After Goodbye – Tonga
Three years before I ever set foot on a boat in Tonga, I booked a trip to swim and photograph the whales — a journey that would bring together everything I know as a nature photographer and animal communicator.
It was an intention — a marker I placed in the future for myself. A new beginning.
Little did I know how true that would become. This is a story of courage, letting go, and the one message that never changes.
Coping With the Loss of a Pet
My dog Stanley had been with me for seventeen years. That is a long time to share a life with another being — long enough that his presence was woven into everything. The rhythm of my mornings. The weight of the couch beside me. The way a room feels when someone who loves you is in it.
When liver disease took hold in his final year, I leaned on something unexpected: my death doula training. What that practice gave me was the ability to hold space — not with fear or worry, but with love. To be present without needing the moment to be anything other than what it was. I can't say it was easy, but it was essential. Near the end, he couldn't walk. And yet he remained patient, loyal, and present — waiting, I believe, for me to be ready.
When I finally let him go, it was from a place of gratitude for the life we shared. On our last day together, we met it with love. Both of us.
He didn't dwell on what was ending. He simply existed — fully present, and at peace. That was his final lesson to me.
The loss of an animal companion is its own kind of grief — particular, and often lonely. The world does not always make space for it. But anyone who has loved a pet knows: the absence is everywhere. In the morning routine that no longer has a reason. In the corner of the room you still glance toward. In the inexplicable urge to be quieter in the house, as if not to disturb something that is no longer there.
I was actually relieved to escape the emptiness. The next day after Stanley passed, I flew to Tonga.
Preparing for the Unknown
Preparing for Tonga was one of the most complicated trips I have ever planned. I spent months getting ready — buying a wetsuit, testing five pairs of fins, renting and learning about underwater camera housing a week before departure. Opening and assembling my Nikon camera in the protective housing was like opening a puzzle box — and if I got it wrong, the ocean would take care of the rest. YouTube tutorials and a lot of patience got me through it. Each challenge demanded focus and humility, including the trips to the ER with Stanley, which were their own kind of preparation.
Stanley had been my greatest animal communication teacher long before I ever had a name for it.
By the time I stepped onto the boat, I felt mostly ready — not just technically, but mentally. Those obstacles had quietly trained me for what was ahead: the unpredictability of the ocean, and the necessity of surrender.
Into the Blue
Nothing can prepare you for jumping off a speeding boat into five to six foot swells and swimming as fast as you can after a whale. You just have to do it. Trust that everything is going to be okay.
All photographers search and wait for the decisive moment — the split second where preparation meets instinct. But nothing in my years behind a lens prepared me for this.
Mask, check. Snorkel, check. Camera housing secure, settings locked. Go, go, go.
You hit the water and everything you planned dissolves. The ocean is vast, cold, and indifferent to your agenda. Keep your eye on your local guide who is there to help you find the whale — he moves through the water like he was born in it. And yet somehow, when you are actually looking for a creature the size of a bus in the deep blue, it can be impossible to find. The ocean swallows everything. Your eyes scan. Your heart pounds. Your camera is ready but there is nothing to shoot.
Then in an instant — there it is. Present, right in front of you. Filling your entire field of vision. Unhurried. Unbothered. Ancient.
No amount of technical preparation puts you in that moment. Only presence does. It is the same presence I bring to every animal communication session.
The mother kept watch as her calf drifted closer, curious and playful. A third whale — the escort — lurked in the shadows. Adrenaline moved through me. I didn't want to miss a single second. The calf came closer and the mother allowed it. The escort rose up behind us and we became a whale sandwich — three humans suspended between ancient giants. No one moved. And then the escort breaches — a waterfall of ocean coming down around us — as if to say: enough play for the day.
What the Whale Said
As a nature photographer, my instinct is to constantly look for the scene — to frame, to hold, to bring something back. But in those first days on the water, Stanley's voice kept rising: just be here.
I'd lower my camera and simply watch — the awesome scale of the whales, sunlight sparkling on the waves, the gentle sway of the ocean all more vivid when I wasn't trying to hold onto something.
And it was in that stillness that the song arrived.
Humpback song doesn't travel around you. It vibrates through you — through neoprene, skin, bone, and something deeper still. On one dive I left my camera behind entirely. It was then that my whole body became an instrument tuned to the ocean.
As an animal communicator, I work in the language of telepathy — the felt sense of presence, the transmission of emotion and knowing that passes between living beings without speech. Floating in stillness above the resting vertical tail of a whale, I quietly sent a question into the deep:
What guidance do you have for us humans?
The whale answered.
Love. Love. Love.
Brief. Precise. Complete. This is how animals so often speak — not in paragraphs, but in the kind of clarity that lands in your chest and stays there.
Presence Is the Practice
Tonga is a place of new beginnings. Humpback mothers travel there to give birth, to nurse, to guide the next generation into the world. Swimming alongside a mother and her calf — watching them move in perfect synchronization, the escort hovering protectively nearby — I felt connected to something ancient.
Life arriving.
Life continuing.
Life ending.
Stanley showed me that last one.
As an animal communicator and nature photographer, nature has always been my greatest teacher, and presence is the doorway. Whether sitting with a grieving client, holding a camera in the wild, or floating above ancient giants in the Oceanic Sea — the practice is the same:
Arrive. Breathe. Listen.
If you want to deepen your own connection with animals and the natural world:
- Set an intention. Even something simple: I am here to listen.
- Breathe with your surroundings. Match your rhythm to the waves, the wind, the birdsong around you.
- Use all of your senses. Sound, texture, light, temperature. This is how we remember how to listen.
Signs Your Pet's Love Never Left
When I returned home to Chicago and opened my door, Stanley's absence was there — and yet so was he.
The space he had occupied for seventeen years was still full — not with grief, not with silence — but with love the size of a whale. He was gone, but it still felt like home.
This is something I witness again and again in my work as a pet medium and animal communicator: the bond does not end. Your pet's love has not gone anywhere. It simply no longer requires a body to reach you. Grief can feel like a deep ocean — vast, dark, and without a visible shore. But on the other side is love.
Whether your companion crossed over recently, years ago, or is still with you but nearing the end — that connection is alive, and it can be felt.
Grief has no timeline. We all make our way through differently. Some find their way to an animal communication and pet loss session weeks after a loss. Others carry a quiet ache for years. Others go to Tonga. There is no wrong way to arrive. Our animals are often waiting — with patience, with humor, with the same love they always had for you.
I work with clients in Chicago, Seattle, and nationwide online — presence, connection, and listening are at the heart of every session.
A trip I had booked as a new beginning turned out to be exactly that — just not in any way I could have planned.
Grief and wonder arrived together.
As they so often do.
And in the act of letting go — of Stanley, of the need to hold on — something opened.
The message was waiting there, the whole time.
Love.
Love is the language.
Love is the lesson.
Love is the answer.
Have you received a sign from a pet who has passed? I would love to hear your story. Reach out to me directly — sometimes these conversations are where the healing begins. Book a session →
