Peace of Mind for Pet Parents Episode 080: You Did Your Best But What If You Didn’t? – 2 Kinds of Caregiver Regret, and How to Move Forward From Both

RESOURCES MENTIONED & RELATED LISTENING

• Menu for Healing PDF(opens in new tab) - Free download
• PEACEFUL PDF(opens in new tab) - Free Download
• LIVING Quality of Life Care Assessment Tool(opens in new tab) — Free download
• BrightHaven Animals YouTube Channel(opens in new tab) — Search: BrightHaven Animals | @brighthaven_animals
• Animal Hospice Group (animalhospicegroup.com) — professional certification organization in animal hospice and palliative care

You might also find helpful:

• When Pet Grief Needs Professional Support: A Four-Part Series with Judith Eve Rosen, LCSW(opens in new tab)(opens in new tab)
• Episode 65: Learning to Love Without Guarantees: A Conversation About Fear, Control, and Deciding with a Whole Heart (opens in new tab)
• Episode 049: Honoring the Body, Healing the Heart: Creating Sacred Space After Pet Loss(opens in new tab)
• Episode 023: Living to the Last Breath: A Pet Parent’s Perspective on Dying Naturally(opens in new tab)
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Related reading:

• Regret After Pet Loss: How to Stop Replaying the End and Start Healing(opens in new tab)
• 📚 Best Books on Pet Loss: Comfort and Healing for Grieving Pet Parents(opens in new tab)
• 📚 Emotional Support for Pet Owners Facing a Difficult Diagnosis: Coping with Guilt, Fear, and Grief(opens in new tab)
• 📚 Walking Through Anticipatory Grief: A Labyrinth Reflection with My Cat, Mr. Hope(opens in new tab)
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Episode Transcript: 

Karen Wylie: Hello and welcome back to Peace of Mind for Pet Parents. I'm Karen Wylie. Here as always with Gail Pope, founder of BrightHaven. A little over a year ago now, we recorded an episode about regret. It's episode 21, as a matter of fact, and it clearly struck a chord because we still hear from people about it. Actually, a few days ago a listener named Wendy left a comment on that episode page that really stopped me in my tracks. She named something that we hadn't fully talked about, a specific kind of regret that didn't quite fit with what we already covered. So today we're going to do two things.

First I'm going to read Wendy's comment to you word for word because I want you to hear exactly what she had to say. Then we're going to have a real conversation about the kind of regret she's calling to our attention because I have a feeling that a lot of us have experienced it and carried it with us too. So before we go any further, let me start with what Wendy left on the episode 21 blog page.

She said, "Thank you for this podcast. I'm constantly listening to podcasts and reading forums, and keep hearing, 'We did our best,' or, 'We did our best with the information we had at the time.' 

But what about when we didn't? 

What about when we often saw a known sign of illness but minimized it and didn't go to the vet? 

How do we move forward from not doing our best over time even if we made the right decision at the end? Any advice is appreciated."

And Gail, I want to do two things before we really open with our discussion. I want to get your first reaction to this first, and then I want to do a brief review of what was already covered in episode 21 so that we're all caught up and understand the different kinds of regret that we'll be spending the rest of the discussion on. Okay? 

So when I just read this to you what Wendy was putting her finger on, do you have any reaction to that so far?

Gail Pope: Two, yes. Wow! The first one was shock. We always do our best. Of course, that's what we always do. We're human, and we always do our best. Then that sat for a moment or two, and I thought, "Hold on a minute." 

Then there comes a conversation when somebody has suggested or advised maybe you should do X, Y, Z, and you've thought about it and thought "No, that, that doesn't seem right," and you've moved on. Then you come back to that conversation. See, I'm talking it round in a circle. And then you say, "Oh, God, did I do my best? What if I should have done that?" So that's where I'm at now.

Karen Wylie: Okay.

Gail Pope: And obviously putting myself in that situation and the number of times, obviously, that I've come back to thinking, "I wonder if I had done that, that wouldn't have happened," or, "I wonder if I'd done that, that would have happened." So I'm not sure if that's where Wendy's going with this conversation or if I'm missing the point.

Karen Wylie: But that's what you're getting out of it so far. Our hindsight is 20/20 and there's all different ways for us to look at it. 

But I want to say it very clearly though here so that anyone listening to our conversation today will hear this. This episode exists because Wendy took the time to write four sentences in the comment box. That's it, and that's how directly you can shape this podcast with us because if there's a topic we haven't covered, a question that's been sitting with you or even something you might think we got partly wrong, tell us. Comment on the blog. Message us. We read everything we get, so Wendy is proof that we will build an entire episode around a topic!

