My book, Love Fraud, has quite a cast of characters. Besides me and my con artist ex-husband, there are seven other women who he victimized, assorted friends, family and business associates, my new husband, three psychics, a channeler, an energy healer, and seven pets.
Why did I include the pets? To illustrate the point that all of life is connected. We are all part of the same universal consciousness.
The pets came into my life for a reason—to accompany me through my struggles. In fact, it was with my dog, Beau, that I first ventured into the feeling realm of love.
My dog offered me what is so often difficult to find among the humans in our lives—unconditional love. His love was safe to experience. There were no strings attached. He never took it away in anger. All he asked for were walks and table scraps, and if I were a more experienced dog owner, I could have trained him not to ask for the table scraps.
My other pets included an African pygmy hedgehog, a chinchilla and sugar gliders—all originally brought home by my con artist ex-husband. While my life was falling apart and I couldn’t sleep, I turned to them for solace. When I decided to leave my ex-husband, I could have left all the small animals with him, but I feared that he wouldn’t take care of them, so I took them with me.
As I struggled to heal from the devastation, the pets gave me little doses of love and trust to keep me going. The sugar gliders snuggled in my pocket. The chinchilla slept on my knee. And maybe they did more. “Sometimes our spirit guides lives in our pets,” my energy healer told me, “so they can be close to us.”
There is an energy in the universe, an energy of love. All living things are part of it, even the tiniest creatures. All living things can contribute to healing, as my pets helped me to heal. I don’t specifically come out and explain this in the book, but it’s there in the story for you to see how it works.
Do you want to see what the Love Fraud pets looked like? Visit the Pets photo page.
All the pets have passed on now, and I’m gearing up to get another dog. For the time being, however, two wild squirrels have learned to come up to our back door to beg for peanuts. Terry and I give them the peanuts, enjoying that they are part of our lives.