Signs Yr Loved Ones Contacting You From Other Side (Death)

Signs Your Loved Ones Might Be Trying to Contact You (From the Other Side)

By Rebecca Rosen

Illustration: Luciano Lozano

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The author of What the Dead Have Taught Me About Living Well explains how spiritual mediums identify the presence of departed friends and family. Although some indicators may sound a little weird, as the author says, "signs from the Other Side often increase in frequency and size when they are focused on and acknowledged."

1. Dimes: Spirit can inspire coins to appear in random and unusual places as a way to get our attention—often as a message of prosperity or to encourage you to value your worth. Because coins, especially pennies, are often found lying around in the home, at the bottom of your purse, or in the subway or train station, it may be hard to distinguish between spiritual intervention and chance circumstance. So, when you find coins, pay attention to patterns that consistently reappear. Do you typically find dimes? Do you often find a penny and a nickel together? Does the date on the coin hold any meaning for you?

2. The family dog: Similar to children, animals easily pick up on the departed because they're highly sensitive creatures. When your pets look like they're watching an invisible fly move around the room; when they whimper or growl in a certain direction but at nothing in particular; when they act as if they're playing with someone, running in circles, jumping all over the place or swatting the air—they may be recognizing spirits. Sure, a lot of times animals just behave this way. But when unusual behavior is accompanied by a request for spiritual intervention, it's very possible your departed loved ones or guides have answered your call.

3. The smell of cigarettes: Have you ever noticed a strong odor or fragrance in the air around you, with no indication of where it was coming from? This could be your departed loved ones manifesting a specific scent that you associated with them in life, to let you know they are still with you. It might be a perfume, cologne, cigarette odor, the smell of certain foods, or any other distinguishable and unique scent.

4. Blown lightbulbs: It's easy for spirits to manipulate electricity and cross wires, so to speak, because both spirits and electricity are forms of energy that vibrate at a high frequency and are highly charged. Look for lights flickering in the house, lightbulbs blowing out or disturbance with television sets, radios, appliances and computers. These are all typical spirit moves, and often just their way of saying hello.

5. Toddlers: Have you ever noticed that kids can say the most insightful things—wise beyond their years—at just the right time? Young children often serve as little messengers for our departed loved ones and spirit guides. The departed connect easily with children because they live in the present moment and are much more dialed in to their intuitive senses. They feel and sense the presence of Spiritand will relay messages from beyond without judgment or question.

6. Love songs: Your departed loved ones and guides may communicate with you through a song title or lyric that reminds you of them at the exact time you are thinking about them. They may also try and provide you with clarity and guidance through a series of songs with a resounding theme or message that answers a question you have about a particular situation.

7. Last night's dream: Spirits like to communicate with us in this altered mental state because our thinking mind is turned down and our intuitive knowing is turned up. When we're visited by the departed and our guides in our dreams, we're often left with lasting impressions and insights that help direct us forward in our waking life.

8. Billboards: Sometimes the departed and your guides will use literal signs to capture your attention. These "signs"—billboards, advertisements, street names, shop signs and flyers—generally address a specific question you want an answer to. Signage is everywhere, so it's up to you to discern the difference between messages that are inspired or insignificant. This is one of the instances where you really need to trust that you will know it when you see it.

9. Formations in the sky: Rainbows are my personal sign for the Other Side, and they are a common symbol of divine love. If you ask your departed loved ones or guides for assistance and a rainbow appears shortly after that, remember that you are connected to divine love within you, as you, and that you're never alone.

Setting the intention to be open to the signs is your best strategy for noticing them. While they may feel small and easy to dismiss at first, signs from the Other Side often increase in frequency and size when they are focused on and acknowledged.

This adapted excerpt is printed from What the Dead Have Taught Me About Living Well, by Rebecca Rosen. Copyright © 2017 by Rebecca Rosen Enterprises. By permission of Rodale Books.

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/inspiration/signs-your-loved-ones-might-be-trying-to-contact-you#ixzz4vmvVKlsZ

http://www.oprah.com/inspiration/signs-your-loved-ones-might-be-trying-to-contact-you

What Happens the Moment After We Die - Oprah.com/B.J. Miller

Oprah.com - Click on hyperlinks to read :

 

 

What Happens the Moment After We Die

 

Palliative care specialist Dr. B.J. Miller describes the sacred and unknowable moment after a person's death.