So before we really dive into what's different about Wendy's question, I want to properly revisit episode 21, because it's been over a year. I don't expect anyone including us to remember it in detail. I went back through it to just grab the high points here. 

Gail and I were talking about regret in general, the kind that shows up after a loss and then doesn't leave us alone. A few of the core ideas that we landed on in episode 21, and I'm basically going to read these.

Regret is sneaky. It can surface any time, in the middle of the night, on an anniversary, years after a loss, because our minds keep learning. Every new thing we learn gives us a new reason to look back and wish we'd known it sooner. 

Hindsight can lie to us a little bit. We fill in the gaps of old memories with knowledge we didn't have at the time, and then we hold ourselves accountable to the knowledge that we didn't actually have back in that moment.

The speed of the loss matters too. Sudden losses, the ones with no warning and no time for decisions, tend to carry more regret than hospice losses where there is more time to think, to prepare, and to say what needs saying. 

The illusion of control creeps in over time as well. Months or even years after a loss, we tend to believe we had more control back in the moment than we actually did. That illusion can make the regret that we feel a little sharper.

Underneath it all, we talked about forgiveness, that making peace with regret isn't really about proving that we did nothing wrong. It's about forgiving ourselves for what we didn't know at the time, and honoring our relationship instead of focusing on the guilt.

So Gail, as I read through those points again, does anything stand out to you now a year later that you'd want to add or say differently?

Gail Pope: Yes, all sorts of little things. I think, oh gosh, it's hard to really even stop— if you'd read them one by one, I could have stopped at each one. The summing up, I think is that it is about forgiveness. We do have to realize that we're not perfect. We also, I think, it came to me very strongly, that over the hundreds of animals that I've known and the beliefs maybe that I've acquired, which may be right or wrong who knows, but I truly believe that animals come to us for a reason.

A reason, a season, or a lifetime from that beautiful old poem. So I think sometimes we make a decision, we go forward, and we're actually doing it because it's what the animal wants or the animal needs, rather than what modern medicine or ancient tradition brings to us as our education. I think following our gut is obviously the right way to go. Sometimes that can be really difficult because our gut will say one thing and yet other parts of us are arguing. So I don't think there's any easy way out of this conversation really.

Karen Wylie: No, and that's what really made me basically look at Wendy's comment and say, "Aha! This is a new path, a new road we haven't traveled," because everything we covered in episode 21 was really describing one particular kind of regret. 

I want to give it a name for us today because even when I looked for it, I couldn't find it written down anywhere but I think we should call it "Decision Regret". The regret that comes from looking back at a choice we made and then second-guessing ourselves.

What treatment to try, when to say goodbye, whether we pushed hard enough for a different diagnosis or options. So it's regret about our decisions, and I feel that's what we explored pretty thoroughly in episode 21. 

That kind of regret does respond well to hearing that you did your best, because the honest truth is we usually did make the best decision we could at the time with what we knew.

But now Wendy isn't describing "Decision Regret". She's describing something that happens before any decision gets made. So that's where I want us to go and explore some new ground with this. I want to name it something different so that we differentiate between the two. 

Wendy wasn't asking about a decision that she looked back on and questioned. She was asking about a sign or symptom that she saw but minimized over time.

So I'm thinking of calling this "Noticing regret", the regret of seeing something, some part of you actually seeing something that might have been possibly a warning sign but choosing not to act on it. Not because you didn't know better but maybe there's some part of you that talked yourself out of it. So I think this one cuts differently from "Decision Regret". 

Gail, it's not "I didn't know", it's "I noticed and I didn't follow through." So that's much harder to forgive yourself for on the surface.

So what do you think in your years of working with animals? Why do you think we minimize signs that we might see along the way? What's actually happening when a loving, very attentive pet parent notices something but waits?

Gail Pope: Actually, "Decision Regret" and this new way of looking, there's still an entanglement between the two. And I'm saying that because I'm looking at where I am right now in my own life with my own cat, Maisie. I am seeing symptoms, things that she's showing me, and I have two different paths that I could take. At the moment, I take one path and I regret it. I take the other path and I regret that. So now I'm left with this jumble of "What am I meant to do?" and "Whatever I do, is it going to be my fault?"

