Walk With Wonder

Welcome wellness through new practices for the mind and body.

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Sacred Sendoffs

An Animal Chaplain’s Advice for Surviving Animal Loss, Making Life Meaningful, and Healing the Planet

By Sarah Bowen

MONKFISH BOOK PUBLISHING

Sarah Bowen credits her first pet, a cat named Him, with putting her on the path to becoming an animal chaplain responsible for improving human-animal interaction. As a preadolescent, she freed a chipmunk from Him’s jaws, later grieving the cat’s own death. From that time on, Bowen made it her life’s work to “ensure animal deaths are witnessed and their bodies are treated with reverence.”

Sacred Sendoffs is a thought-provoking challenge to all humans with animals in their lives (which is all of us) to consider the value of animals, and why we tend to value them as lesser than people. She argues that even if we do insist on valuing humans as more worthy than animals, there is still an incentive to treat animals well: Doing so can engender a respect for all life.

She argues that even if we do insist on valuing humans as more worthy than animals, there is still an incentive to treat animals well.