Tag Archives: death

Embracing Grief Alone

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A fellow therapist and friend who is also navigating big grief, shared with me that a friend of hers in Savannah says when someone dies there, the friends put a black wreath on their front door and keep it there for three months to let the world know that this person is grieving. The community takes care of everything for them so that they can grieve and cry, bringing them food every day for three months.

She followed up with the commentary of how grieving is aloud to be messy and for her, even hearing about the black wreath ritual felt validating in comparison to her grief experience, that feels more like “an aggressive non-validation, almost a crazy making, gaslighting, how muted our grief is.”

I burst into tears when I read her words, feeling validated too. I definitely try to stay buttoned up and act “normal” for other people, not wanting to make anyone feel uncomfortable, fearful of being judged, or trying to be solved like an equation. But grief cannot be solved and there is nothing pathological or wrong with grieving, however that looks like for you. Grief doesn’t have a set amount of time and it is different for everyone, but no matter the amount of time, you are not going to be the person you used to be. You will be different and that is natural.

What a special ritual for those who live in her friend’s Savannah community. They are allowed to be different, to be messy, to be however they need to be, it is understood, grief is encouraged. Unfortunately, for many (most?) of us, we grieve alone and we are expected to get over it quickly. Our culture does not know how to handle griefs myriad of feelings, waves, and phases. Our culture does not understand that grief needs ritual and tending and love and community.

Aside for my sister visiting the day after my father passed for the first couple of days, I have been grieving in solitude. And I felt compelled to share how I am navigating that. You are not alone in how alone you feel. You don’t have to be literally alone to feel alone either. You can be partnered or surrounded by people and still feel unseen, unsafe, or emotionally distant with partners, friends, and family. So when I speak of being alone, I speak of how you feel and not the literal circumstances.

Every day I take the time to connect with my mom and my dad on the other side. I take the time to connect with my spirit team and with the goddess. It is my daily morning ritual. I do this by lighting a candle every morning and pulling a few tarot cards. Sometimes I write. Sometimes I journey. Sometimes I sit in silence and listen. But I start every morning connecting to the other side. Reminding myself that I am never alone in that sense. I say my morning invocation and that plugs me into the transpersonal. I speak to my parents, spirit guides, my soul, body and my inner child. I honestly cannot imagine going even one day without my morning ritual. I do what feels natural to me as there are many ways to connect spiritually.

When a wave of grief tears hit, I let it out. Of course that feels cozy and safe when I’m by myself and can ugly wail and cry but if a grief storm hits and I’m on the street or in a public place, I let it out anyway. I let myself look like a weirdo. I tell myself the grief storm is here and I surrender to it completely, allowing the storm to pass through and cleanse my soul. I trust grief. And I know that a grief storm will have its way with me and leave as quickly as it came on.

If grief shows up as a depression wave, I take myself out to eat delicious food and let myself overdo it. I will also overdo binge watching shows. Or I will light a candle, make a drink and stare out the window while listening to music. Sometimes getting outside into nature helps. During a depression wave I try not to listen to my thoughts. I try not to identify with my low mood that feels like dial tone, exhaustion or a low pressure storm. Sometimes I get caught in the spiderwebs of my thoughts and feelings, which causes me to needlessly suffer and it takes some work to get back out. That’s OK too. Sometimes you fall into the abyss. I find the best medicine during a depression wave is pleasure of the senses. Just like the grief storm the grief depression will leave as quickly as it settles in.

When I start to get overwhelmed with how alone I feel, when the desperation hits hard and I feel starved for human connection, I invoke and ask my spirit team to fill me with love. I’ll talk to my mother and father out loud. Or I’ll make a post to connect with the collective. The desperation wave will leave in its own time just like the other grief waves. I have learned to not expect others to be here for me, but also not to shame myself for wanting them to be here for me.

Without my father, I feel like the root has been severed within. Sometimes grief feels like being lost, like I am floating in space with no tether. It feels scary, unfamiliar, bewildering. How can I be in this world without him? How lost and rootless I feel without him causes me to feel embarrassed too. Like a child who cannot be in this world without her papa. But that’s a judgement, so I toss it out and I remind myself that it’s OK to feel embarrassed. I may need to talk to my inner child and remind her that it’s not shameful to still need him even as an adult.

The secret key is learning how to surrender and feel every grief wave without judgment, without identifying yourself with the feeling, and learning that every wave will seize you completely and then leave as quickly as it came on. Grief is like the ocean, ebbing and flowing in its waves, sometimes mellow, sometimes turbulent and stormy, always mysterious and vast. Grief is much bigger than you and it knows what it is doing. Our culture is a big vast thing that largely does not know what it is doing with grief.

I rely upon my spirit team. Always have. In my current grief, I call upon my spirit team to fill me with love and support. I visualize the severed root repairing itself with light. I remind myself that I am becoming the diamond through pressure. I am growing a new root. Death transforms. Through grief, a magical alchemy of the self occurs, if you allow it. Death is medicine, even the most tragic death is compost for the soul. This does not cancel out the horror, injustice, wrongness, and unfairness of tragic death. The transformative alchemy of death (in any form) sits right beside the terrible pain of loss. Both/and.

When grief hits like a wave of deep longing, I start talking to my dad or my mother. And if I’m still and quiet, I will hear them respond. We all have the ability to talk to our loved ones on the other side. They will talk back to you and it will sound like your own thoughts. You can learn to feel the difference between your own thought and a loved one putting a thought in your head. It’s subtle. But if you cultivate the art of sitting in silence and stillness, you can begin to feel the difference. Communicating with my mother and father brings me immense joy.

My ego, just like anybody else else’s ego, wants out of the discomfort of grief, wants it to be over, wants to move on, wants a new goal, wants the new chapter to begin. But grief takes time. And in the liminal space between the old and the new chapter, I find micro joy to be the way. Appreciating the tiniest moments grounds me in truth. Embracing simplicity keeps me centered. Keeps my nervous system regulated. A simple walk in nature. A yummy drink or meal. The beauty of candlelight, a sunset, light through colored glass. The way one comfortable moment feels. Connecting with a friend. Listening to to the birds. Feeling a good stretch. You get the idea. Micro joys feel like stringing Christmas lights around a massive grief tree, bringing warmth and ambience to the heavy journey.

Creative expression is one of the strongest medicines on my grief journey. I have written about the story of my dad‘s death day about ten times already, in ten different ways. Sharing the story with friends who are interested also feels deeply healing and still has a creative element about it because every time I tell the story it is different. For me, grief is a soulful experience. And there is nothing more soulful than creative expression. I painted the moment my father died in the heat of grief, one day after my father died. I am still processing his death day and painting it felt like honoring the moment. A moment I went through alone with him. A beautiful moment that I treasure, that tore me apart and that sits in my heart like a jewel.

There are a variety of grief groups if you feel called in that direction. Process groups, creative groups, groups that eat meals together, and groups that go deep. I am not drawn in that direction myself but I wanted to mention it. Feeling alone is not something to solve. Our culture tries hard to solve uncomfortable feelings. In my grief journey, I am learning how to embrace uncomfortable feelings, embrace the aloneness of grief versus trying to solve it and get comfortable again. Embracing the aloneness of grief is transforming me. Death transforms. But that is for another blog.

