Grieve Like a Goat ~ Cry when you want to

I had full intentions of taking my daughter down to buy school supplies last night since school started today.


I’m not sure what went wrong or how I ended up 45 minutes away from Wal~Mart, at 8 o’clock at night, loading two goats, that I paid for in quarters, into the backseat of my car. Sometimes these things just happen. It’s usually the consequence of a great idea that has gone very wrong.

I may have jokingly mentioned once or twice that I needed a goat to mow the yard. I’m not sure I meant it. Regardless, my animal loving daughter heard these words and took them to heart and spent the last month searching ads for Goats for sale. Yesterday she found some.

We were only going to take just one. But anyone who has attempted to peel away a baby goat from his Mother or Brother will understand why we ended up with two.

Never in my life have I heard such a scream of agony as the sound that came out of that baby goat while we were trying to put it in the car by itself. It literally made me sick to my stomach. That sound of grief reached into my head and flipped off all the lids on my boxes filled with pain and flooded my brain with the emotions that lay there. I nearly threw up from the Wave. My daughter felt it to. Tears streamed down her face. It was overwhelming. We got the second goat for Free.

I’m not sure what we are going to do with them. These Screaming Baby Goats. They are to small to really be utilized as Weed Eaters and right now they are being held in a protective Barn area at our neighbors house while we contemplate the large task of fixing fence and preparing an area to keep the goats until we can safely tie them up and watch them eat little circles of Weeds all over the fields.

On the way home, listening to them cry and scream, I say scream because ‘bleat’ is just to soft of a word for the sound coming out of them. Those Goats felt Pain. The Pain of Leaving their Mother and her Milk and the only place they had ever known. Their World was Changing and they knew it and Grieved. So they screamed and cried. Right there in the moment that they felt it. If only we were so free to do the same. I can only imagine how few Boxes of Pain we would end up with if we dealt with them one at a time as they came to us. Then let them go. Kicked them out of our head.

I’ve always preferred to hold back the tears, put the lid tightly on the box, pile it in the back of my head with the rest of the “This Hurt Me” boxes, only to revisit them once in awhile after I’ve had a glass or two of Wine or a Beer to many. I can obviously see many problems with this approach.

I’m imagining myself making that Goat Grief noise the next time I encounter a rude negative person who is lashing out at the first body that steps in their path. Can you just see the look on their face when instead of being defensive or rude back you simply break into a Howl of Goat like Grief.

You will walk away with out another Box to deal with. And they will be left reevaluating a future attack on your self confidence. Or its possible they may just avoid you completely.

I can see the look on my ex’s face the next time he attempts to undermine my Holiday Time with my girls or pulls me into a ridiculous Custody Battle. I’ll just look at him or the Judge and Howl and Scream from the pits of my stomach. Of course my next image is a Syringe full of Valium and a Pretty White Coat. I’m just not sure our Society is ready for us to deal with Our Pain with actual Goat Like Grief.

However, there is a lesson to be learned by this. We need to be more like the Goat. Express our Grief and our Pain in the Now. Don’t put it in a box to be dealt with later after it has festered and grown. That and buy your damn school supplies before the day before school starts. Seriously People.