sorry.
To the letter writer, yes.
I lost Bunker in 2007.
It's been 10 years.
And I'm still trying to map out and figure out what that relationship was all about.
And...
The more I look at it, the more I see that he was showing me what I was capable of in terms of joy.
And I would just remind her to think of that when she's, if she goes and she feels this longing for him, that it's okay and that she's going to go home.
But also that she's capable of having a fantastic time and not letting the things that normally would really sideline her get her down.
And also of kindness towards herself.
Dogs treat us with such incredible kindness and remind her to treat herself that way when she's feeling those moments.
Treat yourself like your dog would.
Julie, thank you so much.
Always a delight to talk to you.
Thanks for joining us here on Dear Sugar Radio.
Thank you guys so very much.
Take care.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
You too.
Bye.
Dear Sugars is produced by The New York Times in partnership with WBUR.
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