Faces of Grief 

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Grief doesn’t always look like crying and missing the person (or whatever has died or ended that was deeply installed in your heart and life).

It can look like depression even though it isn’t. You might have no energy to do anything and not find joy in the things you were finding joy in. You may feel lackluster, empty, or low without a lot of feelings or expressing of yourself. 

Grief can feel like a raw searing loneliness. Like there’s a big gaping hole that once was filled with that person and your purpose with that person, place, thing or situation. This is a very specific type of loneliness. Loneliness that is the absence of what was.

If you’ve been a caregiver over a long period of time, then grief can feel like all the years you gave lead you away from the life you knew into a cave of survival. And that cave is gone too along with that person you gave it all to.

Greif is about the goneness and its many layers. How that affects you may not be typical to what we think grief might look like. Such as crying, wanting to talk about it or be with other people. Or in experiencing emotional longing for who or what is gone.

There can be a strange feeling where you don’t long for what is gone but you still feel that absence. That particular form of grief emptiness is an adjustment period.

A huge part of grieving is making space and honoring the transition from what has died into what is going to be reborn within yourself as a result. Death transforms you. Space is needed to process the end and that doesn’t mean mentally talking it through per se, it just means stillness and rest and time. 

Grief can be felt different every time. The grief I am experiencing with the death of my father first showed up in my body and I hadn’t experienced that before. My body got hurt and then it got sick because it needed me to stop doing everything. I had a hard time with that but I knew that surrendering was important.

Some grief is so big that the entire universe has to stop for there to be a grand sacred pause.

To honor the end for as long as it takes requires awareness, prioritizing, and self-care. Unfortunately most of us don’t have the privilege to take the kind of rest we need but even if you have to work full-time or more it might look like doing that and then doing absolutely nothing else for a period of time.

And it’s OK if you feel depressed or you don’t feel like talking to anyone. It’s not clinical depression and you will come out of it. Nobody knows what it’s like to grieve but yourself. We grieve alone, even if we’re grieving with family and friends because everyone grieves differently.

And what you need is what you need.

Maybe you need to write or paint or sing or dance or be alone or not be alone or eat all the treats or fast or take a vacation or cry your eyes out or wander around like a strange ghost not knowing who you are or couch rot, or some of the above or all of the above and everything else I’m not mentioning.

You might experience grief in agonizing waves or in gentle showers of tears or sorrow. Or you might find yourself in a daze. Spaced out. Forgetful. Detached. 

You might need to take time to remember. Going through old emails and texts and voice messages, letters and pictures.

If you surrender to how you feel and don’t judge yourself and don’t compare yourself, grief will be your guide. It will last however long it lasts and also grief lasts for the rest of your life. Sometimes.

Grief can get stuck if you don’t allow it to be present. When my mother died, grief got stuck inside of my father and he did fall into a seven year depression. He never came out out of. That is not the same thing as the period of time where you might think you’re depressed but really you’re just grieving.

How do you tell the difference?

If you are allowing grief to move through you then you are practicing self-awareness, self-love and taking time to listen and attune to what you need. When grief gets stuck you’re carrying on with life and avoiding yourself.

It takes patience, love and skill to be an aware human that doesn’t calcify from getting stuck by grief and life’s trials. But even if you do, that’s OK too. We are all at different points on the path. I say this because I give love to my father and where he was on the path.

As a healer, I am devoted to self-awareness self love, healing, and growing. Grief is a big part of anyone’s life journey. Learning how to grieve is a big part because we are not taught by our culture which does not support the grieving process beyond a funeral, flowers, and cards. And that might not be what you need to grieve at all. 

My intention in writing this blog is to share with you what I am learning. To help carve out space for you to get in touch with the grief you are experiencing. 

Grief wears many faces. May you allow yourself the time and ways that you need. May you also allow for the flow because grief ultimately needs flow, surrender and letting go.

I see you.

Imagine…

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I finally made contact with my father on the other side three days after he died.

We cannot fully understand the spiritual side while we inhabit physical bodies. So they give us metaphors, pictures, use our own brain’s language, and give us feelings to communicate with the physical side. With us.

My dad showed me a picture in my mind of him as Spock, sitting at a computer (like he always did as a human) in his life review. He communicated a very upset feeling because he was understanding where he went wrong and hurt those he loved without realizing because of his Spock nature. Spock being the perfect media archetype to help me understand that the autism was not just his brain in human life but his soul’s nature. A nature not familiar with feelings. He is learning about feelings through being human. He showed me this.

My mom comes through super strong and always has. I can speak her voice out loud and that is how I communicate with her. I have out loud conversations with her every morning. She was at peace with dying and with her life when she fell into the coma seven years ago. This allowed her to “move up” as a spirit guide very quickly.

When you get to the other side you lose your human suit and human personality and become your soul only self. But you don’t know everything. Life continues on as it does in the physical world. The more aware you become, the more choices you have. The more you love, the less you suffer.

The journey doesn’t stop once you cross over. It’s not like you have all your conflict and unknowing in this world and then you cross over and you are blissed out and know the secrets of the Universe and all of life.

True, you instantly lose the human suit which means you lose human pain. But if a soul dies with enough attachments and ignorance when it gets to the other side, it might not even make it to life review. It might hang out in the astral world and stay connected to its earthly life. A ghost.

If you are ready, when you cross over, you will be flooded with the love of spirit and feel all the pain of being human dissolve. You might then go into your life review to understand what you learned and how you impacted others.

You might be offered an opportunity to become a spirit guide and go into training. My mom showed me with the school metaphor how this works. You learn in levels, freshman, sophomore, junior, senior…each level is a different color.

You might choose to reincarnate or not. Maybe you return to the star group you came from and do not return to Earth. It’s all a choice but just like on Earth (as above so below), the more aware and loving you are, the more choice you have.

My mom has taught me a lot from the other side about the other side. It’s pretty easy for me to communicate with her. With my father, it is taking more effort. He is only a freshman and my medium skills are dodgy. Sometimes strong and sometimes weak. I always want my medium skills to increase but I cannot seem to control it.

We all have the skills to talk to our loved ones on the other side. It is a natural part of being human but this fact has been hidden from us so that we learn to give our power away to other people. Externalizing the power source is how the patriarchy maintains control.

God is not on the outside and you can absolutely talk to loved ones on the other side.

True, I have a gift of communicating with the spirit world but also you might too and not even realize it because you have been taught to believe you have to be gifted to do so. I am here to tell you that you don’t have to be gifted to communicate with loved ones on the other side.

When I talk to my mom or dad on the other side, it’s not like having a conversation with a human. It’s not a supernatural experience. They don’t put a picture in my head like a picture on the screen. It’s subtle.

With my father, I hear his voice the same way I hear the thoughts in my head. With my mother, I talk out loud as her the same way I talk out loud with myself.

When I see pictures in my minds eye it is the same as if I imagine a picture in my mind. Nothing out of the ordinary is happening when I communicate with my loved ones. The real skill is learning to feel the difference between them and yourself and to trust yourself.

