Animals and the Afterlife Read Online Free PDF

mourned over a bucket of dead baby pigs slated for dissection in my first college biology class. Interestingly, the name of the course was Human Physiology, so I wasn’t quite sure where the pigs fit in, or the other lifeless animals that I was told would be joining us later in the semester. I didn’t stay around long enough to find out.
    So, nutrition it was. The more I learned, the more passionate I became about all things health related. When I wasn’t in class or doing homework, I was attending seminars and workshops—or reading piles of books—on all aspects of health. I majored in both health education and nutrition, and I left all of my other interests behind, at least for the time being.
    A FTER COLLEGE , I MET MY FUTURE HUSBAND , Jameth (pronounced “JAY- meth”), at a health conference on the East Coast. I flew cross-country to attend that conference specifically because I somehow just knew that the young man who was to be my husband would be there. And he was. The moment our eyes met, we both knew. He later told me that he, too, had a feeling that he would meet his future wife there. Neither of us could afford the price of the conference or the transportation to get there, but we both borrowed the money to make the trip because we knew we had to be there. It was an event that, for me, unfolded just like the rerun of a movie, because all of the very specific details of our meeting—right down to his name and where he sat in the conference hall—had already occurred many years prior, in a childhood dream. So, our magical first meeting was literally a dream come true.
    I soon discovered that Jameth was pursuing identical career goals to my own in the field of health and nutrition, and we simultaneously became business partners and, more importantly, life partners. Our connection was immediate, and we’ve been together ever since. We both went on to earn degrees in naturopathy as well as certification in myriad health and healing modalities, and we pursued busy careers in the health field. We gave regular classes, lectures, and workshops; jointly authored a recipe/nutrition book ( Uncooking with Jameth and Kim ); saw clients in our private practice; conducted and compiled research on multiple aspects of health and nutrition; and dealt with the 24/7 lifestyle and headaches of small business ownership as we founded and grew our own company, HealthForce Nutritionals.
    Periodically, I felt stirrings that pulled me in other directions. I felt that I was supposed to be doing something else, but I wasn’t entirely clear on what . So, in my “spare time” (which really amounted to reducing my already scarce daily sleep quota), I briefly pursued the arts. I took some assorted art and music courses at a local community college, which soon spurred a brief career as a “starving artist.”
    For several months, I drew socks and shirts for an organic clothing company, and then I began a series of drawings called “Ratworks,” the subject matter of which was, of course, rats. I made the first two editions of “Ratworks” into note cards and began distributing them through various rat-friendly organizations. However, as HealthForce slowly grew larger and my time rapidly grew more scarce, I soon abandoned my part-time art career altogether. It had been time well spent, and I actually felt quite complete with it because, although it had been a very short-lived career, it had become one less “what if” in my life.
    I knew there were plenty of other “what ifs” left unpursued, but I was too busy to give them any more thought. Although my years in the field of health and nutrition greatly benefited my own health and enabled me to help others, my other interests remained, for the most part, unfulfilled. For a long time, I didn’t even have any animals in my life.
    Jameth and I talked of having companion animals someday , when our lives settled down. Meanwhile, our only exposure to animals involved rushing injured or