I'm so glad you're here! Empowering Animals is an IRS-recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit community for people who love animals and want to make a difference. This community was created to connect animal lovers with trusted organizations, resources, stories, education, and opportunities to help animals around the world. 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝: 🐾 Rescue and nonprofit spotlights 🌿 Wildlife and companion animal education ❤️ Inspiring stories and conversations 🤝 Simple and meaningful ways to help 🐘 Opportunities to support organizations doing wonderful work for animals 𝐖𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐂𝐚𝐧 𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐩 𝐀𝐧𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 🐾 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐮𝐦 𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 Your membership helps support animal organizations every month. 🐾 𝐂𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 & 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐨𝐬 Wear your compassion! A portion of every sale helps support animal-related causes. 🐾 𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐃𝐨𝐞𝐬𝐧'𝐭 𝐒𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐤 Inspired by a rescued skunk named Tami Tango, all proceeds from this children's book go to All Things Wild for the care and protection of skunks. 🐾 𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞 Shop through our affiliate links and a portion of your purchase helps support animal organizations. 🐾 𝐏𝐚𝐰𝐬 & 𝐖𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐮𝐞 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 A free resource to help connect people with wildlife rehabilitators, rescues, shelters, lost pet resources, and other animal assistance when it's needed most. All of these resources can be found in our Classroom. ❤️ 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐆𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐁𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 One of my favorite parts of Empowering Animals is that we decide together where our donations go. Each month, our community votes for an animal organization, rescue, sanctuary, or wildlife group to receive our monthly donation. No one can help every animal. But together, we can help far more than any of us could alone. ❤️ 𝐍𝐨𝐰 𝐰𝐞'𝐝 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐞𝐞𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮! Introduce yourself in the comments and tell us a little about what brings you to Empowering Animals. If you'd like, share where you're joining from and your favorite animal.

One of the perks of reaching Level 5 in Empowering Animals is participating in our Free Friday Community Connections on the last Friday of every month. If you have a Skool community that helps animals or has a meaningful connection to animals, you'll be invited to share it with everyone here. It's a wonderful way to connect with fellow animal lovers while introducing your mission to people who care. Examples include: 🐾 Animal rescue or wildlife communities 🎨 Animal artists and pet photographers 🎥 Animal-focused creators or educators 🌱 Vegan or conservation communities 🐕 Pet training, therapy, enrichment, or wellness communities 💼 Businesses or services that support animals or the people who love them Not at Level 5 yet? Keep participating! Every comment, post, and helpful interaction brings you one step closer. ❤️ Everyone is welcome to help this community grow. You don't have to wait until Level 5 to join in! Share your: 📸 Animal and nature photos 🐾 Companion photos and stories 🌿 Wildlife sightings 📖 Animal stories 🎥 Fun or educational animal videos Please post them under the 🐾 Companions or 🌿 Wildlife & Education tabs so everyone can enjoy them. Every post helps create conversations, introduces people to amazing animals, and spreads awareness. As our community grows, so does our ability to educate, inspire, and support organizations making a real difference for animals. Together, we're not just growing a community. We're building a movement with one shared goal. To make the world a better place for animals. ❤️

I write about grief. I've been running my pet loss grief website for 25 years. My mission has always been to make people feel less alone, by collecting the real life experiences and feelings, the honest, raw, devastating times, in moments of grief, from as many people as possible. To make a living library of those captured moments, that people can turn to and read about when they are in their own, to help them understand, that they are not in fact alone, in any of this. I do this because I think understanding it, acknowledging how you are actually feeling, and talking about the things society tries to prevent people talking about, is a lot more helpful than pretending otherwise. I think we're conditioned to feel like being open and honest about non positive feelings and experiences is wrong somehow, that we should keep them to ourselves, that we should not bother other people with them and bring the mood down etc, that having these feelings and admitting them is somehow weakness and failure, that it's somehow not polite to ever really and truthfully answer the question "how are you?" except with a response as tokenistic as the question generally is. Personally I've always thought this was harmful and unhelpful. Society tends to ignore and downplay, and also try to make people feel like they should not share, the negative aspects of life, the feelings of overwhelm, not coping, feelings of hopelessness etc. Whilst actively encouraging only the end part of the hero's journey. Subsequently we tend to only find out about the difficult parts in hindsight, as a side note, as a past chapter in the story of what was overcome and what was achieved in the end, as opposed to people talking about the difficult parts whilst they are actually in them. A classic example is when Christopher Reeve became paralysed after his horse riding accident. He was a professional horseman for 10 years, he had a yacht he manned himself, he ran for miles every morning, and when he had his accident, he would dream every night in his hospital bed that he was doing all of those things again, just as he always had. Then he would wake up every morning to the harsh reality of never being able to do any of them, or even normal every day things again, to the grief of the life he had lost, and be devastated all over again. He said it was like going through it again every time he woke up. Like a cruel joke being played repeatedly. He was devastated and depressed and spent the first 6 months asking the doctors to kill him, and said that if he had not had the financial means to get out of the hospital and be treated privately in his home, which many people don't, at the time, in that moment of difficulty, he would have preferred to die.