I am not writing this blog to give you the five easy steps to talk to your loved ones on the other side. But I am writing this blog to tell you that if you find your way to communicate, practice that way, learn to trust yourself and learn to feel the difference of energy between you and the other, you can do it.

It’s not supernatural. It is natural. The other side is nature too. It’s just the non-physical version of nature. Physicality is only a tiny portion of nature picked up by our five senses. But nature is everything.

Find your practice. It could be communicating with your loved ones through writing, speaking, or in a state of meditation and visualizing. Practice every day, or as often as you can. Ask your loved one to communicate with you. Play with the different modalities of communication.

I know for me, the modality is different with my mom than with my dad. This teaches me that the strength of communication is determined by the relationship. My mom is a junior so it is easy to talk with her out loud but my dad is a freshman and I need the cards.

The sad part is that if your loved one is in a deep soul sleep, you won’t be able to communicate with them. Not every loved one is active and available. A soul may either be in deep sleep or have moved on away from Earth. I am lucky that both my parents are active and spiritual guides.

My father was not sure if he would stick around and be a guide. I gave him my permission to carry on, knowing if he chose to do so, I would grieve all over again. But I didn’t want to hold him down with my attachment. He chose to stay and it felt like winning the lottery. We humans are very attached creatures!

I am keeping this blog light hearted and childlike on purpose. I never want to claim to know the truth of all existence or have the way for all people. Taking anything spiritual too serious or claiming too much power is always a sign of deception, be it with religion or anything new age.

Psychic powers are natural human powers always braiding with the ego. The very flawed wounded ego that every single one of us possesses. Therefore, I remain child like and playful as I write this. I also admit that when my psyche is muddied, so are my channeling abilities. I make mistakes.

Any psychic channeler who cannot say this and takes themselves too serious, I would be wary of. But that’s just me.

I am a realist with awareness of myself. I know I am talking to my mother and father on the other side. I know my experience is real. And I also know I am a flawed human filtering the entire existence of all of life through my teeny tiny ego human self.

I also want to share that no matter how much I communicate with my parents on the other side, it does not take away the grief of losing them as human beings.

I am always about the both/and philosophy. Grief cannot be spiritually bypassed. And connecting to loved ones on the other side does not remove grief. Grief is grief. Grief is life. You cannot be human without living with grief.

The skill is about being able to flow back and forth between the two. You can be crying your eyes out with grief and then you can be channeling your loved one on the other side, without one canceling out the other.

Our culture fears grief and shuns internal divine connection. In my opinion, both of these cultural norms are dangerous. Imagine a life where you did not fear your grief and it was as natural as breathing to connect to your loved ones on the other side.

Can you imagine this?

Dear Death

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Dear Death,

You took my father last Saturday on January 17th, 2026 at 1:30 pm.

The last liquidy remnants gushed out like a waterfall from his lungs through the mouth and nose onto my hand lying over his heart. That was the moment you arrived in the ER room to bring him home. I watched his skin turn sort of blue as he gasped for air in his drowning lungs. There was one more gasp before his head dropped and his glazed distant eyes closed once and for all.

Finally, peace.

He only wanted to go to lunch and to return to his bed in memory care, where I walked in to find him during my usual morning routine time.

Every morning for the past fourteen months I have walked into his room to get him out of bed and onto the exercise machine in the little gym. After that he would have a banana in the lobby. I would walk him for a lap with his walker before we would finish our routine with a the vitamin and electrolyte water I made him to drink after brushing his teeth and washing his hands. This was our sacred time. I would ask him the same questions while he drank down his liquids. What’s your favorite color, drink, food, etc. What year is it, what city is he living in, etc. I committed myself to being there every morning since we brought him up to Seattle.

But it’s been much longer than that, Death. It’s been since you took my mom in 2019. That is when my devotion began. With sister as my partner, she became his dad and I became his mom.

When you took mom home, dad died inside and never recovered. So sister and I slowly took over the logistics and care of his life, allowing him to stay in the house he lived in for over twenty years. All of my vacation time was with him, in the house that felt like a tomb since mom died. He only wanted to hold on and have everything stay the same.

We did our best to give him what he wanted for five years until his first fall that led to assisted living in Vegas and the second fall that brought him close to me. Long story short, Death, he has been the center of my Universe for seven years. I have not taken a vacation. I have not followed my own rhythms. I made the choice to sacrifice and I built my life around caretaking him.

You know my voice well because I have been calling out to you for years. You collect the calls from those who have loved-ones in memory care units because it is truly that difficult and sad. You could create a symphony from our voices. And you know it’s not anything bad, how we call to you crying. You know it is a form of love. You know it’s the system that is messed up. That grace does not always look like the body staying alive. The you can also be the grace.

I have no shame. I am an advocate of love.

I watched dad’s body persist as his heart sunk into depression and his soul and mind took a backseat. I grieved him long before you took him home. I have been grieving him for years. I became a master of grieving. My body eroding, my heart enduring. It always felt like too much but I came to accept that. Love must accept everything not just the easy and bright stuff.

I am no saint. Nobody is a saint except the saints. I won’t pretend to be selfless and pure. I sacrificed out of love and it tore me to pieces and I live with no regret. Tragedy is tragedy. Hard is hard. I am glad I did it and deep down I understood you would take him according to his destiny, not my own and that somehow our destinies were intertwined.

And you did. At 1:30 pm with my hand over his heart after five hours of watching him aspirate. The trauma of those five hours. Of making him go to the hospital. The entire time the dementia having him say over and over, “I want to spend time with my daughter”, “leave”, “I’m fine”, “I want to go back to my room”, “I want to go to lunch”.

Through all of the coughing and liquids coming out, the relentlessness of dementia and suffering persisted until finally, toward the very end he said in his only lucid moment, “I can’t take it anymore”.

That is when they finally gave him morphine. Because finally a doctor with heart intervened and understood. Wasn’t afraid. Wasn’t trying to force. He was attuned.

That doctor took me aside and sat me down and got on the level. That doctor ordered the machines to be shut off and for dad to be able to take a few last bites of food because he wanted my father to have what he wanted and to have peace at the end. That doctor was an angel in disguise.

I was advocating my ass off but I did not have the authority the doctor had. Words will never express my gratitude.

Death, you came all of the sudden. Out of the blue. You snuck in on a Saturday and decided we first needed to explode into crisis. Dad’s signature move, one more time. The fourth and final crisis.

He demanded the nurse take the oxygen tube out of his nose after she administered the morphine and there I was, suddenly alone with him in the room, hand over his heart, telling him to go into the light on repeat like a mantra.

The medication finally stopped his suffering and allowed his body to relax and let go. And you granted my deepest wish, to be with him when you took him home. My soul wanted more than anything for him not to die alone.

You have given dad and me the greatest gift, Death. You are just as much life as birth is life. The soul comes in and the soul exits earth school and you are the one who leads the soul back to its origin. You are natural. You are love.

I took the Seiko watch off his hand, still warm, but no longer animated by the soul. Took it to a watch repair to remove a link. The watch was working great when I dropped it off and continues to work great on my wrist, yet when I picked it up from the shop at 5 pm, the time read 1:30 pm. A glaring sign.

