Grief & Gratitude – Our 6 yr old’s processing the death of a dear

Yesterday, I was driving with the boys on a rural highway, and I passed a deer that was just hit by a car, struggling to get up but could not and was clearly panicking with every car that zoomed by. I immediately turned around and pulled over as close to the deer as I could. Dodging traffic, I crossed the highway and lifted the doe in my arms, carried her across the road, and laid her down as gently as I could on some grass where I had parked.

Aiyé was napping deep, but Pèlé got out of the car to see what was going on. I placed my hand on the deer’s neck and peered into her eyes. I could feel her begin to relax. My first impulse was to grab my knife and end her pain as quickly as possible, but Pèlé had come over and asked if he could be with the deer for a bit before I send her on. I agreed, and we both placed our hands on her and just stayed with her as she took her last breaths, feeling as the vibrations of life within her turned to stillness. Pèlé asks me, “This is a blessing, right? I mean, not that the deer got hit by a car… but that we can honor the deer’s life by not letting it go to waste?” I respond to him how I feel happy to have been able to get the deer out of the road and that it could die calmly here with us. I am also grateful that we will be able to eat directly from the land. He expressed how he is sad that the deer got hit and happy for us at the same time because deer is his favorite meat. I let him know that it’s okay to feel both of those feelings at the same time, that it is a part of being alive, and that holding space for death is a sacred part of life. After lighting some cedarwood and laying some tobacco down, we said a prayer of gratitude to the Source of Life, to the deer, and to the land before loading the deer into our car. I then spent the next five hours carving up the deer’s ruby-red meat to fill our freezer as my boys played together in the background, watching the process with curiosity.

Many will say not to show your kids death and blood out of fear that it will traumatize them, but I am grateful to be able to expose my sons in gentle ways to the many lessons, blessings, and reflections from this day, harvesting our food in this way. Many will say don’t eat roadkill because the trauma is in the meat. While everyone is entitled to their beliefs, just as there are ways to check if the meat is physically in a safe condition to eat using our senses, we have ways to check if the meat is energetically safe to eat for us as well. I believe and experience that our body’s own inner technology can reveal when energy can be nourished, blocked, or harmed. Muscle-testing when done with clear attention as opposed to intervening with intention (in-tension) or mental-emotional bias, can reveal brutally honest and revealing answers to yes or no questions. It has been helping me pinpoint food intolerances, heal skin issues, clear blocked emotions, resolve ancestral trauma, and strengthen my own innate intuition. It is a way to fortify the sovereign connection with the inner-guide or connection to our source of life from within. If you have any desire to learn this inner technology, please let me know and I would be happy to share my experience with you. Thank you for taking the time to read this story as I share some of the ways that we as a family find home wherever we are based in our innate WIS-dom (wellness, interconnection, sovereignty) within our bodies, in our relations, and in our life-way. If yoy would like to connect with us and other like minds around this WIS-dom, join our private member circle at https://wellspringsofumoja.site/communion-gathering/, where we can go so much deeper together.🙏🏼

One Response

Shaanan says:

December 17, 2025 at 8:16 pm

Love this story. Pele is so lucky to have you. He will be looking back on day with a lot of gratitude for these memories.