A New Kind of Connection: My Horse in Spirit

He Never Really Left: Finding J.R. Again After 25 Years

There are losses that you carry with you for so long that they become part of who you are. For me, that loss was J.R.—a horse I lost to a sudden illness 25 years ago, when I was just a kid who desperately needed him to stay. For 25 years, I couldn't think about him without falling apart. I couldn't talk about him. The grief felt as fresh as the day I lost him, and I think it's because I never really dealt with it. I just survived it, pushed through it, tried not to think about it too much because thinking about it meant drowning all over again.

And then, 25 years later, I learned animal communication.

When the possibility first opened up

When I realized that communicating with animals who had passed was actually possible, I felt this strange mix of hope and worry. What if I could connect with J.R. again? What if his spirit was still out there? But also, what if opening that door meant re-living all of that pain? What if I couldn't handle it?

When I first tried to connect with him, he showed up immediately—this bright, happy, healthy energy, so full of love that I got major chills. He wanted to be there. He wanted to help me, and the message was clear: he'd been trying to reach me for a long time, but I'd been keeping him at a distance without even realizing it.

The argument I had with an imaginary horse

That’s when things began to fall apart for me. Instead of feeling relieved or comforted by his presence, I just got angry. All the unhealed grief from 25 years ago came flooding back, and suddenly I wasn't connecting with him as the person I am now—I was that devastated kid again. I started arguing with him in my head (which, yes, I realize sounds ridiculous 🫢). But I couldn't help it.  He had been my best friend, my only source of support and unconditional love at a time in my life when I had no one else, and all I could feel was, “You left me, knowing full well that I'd be left completely alone to suffer through it and pick up the pieces all by myself.”

 I didn't care about bigger pictures or soul-level reasons—leaving me like that, especially as a kid, was a horrible thing to do. I was so angry and so sad, stuck replaying those same 24 hours of trying desperately to save him, over and over, unable to move past them.

 I couldn't understand how this would ever get better. I needed to find a way to connect with him as the person I am today, not as that devastated kid from 25 years ago. But I didn't know how.

The reading that changed everything

I reached out to another animal communicator for help. I needed someone else to bridge that gap, to help me see what I couldn't see on my own. And what came through in that reading shifted everything.

J.R. came into my life to teach me a deep, important soul-level lesson, and the only way to teach it was to leave exactly when and how he did—to cause such a massive upheaval of everything that felt safe and familiar that I would have no choice but to learn how to pull myself out of the depths. To learn how to take care of myself, by myself. To go through the full depth of those emotions so that I could become the deep, sensitive, empathic person I am today. He used the depth of the pain to shape me, and he did it for my greatest good. He's been supporting me in spirit this whole time.

Hearing that changed everything. Suddenly, all those feelings of abandonment and betrayal I'd been carrying for 25 years finally made sense—and more than that, they started to soften. For the first time, I could see that he hadn't abandoned me at all. He had loved me enough to do the hardest thing, to leave so that I could become who I needed to be. And just like that, this weight I'd been carrying my entire adult life—this grief I thought would never heal—began to lift. I realized I'd spent all these years trying not to look at the pain too closely, and now I didn't have to avoid it anymore. I could finally let it go.

What our relationship looks like now

Today, everything is different. I can communicate with J.R. now, and the most common feeling he gives me is this deep, overwhelming sense of peace. I can be having a tough day—anxious, overwhelmed, stuck in my head—and I'll ask him to be with me. And almost immediately, this feeling of calm and support washes over me. It's unmistakable. It's him. And it's amazing to know that it's real, that he's real, that his spirit is still out there, with me, supporting me in ways I never imagined possible.

The most impactful thing I've learned from all of this is that he never really left me. He's been here the whole time. I just didn't know how to feel him. I didn't know I could feel him. And part of me wishes I could go back in time and tell that devastated kid—the one who had just lost her horse and felt so completely alone and abandoned—that it would all be okay someday. That he wasn't really gone. That she wouldn't feel this broken forever.

Why I'm sharing this

This journey with J.R. has been one of the most profound experiences of my life. It took 25 years to get here, but the healing that's happened in these past few months has been worth every moment of that wait. If you've lost an animal and the grief still feels raw, even years later, I want you to know that healing is possible. Connection is possible. They're still out there, and with animal communication, you can feel them again in ways that bring comfort instead of just pain.

I didn't think I'd ever get to a place where thinking about J.R. would bring me peace instead of tears. But here I am. And he's here too—just in a different way than before. And honestly? I think that's pretty amazing. 😊