I’m calling it The Harlow Moon
Newsletter No. 24 - August 5, 2026
Last week, on the full moon, Harlow slipped out of the gate without our knowing.
It was strange, even for him — he hasn't been very coordinated lately. His legs had gotten weaker, his mind more confused, and most days he preferred to be held and rocked rather than to wander. So when I went out to the garden to bring him in for the night and couldn't find him, it caught me completely off guard.
We gathered up Uma and Derby and went out under the full moon to look, half-expecting to find him at the neighbor's, taunting one of their sixteen cats. But no Harlow. Eventually we got in the car and patrolled the town, sent a WhatsApp out to the village. A tip came back — he'd been seen with the Scouts, camping in the field at the start of the trails. When we reached them, they pointed toward the woods. "He went that way."
That was not the way he usually wandered. That was the way toward wilderness — toward the land of wolves, foxes, and cervi.
We looked and looked. No sign. How such an old man could disappear so quickly, I still don't understand. We never found him.
There is no proof. No body, no collar caught on a fence, no final sighting. Just an old dog who walked toward the wild on a full moon and didn't come back. I know I can't say for certain what happened to him.
But I feel, in the place where I know things without evidence, that he's gone.
There have been many days over the years when I imagined the day he would no longer be with us. He was part of our family, my sidekick, for sixteen years. I don't know what he was thinking, out there under that moon. Did he sense it was time, and want to spare me the pain of the decision? Did he feel he'd become a burden and want to release it? Was he answering some older, quieter call — something urging him back to the earth?
I'll never know. My grief moves in waves. I had been preparing for this for a long time, and still — of course — I wasn't ready when it came. Tears well up when I think of his last moments. Was he suffering? Did I let him down? Protecting him, loving him — that was my job.
Many of you reading this knew Harlow. He was the greeter. He set the tone in the treatment room. His soft snores were the background hum of so many sessions — I'd look over at him mid-session and just feel his energy settle the room. He was a master co-regulator. He was also a master at doing exactly the one thing that could send me over the top. He challenged me in every way a dog can challenge a person he loves.
Grief is interesting. The pain, the sadness, the sense of loss — it's saturated with love. When the emotion rises, I feel washed over, and it feels good, somehow. That combination of deep love and deep sadness feels like it cleanses something in me. It reminds me I'm alive. It reminds me what a gift it was to be his momma, and how much he loved me back.
The more I let myself welcome the grief — feel where it lives in my body, let it bubble over and move through me — the more love and presence I feel on the other side. Pendulating from one extreme to the other, riding that wave, is what's helping me move through this.
And, just as important: doing it with Ryan, with Derby, with Uma. Being held, and holding them in return. Feeling witnessed in the process is doing as much of the healing as the grief itself. We mammals were built to be with each other — to be looked after, and to look after. Peter Levine writes about this in his work on trauma: that so much of what makes an experience unbearable isn't the event itself, but facing it without anyone there to witness it.
Healing happens in the presence of another.
When I let myself be fully seen in this — not tidied up, not composed — there's nothing like it. And when I hold space for Ryan's grief, something shifts in me too. It aids my own healing just as much. We were never meant to do this alone.
Harlow, wherever you went that night — thank you for sixteen years of teaching me exactly this.
If this stirred something in you
If reading this brought up your own grief, your own losses held too tightly or too alone — I want you to know there's a place for that here.
Somatic Experiencing® and my coaching work with exactly this: the body's wisdom, its capacity to move through what's overwhelming when it has support to do so. Right now I'm offering the first three months of sessions at €50 each — a chance to experience this work together, whatever you're carrying.