And I finally was able to contact dad after three days. He was in his life review, realizing everything he did to cause hurt, making peace, seeing what he still needed to learn. I could feel his soul without the human suit, akin to Spock from Star Trek. Now I know he is safe and healing on the spirit side.

It takes time for the human grieving and for the soul on the other side. It just takes time. We are all on the path…

Death, I love you and I will see you again. I consider you a teacher and a friend. Thank you for the mercy you gave me and my dad.

Love,

Michelle

January 28, 2019

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The Beauty of Death and Spirit

Last night, I was awoken by a dream in which I looked at the pictures on my phone and there was a photograph of mom sitting naked in a living room. In the dream she was dead like she is in real life and the photograph communicated to me that this was a snapshot of her from the spirit world.

Her body looked robust, healthy and the picture had a hazy, nostalgic and ghostly feeling to it. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling spooked, a rare feeling for me because I communicate with the invisible realms commonly. But the feeling I awoke with was a different sensation than I am used to experiencing.

I felt mom in the room, literally. I know it may be hard to understand how to feel something on the physical level that your five senses cannot detect but the sixth sense is as fundamental as the other five. When you detect something in physical reality with the sixth sense, it is as real as sight, sound, touch, smell, and hearing. I sixth-sensed mom in the room with me. It was not my intuition that felt her, the faculty I usually engage with when communicating with the invisible realms.

Not only did I sense mom, I sensed the realm she was in. I got spooked because reality as I know it shifted into a new reality, so alive and real it was undeniable. I felt unsafe suddenly in the dark…

Quickly my fear diminished. I could not hear my mom or see her, I could only sense her in the room. Just like the picture in my dream, it was a totally silent sense. I could not communicate with her but she was there. I instantly had the thought, “what if my mom’s death is going to open up my psychic senses?” I welcome that happening and would use it to help others just as I use my intuition to help others.

Sleep took me minutes after this intense experience…

Now I know she is here.

A friend said to me that mom is being as great as a support for me now as I was for her, through her cancer battle. I feel this. I feel her guiding me.

I am still in the mourning phase where I am wearing her jewelry each day. My mourning decorations are made of pearl and rose quartz, not black clothes. I want to wear more color because she always wanted me to wear more color. I am wearing more make-up because she did when she was alive. I want to model her as a way to mourn her human life with honor. What writer said that mimicking is the greatest form of flattery?

Yesterday, I felt the beauty of death and I know I am simmering the death story in my heart so I may write it out poetically. My way of fully honoring Vivian.

Being there was one of the greatest gifts of my lifetime. I believe we willed her death to be as gentle and sacred as it turned out to be. With fire in my belly and a will like Joan of Arc, I asked mom how she wanted to die, four days before her death. She said she wanted to be surrounded by family. I said, “lets make it happen”.

There are a few key moments in my life where my will was so fiery that I would not allow any other version of reality to happen other than the version in my heart. This was one of them. And…it takes a village. My family, friends, and people we reached out to on social media, all sent prayers and energy for my mom. Along with spirit, I feel we willed her death to be as she asked for it to be. This is the story that is my truth.

They say death is not in our control but I do not agree. I recall a time about twelve years ago, when I was reading tarot out of a metaphysical store in Portland…the owner was a wise and fiery crone who would lay down wisdom for me in key moments. During those years, I was struggling to heal certain aspects and slugging through some serious mud. I wasn’t suicidal and did not consciously want to die but she said to me, “Michelle, be careful or you will unconsciously call death to you.”

That sentence struck my heart like lightning. You know how you hear wisdom and it changes you instantly? I suddenly understood what my energy was creating and I did want to call a near-death experience to me to learn the value of my life. I also understood how death is unfixed and malleable.

Our spiritual and religious cultures tend to perceive spirit as a fixed all-knowing parent (or all-knowing parents when there are multiple gods and goddesses). In this story of spirit, we are the children to be rewarded or punished for good or bad behavior. All relationships and experiences are written in the stars ahead of time, such as having your destined true love, destined birth, destined death, etc.

I don’t feel this to be true for me.

I do feel many of us make soul contracts, choose our parents, and travel lives with divine purpose and intention. But not every soul does this. I feel the variety is endless.

If you believe in heaven you will go to an etheric heaven created in the fourth dimension for your belief to play out…if you don’t believe in spirit your soul will be recycled into nature…if you experience your self as a multi-dimensional being of light you will travel into lives in and outside of earth…if you know past lives are true it is because you have and will reincarnate, etc. These are just a few examples of many experiences. It is not one path for every soul.

Basically, my wisdom is that spirit is pure creativity, hence the possibilities are endless for the soul’s journey.

Spirit is all-loving but not all-knowing because spirit is learning and growing through becoming souls. Any reality can happen at any moment in this huge creative art project called life. Fixed destiny is real too, because if spirit is pure creativity then fixed fate is also a reality to experience.

My knowing is that spirit is playing, creating, learning, and evolving through being individuated into form of every kind, from incarnating as big as a universe all the way down to incarnating as a single cell. Appearing as form is spirit’s activity, lesson, longing, and creative act.

Spirit manifests as everything, in the realm of appearances and all form is spirit behind the scenes of every appearance.

I see through a “zoom out, zoom in” lens where spirit incarnates into every form and dissolves back into oneness in ebbs and flows, cycles, and designs. Spirit desires to become form to experience itself in relationship, to forget it is oneness, and to create.

Therefor, as souls we play all the roles…we play the good guy and the bad guy, we play the powerless and powerful, we play human, rock, mountain, mouse, single cell bacteria, alien, whatever the form may take. Sometimes souls play in a linear progression to evolve an individual soul, collective soul, or species…and sometimes souls play in a non-linear way and incarnate to just be or just do it with no intentions, contracts, or agenda.

The variety truly is endless…

All this being said, death is a creative act, in my truth…

Mom’s passing was a creative and sacred act. Being there to facilitate and witness her death was one of the most valuable treasures I will ever experience…priceless and beyond comparison. I feel gratitude and awash with beauty.

Anger and the Cardinal

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Below is a blog I wrote in 2019. I am experimenting with more personal healing blogs you can all relate to and I want to share some blogs from the past:

The anger stage takes turns with the denial stage, two weeks and two days since my mother’s passing.

Denial is a strange trick of the mind but easy to understand. I don’t forget for more than a second that my mom is gone. But those seconds of denial feel astounding when they suddenly crop up. Like when I wanted to text mom to tell her the new Grace and Frankie season was on Netflix. That one second of denial shocked me once my mind realized she was dead.

The anger stage is harder to understand because it’s rooted in the feelings. It doesn’t help that we are culturally conditioned, especially women, to judge anger as bad and repress the feeling. In truth, anger is coming up for a reason. I think anger comes up not only in reaction to forever loss but also because death brings up the long buried past…especially the death of a parent figure in the family system.

We all grow up in dysfunctional families because we are all born from the same systemic and multigenerational trauma that gets passed down generation to generation, making parents flawed in how they parent because they were once wounded children. Nobody is free from this. Each generation becomes more aware and has more opportunity to heal as a result. Each family has their own version of the dysfunctional story as told differently by each individual.

