In my daily work with clients, I’ve heard hundreds of stories about grieving people finding an object that they believe is a sign from their departed loved one. These experiences are always very healing for the grieving person—a moment that helps them understand that their loved one lives on and watches over them.
Found Objects
On Valentine’s Day, seven months after my husband Paul died, I was going through a filing cabinet, looking for financial information to prepare my taxes, when I discovered a chocolate Valentine heart with a ribbon wrapped around it and a note from Paul wishing me, Happy Valentine’s Day. It stunned me to find it.
As I sat on the floor, crying and amazed to be holding a Valentine’s gift from my dead husband on Valentine’s Day, I remembered that one year ago, Paul had said he couldn’t find a little Valentine’s gift he’d bought me. He was frustrated that he couldn’t remember where he’d put it. One year later, seven months after his death, he nudged me to find it where he’d left it. He helped me find it exactly on Valentine’s Day.
These impossible events are not coincidences. They’re our loved ones reaching out to help us heal and to show us that we’re not alone.
Take a moment to reflect on when this may have happened in your life. Do you remember finding something that you knew in your heart was a gift from your departed? Honor them by acknowledging you received it and knew it was from them. Say, “Thank you, I recognize your divine presence in my life.”
Signs in Nature
When your loved one crosses over, they’ll often manifest signs in nature to let you know that they’re still watching over you. Yet we frequently dismiss these signs as meaningless. How frustrating this must be to our loved ones on the other side! They reach out to comfort us and we dismiss it as coincidence.
When Paul and I were falling in love, he gave me a beautiful silver necklace and matching earrings with a jade moon and star pendant. The necklace pendant and each earring featured a crescent moon with a star in the middle of the crescent. He told me that he was the moon and I was his shining star. This became the symbol of our love, and I wore the necklace every day. Many times during our relationship, he whispered to me, “You’re my shining star.”
Three days after his death on July 13, we held an outdoor memorial service in our backyard. It was a clear beautiful summer evening in the mountains. A group of about thirty friends sat in a large circle, sharing Paul stories.
In the middle of this heartfelt evening, a friend nudged me to look up at the sky. Directly above us was the crescent moon with a bright star (Jupiter) in the middle of the crescent—exactly reflecting the image in the pendant Paul had given me, which I was wearing that evening. I shared this uncanny sign with our friends and passed around my necklace for everyone to see. The pendant was duplicated in the sky above our heads.
We all felt a rush of energy and knew that Paul was with us. It was a healing moment for everyone in the group—a sense of his presence and a sign of divine order in action. Later I learned that the sky configuration with Jupiter nestled inside the crescent moon rarely occurs.
I don’t believe in coincidences. Imagine how many factors were in motion to line up that exact astronomical configuration (which had always symbolized our relationship) on the night I would be sitting outside, mourning his loss with my friends at his memorial service. Divine order is so much greater than we can imagine.
Because our culture highly values our left brain and its linear, logical thought processes, we learn early in childhood that this is the important piece of the brain to develop—starting with words and language. We slowly learn to dismiss the right-brain impressions, visions, intuitions, and dreams that come to us so naturally in our early years.
As a result, by the time we’ve reached adulthood, many of us are no longer even aware that we’re receiving information from the right brain. We’ve developed such a habit of giving priority to our left-brain linear thinking that we’ve silenced our intuition. Yet our departed loved ones speak to us through these right brain impressions, gut feelings, dreams, and images that we so easily dismiss.
It's healing to listen to the whispers of your departed loved ones—and embrace what your higher self knows to be true. The benefits of shifting into this right brain consciousness are enormous—especially when you’re lost in the pain of grief. Whenever we tap into our right-brain consciousness through meditation, getting quiet, and shutting down the mental chatter, we feel our connection to the divine. This process opens the door for our departed to comfort and guide us.
