This year, I learned that healing isn’t just for the patients that walk, crawl, or fly into my clinic. Sometimes, it’s for the person holding the stethoscope.
I’ve spent my whole career fixing what’s broken — closing wounds, stabilizing emergencies, guiding families through heartbreak and hope. But this year, I faced something that couldn’t be fixed. I became a widow.
There’s no medical protocol for grief. It doesn’t follow the neat arc of recovery that we hope to see in our patients. Some days it’s quiet, like background noise. Other days, it roars. Mostly, it just exists — something you carry with you, while you keep doing the work that grounds you.
Because even in loss, life doesn’t stop showing up at the clinic door.
The dogs still come in with snakebites and hot spots. The cats still develop thyroid problems or swallow something they shouldn’t. The guinea pigs still sneeze. There are still emergencies, still charts to finish, still people who count on calm answers.
So I did what I’ve always done — I worked. Seventy, sometimes eighty hours a week. I threw myself into the rhythm of the clinic: morning appointments, late surgeries, evening farm calls. It wasn’t avoidance so much as survival. Work has structure. Medicine has rules. Grief doesn’t.
But in the middle of that schedule, there were small, grounding reminders of life’s persistence. I kept bees again this year, though some hives didn’t make it through the winter. I ordered more packages, started fresh, and was reminded that loss is just part of the natural cycle. I tried to garden, too, though the weeds won more than I did. Still, I’ll try again this year. That’s the quiet optimism of tending to the earth — you keep planting anyway.
When I wasn’t at the clinic, I found solace underwater. Diving has long been my escape — the one place where the phone doesn’t ring and every breath demands focus. In Mexico, I trained in sidemount and cavern diving, exploring the cenotes’ still, dark water. Down there, surrounded by limestone and silence, grief feels smaller and life feels deliberate.
This year also opened a new chapter I hadn’t expected. I bought a share of a veterinary clinic in the Turks and Caicos. I’ll be helping animals on another remote island — treating the same kinds of patients, but in a place where resources are scarce and every bit of care matters. It’s a chance to use what I know to make a difference somewhere that truly needs it, and maybe to find a new rhythm for myself, too.
As a veterinarian, I talk a lot about resilience — to clients, staff, and students. I say it like it’s a skill you can master. But this year taught me that resilience isn’t something you “have.” It’s something you practice in small, stubborn ways: showing up when you’d rather stay home, caring for another creature even when you’re running on empty, cleaning another kennel, writing another note. It’s answering the next emergency, not because you’re ready, but because it’s what you do.
And in that steady practice, something shifts. I realized that my patients — and the people who love them — have been teaching me about grief and endurance all along. The old dogs who lose their companions and still wag their tails. The cats who adjust to new homes after losing the familiar. The wildlife that survives what we thought was unsurvivable. They adapt. They don’t forget. They just keep going.
I also realized how much strength comes from the people beside me. My teams Guardian Animal AND TriState Animal ER — the technicians, assistants, and receptionists who keep both clinics running — have carried me through more than they know. We’ve laughed, cried, and kept each other caffeinated. They’ve given me room to hurt without judgment and reminded me that purpose doesn’t always need joy to be worthwhile.
Some days, that purpose is a successful spay on a tricky patient. Other days, it’s helping a child say goodbye to their first pet. Sometimes, it’s just being there — lights on, phones answered, care delivered. That’s no small thing in a profession where burnout runs rampant.
I won’t pretend I’ve found balance. My new VR fitness system is still in the box. I’m not baking sourdough or painting landscapes. But I have found something steadier: motion. Healing, for me, has meant moving forward — even when I’m tired, even when it’s hard.
And maybe that’s what this year was really about. Not moving on, but moving through. Not finding a clean ending, but learning how to live in the middle of the story — the part where you keep doing what matters, because it still matters.
Every morning, I still drive my Jeep, “Dark Matter,” to the clinic before sunrise. The world is quiet then. Sometimes I think about all the lives — human and animal — that have brushed against mine. Sometimes I just enjoy the silence. But either way, I know why I’m going.
This year wasn’t easy. It wasn’t tidy. But it was real — and full of small, stubborn acts of healing. I’m still a veterinarian, still doing the work that keeps me grounded, and still learning that healing can happen even when the wound never fully closes.
Maybe that’s the lesson I’ll carry into next year: show up, do the work, care for the living, and keep breathing — one deliberate breath at a time.
MJ Wixsom, DVM MS is a best-selling Amazon author who practices at Guardian Animal Medical Center in Kentucky. GuardianAnimal.com She has volunteered at Saipan Cares, learned to dive while in Saipan and is headed back sometime in the future.