How much you have worked on healing the wounds of your family past correlates to what will rise up when there is a death in the family. Death feels like a band-aid being ripped off the wound. In fresh grief, hurt will unleash from the basement of your psyche through the triggers that naturally occur as each family member grieves differently.

Our grief journey is very personal because each person has a unique relationship with the deceased and with the living family.

The day after my mom’s death, we packed up every item of mom’s clothing to be taken to donation in a frenzy that only grief can create. Our action caused pain for my father. It was too fast for him. We cannot avoid the triggering hurt that occurs because grief is not something we can control. I have been witnessing myself not be in control. This is why I call it “the grief creature”.

I believe the triggering hurt is meant to be an opportunity for healing.

Healing has many components. Differentiating your sense of self from your family members, validating and expressing the hurt you feel, accepting the way others are and have been that is different than you, letting go of judgement, forgiving, gaining more unconditional love, allowing your vulnerability to be seen, and rewriting negative narratives about the past that are not true, are some of the detailed aspects of healing from family pain.

Death forces what has not been healed up from the basement and into the light of awareness, through anger. Anger says, “I feel hurt,” and points to what is unresolved. Hurt has a root and that root needs love, recognition, and tenderness.

Each one of us has a right to feel angry about past wounds even if the one doing the wounding did not mean it or wasn’t aware. We can validate our anger and hurt while also learning acceptance and perhaps even forgiveness. We have the opportunity to let go and heal to the capacity we are ready to engage on our soul’s path. Death opens the doorway and urges us to see past our limitations and face new edges.

I am facing my new edge. I am learning how to differentiate between anger that my mom is gone and anger rooted in a dusty wound covered in a musty outdated tapestry. I am looking with soft eyes upon unresolved feelings. I am learning how to express anger in a healthy way.

That’s the thing about feelings, they need an outlet. Thoughts only need to be observed and not identified with to leave the mind but feelings need to be valued and expressed to leave the body.

Anger is hard for me to express. I don’t want to punch or scream into a pillow. I don’t want to throw things. I think I may need to sing out anger. I am still exploring…

Grief is the opposite of control. I cannot wrap up all of my feelings into a nice and tidy file named grief and open it when I have time or it is convenient. The grief creature moves mysteriously through me. Messiness and suddenness must be embraced. I tell my friends I cannot plan ahead because each day I feel different and cannot promise being emotionally available like usual.

Those who have been through it tell me, “I remember feeling that,” and I am reminded that although we move mysteriously alone through the dark night of grief, we all take the journey and we all relate to the same experience filtered through our personal and unique story.

Through feeling and expressing the anger stage of grief a rebirth is occurring that is hard to describe. It reminds me of the picture on the classic Judgement card in the tarot. Gabriel is tooting her trumpet as dead bodies rise from graves, rebirthing into new life. Gabriel’s trumpeting is symbolic of the anger that calls the past out of the basement and into the light, to be given new life.

I am being more present, open, honest, and vulnerable with the hurt, my flaws, and the flaws of my family. To be honest, I enjoy engaging in the painful healing process, no matter how hard it is and how vulnerable I am learning to be. Mom’s death is bringing me deeper into my soul essence and purpose. I feel liberated to be free of ego driving the bus (but I will save this for tomorrow’s blog.)

In conversation with my sister, touching upon our deep family wounds, a bright red cardinal landed on her porch and watched her as we were Skyping. We both knew it was mom. We both had reached the other side of anger and found healing through being loving, communicative, and open. My sister commented on how our family has not been through anything like this before, specifically with how grief is effecting the family dynamics were are navigating through now that mom is gone. Truth.

Mom’s death takes us to new levels and places within ourselves and within the family. She watches us through the eyes of birds.

Mom was always unconditionally loving no matter how challenging other personality traits presented (in any of us.) Unconditional love is a quality our family has in abundance. I have always associated cardinals with unconditional love and also with Virginia, where I was raised.

Now, the cardinal becomes Vivian.

The Key

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it is OK to feel what you feel. sink into the feeling by allowing it to consume your body and take you for an emotional ride. grief ride. joy ride. anger ride. fear ride. inspiration ride. peaceful ride. confused ride. shame ride. insert the feeling here ride.

if you have trouble naming your feelings i suggest keeping a feelings wheel saved in your photos or notes app or get a feelings wheel pillow. that thing is great for those of us who have trouble naming the feelings.

beyond naming the feeling, don’t do anything else with the mind but to notice what you are feeling.

name the feelings, beginning with body feelings.

my belly is bloated. my jaw is clenched. my heart feels heavy, my feet feel light.

next, relax the vagus nerve by unclenching the jaw, relaxing the roof of your mouth, softening your tongue in the mouth, relaxing the butt muscle and all the pelvic floor muscles. take a deep breath or two or three. maybe do a few switch nostril breaths. let body be a wet noodle. let gravity, mother earth’s love, hold you. release body into her gravitational hold.

now…keep naming. move to the movement of body. are you staring into space? are you pacing, dodging, darting? if your movement is frantic or causing distress and you can’t relax body maybe splash cold water on your face or put ice on your risks or shake your body for 3 minutes…

maybe have a seat or move into a stroll or lay down.

keep naming. now heart. are you ugly crying? wretched grief abyss sad? are you feeling seething inflamed anger? ferociously frustrated? mildly annoyed? feeling rejected, dejected, unseen or ignored? feeling inspired, wired, elated? feeling confused and like you are imploding? are you feeling numb? are you feeling dissociated or depersonalized? use the feelings wheel if you need.

don’t tell any stories in the mind at all, only use the mind to name feelings.

if you come across any guilt for being bad, wrong, or insert judgement here, ignore it like a pesky fly. don’t bargain with it or let it seduce you. ignore guilt, nine times out of ten it’s just a useless neural pathway.

allow the feelings to run their course through your relaxed body the best that you can right now, you don’t have to be perfect or get it right. just feel. it’s ok to feel what you feel. no need to change it or fear it or turn any frowns upside down or hide it. sink deeply into it’s drug like effect washing through your body and heart and don’t tell any stories about it, don’t think with your mind any deeper than naming what you are feeling.

check the vagus nerve again, the snake. relax the snake by relaxing the head of the nerve (which is the roof of the mouth) and the tail of the nerve (which is the butt muscle).

feel and name and keep the body relaxed for as long as you have time for and if you have time to feel the feeling fully, the feeling will course through and leave the body.

and this too will pass.

if you don’t have time and you need to go do something or be somewhere, call upon your guides to shut off the feeling and seal up your aura and/or make a mental intention to come back to feeling your feelings later. if you can’t do this, go back to relaxing the vagus nerve or maybe you need to take your anxiety meds or a theanine or GABA. can you get some support?

rinse lather repeat. for the rest of life.

it’s OK to feel what you feel.

feelings are not moral so never listen to the morality police that loves to yap out of mouths because we’ve all been taught that feelings are somehow moral when they are not. feelings are human. save morality for behaviors and give yourself full permission to feel what you feel. no comparing.