 

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5 Things Dying People Want You to Know

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The Unexpected Advice That Helped Sheryl Sandberg Cope with Grief

What Happens When We Die, Cross Over & What Do We Need - Oprah.com

Oprah.com:

January 16, 2017 What Does Someone Need at the End? A hospice chaplain reveals what she's learned about supporting loved ones as they prepare to embark on their last journey. 5 things the dying want you to know What happens when we die? Spiritual teachers weigh in 5 truths about what happens when people cross over 6 ways to begin healing after an enormous loss Heartening quotes to get you through hard times

What Dying People Want You To Know / Kerry Egan, "On Living"

OPRAH.com:

5 Things That People Who Are Dying Want You to Know

The hospice chaplain and author of On Living reveals what she's learned about supporting loved ones as they prepare to embark on their last journey.

By Kerry Egan

Photo: Malte Mueller/Getty Images

1. They are starved for touch.

"No one ever touches me anymore," my patient Betty said. "You can't imagine what that's like." She looked very small on her nursing home bed.

Didn't the aides touch her, I asked, when they took care of her, bathed her and helped her move?

Yes, she said, but it was different. They touched her because they had to, not because they loved her. It wasn't the same.

"I long to be held," she said, and her voice cracked and broke.

What could I do with such a deep, heartbreaking need right in front of me? What would you do? I lay next to Betty, wrapped my arms around her and kissed the top of her head, the way I do with my children when they go to sleep.

Many people who are dying are starved for touch. So ask your friend or family member whether she wants to be hugged. Put your arms around her. Hold her cheeks in your hands. If she wants you to, climb into bed.

2. They don't need to be told what to do.

There's a well-intentioned but odd piece of advice floating around out there that friends and neighbors of the dying should show up without calling first and do the laundry or clean out the refrigerator. Without asking.

People who are dying often feel like they've lost so much control over their lives already. Someone taking over your home without permission can feel like yet another loss to bear.

Yes, offer to help with chores, but don't decide you know what needs to be done. Call first to see if your friend is feeling up to having visitors that day. Set up a time so he can be ready. Ask how you can be helpful.

Dying is exhausting. If the person says he's tired, go home. And if he cancels at the last minute, know that it might be that he feels absolutely awful that day. Don't take it personally. If he says he's overwhelmed by phone calls, believe him, and send a card instead.

3. They know you are scared, but they still need you there.

People who are dying are still living. They laugh, and reminisce, and love to see the people they love. They're still who they always have been, even as they go through this new experience.

But they're often crushingly lonely. Too many times, I've heard about the children, the friends, the churches, the clubs who have stopped visiting. "She doesn't need prayers! She needs her friends!" a husband whose wife hadn't had visitors in years once cried.

I get it. I really do. I've had education and training to be a hospice chaplain, and have probably visited over a thousand people who are dying, and sometimes it's still hard for me. Sometimes, the sights and smells overwhelm me. Some people die quickly and easily, but most, at least in hospice, do not. The body struggles to hold on, and it can be really hard to witness.

Someone who's dying often looks different, sounds different, smells different and can't do the things she might have once done. Too often, these changes, and perhaps their own fears of death or saying or doing the wrong thing, make a dying person's friends and family afraid of her.

Can you imagine knowing you're leaving this world soon, needing the people you love more than you ever have in your entire life, and all of a sudden, seeing that they're afraid of you? So try. Try really hard to overcome your fear, and call or visit.

4. They might not tell you the truth about their feelings.

"Do you know why you're my favorite?" a hospice patient named Stan asked. "Because you're the only one who will pray that I die this afternoon."

Stan closed his eyes and started again on his favorite pastime: imagining his own death. The scenarios were always different, but what he imagined heaven would be like always remained the same: He'd be walking down a path in a park, and his wife would jump out from behind a tree and yell, "Boo!"

Just as she had 70 years before, on the day they met.

One of the most common things patients ask me to pray for is that they die soon. It can be a huge relief to talk openly about and pray for a quick death, because often their family and friends shush them when they try to.

On the other end of the spectrum, I've had plenty of patients whose families have assured me that their loved ones aren't afraid at all because of family beliefs. And many of those patients, as soon as the family leaves the room, break down in tears, terrified and grateful for the chance to finally talk about their soul-shaking fear.

Never assume you know anything about their spiritual life or feelings. If you want to pray with someone, ask him if he wants to first. Then, ask what he really wants to pray for. There's a good chance you'll be surprised.

5. They're willing to learn with you.

Kate, my new friend at the swimming pool, welled up when I told her I was a hospice chaplain. That didn't surprise me; it's a common reaction if someone's used hospice for their family before.

"The nurse gave us this booklet that explained what would happen as Mom died, and it all happened exactly the way the pamphlet said it would!" Kate said as tears slipped from her eyes. "It was totally accurate!" Her voice caught in her throat.

I was confused. Hospice nurses give out these booklets to comfort families, to assure them that what they are seeing and experiencing is normal. Why did it have the opposite effect? Why was Kate so upset?