Now, that really comes under decision, the "Decision Regret" but yet it's still tangled up with this other, "I'm not quite sure about what that is", and "I wonder if this or that could be causing it, so I'm doing that."

You see what I'm saying?

Karen Wylie: I do. I totally hear you. When I read Wendy's comment, I reflected on it for a few minutes. It was like, "Oh my God, this is what was bothering me so much over the last year with Chey." Because just to recap a year ago, just 11 months ago, Chey was diagnosed with a partial CCL tear, a cruciate ligament tear. Not a full one, not a complete one, so we chose to pursue conservative treatment and try to avoid surgery which he did heal really well. I observed things that I wasn't sure I was noticing for probably two to three months before it was diagnosed.

Because I would see him walking down three stairs and I would almost think I saw a hop on the last stair. Or I would see him running and then slow down and then I'd see what I think was a favoring of that leg once. Then I wouldn't see it again. But it was like I would see these things and be like, "What? What was that?" But I was looking for it to show itself consistently so that I would understand what was going on.

Because dear God, you don't want to walk into your vet's office these days and say, "Something's going on. I don't know what it is. Go ahead and do every bit of blood work and every X-ray and every ultrasound." Those are thousand dollar or multiple thousand dollar days. 

So you do want to know what it is you're seeing at home before you go to the vet. So that was the kind of thing I responded to, the pet parent in me when I read Wendy's comment.

Because when he was diagnosed, in addition to the tear, he had started to have a little area of arthritis, and that was probably because I didn't catch it early enough. Yet because it was inconsistent or erratic in terms of how it was shown, I can let myself off the hook a little bit. But there's still the part of me that's like, "Geez."

So I'm right with you in terms of looking at this from a pet parent perspective.

Gail Pope: Yes, I think we do it with ourselves, too, a lot of us. I know I do. I ignore things deliberately and I make excuses for them. Then maybe later I look back and think, "Oh, I wonder what would've happened had I done..." and then I push it away again.

Karen Wylie: It's a good thing you have a work partner who says, "You need to do this."

Gail Pope: Oh, I don't tell you everything.

Karen Wylie: That's a good thing, right? I might have an opinion about more.

Gail Pope: Oh, yes. Between you and my daughter, it's like, "I'm perfectly healthy and I don't need to do anything" and "No, I don't have any symptoms of anything."

Karen Wylie: I'm fine. I'm absolutely fine. Oh, God. But I agree with you. We can certainly do it to ourselves, too. Maybe that's a source of some information to think about because there's also the fear, I think of overreacting to something. Being that kind of pet parent where we're playing a role and then we talk ourselves out of everything.

Gail Pope: Well, you know, The other thing that comes up here as well is fear. Sometimes even though we notice a little something that's probably nothing then fear creeps in. Then it stays with us but it sits in the back of our mind. Then as the trajectory goes forward, we start to bring in the blame at that point because, "I noticed that and I didn't do anything."

So I think we are very ready to blame ourselves for any and everything as humans. That's interesting, I don't think we do that with our children as much as we do it with our animals.

Karen Wylie: At least we get feedback from children about how they feel and what they want or don't want. With our animals, that can be a little more difficult.

Gail Pope: I don't know. I think we're all different. The bottom line is we are really all different. Some of us will see a little symptom, we'll maybe even write it down, and we'll start noticing it. It doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to act on it. Whereas others will see a very little thing and they'll act on it.

Sometimes acting sooner rather than later isn't a good thing. Sometimes it is a good thing. 

However, life is juggling. It really is learning, living, juggling with what comes along, and acting from your gut. Then it's not that we necessarily act in one way. There are many different ways we could act, depending on everything from what to feed, "should I have changed his diet?", "Would that have made...", "Did it..." Again, it comes back really to "Decisional Regret" because that seems to sit in almost everything, doesn't it?

Karen Wylie: It does. What you're describing with Maisie and what I'm describing with Chey, it's almost like we're— on one hand, we're being vigilant, and on the other hand, we're being hopeful it's nothing. Almost going back and forth with that which I think is, of course, we all want to be hopeful. We want it so badly to not be anything serious. If we watch something and then we're like "No, no, no, that can't be something that's really bad."

Are there any other stories from any of your animals in your care over the years where maybe you noticed something and minimized it the way Wendy was describing?

Gail Pope: I don't think of anything right offhand. I think maybe because I was lucky enough to have a staff or one or two other people there that when something little came up, maybe as a team we would minimize it or maybe one of us would say, "Hey, did you notice that Derek did so-and-so? Had you noticed that?" Or, "Did you notice that he was coughing when he ate?" or who knows, anything like that.