it is life’s mystery why some experience more tragedy than others, or worse tragedy. equality is not found in our individual experiences of expansion and tragedy. equality is found in only one place, the fact that every single one of us is as valuable as the other no matter what. makes it hard to love one another when we have such varied experiences of loss and gain, the have and have-not injustice. can often make it hard to love yourself the most.

the truth in me says that no matter how difficult and unfair, life is supposed to be this way because it is Nature’s way of teaching us how to love ourselves, each other, the planet, all of life. Nature, the Goddess, Spirit, Source, call it what you will….that transcendent mystery.

life in these human bodies on earth is not for the flimsy, you can see this by looking at all the ways Nature can be dark and cruel with her cataclysms, parasites, viruses, poisons, and seemingly no attachment to who or what gets sick or dies in a sudden and needless loss. mother animal eating her weakest baby to save her other babies shows it well, in a living metaphor.

on the deepest level i feel how Nature’s dark side, her vicissitudes, take us to our knees and only then does human nature really learn compassion, unconditional love, forgiveness, acceptance and also empowerment and courage, resilience and bravery. the dark feeds the light like compost being spread into the soil under the full moon’s light.

you will blossom again after every tragedy that sinks you deeply into the abyss. and when you are blossoming toward the sun on cruise control coasting through a warm summer breeze, the abyss will snatch you again when least expected. these cycles are what life is here. to not escape but embrace the symbiotic light and dark cycles of life is the key.

The Journey of Grief

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The inspiration for this blog comes from wanting my journey of grief to inspire and help you on your journey of grief. I want to pioneer more therapists sharing their own life stories and reflections because those of us who have been through it to be a guide for others have much to offer from our personal experience. We can speak in a universal way in order to connect with others on the healing path and to release muck from the collective unconscious.

On January 9th it will be one year since my mother passed away. The experience of her death is a treasure in my memory as my sisters and I sent my mother into death with our words and comforting presence. A rare opportunity. This was my first experience of sending a human into death. I did this with a doggie and the feeling was similar. Peaceful. My mother was not scared to die. She was ready and trusting. She felt spirit and soul to be real, not in a religious way, in a way she could feel on a personal level. Her felt experience gave her inner peace. She was only scared of the actual passing moment and she called her daughters to be witness and help her transition.

Although the few days she was in a coma prior to dying were two of the hardest days of my life, I am beyond grateful to have been a death guide for my mother. I asked her in the hospital, days before her death, how she wanted to die. She said with certainty, “at home, surrounded by my family.” I told her we would make that happen and the conviction in my body was so fixed nothing could stop me. I learned a lot about that feeling of fixed conviction. I learned that it is a transpersonal and archetypal force that rose into my ego to make my mother’s death be as she wanted. We have help from the transpersonal/archetypal realms whenever we need it.

Her year and half battle with cancer was brutal toward the last six months. I have thought a lot about it since her death. I have thought a lot about my behavior. I worked very hard to accept her battle and accept how she wanted to proceed through it. I remember distinctly learning the lesson of letting go of trying to control her in order to make myself feel better. The lesson of surrender is deep and life long. I did the best I could and I don’t harp on myself. I showed up with a lot of presence. I also recall all the times I was irritated with her, angry with her, wishing she made different choices and all the ways I reacted without presence and surrender. Part of grief for me has been going through each memory and forgiving myself for every time. It’s a process.

I also have needed to go through the awful memories of her vomiting and in pain with me as witness. I have felt so much pity and pain for her when these memories rise up. I then hear my mother in my head say, “I am free of that now, don’t dwell on the pain,” and I know she is right. This is a hard lesson for me because I feel so strongly how she did not deserve to go through all of the pain she went through. The anger for her having to endure cancer and the battle to kill it,  flares up strongly in my heart. I then tell myself all the crone wisdom: life is unfair for everybody, life is suffering, life is dark and light… and it helps. I make the intention to release the anger. Again, this a process and it just takes time.

What is important about grieving is that every step is treated as important. You cannot rush grief. Everybody grieves differently and for different amounts of time too. I cannot control my father’s grief and my sisters and I grieve each in our own way. Grief control us, we don’t control grief. You must let grief have its way with you and not judge others for how they grieve. Grief will teach you to endure loss, surrender and become much more aware of time and the shortness of life if you let it do its magic. If you resist grief you will become more addicted to the things you are addicted to: shopping, hustling, working, drinking, eating, controlling, whatever it is. People resist grief all the time and dive into doing all the things and escaping in all the various ways.

I have learned that grief comes in waves. I have cried the hardest for missing my mom about ten months after her death. In the beginning, the tears were more violent and deluging storms of shock. Once I accepted my mom’s death (stages of grief) about six-seven months later, the tears have become about missing her versus being shocked she is gone. I did not think about it until these new “missing her” tears…about how the longer the loved one is dead the more you miss them because the longer time passes without them. A very logical thought that I did not consider. Grief is not logical. I miss her presence so much.

I miss my mother’s voice, her scent, her sayings, her mannerisms. Grief has taught me that love for others is much more about their particular essence and much less about compatibility or beliefs. My mother and I were very opposite personalities but we found connection when shopping, watching television, having morning coffee, sharing our love of animals….but it’s not the connecting I miss about her. I miss her. Vivian. I miss her being in this world. The lesson this teaches me is so potent. I realize that love really is about love. It’s not about what I get or give. Sure, I miss how she nurtured us with her domestic ways and I miss giving her my love too but what I really miss is literally her presence as a living human being existing in this world.

I come from my share of abuse, dysfunction, and trauma like most of us do. Yet I am also very lucky that my family knows and gives unconditional love. I got very close to my mother over the last twenty years and we healed our stuff. I know me being a healer had much to do with it as I stubbornly pushed for healing in the early years. Yet also, my mother was open and healthy enough in her psyche to go through the healing journey. Many mothers do not have the capacity to heal or even relate. Many loved ones are so mentally ill that their children and siblings need continual distance and hard boundaries at all times. Grief may be very complex with the pain and mental illness involved in family systems. This still does not tell you how you will grieve though. Grief will surprise you.

Grief transforms you, a friend and fellow therapist told me. He has been through a lot of death. That sentence sticks with me. I have witnessed myself transform over this past year. Solitude is something I need much more of since my mother’s passing. It may not always be this way but for now, I don’t feel like being very social like I used to be. I have become a ghost friend. I know those who love me and are closest accept me for my ghost phase and those who cannot accept me, I let them go. I need a lot of space around me and a lot of time to go within. I don’t feel like doing much of the “fun” things either. I don’t want to go out much. I go to bed early. I am more serious, somber, and internal. I am sure this will balance out over time but for now, I need what I need.

One of the biggest transformations is that I no longer care what other people think of me, for the most part. I used to be much more concerned, as many of us are, about being liked and accepted by others. Now, I don’t care. I have an attitude that feels like, “if you don’t like me that’s fine, whatever.” All shame about being me has vanished. I feel a major increase of self love. I also feel more shit cutting, pragmatic, and honest with myself and everybody. I am not trying to people-please and any ideals carried over from my twenties have dissolved in the grief journey. I want to continue to dream, grow, and live with fulfillment but it comes from a much more grounded place inside now.

