In brainstorming ideas for Instagram content, I thought about some sort of piece on FAQ’s (Frequently Asked Questions) but realised it could actually make a good article for the website. With the Project obviously not being launched just yet, it was going to be impossible to reach out to followers to ask them to submit questions; so, I wrote a prompt for AI (specifically, Chat GPT) to create questions for me based on the contents of the website…
1. What
inspired the creation of Gracie’s Way? How did the idea first come about?
Ultimately,
and most obviously, the inspiration for Gracie’s Way was the death of my youngest
rabbit (she was only two); Gracie on November 1st, 2025. The
specific idea of using her death to inspire a project, however, came at an
event in Leeds where I was invited by Waythrough
(the organisation who supply my Recovery Workers) to meet with service users
and staff of a new addictions service. At the event, the staff were talking about
co-produced work they’ve done alongside service users and were saying that
service users had requested they do some work around bereavement support.
However, being an addictions service (Waythrough help and support both people
with mental health problems and addictions – or both!) they were focusing on
those whose loses were a result of addiction. So, I suggested considering
similar work around mental illness e.g. those lost through suicide and then,
being just eighteen days after Gracie had died, I mentioned pet bereavement and
questioned people’s thoughts on the relevance and importance of doing work on
that too. There were a lot of nods in the room and a few people commented that
it was a good idea because pets can be so important to a lot of service users
and particularly, for those who have a mental illness.
So, initially,
the project was going to be under Waythrough, but the staff and I quickly
realised/agreed that it would be a really slow process, and I wanted to get
moving with it. The staff pointed out that they didn’t want to stunt my own
grief journey/recovery by dragging out the creation of the project, and, fortunately,
I felt that I had the knowledge, skills, experience, and confidence to just basically,
run with it alone!
2. Can
you share the story behind the name of the project?
From
first mentioning the idea of doing work on pet bereavement in that event, I had
said I’d really like it if we could incorporate Gracie’s name in the title of our
work. Then, when I began brainstorming and putting prompts and questions into
Chat GPT, I decided to ask it for ideas on titles which featured ‘Gracie’ in
them and ‘Gracie’s Way’ popped up amongst a huge list! I liked the ‘Way’ bit for
two reasons; firstly, it was very fitting for the project being a part of
Waythrough (at that point, we hadn’t individualised it. Secondly, it hinted
that the project was about guiding people through pet bereavement and leading
them through helpful coping strategies for their grief – showing them the ‘way.’
3. What
personal experiences shaped the mission of Gracie’s Way?
Obviously
losing my little, mini-Lionhead, lop-eared bunny; Gracie was the largest, more influential
experience on the mission of Gracie’s Way, but I think that second to that
would be my own experiences of pet grief and bereavement. Sadly, Gracie isn’t
the first pet I’ve lost (we lost our family cat; Saffy in 2016, I lost my first
cat; Dolly, in 2018, my first Lionhead rabbit; Pixie, in 2021, and my rescue
calico cat; Emmy, in 2022) so I actually felt somewhat prepared for a lot of
aspects of my grief in losing Gracie. Something else that’s also shaped the mission
for Gracie’s Way was my experience of how you can be treat by others who have
no understanding or respect for pet bereavement and also how little help and
support is available for this type of loss.
Knowing
the poor treatment you can receive from others, mostly stemmed from the loss of
my first rabbit; Pixie in 2021. I was crying and telling one of my elderly neighbours
– who I felt that I’d actually grown to be quite close to – when she said, “shall
I heat the stove up and get the pot out?!” I couldn’t believe she could be so vile
and unkind. I mean, even knowing that she had never had a pet herself and that
this probably made it difficult and challenging for her to comprehend how it
feels to lose one, I felt that this still wasn’t a sufficient enough excuse to warrant
– or forgive – her completely and utterly heartless comment!
