Releasing Others from Contracts

As I work through all the things that come up after my Mom’s death, I realize there were a lot of things I didn’t have time to pay attention to. Pieces of myself, things I liked to do, personal care, hobbies and re-learning about myself before I was enmeshed into her dramatic, borderline personality disordered existence.

Now that there is no longer anyone showing up at the door to drop off food, clean the house, and to check up on my Mom, it’s quiet. All distractions related to my Mom were removed with her death, and it leaves a lot of space for other things to come up, be seen, released and healed.

It’s like I’m on a months-long soul retrieval. I’m calling back the pieces of myself that I tore off and left behind in order to be unknowingly codependent with my Mom, before I innerstood what happened.

I’ve been thinking a lot about contracts and how we’re all engaged in helping each other with our soul’s evolution. This doesn’t work the way I thought it did. These kinds of awarenesses come through painful situations, so the nastiest situations and people can be your greatest teachers.

The other day, I wondered if I could release my pets from their contracts with me. I am mostly concerned about them taking on my unresolved emotional issues, getting sick and dying.

One of the benefits of the evolutionary ascension process is that many of us are settling up karma and preparing to separate from people in our lives and in future lives. Settling up karma is an interesting concept because it can look like many different things.

I have come to understand that our pets have contracts with us, too. They take on our emotions and health issues when it gets to be a little too much for us. However, vet bills get really expensive, and so I’ve started to tell my pets, “Please don’t take on my stuff! It’s my job to handle my emotions.”

It seems evolved for me to know that about them and to ask them not to take on my stuff. I'm not saying that from an ego-based perspective. It's more from a place of being surprised that I made it far enough to understand the concept.

I don’t know how contracts work with animals and pets, so I just asked out loud about it, like a prayer.

I certainly don’t want them to die because I didn’t manage my own unresolved issues. I know they did take on a lot of stuff for my Mom, and two of them died a couple of months before she did.

I know they don’t think of dying as a bad thing. They have mastered unconditional love and they don’t mind dying for us, and it’s not like they don’t reincarnate.

Animal communicator Danielle MacKinnon says that pets are part of our soul family and they are often with us in each of our reincarnations.

To me, this explains a lot. I always wondered how they know how to find us, ha ha.

She says they typically only incarnate into our lives once and often they are here in service, not just to us, but to the expansion of consciousness. They are also on their own ascension journey, and have their own work to do.

I don’t think of them as children. They are much wiser than we are, I think. They just have different missions than we do.

I once heard Bashar, the being channeled by Darryl Anka, in response to a question about humans eating meat, say that just because animals are killed and eaten doesn’t mean it’s a BAD THING. It really made me pause.

It might just be my own weird initiation thing happening for me related to death and my pets, but I can’t imagine coming here knowing I would just die to be meat for human beings.

I also don’t innerstand how everything works, which is why I asked the question.

But I suppose if we all reincarnate it might not be a big deal to just come here, live a short life to be food for humans.

Dying must not be terrible if we keep doing it over and over, LOL.

My dog Spencer has opened up so many doors for me. He has a clogged salivary gland under his head that is pretty big, and people notice it. A LOT.

Spencie was due to be euthanized in 2013, when I saw him on Facebook. I was only planning to foster him. He was destructive and I almost took him back to the rescue, but changed my mind.

He settled down after that, and became THE BEST DOG. He was exactly what I needed during the last three years.

We had to move because of the pandemic, my Mom’s health declined and she became more toxic, and Spencie was there for me. He adapted quickly and he absolutely LOVES the grass in the Midwest.

Spencie also helped me make friends in our new place. If not for Spencer, things would be a lot harder. If not for me walking him around our new neighborhood or going to the dog park, it might have been a lonely and isolating experience. The friends I made led to a lot of other nourishing relationships that I am glad to have.

I have thought about having the pouch under his chin removed, but I don’t think he wants it removed. He likes it, because people notice him and it helps him make friends.

He’s just a mutt with a clogged salivary gland rescued from a shelter. He’s been pretty healthy otherwise, and the pouch doesn’t bother him. The vet says leave it alone or remove it – there’s no need to remove it if it doesn’t bother him.

I see the Divine perfection in Spencer’s clogged salivary gland. I see how he affects people and how they open their hearts to him. It’s powerful dog medicine from the best dog I could ask for.

I have been working with a shamanic fire ceremony that I learned from Dr. Alberto Villoldo. It can be done indoors by opening the Four Directions and with a candle and some wooden skewers. I am probably not doing it correctly but every time I open the directions, I just wind up pouring my heart out to the Ancestors to ask for healing and disconnection from my family’s toxic lineage.

