Life After Death

I know what miracles are. I know because I see them happen every day—and because some of them happen to me. I guess you could say that I’m proof, or my life is proof, or, for that matter, my very existence, is proof. There have been so many miracles in my life that choosing just one to write about and calling it the “biggest” would be like loving one of my children more than the other.

I loved my husband, Randy Michael Connolly, until death did us part. So much so that it felt as if I’d died with him. By the time December 2013 rolled around, I’d been praying for my own death for a little over a year, although I still hadn’t conjured the nerve to take my own life, and realized I might never find that nerve, no matter how devastated I was. The only thing that could possibly keep me going, I determined, was a miracle.

I wanted, I needed, some kind of concrete, measurable evidence that he was still with me, just as he’d promised he’d be as he was dying.

Night after night of crying myself to sleep had mitigated neither my desperation nor my depression. Nor had knowing that there were people around me who were hearing Randy, in spirit form, clearly and irrefutably. Sure, I appreciated their loving messages, as indirect as they were. But what about me? I was his wife, dammit. Didn’t I deserve to hear those messages straight from the source?

Then, one night, a night like all the rest where I’d passed out after hours of tossing and turning and abject anguish (I don’t profess to be one of the stoic ones), I was awakened at 3 am by a loud—booming—voice that said, “Get out your pen and get writing. We’re going to write a book.”

I can’t tell you why and I can’t tell you how, but I knew in every cell of my being that this disembodied vocalization belonged to my husband (and not only because I was alone in the house). What I did not realize was that the result of this mandate, and the ensuing half hour of notebook scribblings, would be the basis for our first “ghostwritten” book together, Crossing the Rubicon: Love Poems Past the Point of No Return.

You might think I’m going to say the miracle was that Randy, in spirit form, woke me up and downloaded a book of poems, along with an almost instant comprehension and precisely worded description about how to form a new relationship with your loved one after death, and how to write about it so others would understand and benefit.

You might think it was that since that night I’ve been able to communicate with Randy, and the dead brother of manicurist, and the dead wife of my father’s best friend, and many other spirit beings who so much want to communicate with their own loved ones.

Either way, you’d be right.

But, honestly? The most profound and shocking miracle is that without the gift of Randy’s dying, I would never have discovered, or perhaps I should say uncovered, the brilliant conscious creation practice that has become my way of life.

A celestial life.

Is it possible to recognize a miracle—a blessing, even—while you feel you’re being ripped to shreds? When your soul can’t see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel even if it were wrapped in the glow of every star in the sky? When your heart is gasping for breath in order to survive one more minute, one more hour, one more day?

My answer?

• BRD–Before Randy’s Death: Absolutely not.
• ARD–After Randy’s Death: Absolutely. Even if you’re in the throes of agony. Because once your anguish has been imbued with conscious awareness, the frequency of unconditional love, the vibration of truth, and the resonance of wisdom, nothing is ever the same again.

For me, on that night, even as I wrote in the dark, sobbing over the pages of an old lined notebook, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, fear, grief, and the sense that I had been abandoned to fend for myself in a world I could no longer make sense of, I was concomitantly aware that I was feeling something I’d never felt before.

Even in that state of complete overwhelm, I knew I was experiencing something so enormous, so rock-me-to-the-core powerful, that while I couldn’t name it at the time, I could feel it blooming inside me, as evidential as the scar on the inside of my thigh, the one I’d gotten in a motorcycle mishap in high school. It seemed as if I’d always had this thing that was burgeoning—always known it, always felt it—but would never again fail to recognize it and cherish it.

The wave of unconditional love that flowed through me arrived in the form of complete phrases and rhymes and prose: an unabridged conversation. It arose in the vibration of truth, through the voice of my dead husband. It emerged in the resonance of wisdom, as a new kind of knowledge I was being invited to believe in, accept, and share. It emanated with the awareness that, even as I wept and the lead in my pencil dwindled to a stub, I would never be the same again.

Turns out, it’s true.

Because nothing has been the same since that night.

I no longer have any need to pretend that I have it all under control, or that life makes sense. I don’t and it doesn’t. Which is precisely what makes miracles so…miraculous.

I now understand that all our attempts to control, fix, cajole, maneuver, manipulate, push, and pray are nothing more than miracle-blockers. When viewed through the lens of retrospection, miracles are the fruit of faith, not force.

When I met Randy after my first 40 years on the planet, I knew that was a miracle. The circumstances were too bizarre, too completely without precedent. We agreed that we were two of the truly fortunate ones. We’d prayed for a miracle. We’d gotten it. End of story.

Then he died.

