Episode 16: Tiny Paws Helping Broken Hearts

Grief doesn't disappear... it jusst changes shape. And sometimes healing shows up in the form of muddy paws, early mornings, and a puppy who has absolutely no concept of personal space.

This week I'm talking about Honey, the chaos she's brought into our lives... and the quiet ways she's helped us to heal.

Because joy doesn't replace love. 

It learns to sit alongside it.

☕️🖤

Transcript

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Hello and welcome back to the Early Morning Coffee Club, the podcast where grief is intense, humour is finely ground, and strength sinks up on you like a double shot. I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend. Ideally involving an irresponsible amount of chocolate and absolutely zero guilt. I on the other hand decided to make wholesome life choices and I took myself off to the Yorkshire Dales for a long weekend camping with my four-month-old cocuspaniel puppy Honey. Now when I say camping, I don't mean real camping. I bought a tent box last year because I enjoyed the idea of nature, but only if the tent can be assembled in under two minutes and comes with a comfy mattress. So my dad helped me wrestle it back onto the car for the season, which mostly involved him doing all the work and me saying things like, Yeah, that looks right, Dad. I dropped Oscar off at my parents' house in Derbyshire, where he spent the weekend doing what I can only describe as his best farm boy cosplay, riding tractors, eating chocolate and living his absolute best life. Meanwhile, I arrived at the campsite on Good Friday, opened the car door, and it started raining. Of course it did. So naturally I did what any resilient outdoorsy woman would do, and I went straight to the pub. Honey made herself very comfortable. She perched right at the entrance like a tiny fluffy nightclub bouncer, making sure that she had maximum visibility for incoming foot traffic and therefore maximum fuss opportunities. Now I will say since Alex passed away I found it a bit awkward asking for a table for one when I go out to eat. There's something about it that feels heavy. But add a dog to the equation. Table for one and a dog please. Suddenly feels like a lifestyle choice, a personality, a whole brand really. So highly recommend taking your puppy to the pub for a date. That night we got back to the campsite, set up the tent box, and our first night was an absolute dream. I mean it was fucking freezing, but a dream nonetheless. I was lying there in about six layers, questioning every life decision that led me to that moment, while Honey on the other hand slept like she'd just checked into a five-star spa. The next day we did all the wholesome things, long walks, mud, more pubs, obviously. And let me tell you, nothing quite prepares you for the smell of wet dog in a confined space. It's aggressive. Like you think you're emotionally strong until you're trapped in a tent with it. But guys I powered through because this is growth, or poor planning, or both. Then on the final night, enter Storm Dave. Now I don't know who Dave is, but I can tell you this, I don't like him. It was so windy I genuinely thought the tent box was gonna take off with me and honey still in it. I got absolutely zero sleep. Honey? She slept like a log, unbothered, unshaken, snoring and farting to her heart's content. So the next morning, slightly delirious and smelling faintly of damp regret, we headed back to Derbyshire to pick up Oscar. And I'm not exaggerating when I say he actually might have been more excited to see honey than me. Which cool, love that for me, and that leads me nicely into what I want to talk about in today's episode. The power of a puppy. Specifically our puppy, honey, and how this tiny, chaotic, slightly smelly creature has helped us both heal. I'd already decided that in 2026 it was a year I was finally going to enter my dog mum era. I've said before, Alex was always more of a cat person, and when he died I remember thinking, well, silver linings, I can get a dog now and no one can stop me. Which feels exactly like the kind of logic he would roll his eyes at. The first year of grief was a whirlwind. I kept myself so busy I barely had time to think, let alone raise a puppy. But after we came back from our little ski season, everything slowed down, and suddenly the future felt big and quiet, and honestly quite scary. I needed something to focus on, something to anchor me, and I decided it was time. And also if I'm being completely honest, I love a challenge, which when you say it out loud sounds like a really positive personality trait, but in reality it is slightly unhinged. Because as if life wasn't already complex enough Solo mum, widow, juggling work, childcare, emotions, logistics, trying to keep a house vaguely standing. I thought, you know what would really elevate this situation? A puppy. A literal baby animal that needs constant supervision, chews everything, wakes up early, has absolutely no regard for personal space or basic hygiene. It's like I looked at my already full plate and thought, yeah, let's just pop something else on there for character development. But the thing is she didn't make life harder in the way I expected. Busier, yes. Louder, definitely. Smellier, without question, but harder not really. Because somehow she just slotted in. Like she was always meant to be there. And I didn't realise how much space there was until she filled it. And not in a big dramatic, life-changing, all at once kind of way, but in small, quiet ways. A presence, a distraction, a reason to get up and out even on the days I didn't feel like it. And I think that's what surprised me the most. I thought I was adding chaos to an already chaotic life, but actually she bought balance, which feels ridiculous to say about a creature who I've caught trying to eat my underwear more than once. But here we are. Everyone said the same thing. How are you gonna manage a puppy? You're always so busy. And they weren't wrong, but what they didn't understand is that was exactly the problem. I didn't need something that fit into my life, I needed something that would change it. I needed to be grounded, forced to slow down. Because there's something about routine when everything else feels broken, morning walks, feeding time, structure, small predictable things when life feels anything but And then of course there was Oscar. I wanted him to have a companion, a best friend, someone to grow up with, someone to confide in, but also let's be honest, someone to help him learn that I am not exclusively his personal assistant. And honey, well she's delivered. I mean she is obsessed with him. Every night when