Dear Fellow Bereaved Parents,

Here we are again, approaching the holidays, such a difficult time for bereaved mothers and fathers. Outside of passing dates and birthdays, these holidays, with their focus on families and gift-giving, can easily unearth some of our saddest feelings of deprivation and longing: we feel deprived of our children and we long for them. This is natural and understandable and probably, to some degree inevitable, but I would like to offer another perspective here.

I firmly believe that what has been lost in the flesh can be found in the spirit, however, this cannot by done by looking out through your physical eyes into a crowd. Our children are not physical anymore so we cannot use our physical eyes to see them. Our children are spirit and so we need to look inward, into the vast and perceptive, inner screen of our imagination, which is the portal through which spirit speaks. Just think about it. In order to see something in physical reality, you need to look outward through your physical eyes. We open our eyes, we direct our awareness outward, and we see an image or many images in the physical world. In order to see something of a non-physical nature, however, we need to focus that same awareness inward, to our inner screen, where other images pass through our minds all the time.

All of our lives, we all have had thoughts and images presenting themselves to us on our inner screens of sight and sound. We all hear our own voices talking to us, and we all have a constant flow of images that flash onto our inner screens, but we have been taught to define what we see and hear as unimportant, as mere figments of our imagination. We don’t give it much credence, what we do is down-play it. But I ask you, “What do you think imagination is? What does it draw upon? Yes, of course it will draw upon our own psychological issues, however, do you believe it’s limited to that alone?

Whenever a great idea occurs to someone, whenever a new invention is envisioned, where does the idea come from? Albert Einstein understood that the imagination is far more than a bunch of silly cartoons running around in our minds. He understood that through the imagination we could tap into an enormous pool of information:

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand. — Albert Einstein

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.—Albert Einstein

Both of these quotes, from the great man himself, illustrate his deep respect for the imagination and it’s importance as a source of information.

The next question that I know some of you will want to ask me is: How can you know if what you hear is not just you, making it all up? Good question. It can be hard very hard to decipher and if you’re one of those people who likes definitive proof of everything, it becomes even harder. But the more you work with it, the easier it becomes.

Of course, I cannot write a book here, and much of this I have written about in my own book, “Lost and Found-A Mother Connects-Up With Her Son In Spirit” but I will suggest that you seek your child or children, where they dwell, which is in the realm of spirit. The good news is that we are already connected to the spirit realm, because we are also spirit. We are spirits in bodies, or spirit incarnate and the children are spirits out of bodies, or discarnate spirits, but we are all spirits. What separates us is our perception! We are on different vibratory levels, but we are all alive, aware, conscious beings.

So, instead of feeling robbed over the holidays because you can’t serve your children any turkey, focus more on sending them the gift of your love, which they can feel. You don’t have to say anything to anyone else about this, but when gifts are being given, take a minute to breathe-in and on the exhale, breathe-out your love to your child, thinking, I am sending you the gift of my love. Keep in mind that this gift is far greater than any material gift, for it is eternal and cannot be lost or destroyed. Your loved ones can feel it and they can hear your thoughts as they receive this gift of your love and energy. Realize that you still can give your child a gift, and that this is also a gift to yourself, for you will be initiating connecting-up, the one thing that can really give you back some peace and joy.

I also want you to understand that although probably no one in the room will be able to hear or see your children at the Thanksgiving table, that they like to come to these family gatherings and they are likely to be present. Below is a quote that I love, taken from the book: “Raymond, Or Life and Death,” by Sir Oliver Lodge. A renowned British scientist, Lodge was working to develop the wireless radio when he lost his son Raymond on the battlefield during the first World War. The book shares many of the communications that Lodge had with his son through mediums.

Father, tell mother she has her son with her all day on Christmas Day. There will be thousands of us back in the homes on that day, but the horrid part is that so many of the fellows don’t get welcomed. Please keep a place for me. I must go now. Bless you again, father. Raymond

Keep in mind that what we find so frustrating is that we still want to see them with physical eyes and hear them with physical ears, because that is what we have been taught to believe in, and have come to trust. But, that, my dear friends, is the impermanent part: the part that you cannot hold on to. Doesn’t it make more sense to develop our inner eyes and inner ears so that we can be in relationship to that which is eternal? Well, I certainly believe it is the only way for me to live, now that Danny is no longer in his body.

For those of you who want more help with connecting-up, I refer you to the guided meditations that I have posted for you at The Prayer Site: https://theprayersite.wordpress.com/. There is one in the form of a short prayer for the children. The two others, located just below the written prayer, will help you by guiding you through simple meditation and healing techniques, leading into sending and receiving energy from spirit.

Why not give yourselves a gift for the holidays—the gift of taking a few minutes a day to initiate connecting-up with your loved one! Keep in mind that there are other ways to perceive reality besides the 5 physical senses! If you haven’t already, start the process of looking inward, away from the all-mighty physical world, and into the inner realm of spirit. There is so much beauty that we cannot see, but we can understand that it exists, and that it is our task to learn how to perceive it.

As Dr. Eben Alexander says in his book, Seeking Heaven:

The end of someone’s physical life is not the end of your relationship with them.

Well, it doesn’t have to be, and so I leave with these ideas. I hope that they will stir up some thinking in those of you who are feeling very sad, and for those of you already on the path, I hope it offers some encouragement along the way.