I have
been incredibly fortunate that through all of my four losses of pets, in addition
to sometimes being under the NHS Community Mental Health Team and having a
Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) I’ve actually also always at least been under
the care of Waythrough (originally named Richmond Fellowship until their merger
with Humankind in 2024!). This has meant I’ve always had at least one,
already-established form of professional help and support when I’ve been grieving
my pets. I will say, however, if we’re being completely honest here – a quality
I pride myself on maintaining throughout all of my content and work online – that
this hasn’t always meant that I’ve felt supported by those professionals with
my pet bereavement. But, in all fairness, I do feel and believe that a huge
part or reason behind that fail or that lacking, is a complete lack of
understanding, experience, skill, and knowledge on the topic. I’ve felt near
certain that those professionals haven’t felt confident enough to provide any
sort of specific support around my pet grief though I have always still experienced
a sense of empathy, kindness, and comfort from them – which, for me, is
actually really important in itself… Perhaps even more so than any sort of official
therapy or structured counselling etc.
In addition
to my own experiences of pet loss, of struggling to receive support, and of
being met with horribly unkind responses, I did a fair amount of research (I
actually really enjoy that side of projects and really recognise the importance
of it a lot more than I admittedly think I used to!) in starting to create
Gracie’s Way and it actually really contributed to shaping the mission of the
project too. I learnt a lot from it about just how common pet bereavement is
and – mostly through the RSPCA Pet Loss Survey (which you can read more about here)
I discovered a lot of really important statistics that were not only supportive
of my initial thoughts in terms of content the project would create/provide,
but which also served as inspiration for additional ones too! Particularly the
facts around how many people (around half of the 2,000 + who responded to the
Survey) experience symptoms of Anxiety and Depression after the loss of a pet.
Prior to reading that, I hadn’t really had any sort of specific mental health
diagnosis in my mind in terms of doing specific Gracie’s Way content/resources.
4. How
would you describe the core purpose of the project?
Gracie’s
Way has a huge, sort of, behind-the-scenes document which is simply named the
Project Document and toward the beginning of it, there’s actually a page titled
‘Project Purpose.’ In that, I have four bullet points of purposes for Gracie’s
Way:
1.
Provide
emotional support for people struggling with pet bereavement.
2.
Develop
practical resources to help people to process their grief.
3.
Offer
educational materials for professionals.
4.
Help
normalise pet grief by raising awareness that pet grief is as valid as human
loss.
I do
want to recognise here though, that through my blogging career and work in the
communications and marketing industry, I’ve come to learn a lot of things about
content creation and online projects and something which is relevant here is
that you can create something with all these precise intentions in mind, but your
followers or readers can really turn them around. Based on their responses and
feedback, you can often find yourself developing purpose and goals that you had
either never considered, or which had occurred to you, but you didn’t think
they were feasible or relevant etc. So, I fully expect and I’m prepared for,
that list changing in being either added to or taken from. Or both!
5. What
do you think is the largest unmet need in pet bereavement?
Two
words: mental health.
I think
that even those who can’t empathise with pet bereavement, appreciate it can
massively upset one – even if they don’t agree with the extent to which a
person is upset; they still aren’t exactly shocked to see someone crying over
their loss. However, I don’t think there’s many people at all out there who
really recognise that the ‘upset’ can run a lot deeper than crying and missing
the pet. And it goes back to the RSPCA Survey I talked about and the statistics
for people experiencing symptoms of Anxiety and/or Depression after the death
of a pet. But here are – in my opinion – the five most powerful statistics which
are also relevant here:
1.
67%
have been shocked by how intense their grief has felt
2.
93%
stated they felt ‘heartbroken’ from their bereavement
3.
57%
have felt the needed to hide their grief because of the general lack of
understanding
4.
28%
didn’t know where to turn for support
5.