I run Oscar's bath, she sits there with a little head resting on the side of the bath, just watching him like his bodyguard. Like she's personally responsible for his safety. Then she follows us into his room and we all pile into his little teepee with the fairy lights on, and I sit there reading stories, Oscar on one side, Honey on the other, and it's one of those moments where everything just feels calm, simple, whole. And then Oscar gives us both a kiss good night, and I literally have to drag Honey out of the room because she refuses to leave his side. But let's not romanticise it too much because she is also an absolute menace. Her farts are lethal, like genuinely offensive. And the worst part is she'll do it and then slowly turn and look at me with these big cute puppy eyes, as if I've done something wrong. And I just sit there thinking, you are disgusting, but I love you. Which honestly feels like a very accurate summary of parenthood in general. And then there's this patience that she has with Oscar. Because he's not gentle. He chases her, he winds her up, he pushes the buttons like he's being paid for it. She's much better now, but in the early days she didn't quite understand her own strength. So there were incidents, little scratches, the occasional accidental nip, and every time I dropped Oscar off at nursery in the morning, I'd have to fill out yet another accident form cause of injury? The puppy again. At one point I felt like I was running some kind of underground dogfight club, but now she's learned and she's calmer, and she's more patient than I am, to be honest. But the biggest shift is the mornings. Mornings used to be chaos, like complete survival mode. If I didn't put the TV on for Oscar, there was absolutely no chance we were leaving the house on time. It was just noise and stress and me shouting, Where are your shoes? on repeat. But now, before I can even stop him, he's jumped out of bed, he's pulling his wellies on over his pajamas, running outside to play with honey, and I just sit there with my coffee, looking out the window at the two of them, laughing and playing, my little family. And for a moment everything feels okay. And it's not perfect, there are still mornings where everything goes wrong, where someone's crying, usually me, when we're late or I've forgotten something, and honey's running laps around the garden like she's training for the Olympics. But even in that chaos, there's laughter now. There's a lightness, and it doesn't feel as heavy as it used to. And that shift is subtle, but it's everything. And there's another thing about her, the affection. Every dog owner knows it's uncomplicated, unfiltered. She doesn't know who I was before Alex passed away. She doesn't know what I've lost. She just knows me as I am right now, and she chooses me every day. I think when you've been through something like loss, you become very aware of what's missing. The silence, the gaps, the moments where someone should be but isn't. And for a long time that's all you can see. But then something or someone comes along and gently, without forcing it, starts to fill those spaces in a different way. Not replacing, never replacing, just softening the edges of them, making them a little less sharp to carry. Grief is strange because when you start to feel joy again, there is a guilt, like you're betraying something or someone. But Honey's reminded me that joy doesn't replace love. It sits alongside it and they can exist together. There are still hard days, days where the weight comes back out of nowhere, days where even her energy feels like too much, and that's okay. Healing isn't linear. It's messy, unpredictable. Honestly, it's a lot like a puppy. But in between the chaos, the chewed-up shoes, the early mornings, the absolute criminal farts, there are these quiet moments, like a nap on the couch, a warm weight beside me, a small reminder that life in its own way is still moving forwards. Oscar, one day you might ask me why I decided to get honey. And the honest answer is I got her for both of us. I got her because life felt heavy and I needed something to bring light back into it. But I also got her for you because I wanted you to grow up with a best friend, someone who would be there on the ordinary days, someone else who would love you without conditions, someone who would sit beside you no matter what kind of day you've had. I hope she teaches you kindness, patience, responsibility, and how to love something even when it's annoying, loud, or smells a bit questionable. I hope she teaches you that joy can be simple, that happiness doesn't have to be big or loud. Sometimes it's just running around the garden in your pajamas and wellies with your dog. And I hope she reminds you the way she reminds me that even after loss, even after heartbreak, there is still so much love left to give and to receive. And you know what I think? Your daddy would have absolutely loved her. He would have pretended not to at first, there would have been lots of eye rolls, but I would have caught him cuddling her on the sofa, and I can hear him saying, She's actually pretty cute, isn't she? So if you're listening to this and you're grieving, whether it's fresh or something you've been carrying quietly for a long time, I just want to say this get a puppy. No, I'm kidding. Kind of. The truth is it won't be a puppy for everyone. It might be something much smaller, much quieter, like a routine or a walk, a new habit, a person who shows up at the right time, or something you never saw coming at all. It's okay to find comfort in unexpected places, it's okay to let something or someone bring you back, little by little at your pace, in your own way. There's no right way to heal, no timeline you have to follow, no moment where everything suddenly feels fixed. It's just small steps, small moments, tiny shifts that one day you realize have carried you further than you thought possible. And it doesn't mean you've moved on, it doesn't mean you've forgotten, it just means you're learning how to carry it differently, how to live alongside it. And maybe even how to feel joy again without questioning it. Even if that joy looks like muddy pores on your floor or early mornings you didn't ask for, or sitting in your tent wondering how something so small can smell that bad, or just realizing in a quiet moment that you laugh today, without forcing it, without guilt, just naturally. And maybe that's the thing. Maybe healing isn't about big breakthroughs. Maybe it's just that little moments where life feels lighter again. Thank you for sitting and listening with me today. I'm sorry you're here, but I'm glad we're here together. I'll see you next week.