Which compelled to ask, What does that say about our supposed miracle? Was I wrong? Were we wrong? Was this some kind of a joke, a faux miracle? Had I been deceived? If God wanted me to be happy, why take away the one person who made me happy?

Could something that once looked like a miracle of light and love turn into something so sinister and dark, something so obviously not miraculous?

I did not know the answer then. But these questions are what goaded me on, deep into realms that I’d never previously tapped. I explored karma, life after “death,” past lives, meditation, and conscious creation. I acquiesced into what has been so aptly called the dark night of the soul. I allowed myself to be held by those who’d had similar experiences and encouraged me to believe that I would come out the other side…whole again.

I eventually learned that my sensitivity was simply code for being an HSP, a Highly Sensitive Person, and medium for the spirit world, and that tapping into that ability would prepare me for becoming a facilitator for other HSPs.

Finally, ultimately, I learned that miracles are in the eye of the beholder, like these:

1. I contracted with Randy and agreed to be his partner in this lifetime to help him learn that someone (me) could and would love him unconditionally—a lesson that allowed him to cross over knowing he’d achieved his spiritual goal.
2. Randy is now helping me learn, from across the veil, that having trust and faith in what you can’t see is the means by which we can influence the energetic force that determines our ongoing lives.
3. Questioning every core belief you once held deepens your understanding that the spirit world is always communicating with us, and that it’s simply up to us to learn how to listen. For me, this has meant having the ability to share such insights with others.

The biggest miracle of all, you ask?

That’s easy.

There is life after death. On both sides of the veil.

* * * *

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The post Death and Grief and the Highly Sensitive Person first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.

I have noticed a distinct uptick in my clientele of people in the healing professions. From nurses in oncology units to physical therapists to massage therapists and, yes, even psychologists, we’re all looking for new ways to address old situations.

We’ve come a long way, baby 

Sure, we’ve come a long way. From Freud and Jung into a world of past life regressions and–for some courageous souls—things like Ayahuasca and mushrooms. The old methods are fine, at least for some things. It can be incredibly useful, for example, to backtrack through time to explore and assess why you are the way you are; why you became what you have become; why you feel the way you feel, etc. It’s just that there’s very little guarantee that all that exploration will ultimately guide you toward a significantly improved, i.e., happier, life. As I am the first to say, therapy can be fantastic. It was for me when I was in the midst of the crises that comprised my life, although, truthfully? It seemed like my life was one, long never-ending crisis. And, at that time, it was terrifying to think of seeking out therapy because society, at least the society I knew and of which I was a part, frowned on it so much.

“See a therapist? You’d have to be crazy!”

“We keep our private business to ourselves,” said my parents always told me. “You should be able to figure out what you need to figure out on your own. You have to learn to leave all this emotional crap (my word) behind.” “Shrinks are for crazy people,” said friends. “You’ll be labeled nuts forever.” The shame associated with seeking out help was crushing. The only thing that changed was my level of desperation, which ultimately led me to some wonderfully talented social workers, psychologists, and hypnotherapists, all of them helpful in their own ways and sharing their various perspectives. I believe my experiences with these people who give themselves to the art of healing had a great influence on the ultimate trajectory of my life.

What I did not understand was how many of us who are sensitives and end up in healing professions also end up losing ourselves while healing others. I am the perfect example of someone who naturally—intuitively—understands how people feel, which inspired me to help them. I had so much innate compassion and respect for their pain that I studied psych in school and started a master’s degree in social worker. The problem was that I felt so much of what people felt that I was a wreck myself. I had no way to distance myself from the pain unless I turned off my compassion, empathy, and sympathy. In other words, my high sensitivity . . . my HSP-ness.

Intuition as the gateway to healing

When you believe your intuition (what I call your IGS or Intuitive Guidance System) guides you in your healing practice, you are usually willing, no matter the repercussions, to take on whatever pain comes your way. I know physical therapists who receive information about where their client’s need attention in their bodies by feeling that same pain or discomfort in their own bodies. Unfortunately, such a practice cannot be endured forever. Before long the practitioner is experiencing their own pain. They have become conductors of the patient’s condition without being able to let it go.

I advocate a different approach. It’s not about letting the condition in and then having to let it go, but about receiving the information about it without taking it in in the first place. It’s the good old, never-fail technique again, the Psychic Octopus.

Staying aligned in your own energy does not preclude accessing the intuitive hits you want to help your clients. All it does is keep you from feeling what they are feeling in your own body, mind, and spirit.

It’s a win-win all the way around.

The post HSPs feel everybody’s else’s stuff–So why do are we healers? first appeared on Elevate Your HSP-ness!.