"How did I not know this?" Kate continued. "How did I get to be 45 years old and not know that this is how people die? That it's so well known they can predict it? It just seems like something I should've known!"

We don't see death up close very often in our culture anymore, and most people have little or no experience navigating it, so it's normal not to know how it usually happens, and that there are steps and stages to it. Add in the fact that you might already be grieving for your loved one even before he or she is gone, and it's a recipe for confusion and regret.

It's okay that you're not an expert in dying. The person who is dying has never died before either. You can muddle through this process together.

Hospice patients are surrounded by aides, nurses, social workers and chaplains who do know what they're doing. Ask them for advice and information. Don't be ashamed of being nervous or overwhelmed. Not knowing what you're doing is not a reason to stay away.

What people who are dying really need is to be surrounded by the people who love them, even if those people have no idea what's happening. Your loving presence is the greatest thing you can offer someone. You don't need to know anything to do that.

Kerry Egan is a hospice chaplain and the author of On Living.

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From A Widow, Learning Resilience / Optimism - Modern Widows Club

Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, March 25, 2015, PERSONAL JOURNAL section, Front Page, Page D1:

TURNING POINTS

Resilience Can Be Learned

How a widow traced a long path back toward optimism

ENLARGE

After losing her husband, Carolyn Moor, center, with daughters Mackensey, left, and Meagan, right, had to learn how to be optimistic again. Now she works to help other widows. PHOTO: EDWARD LINSMIER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

By 

CLARE ANSBERRY

March 24, 2015 3:23 p.m. ET

9 COMMENTS

When life as you know it ends, then what?

It took Carolyn Moor more than seven years to figure that out.

By her own accounts, Ms. Moor had it all. She and her husband, an architect named Chad, had two little girls, their own business and a house they designed and built in Orlando. On Valentine’s Day 2000, when they were in their mid-30s, they talked over a romantic dinner about what would come next.

While they were driving home from dinner, a car struck theirs. Her husband died from injuries. In one moment, Ms. Moor’s world was upended.

“Somewhere along the way I had come to believe that life was going to be easy,” she says. “Then suddenly, you lose someone you love. You think you will never feel life again.”

ENLARGE

Carolyn Moor and her husband Chad on their wedding day. PHOTO: EDWARD LINSMIER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Everyone experiences loss and setbacks. We are diagnosed with serious illnesses and injured in accidents. We lose homes, jobs and loved ones. Yet even the most traumatized often manage—over time and with help—to slowly piece together their lives. It is a painful and rarely linear process, but it can strengthen people in unexpected ways. Many are able to transcend their hurt by providing help to others, and in doing so give direction to their waylaid lives.

Often people don’t know what they can endure until they face an unthinkable loss, says Steven Southwick, a psychiatry professor at Yale University. “Most of us are a lot more resilient than we think,” says Mr. Southwick, co-author with Dennis Charney, of “Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges.” We bend but don’t break, he says, like a green twig that bows in a gale but doesn’t snap. In spite of harsh weather and conditions, the twig grows, sometimes in a slightly different direction.

He and Mr. Charney came up with 10 traits of people who survived war, assault and disasters, as well as less traumatic events, and ultimately thrived. These people tend to be optimistic—thinking things will work out—and are able to accept what can’t be changed and focus on what can be, he says. They recognize that even though they didn’t have a choice in their loss, they are responsible for their own happiness.

ENLARGE

A chapter of the Modern Widows Club met recently at First United Methodist Church in Orlando. The Modern Widows Club has 10 chapters nationwide, with about 3,000 members. PHOTO: EDWARD LINSMIER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Although genetics plays a role in being resilient, it isn’t a huge one. Resilience can be learned and enhanced, he says. For example, people can develop a more optimistic view by cultivating friendships with positive people and challenging negative thoughts.

“When you change the way you are viewing things, it has a pretty big impact on all sorts of things,” Mr. Southwick says. It isn’t easy to do, he acknowledges.

When her husband died, Ms. Moor had no family around to help with her two daughters, ages 2 and 4, and the couple’s interior architecture and design business. She had left her childhood home near Bryant, Ark., years earlier, and Chad’s family was in Colorado. Memories of the accident haunted her. She suffered panic attacks every time she heard a siren or saw a police car, and could no longer sleep in the bedroom she had shared with Chad.

Her strong Southern Baptist roots offered little comfort. Instead, she cursed the God she had always trusted.

“I thought my allotment of happiness had been used up and that the rest of life was one of duty,” she says. She went through the motions, getting her daughters out of bed, dressing and feeding them, and volunteered at a grief group called New Hope For Kids. “I put on a good face in public,” she says. Inside, she says, she was a wreck, not sure of what to do with her life. She met other widows at the grief group but didn’t know anyone who could show her how to move forward.

