Tell someone you bought a workbook to help you grieve your dog and watch their face do a small, kind flinch. A pet-loss workbook sounds like the kind of thing that would make the sadness worse, all forced prompts and greeting-card language. That reaction is exactly the problem the book is built to solve, and it is why Griffin’s Heart, by Reagan J. Pasternak, earns the shelf space anyway.
The reason a book like this can work comes down to a gap in how we’re allowed to mourn. When a person dies, there is a whole apparatus, funerals, bereavement leave, casseroles, a shared understanding that you will not be yourself for a while. When a pet dies, most of that vanishes, even though the loss can cut just as deep. Pasternak cites a striking figure to make the point: in one survey published in the Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 38 percent of people named their pet as their closest family member. Losing your closest family member and being expected back at your desk on Monday is a specific kind of lonely. Griffin’s Heart exists to fill that gap with structure and, above all, permission.
What the book actually is
It is a workbook, meaning you write in it. There are prompts, journaling space, and, crucially, room to tape or glue in printed photos, so keep a glue stick handy before you start. Pasternak refers to pets throughout as “beings,” a small linguistic choice that quietly insists these relationships were real and full. The whole thing is designed to be done at your own pace. You can sit in the opening pages as long as you need before going further, and there is no penalty for closing it for months, which many people, understandably, do.
It moves through three sections, and the architecture is the point.
The opening: sitting with the hurt
The book’s first stretch opens gently, inviting you to remember your pet in the good, easy ways: how they looked, how they moved, their small quirks, the story behind their name. For many readers these early prompts are the low-stakes on-ramp, the memories that come with a smile rather than a lump in the throat.
Then it asks something harder. One exercise invites you to let the pain exist without judging it, even to thank it. The book keeps returning to a single idea, that acknowledging grief without fighting it is not weakness, and that the intensity you feel, sometimes stronger than grief for a human, is valid. If there is one takeaway from this section, it is to stop letting anyone, including yourself, decide your grief is disproportionate.
The middle: remembering on purpose
This tends to be the stretch that does the heavy lifting. The idea is to set down the hard memories first and then use the exercises to build the good ones back up. You write about the funny habits, the gotcha day, the bedtime routines, and yes, the hard final days, the guilt, the mourning. Woven through are meditations and healing exercises, including a heart-clearing meditation focused on forgiveness, of yourself, of others, of the loss itself.
It is worth flagging that this is where the book gets its hands dirtiest emotionally. The forgiveness work in particular tends to be where readers report crying the hardest, and that is by design. The reassurances Pasternak offers after each heavy prompt are what make the section feel survivable rather than punishing.
The close: what comes after goodbye
Having walked you through the pain and the remembering, the final section turns toward what comes after. Pasternak shares cultural mourning practices from around the world and nudges you to imagine the far side of the initial grief. The book closes with two quiet, powerful moves: writing a thank-you note to your pet, a reflection on the life you shared, and then writing down your hopes for the future. It ends, deliberately, on hope.
Who it’s for
Griffin’s Heart is not for the first raw week. Grief that fresh often cannot hold a pen. The book is for later, when you are ready to look directly at the loss and do something with it, whether that is a month out or several years. It is for the person whose grief has nowhere to go because the world quietly decided a pet doesn’t count. And it is gentle enough that you can put it down whenever it becomes too much and pick it back up when it doesn’t.
If that describes where you are, or where someone you love is, it is a genuinely useful, humane tool. You can find Griffin’s Heart by Reagan J. Pasternak for around $28. Consider it less a book to read than a room to sit in, for as long as you need to.
Losing a pet is a real and heavy grief. If you’re struggling, this is a sensitive time, and it’s okay to lean on people who can help, whether that’s a trusted friend, your vet, or a grief counselor. We’re happy to point you toward pet-loss support resources if that would help.
