Dear Soul Arcanum:
My husband of six years passed away two years ago after a long battle with cancer. I have been blessed with sensing his presence at times, and with truly believing he is free from suffering and I will see him again someday. Nevertheless, I can’t seem to move on. Maybe I’m just not sure where to go from here. I’m in my mid-thirties, we had no children together, and I have a satisfying career. Despite all the good things in my life, it feels like I’ve already had the best love had to offer me. I would appreciate any advice you could give me.
– Brenda
Dear Brenda:
I’d like to share a personal experience with you.
When I was a young woman, my first love died very suddenly. There are many amazing spiritual stories surrounding that event, but there is one in particular that is relevant here.
A few days after Todd died, I awoke in the middle of the night in a panic. I was burning up with heat and gasping for breath, and as I opened my eyes, I could see the room was filled with smoke. Assuming the house was on fire, and I catapulted out of bed and flew across the hall, where I pounded on my parents’ door yelling, “Fire! Fire!”
My father was at the door in a flash with a fire extinguisher in his hand, shouting, “Where? Where?” As I turned and looked back into my room, the smoke was gone. There was nothing there. Speechless, I mumbled something like, “It was there, I swear…”
For three nights in a row I was awakened the same way. The second night I actually repeated my frantic scramble for help. (My father did NOT make it to the door nearly as quickly that time). The third night I forced myself to sit still in bed, and as I did so, the smoke dissipated before my eyes.
Many years later, I am now married to the love of my life. I don’t have room here to go into all the incredible details of how we found each other, but it was definitely preordained. The important thing to note is that I have found even greater love than I lost long ago – and with a firefighter. It took me nearly 20 years to figure out those “fire” experiences in the night, but I now believe that Todd was trying to give me a sign that I would find true love again, and how it would come to me.
When our grief over someone’s passing has subsided but we still feel empty, I believe we are wise to focus on just what Todd was trying to shift my attention to: all the people we have yet to meet whom we already love so well. We must remember that just as death is inevitable, life is ever leading us back to people we have loved in other lives. The cure for your emptiness is deciding to reconnect with these kindred spirits.
Also, while I believe that grief is totally natural, I think we have developed some unhealthy ways of dealing with it. Some people, for example, assume that the devastation they feel when someone dies must indicate that death is indeed a horrible and final end.
As I see it, grief is a natural response to the end of anything we have loved well. It’s normal to be sad when we are leaving some person, place or era that has held a lot of happiness for us. Ironically, it’s my understanding that many souls feel some grief about leaving the spirit world to incarnate here on Earth, which makes our grief over doing the reverse seem a bit overblown. It’s focusing on the past that causes us pain; at some point, it only makes sense to shift our attention to all the possibilities on the horizon.
Every time someone we love departs our experience, it creates room in our lives for someone else who is just as special. Too often people feel that they are somehow betraying a departed loved one by loving someone else. I say that by holding themselves back from new love, they may betray someone they have loved just as deeply in another life, whom they have yet to meet again in this one. Just think: what if you had met someone else prior to meeting your husband, and when that person died, you closed yourself off from new love?
Romance aside, there are many people you have loved in other lives who are waiting to love you again, and I think you owe it to all of those loved ones to stay open to creating new happiness with them. For example, I have done readings for parents who had lost a child, and to whom that same soul had already returned in the form a new baby. It often takes such parents years to recognize the departed child in the younger sibling. Eventually when the child begins to talk, however, they will do things or say things evidential of their true identity. Some children will even refer to the “last time” they were here, before they died in some manner, when they were so and so, etc. Then those parents realize that they have spent years grieving for a child who was sitting right beside them!
I have similarly read for number of widows and widowers who say that they will never fall in love again, and been shown an even greater love for them in the future. This is always a love that already exists, and usually it is with someone they have loved even more deeply and truly than the person they say they will never get over. I think it’s exciting to know that for each one of us, there are many people out there whom we have been missing on an unconscious level and have yet to meet up with again in this lifetime.
While big reunions between souls are often destined to happen at certain junctures, there are some things you can do to reconnect with as many people you’ve loved in other lives as possible. Here are a few:
- Act on your impulses to go certain places and speak to certain people.
- Stay open to meeting new people and letting them get close to you.
- Call or contact people who frequently come to mind, for often these are relationships you are being guided to pursue.
- Accept invitations from strangers you feel drawn to.
- Honor your hunches and feelings about seemingly unrelated matters, such as which job you will take and where you will live. Often we are led to meet important people through such decisions.
Here are a few signs that you’re in the presence of someone you have loved before:
- You have a very strange feeling, or it seems like time stands still when you first meet them.
- They seem vaguely familiar or you feel unusually drawn to them.
- The way you meet is surrounded by lots of synchronicity, like you were guided or destined to find each other.
- You can see certain turning points or incidents in the past that are strongly connected to this meeting or to this person. For example, my ex-husband said that for his entire life, he’d had a picture in his mind of his “ideal girl.” He thought this was just a fantasy until he met me and discovered that the girl with that face actually existed.
- Other people in your life are strongly connected to someone you feel an instant sense of kinship with. For example, if you have a strong feeling of familiarity upon meeting your brother’s fiance, it could mean that you’re GOING to know her in the future, but it could also mean you’ve known and loved her in another life. Since we reincarnate in soul groups, it’s common for there to be strong connections between your loved ones.
- This relationship seems to have a life of its own – it just happens.
As I see it, my friend, the future is rich with exciting opportunities to love again. Please do remember that the karmic bond you feel to people from past lives is no more special just because it began in another time and place. As a very wise song goes, if you can’t be with the one you love, then love the one you’re with. You could create the most magnificent relationship EVER with someone you meet for the first time today.
– Soul Arcanum
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