Reimagining Our Lives with Animals — and Each Other
Help build the Center for Families & Animals™ — enhancing our relationships with animals at home and in the world. Donate today.
When we open our lives to animals, life becomes more interesting, poignant, funny, frustrating, sweet, and hopeful. We each bring something new, sometimes challenging, to these relationships. Fifty years ago, animals were simply objectified as property—their capacities for emotions, feelings, thought, and suffering were regularly dismissed. Today we know better. In the past, strong feelings of joy or love shared with another animal was stigmatized, even pathologized, especially for teens and adults, and most especially for men. That’s all changing—worldwide.
The Center for Families & Animals™ is a hub for service programs, creativity, and scholarship. We’re committed to improving our relationships with other animals and each other, within and outside the home, and across cultures. When our animals are happier, everyone is happier, and wonderful things happen when family members work together to ensure that their animals are well cared for, physically and psychologically, in accordance with each species’ requirements for a good life. Giving greater attention to our animal friends and family also helps us to think more deeply about the loss of species and habitats, and our connection to our local and global environments.
Our Current Programs (see below) include Let it Out!, our series of discussion and support groups, the Family Dynamics Clearinghouse™, and our Virtual Art Galleries. We also host the Green Pet-Burial Society, founded in 2010, which offers an array of resources, art, and programs addressing the links among animals, humans, death, and Nature.
Much more is planned – your donation can make it happen!
Services
Let it Out! – Discussion & Support Groups
Let it Out! is our series of online, facilitated, peer Discussion & Support Groups addressing our interactions with the animals in our lives, and how they affect our family dynamic. Discussion Groups address specific problems within families, and Support Groups focus on grief and guilt experienced upon the death of an animal. Our staff-led groups for people 18 and older include 10-week Discussion Groups, and weekly Bereavement Support Groups.
One-to-one sessions are also available—contact us to make arrangements.
To see all the Family Spirals’ groups and express interest, click here:
- When Family Mistreats an Animal* – “An animal was hurt in my family—sometimes to hurt me, punish me, or ‘toughen me up.’”
- Apology to an Animal* – “I was taught that hurting an animal was right, good, funny, necessary, no big deal. Now I question that.” (This includes: hitting the dog, ignoring the cat, extra curricula activities, breeding animals, school-based courses, experiments, or employment.)
- Pet Bereavement & Nature – “In my grief, I find solace in Nature.”
- Animal Road Watch – “I was the driver or passenger when an animal was hit (on roads, waterways, airways).”
* To ensure a safe space for all participants, family members are not permitted to join this group together. We will develop future programs where family members may participate together.
Family Dynamics Clearinghouse™
Resources
Organizations & Information: Training & Behavior | Research | Animal Care | Phobias
Citizen & Community Science: Activities & Resources for Curious Families | Articles & Blogs
Media
Bibliography
Bereavement
Green Pet-Burial Society: Addressing notions and practices of death and dying in relation to animals and Nature, and promoting whole-family ecocemeteries—natural burial grounds for pets and their people.
Virtual Art Galleries
Galleries
Paintings
Short Films
Music
Bereavement Art Galleries
Top Images (clockwise from top):
Sofonisba Anguissola, Three Siblings of the Gaddi Family with Dog, c. 1555-1560, oil on panel, 74 cm x 95 cm, private collection.
Tony Alter, Abandoned Dog, 2009. on flickr.
Abbott Handerson Thayer (1849-1921), The Favorite Kitten. Public Domain {PD-US} US.
Public Art, part of former Los Angeles City Councilmember David Ryu’s Utility Box Art Program.
Family Spirals® 