57%
felt they were unable to find the support they needed
I think
that the recognition and improvements of anything that has an impact on mental
health can be lifesaving. And I think this stems from my experiences of suicide
and self-harm – both in personally doing those things, and in witnessing or
knowing others do them too – because it means I’ve seen just how unsafe things
can get when you’re struggling with your mental health. It’s not all about
crying loads or not getting out of bed or isolating yourself. There’s also actual,
physical danger surrounding mental illness and emotional wellbeing. And I think
this illustrates the importance of Gracie’s Way’s inclusion of resources for
professionals because it recognises the idea that another person’s response to
a bereaved owner can seriously contribute to their mental health and safety
levels.
6. How
would you define ‘success’ for Gracie’s Way?
Initially,
I thought this was quite similar to another question towards the end of this
article when it asks what goals I have in mind for the first year of Gracie’s
Way. But I realised that I only really wrote about marketing goals in terms of
the level of followers I’d like there to be on the Gracie’s Way Instagram (@gracieswayuk) and the amount
of website traffic I’d like to see too. So, for this question, I thought I’d talk
about the project as a supportive service…
A few years
ago, the Chief Executive of Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne, and Wear NHS
Foundation Trust (CNTW – the mental health NHS Trust for my locality) retired
and a while later, I found myself in the car of the new Chief Executive (James
Duncan) to travel to an event, and I asked him: “does it feel like an achievement
getting the promotion?” And his response was “no, I think the achievement comes
when I hear we’ve helped someone.” I absolutely loved this mindset of his and thought
it actually really set him apart from a lot of other Chief Executives who just sit
in their office doing paperwork and having meetings rather than caring about
what’s happening on the frontline (in terms of both the service user’s
experiences and those of the frontline staff!). In that moment, I recognised
James as grounded and committed.
So, why
tell you that little story? Well, I think that in creating Gracie’s Way, I’ve
taken inspiration from James in so far as determining my priorities and – in relevance
to this question – my definition of ‘success.’ It’s meant that my response to
this question isn’t so much about followers, but more that it’s about the
number of people Gracie’s Way helps. I recognise that could be a difficult quality
to measure, but I thought of two ways of doing so:
1.
The
contents of any feedback I get from those who use the resources
2.
The
number of requests I get for copies of the resources
In 2017,
I wrote a blog post over on my mental health blog, I’m NOT Disordered about coping
whilst reporting rape or abuse to the Police and I received an email a while
later for a reader saying that as a result of that content, she’d gotten the
confidence and bravery to report her own experiences. I was so amazed at the
notion that my words had done that. Had actually made that much of a difference.
And her comment meant so much to me that I’ve held onto it and still see it as
motivational eight years later! I think that I’d really love for something like
that to happen with this project – to receive messages that the resources have
helped someone’s mental health and their general recovery and healing from
their loss.
When you
think about though, that’s half the target audience for Gracie’s Way; I think
that the other half – professionals – would have a different sign that would
make me feel the project was successful. That would be not only having frequent
requests for resources for professionals, but also regular bookings or
enquiries for the Pet Bereavement Training (which you can read a lot more about
here) that the project
offers. I decided to create this Training because I’ve actually facilitated various
training sessions that have ranged from mental health training for the new
recruits of my local Police Force (Northumbria Police), to suicide awareness
training for the British Transport Police (BTP), to journalism training for NHS
Lived Experience Reporters, and I’ve really enjoyed all of them! I think it’s
wonderful and inspirational to have the opportunity to teach someone something.
To have the chance to improve someone’s knowledge, understanding, and skills around
an important issue where getting it right could be so meaningful and incredibly
beneficial to someone else. And this is something that can be gained from the
Pet Bereavement Training.
7. What
values are the most important for leading the project?
I think that, in my opinion, the top four – which I
have discovered to be most helpful and therefore important – are: compassion,
respect, creativity, and empathy.
I’d say that compassion matters because it’s a value
that not a great deal of people illustrate when communicating or interacting
with those experiencing pet bereavement and this is largely a result – or a foundation
for – the fact that pet grief is typically
disenfranchised (isn’t fully validated, acknowledged, or supported by society)
and those experiencing it are left feeling isolated and different. Things which
can often lead to you questioning whether your own thoughts and feelings are
valid too!
