Quiet Agreements

Quiet Agreements 

June 19th marks two years since Lulu joined our family.

At the time, I didn’t think I was ready. Two weeks after our beloved border-aussie died, our heart-cat passed too. The loss felt total. I was gutted, moving through a world that had gone quiet in every sense. Where I once could hear the trees whisper, sense deer before they appeared, see the land spirits around our home, now there was nothing. No shimmer at the edge of the woods, no knowing before a moment happened. It was as if my psychic senses had suddenly gone offline. I understood this to be a part of grief, but knowing that didn’t make the silence easier to bear.

What unsettled me most wasn’t just the quiet, but how absolute it was. I didn’t know how to navigate that kind of stillness. I trusted my senses would return in time, but I couldn’t see the path forward. I felt alone in a way I hadn’t before. And then Lulu arrived.

It was Callie who first felt the opening. Our neighbor had reached out to her, asking if we knew anyone looking to adopt a cat, and sent a photo of a blue-eyed, mackerel-striped tabby from a home where, being afraid of the young children, she hadn’t fit. At that time, her name was Luna. We walked over to meet her, and that was when we learned the neighbor would be away for four weeks, with no one lined up to visit regularly. We said we’d gladly care for her while she was gone. Callie gently suggested, “Well, how about a trial adoption?” I hesitated. I couldn’t feel the cat the way I once would have. I didn’t have the usual intuitive knowing to guide me. I couldn’t sense Luna at all in the way I was used to. So I leaned into Callie’s clarity. She recognized a possibility I couldn’t yet see, and I trusted her enough to move toward it. That was how Lulu came into our home. And because I always enjoy giving my pets fun, full names, she became Lucy Lu Augusta Moon.

Four months later, a former client sent a text. She had recently rescued a two-and-a-half-year-old golden retriever but said the dog wasn’t happy with them and seemed afraid of their granddaughter. She wondered if we might consider giving her a home. I had met the dog once, six months earlier. Again, I paused. The ache was still so present, and I wasn’t sure I had room to welcome another being into that space. My senses were still quiet in the way I had once relied on them. I was slowly learning, or relearning, how to engage with an animal and the world around me in a different way. I was beginning to re-open to the language of physical cues, body signals, and the quiet observations that reveal how to meet a creature’s needs and enrich their life. Then Callie looked at me and said, “How about us?” Not just a yes to the dog, but a yes to whatever it might mean for all of us to try again.

That’s how Piper joined us. Like Lulu, she had come from a place where she hadn’t fully been seen. And like Lulu, she arrived quietly, without fanfare, but carrying something unmistakable. Her full name, as it quickly became, is Golden Song of Magick.

I still couldn’t connect with them the way I was used to connecting—with that inner pulse, that quiet communion I had always trusted. So I relied on Callie’s interpretations. Of them. Of me. Of the needs of the three of us. She was the one who translated the space between us, the one who felt into their rhythms when I couldn’t. I watched her tenderness, her attunement, and let that become my orientation point.

In the absence of my psychic senses, I made a choice. I returned to grounded basics, to the tangible world I could still touch and study. I reacquainted myself with the subtle body language of animals. I watched plants and trees to anticipate shifts in weather. I observed wild birds and animals, tracking their cues for gathering, foraging, and storing. These steady disciplines gave me rhythm and presence. They were real, alive, and accessible even in silence.

Over time, the quiet began to shift. Some of my gifts returned slowly, others with a sudden flash. As I regained my ability to walk in both the seen and unseen, I recognized that those basic, natural practices had shaped me in essential ways. They gave me a clearer path between the worlds I inhabit. They deepened my attention and reminded me how to belong.

Lulu’s gaze started to feel familiar. Piper’s body settled more easily beside mine. The land began to soften around the edges again. I can’t say exactly when it happened, only that something began returning.

We make gentle soul agreements with the animals who enter our lives. Not in theory, but in practice. In the shared rhythms of daily life, in showing up, in choosing to stay curious. Lulu and Piper didn’t arrive to fix me. They came to live beside me. To stay present in a world that had fractured, but not ended.

Callie and I didn’t come to save them. We’re healing and growing together. We allow space for each of us to grow into who we are. No one is leading or following. We are learning how to live in the in-between. We are learning how to say yes, even if we are unsure.