When Growth Hurts: A Goodbye, A Beginning, and Everything In Between

Tonight should feel like a celebration.

We just moved out of a cramped 660-square-foot building—the tiny little “Paw Pad” that somehow held an entire community’s hope—and into a nearly 4,000-square-foot clinic built from grit, grief, generosity, and eight relentless years of refusing to quit.

I should be popping confetti. I should be standing in the middle of that huge new space feeling triumphant.

But tonight, I’m grieving.

Not because the new building isn’t beautiful—it is. It’s everything we fought for. It will allow us to keep pets with their families, ease suffering, and stop the cycle of unwanted litters at a scale we’ve never been able to reach before. It’s the beginning of a new chapter for our community.

But it also means closing the door on the little place where this all became real.

The truth is, my heart is still standing in that small garage-door building on the corner of Washington and Cedar, where every shelf held a story… every donated bowl, every blanket, every bag of food, every scribbled note taped to a wall. Every inch of that place smelled like love and hustle. You could walk in and feel the heartbeat of everyone who ever believed in us.

Tonight, that building is empty again. And I wasn’t prepared for what that would do to me.

The Things You Don’t Expect to Break Your Heart

I keep thinking about Hope—the tortie who chose us long before we ever chose her. She wandered in with her kittens when we first moved into the Paw Pad so we got them all fixed, vaccinated, then released. Her kittens we never saw up close again, but Hope kept returning. She greeted cars like she was the mayor of the place. She made even the toughest mornings feel manageable.

And she’s gone now.

Her little coyote-proof house, her miniature temperature-controlled home, and her dog igloo I painted as “Hope’s Pad”—came with us to the new clinic, but she didn’t. I’ll never stop wondering if she’ll come back to an empty place, waiting for a bowl that isn’t there anymore. I’ll never stop wishing I had looked for her sooner, harder, louder.

Some losses sit under your ribs forever.

I’m grieving the shed we had to leave behind too—the one donors helped us buy, the one we planned to turn into a cat adoption cottage, with lofts and toys and sunbeams for days. It wasn’t supposed to stay. It wasn’t supposed to be sold. But here we are, doing what nonprofits have to do: adapting even when it hurts.

The Weight of Building Something From Nothing

People see the new clinic and think “success.”

But they don’t always see the eight-year grind that built it:

Driving animals two and a half hours to Panama City because it was the only option.

Filling my living room with kennels.

Chasing feral cats under furniture.

Scheduling everything around kids and shifts and life falling apart.

Volunteers coming and going because the work is hard—emotionally, physically, spiritually.

Raising money dollar by dollar, grant by grant, while being told “no” more times than anyone deserves to hear.

Trying to hold a marriage together while drowning in the pressure of a mission that never sleeps.

And yet, somehow, we kept going.

We went from nine animals on that first transport in 2017 to 50–60 spay/neuter surgeries every single clinic day.

We went from a house, to another house, to the Paw Pad, to this brand-new facility on Pine Blossom.

We went from “Who are you?”

to “We couldn’t do this without you.”

That shift didn’t happen by magic.

It happened because people cared enough to help—and because we refused to give up when it felt impossible.

The Children Who Grew Up in the Middle of This Mission

My daughters grew up in this work—learning things most adults never face.

My youngest fell in love with rats and engineered elaborate little worlds for them. She wanted to be an engineer until math hit her sideways, and even then the heart she poured into those animals showed me who she is.

My oldest has always carried her feelings differently—quietly, intensely. Cats were her world. Cat shirts, cat ears, cat everything. She related to them in ways that were entirely her own.

And one moment I’ll never forget is the day she saw a kitten who had passed—one we had tried to save. She knew he had died. But seeing his body made it real. And she broke. Not a tantrum. Not a meltdown. A raw, soul-deep cracking open. The kind that tells you your child has just walked into a new stage of understanding.

Both my girls learned life and death side by side, not because I wanted them to, but because this mission seeped into every corner of our lives. They helped clean crates at 3 AM. They rode shot-gun on rescue transports. They celebrated adoptions like people celebrate birthdays.

This clinic is as much theirs as it is mine.

Why This Work Still Matters—Maybe More Than Ever

People often forget that animals and humans are tied together—emotionally, financially, spiritually. When a family surrenders a pet, it isn’t just an animal losing a home. It's a home losing a piece of itself.

We see the animals grieving.

We see the people grieving.

We see the fear, the guilt, the desperation.

We see how many problems could be prevented if resources were accessible.

That’s why this clinic exists.

To keep families together.

To keep animals healthy.

To stop the endless cycle of litters being born into suffering.

To give people options beyond surrender, abandonment, or hopelessness.

This building isn’t just bigger.

It’s a lifeline.

It’s a promise.

It’s an answer to years and years of community need.

And Yet… Tonight Hurts

Tonight, the Paw Pad is empty.

Hope is gone.

The shed is gone.

The rooms echo.

The shelves look naked.

And I feel like I’m leaving a piece of myself behind.

This new clinic is everything we dreamed, planned, fought, begged, fundraised, and waited for. It will change lives on a scale we haven’t even begun to measure.

But the Paw Pad?

She changed us.

She grew my kids.

She built our reputation.

She held the first conversations, the first surrenders, the first adoptions, the first wins and losses and late-night breakdowns.

She was humble and small and overflowing with a kind of love that only grows in tight spaces.

So Tonight, I Let Myself Feel Both

Grief for what we’re leaving.

Gratitude for where we’re going.

Fear of being forgotten now that we’re tucked away in the woods.

Hope—big, bright hope—that our community will follow us down that long driveway and stand by us like they always have.

I’m proud of what we’ve built.

I’m proud of the people who stuck through the hardest years.

I’m proud of the animals we saved, and the ones we held as they passed.

I’m proud of my children for growing up in the middle of all this chaos with more empathy than most adults ever develop.

And yes… I miss the Paw Pad.

I miss Hope.

I miss the version of me who started all this.

But I’m ready for what comes next.

Because growth hurts.

But it also heals.

And this clinic—this beautiful, quiet, spacious clinic—is proof that every sleepless night, every tear, every fight, every loss, and every breakthrough meant something.

We built something that will outlast us.

And that is worth every drop of heart I’ve poured into this work.