Then there would be a mutual conversation where, "I don't think it's really necessary to call a vet right now. Let's just write it in his file, and we'll remember that maybe this is where that symptom started." So I think the onus of that kind of regret, I'd almost learned to just scoot by because I had backup people that applauded what I was thinking, or I applauded what they were thinking, or we all agreed, "Yes, we need to do something." So I think it's a little different. When you're making your own decisions all by yourself, like I'm doing now, it's a lot tougher.

Karen Wylie: A lot tougher. That's really an interesting take on that. Yes, I've certainly found myself doing that with Tim over the years, describing what I see. "Do you see this too? You know or is it just me?" He's not very observant, so sometimes that's no help.

Gail Pope: I don't think it's about the observation. It's about the internal discussion with yourself as to what you should do with the information that you've got.

Karen Wylie: Yes.

Gail Pope: That's the root of it, isn't it?

Karen Wylie: It is. It is the root of it. Yes, and in processing this information after reading what Wendy had said and thinking about it, it brought me literally 35 years ago taking one of my beautiful Birman cats to the vet because I had noticed him holding his eye a little funny. I had just moved here to the mountains. It was a new vet. I think he'd seen me one other time or something. He was an old-timey mountain vet, just wonderful. So I went there with my beautiful Edouard from France who I'd imported.. No fever, nothing was happening to the actual physical eye itself or anything.

And I'm saying, "I'm so sorry. I just felt it was something. He was holding that left eye somewhat closed. It was just not right." And he said, "I tend to go with the gut that the pet owner has and if you're feeling that, maybe he's coming down with something. We just don't have all the symptoms yet. So let me give you some amoxicillin and some drops or terramycin for his eye. Let me know in a day or two how he's doing."

Darn it all, within a day and a half, he had a slight upper respiratory. So I caught it too soon to really be full-blown symptoms. But I fortunately had a vet who would rather make me feel good about bringing an animal in too early than bringing one in later. I think that kind of thing influenced me over the years where I really want to be sure that I see what's going on before I take somebody to the vet. It doesn't mean I hold off forever, but it does mean I try to make sure I'm clear about what I'm seeing.

Gail Pope: That's good.

Karen Wylie: So that when I get there, I can explain exactly what it is, what my observations are. I think it's one of the reasons I make such a big fuss about everybody taking notes and taking photos or video once a week and that kind of thing with "The Living Quality of Life Care Assessment". It's just a way of making sure that when you get to the vet, you're very clear about what you're calling to their attention. These days it affects your pocketbook if you don't do that because if you leave it wide open, the tests are going to be wide open.

Gail Pope: Actually, now thank you for that. You just brought me back full circle to think about the different ways we can act. And yes, every animal that I've ever had in the sanctuary days, had their own files, still do, and on a daily or every other day basis particularly if something is going on, I'll jot down anything I notice. And that brings me to really then realize that my journey in healthcare is different from your journey in healthcare. My journey is with homeopathic veterinarians and it's on the telephone rather than going to the office.

Although I do have a local vet who I very rarely ever visit. However, what I'm realizing is that because I take a lot of notes, then every few weeks, every month, or whenever it is that I meet with my homeopathic vet, I'm going back through those notes. We're picking out odd little things that may still be happening or may not be happening or this, that, or the other. So that gives us the opportunity to work on them at this point to find the right remedy that addresses those things under the umbrella of holistic thinking and medicine and go forward.

So I think that minimizes my fear that I'm doing something wrong sometimes or that I might have done something wrong because at least I've shared my concern whether it's large or small. 

I'm trying to stay away from decisional regret and put it into this little area that we're identifying now, which again, I think comes down to obviously fear, a distrust in our own selves, and probably a regret that we didn't do whatever it was. We didn't notice. We didn't “something”. It's blaming, just blaming ourselves.

Karen Wylie: And that's where we really can get into trouble because generally it's going to be easier to name a pattern or something that we did and name it honestly rather than avoiding it. 

I don't know, sometimes, at least if I admit it to myself, I feel a little relieved that I can say "I did this, and this was the effect it had or didn't have." Where I acknowledge my role in a situation rather than letting it stay in thinking of our pets here, rather than letting this kind of regret stay vague or a shape— a guilt that just follows you around and you can't get past.

Gail Pope: Do me a favor. Read me the crux of Wendy's question again. Have we side-stepped it or are we getting to the heart of the matter?