Having compassion, in terms of leading on this
project, has become important because I’ve found that it really aids me in my
chance of being more effective with any and all of my efforts of encouragement for
bereaved owners to use the Gracie’s Way resources. I’ve said before – around mental
health generally – that I’m genuinely a lot more likely to take the advice or
recommendation of a fellow service user or patient, than I am to listen to a
professional and all their tips! So, I think that it helps bereaved owners to
know that there’s someone leading this project who truly ‘gets it.’ Someone with
compassion. With the ability to appreciate how they feel and what that might
mean they need or want.
This, then ties really nicely into that last value I
listed; ‘empathy.’ In all honesty, I was a little unsure as to how different
they actually are; so I checked with a quick prompt on Chat GPT and learnt that
compassion is about simply caring so much that you want to help, whereas
empathy is about helping and caring but specifically through being able to relate
or have a similar experience to someone else that means their thoughts,
emotions, and/or actions properly resonate with you. Whilst they have this
difference though, I think that their impact or influence on the project are
the same in that it aids me in assuring owners that the resources will be useful
and that they deserve to be given at least a chance to see just how impactful
they can be.
8. How
does your audience of owners and professionals differ in their needs?
I
actually think there’s a massive difference in the needs of the two separate
target audiences of Gracie’s Way. From the resources, bereaved owners need to
gain different things and benefit in different ways to those which
professionals do.
I believe
that the greatest need bereaved owners have in utilising the Gracie’s Way resources
is empathy. When you’re struggling with something – and it could be anything
really – you can often be desperate for this feeling because it can be hugely
therapeutic, comforting, and reassuring to feel that someone else understands.
Someone ‘gets it.’ You aren’t losing your mind or failing. There’s nothing wrong
with you. You aren’t broken or responding dramatically. In fact, these are
things that were mentioned in an anonymous review of the Understanding Your Grief
resource – you can read it over on the Owners Testimonials
page. There’s also a page in the Bereaved Owners dropdown menu which includes
all the ways in which Gracie’s Way can help (you can see it here)
that audience. It includes empathy, but also in there is hope, validation, and
distraction and you can read more each of those and the ways in which they’re
relevant or appropriate on the page.
The largest
need – I think – that professionals have in using the resources is courage. When
you’re faced with supporting someone with something you know nothing about, can’t
relate to, don’t understand, or have no skills in; you can very easily and
understandably feel completely out of your depth. And this sensation of simply
not having a clue can lead to stigma and judgement. It can lead to being
invalidating of someone and – in this instance – their pet grief. When someone
could already be feeling alone and isolated in their bereavement, the last
thing they need is for a professional to be unsupportive and/or to judge them for
their thoughts, feelings, and the ways in which they’re coping with all of that.
Other needs – advice, awareness, and communication skills – which I feel Gracie’s
Way meets, can be found on the Professionals equivalent page to how the resources
can help owners – you can read the professional’s version here.
9. Can you talk about the most impactful
materials or approaches recommended for a bereaved owner?
A huge
mindset and thought process behind the resources on Gracie’s Way, was that I wanted
to create content and materials which were the exact things I wish had been
available for myself in going through my own experiences of pet bereavement. I
did, however, still recognise the need for a balance in meeting what had been
my own needs as well as recognising that others grief and cope with pet loss
differently and therefore require different help and support. Different
resources.
Another
consideration in the creation of the resources for Gracie’s Way, was around the
approach to grief that is titled ‘The Five Stages of Grief.’ This approach was
founded by Elisabeth Kubler Ross in 1969 and involves the labelling of the five
‘stages’ a person can experience after a death or loss. The stages (in no particular
order) are anger, acceptance, denial, bargaining, and depression.