“If there is no one to remind you that optimism still exists and why, it’s really easy to let it slip through your fingers,” she says.

In 2006, six years after her husband died, she met Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. At the time, Rabbi Boteach, a prominent Orthodox Jewish rabbi and self-help author, was host of “Shalom in the Home,” a reality show that aired on TLC and featured him advising struggling families. He was filming a segment on grief in Orlando, and New Hope for Kids suggested he talk to Ms. Moor, among others. She and her daughters, Mackensey and Meagan, appeared on his show, and they became friends.

WAYS TO ENHANCE OPTIMISM

When something bad happens:

• Take one day at a time. Now there may be only pain, but good things will return.
• Keep the adverse event or situation within its limits; don’t let it pervade other areas of your life.
• Notice what is good, such as acts of kindness by others.

When something good happens:

• Give yourself credit for whatever part you played in making it happen.
• Feel grateful for whatever part you didn’t play in it—the efforts of others, or just good luck.
• Get the most out of it: Think of ways to expand the scope and duration of the positive event.

Source: ‘Resilience. The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges’ By Steven M. Southwick and Dennis S. Charney

Ms. Moor remembers, in particular, one point in the show when Rabbi Boteach told her she had a choice. “You either choose life when death comes to your door or you choose something else,” she recalls him saying. It was one sentence, yet it touched her. She realized she couldn’t control what happened—fate made its move—but to some degree she could control her response.

Rabbi Boteach asked her to look at the choices she was making to see if they were the best for her and daughters. One stood out. Every year on Valentine’s Day, the anniversary of her husband’s death, she opened a memory box. Inside, along with her husband’s watch and architectural drawings, was a stained sweater that she had worn the night of the accident. It was, she reasoned, a way to honor her husband by never forgetting the pain of that day.

Doing so, though, left her—and her daughters—focused on Chad’s tragic end, rather than their happy times together.

With the show, a spate of publicity raised Ms. Moor’s profile. She appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s TV show during a segment on troubled families in which Rabbi Boteach counseled several sets of parents. Other widows began contacting her, looking to her for advice. She was overwhelmed, questioning her ability to help them and struggling with her own doubts that she had choices and deserved happiness. She was afraid of dating, fearing it would alienate her in-laws, and of selling things connected with Chad—their sports car and the house they had built. She went through five exhausting months of therapy, examining her fears and learning how to reframe her thinking.

“I had two little girls looking up to me,” she says. “I needed to find happiness and love again so they could have that in their lives.” Over time, she regained hope and began to move forward. She sold her house and bought a smaller one, giving her some added savings and security. She took her daughters on vacation to Maui and learned to surf. She began dating.

In 2010, while developing a website for her design business, she hired and befriended a young, newly widowed photographer. Over coffee at Starbucks, they decided to form the Modern Widows Club. Ms. Moor emailed local widows who had contacted her after the TV appearances, inviting them to her house on a Thursday evening.

Two showed up at that first meeting in 2011. Since then, 350 widows have attended Orlando meetings. The Modern Widows Club, a nonprofit, has grown to 10 chapters nationwide, with about 3,000 members.

They meet monthly in leaders’ homes or a local church. Leaders, all widowed at least two years, act as role models. The groups discuss their fears of being alone for the rest of their lives and practical issues about such as when to sell a house, start dating or remove a wedding ring. By seeing that others have quit jobs they hated, traveled alone and written books, they feel empowered.

Annette Vogel Little helps lead the chapter in the small town of Janesville, Wis. Ms. Little’s husband, Steve, suffered from depression and took his own life in 2005. At the time, she was 46 and their three children, ages 11, 15 and 16.

Ms. Little drew strength from her large family and her faith and, grateful for both, wanted to serve others. She volunteered at a homeless shelter but felt she would have greater impact mentoring other widows by sharing her story of what she came through and how. “I had healed enough and had enough to offer other people. I have come through a lot of losses and I’m more than OK,” says Ms. Little. “I have much more depth now.”

Searching the Internet, she found the Modern Widows website and contacted Ms. Moor about starting a chapter. Ms. Moor was struck by Ms. Little’s kindness and strength, traits she seeks in all chapter leaders. The first Janesville meeting was held in January 2014. About 20 widows ranging in age from 25 to 75 attended, some newly widowed and others widowed for more than a decade.

The widows in the group help each other realize that they can regain optimism, something that Ms. Moor spent years coming to believe. In turn and in time, they teach others. “The chain keeps going,” Ms. Moor says.

Write to Clare Ansberry at clare.ansberry@wsj.com