“Enter the Animal: Cross-species Perspectives on Grief and Spirituality” by Dr. Teya Brooks Pribac (vegan), Part 1 of 2

Dr. Teya Brooks Pribac is an independent scholar, multidisciplinary artist, and award-winning writer. Her book “Enter the Animal: Cross-Species Perspectives on Grief and Spirituality” was released in 2021. “Anyone that has spent time with non-human animals knows that they experience a spectrum of emotions like ourselves – joy, fear, excitement, anger, jealousy – and in some cases it’s very explicit. Sometimes the signs are less obvious. But when sheep are in physical pain, they don’t vocalize. And so one may think that, they’re not in pain when they’re cutting their tails off. They are in pain.”

Dr. Teya Brooks Pribac explains the science on grief and how it affects animal citizens. “You may have heard of dogs, for example, who lost their human companion, and then they just can’t get over it. Then you have animals with merged identities. And when one dies, it’s quite literally like losing part of yourself. I believe that non-human animals are actually more vulnerable to developing complicated grief compared to humans because most of them don’t come from an environment that will foster security of attachment.” “We are so similar. There is psychological depth that I wasn’t aware of, that was quite a shock. And back to the farms, and the labs, and all that stuff that we put animals through, the conditions, they’re horrible in infancy. Then you have the physical violence and the abuse on top of that. You have these animals that have had practically zero chance to develop any kind of resilience for that, very harsh conditions, that they have to live in and eventually die in. And so veganism makes even more sense than it ever did before.”