Karen Wylie: I think we're getting to it by sharing our ways that we've dealt with it or not dealt with it ourselves. So let's see, here's Wendy's comment again.

"Thank you for this podcast. I am constantly listening to podcasts and reading forums, and I keep hearing 'We did our best' or 'We did our best with the information we had at the time.' But what about when we didn't? What about when we often saw a known sign of illness but minimized it and didn't go to the vet? How do we move forward from not doing our best over time, even if we made the right decision at the end?"

So I think maybe where we are in our conversation is for us to begin really talking about how can you move forward when you have that feeling, about that you didn't do your best because you minimized something and later on, looking back, it would've been better to have dealt with it.

Gail Pope: Okay, that actually still takes me back to Maisie. Other times, and I think again, the word education sits at the foot of everything that we're talking about. It's where we could have done our best but we didn't. So there's an argument. Who's to say what was the best for the animal as well as for you and the situation?

Karen Wylie: Are you talking about “Healing for the Highest Good?”

Gail Pope: I could well be! Sometimes we have to know that is what we were doing and that it's not for us. We're not God. We can't judge what was the best and what we did or didn't do because we minimized the importance of it. Okay. This takes me back to Maisie and where we are now.

She's a kidney failure girl and because of all the experience that I've had with renal disease over the years, the first obvious thing that I should be doing is giving her subcutaneous fluid therapy. However, I'm not. I did. I looked at her values, discussed it with her vet, and agreed that she's shy, she's timid, so we need to take baby steps into this process and go gently with her.

But yes, they can be very important for helping her because she's also very constipated. She is passing stool but not regularly enough and her stools are dry and hard. So I gave her fluids, a small amount for the first time and it terrified her. Absolutely terrified her. So I waited a couple of days, gave her lots of treats and lots of love, then decided to do it again.

We're going to get this in and we're going to create the right balance, so I did and had the same response. Then she now refuses to go into the room where she had the fluids— into my living room. She was cuddled up there before. She is absolutely mortified and when I walk up to her, she ducks like, "No, you're not going to do that thing."

And I'm, "No, I'll give you the treat. I'll give you a treat." So I made the decision, I'm not doing this because there is no way that if I was in her situation, I would rather die sooner than endure the pain and terror of this process. 

So I'm approaching the situation from a different healing way. And yes, I still argue it in my mind but I'm learning. I'm still learning. I'm still learning to let that go because I know that I'm doing my best because I am following what my gut is saying. But this little man that sits here (on my shoulder) is saying, "You could have given her fluids today. Has she passed stool? Oh, goodness. Yes, you're worrying. Yes, keep worrying."

And so this is the heart of what Wendy was saying. I'm killing myself because I think that my choices are contributing to her death. However, my gut, I know darn it, that mine is the right choice. But that little word comes up again because this little man is saying, "I don't think so. She would've gotten used to it. You would've been okay." There's always an argument and we end up fighting ourselves in the middle of these things.

Karen Wylie: Very true. And of course, in her situation where you've had her four to six weeks, I think at this point, and she had been a barn kitty for 13 years, pretty much unhandled. You've got different factors to consider in terms of what is the right thing for Maisie. It's not all medical and not all physical.

Gail Pope: Oh, it's certainly not, because now, as of the last few evenings/nights, she's actually come not only onto my bed but into my bed, into my arms, and slept with me. That, to me, is the line that goes underneath which tells me it's okay. But I still have that “but” because I know damn well that my feeling is that she could do better if I did blah, blah, blah. That hurts me terribly to feel that I could have done better but I've chosen not to. I think that kind of goes where Wendy is, doesn't it?

Karen Wylie: I think it very much does go where she is. Although, I have to defend your choice.

Gail Pope: That's where Wendy has to stop and actually think it back through her choices. When we love our animals, our children, our other humans and we have to make choices for them, very often— again, we come back to calling it decisional regret. But that deep inside of us - that's questioning whether we actually made the right choice. Should we have? Could we have? Would it have been better? There are so many little questions that sit there and we beat ourselves up about them.

So really, it's education in so many different ways, what's right, what's wrong, what's normal, what's not. But then it comes back down to love and to life, and to each individual because I think we can make a choice for our animal which is based on, "Oh, maybe I'll go to the vet tomorrow, or maybe I'll..." There are so many different types of decisions that we make along the way.

Karen Wylie: Yes, yes.