The other day, I asked about releasing my pets from their contracts with me, so that they don’t have to be sick from taking on my emotions.

Now, to be clear: we’re ALL going through a process, whether we’re aware of it or not. Also, I probably do have some form of complex PTSD after everything that happened with my mom and the roller coaster I’ve been on since 2015, and I’m working through all that stuff.

You CAN heal PTSD. I’m not a therapist or counselor, but in my experience, it requires allowing the triggers and letting all that stuff come up, until it doesn’t trigger you anymore. I worked through a lot of crap while my Mom was still alive, thank the Goddess.

If you need help, please get support. I am not wild about doing this by myself but I think it’s necessary to be alone to recover from codependency. Otherwise, I might focus on whoever else was around instead of myself, and that’s not what I am supposed to be doing right now.

But as time marches on I can see how so much of myself I abandoned because I put everyone else first. I was programmed that way.

I don’t mean to sound like a victim. I have accepted responsibility for my own healing and mitigating my own losses.

My Mom brought in several strays and then didn’t take care of them. Guess who takes care of them? Me. I was probably codependent with my pets for awhile too. But it’s frankly very expensive when they get sick, and it would be better for us all if I just deal with my stuff.

I often wonder who I will be without someone else to take care of. And because my parents are/were (probably) both Cluster B personality disordered, I am not sure where the line is between compassion and codependency sometimes. This is something I am learning.

Now that I have effectively cut off my family and my Mom is gone, I feel like when my pets are gone, my whole life will feel strange. When they are gone, will that old life even seem real? Did all that stuff happen?

One of the benefits of settling up karma with people and beings is that we don’t have those karmic ties with each other anymore. Everyone is FREE to go wherever they need to go, without having to keep being born into the same families because of our karmic ties and painful unfinished business.

Knowing that my pets are part of my soul family makes it easier to release them from contracts, because I know that we will be together probably forever in some way. It’s OK to let go of them and not feel like such a failure, or struggle with heartbreak after they’re gone.

We suffer so much (well, I know I do) when they die. I have often thought, “Why do people have to get sick in order to die?”

Things are going good, then suddenly a pet gets sick and they are gone. Or, we have to watch them go through the dying process, and be present with them for it.

Many of us are not prepared for death, or how to be present with someone dying. It’s not discussed, so many of us are wholly unprepared for the situation.

There was a Star Trek episode, the series with Capt. Picard, where one of the leaders somewhere in the galaxy was retiring, which in his culture, when you retired, you died.

I don’t know if they were put to death or how that worked, but perhaps it was a metaphor for the way society treats aging people. When you’re no longer producing you become a liability and you get shuttled off to a nursing home, ignored and die alone.

Maybe that fake television culture is more humane than ours is. Why spend another 20-30 years getting old and frail and sick and then dying? Why not just get right to it?

It’s possible that for me, I am being initiated into a new understanding around death. I’m not sure. I have a lot of unwanted experiences, AKA initiations, that don’t make sense.

So this brings me to the final point of this blog: I have released my pets from their contracts with me. I hope they stay with me for as long as possible, because they WANT to be with me and not out of any obligation or karmic contract. I hope they have enjoyed being with me as much as I have enjoyed having them in my life.

I feel like I’ve spent so much time dealing with my family crap that there won’t be enough time to do everything I want to do with them. Like getting a permanent home and building them a catio, or taking them with me on trips in an RV.

This is a lovely part of the ascension process. I hope I have time with them. At the same time, I don’t want them to stay longer out of obligation to me, in case they want to go do something else.

This also started me thinking about people in my life that I need to release, too. But that’s a little tougher because of the dysfunction in my family.

However, I think often about something that Dr. Villoldo said, about how we can look to the Sun as our father and the Earth as our mother. This allows us to release our pain related to our biological parents.

This gives me comfort. It means that I can stop carrying the story of abuse, dysfunction, trauma, narcissism and abandonment. I can let go of that old story and see family in a new way.

The shamans talk about “all our relations” which is the acknowledgement that each and every person you encounter throughout life is from the Creator and thus, related to you. That is a very good feeling.

I am being freed from an old, worn out story. A story I no longer wish to tell or carry forward. I will probably tell you about it here on the blog, just because it was a big catalyst for my transformation. But I’ve lost interest in being a victim.

I hope this inspired you. It just bubbled up and felt like a good place to get started blogging here again.

Christine