Again, my friends who are close honor this change in me. The people who count allow me to change as I give the same allowance to them. If we need to grow apart, that’s ok too. Those who needed me as I was before, I release. It feels really wonderful to be free of needing to be liked or to hold on to relationships that don’t serve me or them anymore. The self love increase is nourishing too. I am so much more gentle with myself. It feels as if my mother’s soul went into me and is helping me to become more gentle and balanced.

I feel that when the soul leaves the body, a piece of it enters those who were close. I feel the piece of my mom that went into me is her dignity, her shit cutting attitude, her grace, her pragmatism, and her love for fashion. Not all of these traits lived in the conscious world of my mother’s personality but all these traits lived in her being nevertheless. I feel these traits mix with my own and make me new. I have worn more make-up since her passing, feeling her love for make-up and being lady-like in that New York city way. I feel her quiet grace and earthy poise become a part of my former stormy celestial sparky self. I feel her shit cutting wisdom permeate my ethereal attitude. This makes me feel close to her too as I transform.

As we approach the year marker of her death, I feel a sense of joy. I feel joy that she is free of her body and her life here. I have connected with her on the other side. She is actively becoming a spirit guide and very happy with her life choosing to not reincarnate but to be a soul guide for the incarnated. Not every soul gets this choice. You have to die with enough peace in your heart to see the choice in the first place. How we live in this body continues after we leave it, with the same continuity of emerging into unknown possibilities and choices whether we are human, in another kind of body, or not in a body. But I will save the esoteric for another blog. I feel joyful for my mother’s happiness.

At the same time, I feel sorrow for my father being left without her. This is the dark side of love. Somebody will grieve the other when you get into these long partnerships. The lesson returns of not controlling. I cannot control his grief. I cannot control his life. I have learned so much about how we want control others when they are hurting because it hurts so much to feel their pain. Through my mom’s cancer battle, her death, and my father’s journey now, I see how much I want to take away the pain of those I love with my solutions, my way of seeing things, my way of healing. The lesson is to let it go. Allow others to experience life as they need to and only show up to help as asked. Pain is not bad and pain should not be avoided. Surrender.

Surrender means making peace with what is. Making peace with what is means making space for what is. Making space for what is means not saying or believing things like, “this should not have happened” or “this is wrong and unfair.” To make space means to allow all of it. ALL. I have discovered how to allow life to be grief, pain, hurt, and loss just as much as growth, pleasure, gain, and expansion. It means letting all of life express itself, the good, the bad, the ugly as they say. It means letting go of controlling the cycles. Paradoxically, you must put effort forth to self-care, heal and grow to allow yourself to let go of controlling the natural vicissitudes of life.

I always recommend the book, “Dark Nights of the Soul,” by Thomas Moore. He inspires me to find the richness in the dark night, whatever it may be. What bothers me is the collective ignorance of “turning the frown upside down” or bypassing the stages of grief (denial, bartering, anger, depression, acceptance) with sayings such as, ” don’t be sad, she’s with you in spirit.” These sayings are so the sayer can control your pain so they don’t feel afraid of it. It is vital to go through the grief journey with all the frowns, tears, stages, and for as long as you need. The difference between getting stuck and moving through the stages is that the former comes from resisting the stages of grief and the latter happens when you surrender to the stages and allow them to pass through you.

 

 

How to Connect with Loved Ones in the Spirit World

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This blog is inspired by the death of my mother. We all go through the journey of saying goodby to our mother or a dear loved one when they pass on.

Per usual, I disclaim this blog by prefacing that I will write it as if it is truth. It is my truth. Maybe it is your truth too. If not, no worries, mate. Carry on. There are many aspects of grief, death and dying to explore. This blog will be about making contact with loved ones on the other side.

On a side note I would like to mention that as I type these words I am bathed in my mother’s favorite perfume because I bought it yesterday when I spotted it at the drugstore. It was the last box of L’air du Temps left. Means “The air of time. ” How appropriate on a metaphorical level. Wearing her scent brings me comfort and also helps me to feel her soul in my soul.

When you die your soul travels to the other side of the veil. We can have no literal concept of the other side so we must allow the imagination and intuition to give us pictures and concepts that are a metaphorical version to help us understand as best we can. The key is to feel the other side and this is done through creative visualizing and feeling the intuition.

Imagination is not an empty thing that is pure make believe. There is a make believe element but imagination is how we communicate with the layers of existence undetectable through the five senses.

Intuition is the feeling of knowing we all have and the other main faculty that helps us access what cannot be detected by the empirical senses.

It is what is is. I don’t want to convince you of my truth. There are many layers of consciousness beyond the five senses. To claim the five human senses are the only detectors of the vastness of existence is very limiting though you may still not believe or feel what I am sharing as the truth. I honor the differences.

This blog is for those who wish to understand and contact their loved ones on the other side and who resonate with these words. Trust yourself.

Souls do different things when they pass on. Existence is vast and not a factory where every soul goes through the exact same process. Most earth bound humans, upon death, do spend time resting (especially if the death was sudden, severe, or the life before death very trying) and then they have a period of life review. Read “Journey of Souls” to delve deeper into this process.

The rest and life review part of the journey helps the soul metabolize all that happened in the lifetime, without the limitations of the human suit.

The human body is a suit of emotional heaviness and density. All stories we tell about our life and all feelings live in the body not the soul. Betrayal, abandonment, depression, despair, rage, suffering,  fear, hatred, resentment (etc etc) are all based on attachment to what is right and wrong, painful and pleasurable, and these dichotomies and attachments do not exist in the spirit world.

The spirit world soul tells a different tale and knows that earth is a school to learn how to love as a separate being and work out the karma that builds up as a result of being an individual body.

Karma is the emotional residue we collect through lifetimes when we don’t let go, forgive, accept and free the soul of the stories and feelings that attach to it from the human experience.

On earth the soul takes on a body and is able to play with being separate, able to cause hurt and being hurt by other separate individuals. Same goes with causing joy, pleasure, and every emotional experience. This is a big deal because once the soul enters the spirit world it is no longer an individual.

I mean, it is to a certain extent. The soul holds on the art project of being a singular being for growth and experience’s sake but the soul experiences true connectedness to all of life from being an aspect of a soul group all the way to being an aspect of oneness.

The more the soul ascends the more collective it becomes, all the way until it returns to oneness. As the soul descends, it takes on the costume of being one individual to experience, learn, grow, and play.

Both ascension and descension of the soul are equal in the evolution of the soul because the soul is an aspect of oneness descending to play the part of being embodied to evolve through the journey back to itself as oneness. Forever this goes on like the infinity symbol demonstrates.

Once we die on earth we lose our human suit, rest, review our life and see what’s next.

Some souls have a choice about what is next and others are sucked back in to the next life with no choice. The ability to choose has everything to do with how conscious the soul becomes in a lifetime.

The more conscious and aware you become during your lifetime on earth, the more you have the empowerment of choice to create your destiny. You can say no to what comes your way or not allow what hurts you to take all your power and you can use your inner source of power to create your life as best you can in the circumstances you are given. Those with little awareness live by the whims and patterns of external fate.

This process is the same when the body dies and the soul travels to the other side of the veil.