Gail Pope: And if we continue to blame ourselves that we could have done something different for whatever reason along the way, we're missing out on the love that we could be sharing today, or that we may have lost because we spent too much time worrying about them when all they wanted was our love.

Karen Wylie: That's so true. You're making me think about, actually, the only cat of mine that was diagnosed as a diabetic and it was decades ago when treatment and recommendations of how to treat at home were really sparse if you were able to get any information. That cat, after several days of pricking his little ears and paw pads so that I could understand what his body was doing with his food around the clock, he started hiding under the furniture and not wanting anything to do with me.

Gail Pope: Yes.

Karen Wylie: And so I had to also make a decision of trying to manage his blood sugar through diet alone because I was losing my relationship with him. I ultimately lost him but we had a better few months. He stopped hiding. 

We have a podcast episode, where I think we also discussed similar decision-making. We called it "Letting go of treatment but not love."

So I'm going to make sure I put the the link to that episode in our show notes here because that may be of help for anyone who would like to explore the thinking about this. We really can continue to injure ourselves if we don't show ourselves some self-compassion.

Gail Pope: Exactly. It's not only the love we share with our animals, it's the love they have for us. Plus the love we really should have for ourselves and we tend to push it away a little bit.

Karen Wylie: And they know that we're always trying to think of how to handle everything the best for them. Maybe we make mistakes sometimes, but that's still our goal and what we're trying to do. 

You said something a little earlier that I just wanted to circle back to, Gail, because anything that we noticed and didn't take action on later proved to be an important factor or sign of illness... It's important that we let that become information for how we handle things in the future.

Rather than judging ourselves and giving us a verdict on what we didn't do. Because as you were saying earlier, sometimes what you learn in one situation that is imperfectly handled when you're looking back at it, is what allows you to handle things in the future, similar situations, handle them better and differently.

Gail Pope: Yes, you just identified another thing. Plus, if you think about what I did and it wasn't right, or it didn't feel right or whatever, and then something similar happens in the future, so you do what you felt should've been done last time and it doesn't work— "Oops.

Obviously it's a little bit silly the way I explained it but we can't know everything. Every situation with every animal or human is different. I'm ever so sorry, Wendy, but again, whatever you did at that time, I know that we all do it as meaning for the best, don't we?

Karen Wylie: Absolutely, absolutely. Always, always.

Gail Pope: Even if we understand there may have been a different way, and we don't follow that path, we're still doing our best.

Karen Wylie: Yes, and as you said, we could then take what we've learned in that one situation. Then do things totally different the next time and it still doesn't work, or it's the opposite of what's needed then. So we need to give ourselves a little bit of a break here as we work things through.

It sounds like we're coming to a closure here of our conversation because so far today we've named the two different types of regret, "Decisional Regret", the kind we mostly covered in episode 21 which was about looking back on a choice we made with information that we had at the time.

And now the "Noticing Regret", the kind Wendy named for us which is about seeing a sign or symptom of illness and minimizing it before taking action or before any decision about it is on the table. Both types are real. Both deserve our self-compassion, and certainly neither one means you loved your pet any less. Wouldn't you say, my dear?

Gail Pope: Absolutely. Just listening to you share the topic again, those two different types of regret are so intertwined. They really are so intertwined because I find myself thinking about one, and then the other one weaves within it.

And I go back to, "No, Wendy asked that. I'm going to stay with that." But then within that, I make a decision. So it still seems to tie itself together. Wendy, I hope you listen, and I hope you comment because we can flesh this out even more if necessary.

Karen Wylie: We might get her to comment and say, "Okay, you guys covered this and this but eh, I didn't hear these other couple things."

That would be good feedback as well. Thank you to Wendy for bringing this topic to our attention. It really helped us identify a kind of a gap in our coverage of something we hadn't explored yet, and so we're grateful to you for bringing it to our attention. To everybody else out there, if you're listening, you're watching, you're reading, if there's a topic that is sitting with you and something we haven't covered or maybe not covered as well as you believe we could, please tell us.

Leave a comment on the blog, reach out directly via email, bring it to our "Cuppa and Conversation" on Thursdays at 10:00 AM Pacific. You never know. It might become our next episode. Because as always, you did your best, and you did it with love.

As we discussed today, for "Decision Regret", that is enough. And for "Noticing Regret", we hope today's conversation gives you a place to start. So thank you for being with us, and we'll see you next time. Bye-bye now.

Gail Pope: Thank you so much. Bye-bye.