Crossed Over Loved Ones, Helping Us to Heal

Grief is such a funny thing—just when you think you’re mostly healed or you have a handle on it, it sneaks up on you—catching you off guard. It can be triggered by the smallest of things. Things that didn’t bother you last week, but now for some reason do today. 

You may be moving through your everyday routine and all of a sudden tumble into an empty space where they used to be. Or perhaps you’re de-cluttering and you come across a note from them. You may even smell their perfume or their pipe smoke. Or maybe you catch a glimpse of them in someone else or a flash out of the corner of your eye and, for a moment, it makes your breath catch in your chest— and then the moment is gone. That one moment opens up the grief, pain rushing to the top and the tears flow.

But what if these moments, where we catch our breath and feel it fresh all over again—were actually healing from our loved ones? The pipe smoke, the perfume, the flash—what if these were messages sent from our crossed over loved one to help us continue our healing journey?

I believe that the moments when we are cracked open unexpectedly are moments that are sent from our loved ones to help us unmoor—to get us unstuck in our grief. The sign or message we see allows us to access the next level of our grief, the next phase of processing. It makes us slow down for a moment and acknowledge that grief is an unfolding. There isn’t an end to it, but it does change and transform into a form of love so pure that it makes our heart stop. The grief is a conduit for gratitude and, if we let it, a path of connection to the Divine in everything.