What happens after the body stops working? The soul continues experiencing life and evolving from those experiences. I’ve enjoyed many opportunities to connect family members on both sides of the veil. Those who have crossed repeatedly show us that they are still very much involved in their family’s lives.
I fondly recall receiving an email from a woman who learned that I would be speaking at a conference in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She inquired if it would be possible to meet with me in person at that time to connect with family members who had passed. I noticed that she did not provide her full name and her email address appeared to be a temporary one. I smiled at her efforts to remain anonymous.
In my memoir, Messages of Hope, I describe the skepticism that led me to conceal my identity the first time I took my husband to see a medium. I wanted so badly to know that my stepdaughter, Susan, still existed after the death of her physical body from a lightning strike. As a retired U.S. Navy Commander and former aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I wasn’t about to let anyone fool me with nebulous messages from an alleged spirit world. Only verifiable evidence would convince me that Susan was present with us.
Happily, the evidence that medium provided convinced us that our beloved Susan was as close as our thoughts. I had no choice but to adjust my worldview to include a reality beyond that which we perceive with the physical senses. Once I expanded my beliefs, I began to experience adventures in consciousness that had previously been beyond my reach. These weren’t fanciful dreams, but experiences laced with unknown information that I was later able to verify.
I discovered my own ability to connect quite clearly with those who had passed and began helping others to find the same kind of healing that resulted from our meeting with a medium. In doing so, I encountered skeptics just like I had been. One of my favorite stories from Messages of Hope involved a woman whose mother and father appeared from the spirit world during a private session with me. Her father told me, “I worked 9 to 5, like a banker.” Sure enough, the woman confirmed, daddy had been a banker.
Imagine my surprise to encounter that same banker and his wife when sitting with a new client a short while later. I learned afterwards that I had been set up by the first woman, who had sent her sister to me anonymously to see if their parents would come through again. When the banker and his wife unexpectedly appeared in a third reading that same year with yet another anonymous sister, I didn’t mind the subterfuge. Could there be any better way to show that family ties remain unsevered despite the transition we call death?
The experience with the three sisters was far from my mind when I greeted my sitter in the North Carolina hotel room. She appeared to be about thirty years old and quite tight-lipped. Trying to put her at ease with small-talk, I asked if she had traveled to North Carolina for the conference. She replied that she had come only for our session and that she had stayed in another hotel the night before. I mentally sent up a prayer that her efforts would be well rewarded with a strong connection with the loved ones she hoped to hear from.
As soon as the session began, I sensed a male presence and heard the words “Daddy Dearest.” When I related that this fatherly figure felt very happy to see her and that he was giving her a big hug, my client laughed with restrained pleasure. I could clearly feel the man’s pride in his daughter. He indicated that I should talk about a connection with North Carolina’s “Research Triangle” and mention the word “professor.”
To my surprise and delight, my young sitter stated that she was a professor and had graduated from one of the universities in the famous Research Triangle. With this wonderful validation of her father’s presence, we were off and running!
Next, Dad said as clear as day, “Mom is here.” I reported this verbatim to my sitter and I said in surprise, “Is your mother on the other side?” I should have checked to see if I felt a motherly presence with us, but I couldn’t help but think that she was awfully young to have both parents across the veil. When she stated that her mother was alive, I responded, “So maybe your father is talking about his own mother,” but I sensed no one present other than the man with whom I was conversing.
The young woman shook her head. I was puzzled because his words had been so clear, so I asked, “Then why would he say, ‘Mom is here?’”
She replied, “Well, my mom is here.”
“You mean here, in the hotel?” I asked.
“Well,” the professor replied, “she’s actually sitting outside in the car.”
I laughed with delight and explained that her father’s statement showed he knew that his wife had come with his daughter. I asked if she might like to join us. This was, after all, Mom’s deceased husband we were talking with.
I was caught completely off guard when my client informed me that her mother had already had a reading with me. My first reaction was to ask, “Who’s your mother?” but instead, I recognized a great opportunity to show this family the reality of their loved one’s ongoing presence in their lives. Surely this man had come through during his wife’s session. It would be much more fun to ask him to reveal his wife’s identity to me.
I have connected with thousands of souls across the veil, so the woman could have been one of many grieving widows anywhere in the world. Yet, as soon as I asked this man in the spirit world to remind me of the last time we communicated, he showed me a sitting I recalled with great clarity.
In my mind’s eye I saw myself sitting in my RV two years earlier across from a woman and her daughter who had attended one of my workshops. We communicated by email several times in the ensuing months as she celebrated the validations her husband gave us during the sitting. I recalled that the man had shown me his pride in his two daughters, not just the one who accompanied her mother to the initial sitting.
I rarely remember the names of my sitters after a session, but her husband brought it directly into my conscious awareness. “You’re Tammy Parker’s daughter?!” I blurted out, amazed at the clarity.
Looking quite stunned, the young woman sitting across from me silently nodded her head.
She had withheld her last name from me and changed her email address, yet she could not hide her identity from daddy dearest.
“Get your mother up here!” I ordered playfully, adding, “but only if you want her here.”
I could feel Dad’s energy hanging around as my sitter placed a call on her cell phone and we pulled in an extra chair from the hallway. I hugged Tammy when she walked in the door, and gently teased them about not telling me what they were up to.
“She’s a scientist,” Mom stated sheepishly. “She needed proof.”
Minutes later when we resumed the conversation with Dad, he showed me the image of several insects under a magnifying glass, prompting me to talk about biology, which turned out to be his daughter’s specialty. He reminded me of how he used to love to play basketball with his daughters, and I noticed both women tearing up.
Having given the proof they needed to know that he was present, Dad showed me the current family dynamics. He indicated that his wife was grieving more in the 2nd year of his passing than she had in the first. She validated this fact, and he then provided a series of wise and comforting messages that focused on how they could move forward together.
He alternated his messages with verifiable pieces of evidence to show that the loving words were not merely platitudes from me. “He’s showing me that you recently cut yourself,” I said to Tammy, “and you had to put a band aid on the wound.”
She blinked in surprise and rolled up her pants leg to reveal the band aid. “I did it shaving this morning!”
“Of course, he knows about this,” I said, taking the opportunity to educate both women that our loved ones across the veil remain aware of our every-day activities. Mother and daughter gazed at each other with wonder.
Dad went on to confirm his presence with inside jokes and stories that only he and his family would know. The evidence was more than enough to convince the skeptical scientist that her mother and sister had not been hoodwinked the previous year when they’d sat with me.
At the end of a teary, love-filled session, we laughed again at how mother and daughter had set me up. They assured me that it hadn’t really been a test. If not, then the set-up came from the other side. The family’s patriarch had clearly known his wife needed the reading more than his daughter, and he had cleverly orchestrated this beautiful three-way reunion to comfort all of them.
The messages of hope never end from those in the spirit world, for the two worlds are not separate at all, but part of one continuum of consciousness. The veil is parted easier than most are aware, for it exists merely as the result of our lack of awareness of our true nature as souls. The illusion of separation begins to lift when we allow ourselves to believe in the existence of a reality beyond this physical world. Once it does, we move from hope to full awareness that those who pass are not “dead and gone,” but still right here, for at the level of pure Consciousness, there is only “here.”