The more self awareness, love, and letting go we achieve in a lifetime, the more choice we have on the other side. Those who live unconsciously die unconsciously and those who live consciously die consciously.

Nature is being nature here as life never truly dies but always transforms and changes based upon the living experience.

There is no static place called heaven or hell that you go to forever based upon the judgement of an external god. That is a story of the mind. If you believe in that myth that is your right and this blog is not for you.

Once the soul has rested and reviewed they either choose what they will do next or they are magnetized into the next lifetime by the power of their attachments, to work out their karma.

But this process is not linear. Linear time does not exist in the spirit world. We cannot literally conceptualize the vastness of the other side of the veil. A soul can exist in the spirit world and reincarnate at the same time. A soul may choose to become a spirit guide and stick around the earth plane while also reincarnating. A soul may have several individual bodies on the earth plane and not all of them human. The variety is endless.

Communication with a soul on the other side is almost always possible if the soul is not in a deep sleep or has left this universe completely.

The deceased soul may be trying to reach you too.

A soul on the spirit plane may have a hard time contacting a soul embodied on earth because we create energetic blocks with our thoughts and feelings.

If you are still in the stage of grief where self pity, depression, anger, bartering, feeling abandoned or betrayed are still active stories and feelings, it will be hard for the soul to make contact. These dense feelings and stories are like a thick wall for the soul on the other side. This is not always the case because anything is possible and no judgement for being in whatever stage of grief you are in for however long you are in it.

Acceptance is a process of grief with its own sense of timing and all of our feelings are valid.

Souls on the other side often make contact through scent, electronics, and dreams.

We used to get the strong scent of cigarette smoke when Grandma would visit. Toward the end of my mom’s human life we smelled it a lot. My mother expressed fearing Grandma was coming to escort her into death (even though she was also ready to go).

Death is such a huge transformation from the human perspective because we’ve lost our memory of the connectedness and infinite continuation of soul life. This makes letting go really hard and scary for both the dying and the living.

Electronics may reveal a visit from a loved one. My father has received calls twice on his house phone from his own cell phone. He still has my mother’s cell phone active on his plan. This could very likely be a visit from his wife. I know it is a visit. But usually we doubt because we are conditioned to need more proof externally to tell us what is really occurring.

Dreams may be easier to trust if the soul visits clear and strong but often the dreams don’t come or are strange and muddled. It all depends on the deceased soul’s ability to enter a dream as well as living dreamer’s openness. Both souls still have a relationship ongoing where communicating is a skill to learn.

We are not conditioned in culture to understand the continuation of the soul as a natural process of existence because religious dogma has turned the cycles of nature (nature is spirit) into a mental spiritual belief system. Science as the polar opposite narrow extreme has discredited life beyond the five senses because it cannot be measured empirically.

Truth cannot go away because belief systems try to sway the human mind away from it.

To contact a loved one on the other side you want to train yourself.

The first step is learning how to still the body, detach self from the thoughts and feelings, and begin to go within to develop the intuition and imagination.

This needs to be a practice. Just hoping you suddenly can be skilled at contacting the other side is the same as expecting to lift a fifty pound dumb bell when you have never lifted weights in your life and your arms are weak. Skill is the key, not how evolved or awake you are.

To develop the intuition and imagination it would be a good beginning to meditate for five minutes twice a day and also to spend time taking journeys within. The meditation will develop your ability to detach from thoughts and feelings so you can let go and travel. Taking regular journeys within will build your concentration, focus and imagination. This is how to meet your loved one.

You also need to learn to still the body. This prerequisite may require yoga, stretching or maybe all it takes is setting time aside to do nothing but sit and stare out the window. Don’t do, just be.

Be. Meditate. Take journeys. Be consistent about these three aspects. Practice regularly. It does not need to be hours. Five minutes of meditating. Ten minutes to take a journey. Half hour to sit and be, doing nothing.

Journeying to the other side of the veil has a basic structure to it. First, you relax the body completely by focusing on breath and scanning all your body parts, consciously relaxing each part.

Once relaxed, visualize yourself at the bottom of a staircase and walk up the steps slowly, noticing what the steps to the other side of the veil or upper world look like, feel like, smell like and any other details. Trust what your imagination shows you.

When you arrive at the top you will find yourself in the upper world sanctuary that appears before you. Trust what you see. This is a big aspect to learning how to journey. Trust what you see without question. After you have taken a few minutes to explore your upper world sanctuary, paying close attention to all you see, touch, smell, taste, and feel….call the loved in to enter.

They will appear. If they do not appear, they are resting or busy and the time is not right. If they do appear, allow the connection, dialogue or whatever is meant to happen….happen.

If you are not able to focus enough to journey, work on stilling the body and meditating. You will get there.

After six months of grieving my mother, I came to a deeper acceptance of her death and of my dad’s fate to be left alone. I was ready to journey and begin a regular practice.

In my imagination she shows me an image of her that is easy for me to connect with. Souls will appear how it is best for you to see them.

In my first vision, she let me know she is done with her life review and that she exploring much more of the universe than she ever knew existed. When I asked her about the details of my life she gave me a big message. She said each lifetime is so short in the scope of the vastness of the soul, that it truly does not matter if we get what we want, find success, fail, lose, or never get what we want and suffer as a result. She said that the point of each life is the experience itself and not how this or that it was (good or bad, mistake or success, etc).

Vivian was filled with bliss and joy as she shared this message with me. I felt my mother’s bliss palpably and I was filled with joy too. I received her message on a feeling level that changed me instantly, freeing me of some of my karma and helping me see the fear I was carrying. Powerful!

I share a bit of my own tale to model what this process looks like and know that I am very skilled at connecting with the other side and I have always had a natural inclination that’s made it easier. Don’t compare yourself.

If you practice, you will get more tuned in at the pace that is right for you. I long to be at the level of a practiced medium but it’s not my time for that yet and I trust the timing. The pace is important and your loved ones are available for you no matter what your skill level.

In another vision my mom said she has chosen to become a spirit guide. She is very busy learning and exploring as a result and she shared that we need to call to her if we want a visit from her. Mom said she will visit whenever we call. I was comforted and I felt immense happiness for her liberation.

I make journeying to visit my mom a regular ending to my yoga/mediation practice most mornings now. Repetition increases lucidity and strength. I also enjoy getting the tea on what she is up to.

In the last journey we shared almost no words. It was a visually intense and rich experience. My mother opened her mouth and thousands of turquoise butterflies came flying out. I was enthralled and found I could receive the message better through the image than with words.

Don’t want to share any more from my journeys as it is too personal but I want to demonstrate how journeys can shift from day to day. Anything is possible in a journey.

You may meet other loved ones or spirit guides. You may meet yourself on the other side! Remember, time is not linear over there so as we live in the body on earth we also live on the other side. It’s a trip for the logical mind to grasp which is why we need visuals and journeying to truly connect.

Vanquishing doubt and building the skills of trust, body stillness, focused imagination, detachment from the thoughts and feelings is the process. It may also be a process to learn how to play and be the magical child when journeying.

You can connect with your loved ones on the other side of the veil through intention, dedication, and practice if you so desire. It is your birthright.