Some of the hardest parts of life are the bits that don't have a proper name. We understand endings and we understand beginnings, but what about the stretch in the middle? Those periods of life transition can be surprisingly unsettling. You've left the job, but you don't know what comes next. The children need you differently now. You've moved house and it doesn't quite feel like home yet. A relationship has changed, or perhaps you've finished something significant and expect

Losing a pet leaves a surprising amount of space behind. There's the loss of the animal, obviously. But there's also the quiet disappearance of a hundred small routines - the sound of paws coming down the hall, the greeting at the door that happened every single time, the walk taken at the same hour each day, the warm weight curled up nearby in the evening. I think one of the hardest things about pet loss is the sudden stillness of the objects left behind: the lead on its peg