I’m a
huge believer in the recognition that these stages don’t always happen in any
particular order, sometimes you can experience more than one at the same time, you
might struggle to pinpoint which stage you’re in sometimes, and you can feel
that you’ve experienced and overcome one and moved to another when you suddenly
find yourself back in the previous one and feeling like you have to battle it
all over again! However, despite this perspective or opinion on the Five
Stages, I 100% recognise its relevance to pet bereavement and will completely agree
that I’ve experienced all five every time I’ve lost a pet.
So,
with this balanced view, I decided to include the theory in a couple of the resources
– namely the Understanding Your Grief document and the Pet Bereavement Coping
Guide (you can read more about both of these, here) –
but I put a huge amount of attention on their relevance to pet bereavement. So,
there are bits where there’s examples of the thoughts a bereaved owner could experience
at each of the stages e.g. in the Coping Guide it mentions a thought in the
bargaining stage could be “I should have done more.” I did this because my thoughts
on the fact that the stages don’t always happen the way you might be led to believe
they do, is a fairly common mindset and I didn’t want for someone to be
dissuaded in reading the resource once they saw the mention of the stages. So, I
tried really hard to make sure someone would feel convinced and certain that
they were still appropriate for this type of grief.
10.
What feedback have you had from people using the resources?
A while
ago, I had the idea of asking people to write reviews of the resources prior to
the launch. I provided everyone who offered or agreed to do it with a list of
the materials available, and they chose one or more and then wrote a review
about them. Admittedly, though, it actually wasn’t until a little while after requesting
people write reviews that I realised I was only looking for reviews on the
bereaved owners’ resources. With professionals being the second target audience
and with the level of thought and effort I’ve put into the resources for them, I
realised I should be pitching that people from this group write reviews too.
I’m still
awaiting a few owner reviews but have managed to fill one page already with
what I do have so you can read those: Owner
Testimonials | Gracie's Way
And the
reviews from professionals: Professional's
Testimonials | Gracie's Way
In all
honesty, it was so overwhelming receiving the reviews! I think that after thirteen
years of blogging over on I’m NOT Disordered, I’m incredibly accustomed to receiving
lovely comments and feedback on my mental health content, and whilst I still
always appreciate receiving them, I do wonder if I’ve become a bit complacent. I
mean, after thirteen years, it’s incredibly hard for someone to say something
to me that I haven’t already heard… For Gracie’s Way, however, I’ve obviously
never received comments like those that were in the reviews, so I felt I had no
idea what to do with the overwhelming pride, appreciation, and motivation.
11.Is
there training available for professionals through the project? And how is it
structured?
Yes!
With my experiences of training in mental health – namely mental heath training
for my local Police Force (Northumbria Police) and suicide awareness training
for the British Transport Police (BTP) – and how much I loved doing it, I
definitely wanted to offer training to professionals through Gracie’s Way. So,
there’s actually a page on the website: The Training | Gracie's
Way where – as well as having a section for ‘additional information’ – it
also answers the following questions:
ü
What
is it about?
ü
What’s
included?
ü
Is
there a trigger warning?
ü
Why
train with Gracie’s Way?
ü
What
does the accompanying Workbook contain?
12.
Have you partnered with others to expand the support etc?
Having
discovered the benefit, power, and influence of collaborations through my
blogging career, it was one of the first things I wanted to do for this project.
So, Gracie’s Way has already formed partnerships with numerous organisations (over
time, you’ll see the announcements and reveals of who these organisations are) who
will be utilising both the resources and training as professionals as well as
offering or suggesting the bereaved owners’ resources too. But there’s always room
for more endorsements and partnerships, if you’d be interested in working together;
please email: gracieswayuk@outlook.com
13.
What were the biggest challenges in developing Gracie’s Way?
100%
technology! I used both Canva and AI (in the form of Chat GPT) a large amount for
developing Gracie’s Way – particularly in creating the resources. Something I
always laugh at is that I think people assume that with me having the following
I do on my blog (over 2.6 million readers), it must mean I’m good with
technology. But mental health influencing is more about the actual content than
any use of technology in creating it.
Fortunately,
though, I’m a fast learner and I massively enjoy learning new things; so, I
think I managed to figure out the best functions on Canva and ways to get the best
results from AI fairly quickly. Although, admittedly, due to the vast abilities
on Canva, I would say that I still learn something new every time I use it –
but that’s more to do with Canva than my own skill and abilities!
Lots of
terrible things are said about technology – mostly in relation to social media
and triggering or offensive content, but because of all the benefits that have come
from my blogging, I’ve always defended it. But I won’t lie; there were times in
the development of Gracie’s Way that I really wouldn’t have supported it or encouraged
anyone to use the things which were causing me so much stress and actual,
full-on headaches!
In all
honesty though, I genuinely thought that the biggest challenge in the
development was going to be drumming up interest for others to have an input or
to endorse it. In my opinion, that would have been a harder challenge to run
into than the technology problems so I’m grateful!
14.
How has the project influenced your own journey with grief?
Gracie’s
Way has helped my own grief journey so much more than you can ever imagine – so
much more than I could have ever expected or have even hoped for! It has been
especially helpful when it came to celebrating the New Year of 2026… I had this
horrible thought that I didn’t want to begin a new year that she was never going
to be a part of and in all honesty, it was so saddening that I started to feel
unsafe. I started to have unsafe thoughts and feelings. Started to have unsafe
ideas and make unsafe plans. And the largest thought which got me through that?
The realisation that actually, because of Gracie’s Way, Gracie was going to be
part of the new year. She was, in fact, going to be a huge part of it! It was
such a reassuring and comforting realisation that honestly placated all those
unsafe thoughts and feelings. It was as thought that got me through it. Safely.
15.What
key goals do you hope to achieve in the first year of Gracie’s Way?
I
cheated a big with this question, because Chat GPT had actually written for the
first three to five years, but I thought that was a bit too far into the future
to answer. So, ‘one year’ felt more do-able and I felt more trusting of my
answer for this time period – like I felt that I could give a better-informed
answer that was more likely to occur and was less tokenistic or imaginative. In
all honesty, I think that part of that is the unreliability of both the
communications and marketing industry and the mental health world (two hugely
fundamental and important elements and qualities that are relevant and anchoring
for this project). I mean, five years?! There could be a whole new, popular,
trending social media platform by then! Or there might be a completely new design
tool to Canva or within Canva that changes up everything! And how am I supposed
to know where my own mental health will be by that point in addition to
understanding the general standpoint of pet grief for that world?!
So, for
the first year I have a few very wishful thoughts:
1.
I
hope to have a really decent following on both the Gracie’s Way Instagram (@GraciesWayUK) and a steady
flow of traffic to this website. To get more detailed; in terms of the social
media following, perhaps somewhere over 1,000 people after one year, would make
me feel well-accomplished.
2. And views on the website? Well, I don’t envision it being close to my mental health blog’s (www.imnotdisordered.co.uk) because it’s total is over 2.6 million readers and it can average between 1,000 and 5,000 per day depending upon content posted etc.! And I can seriously remember how long it’s taken to get my blog to that point (for perspective; it took two years to reach my first 100,000 readers and a few months ago, I reached over 100,000 in five weeks!) so, I don’t expect this project to hugely differ in terms of how fast a really substantial audience is built or developed. Although, I do recognise it’s kind of a whole different audience so… Perhaps if – after one year – it could be averaging at a few hundred views per day? That would probably be really great and feel like a success.
4.
I’d
also like to have cemented a handful of partnerships and collaborations with
charities and organisations and have secured more guest posts from individuals (including
professionals) who have benefited from the resources.
5.
Finally,
I’d like to have hosted some sort of online event for Gracie’s Way too – which would
actually be a huge first in my Influencer career!
16.
If you could give one piece of advice to a bereaved owner, what would it be?
Surround
yourself with people. Don’t’ wall off and isolate yourself from help and support.
Seek companionship. Seek help. Seek resources. Your pet would never want for you
to be alone.
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