I lost my son Danny to an overdose of alcohol and prescription drugs on July 1, 2008. He was 22 years old. I don’t have to tell any of you how devastating it is to bury or cremate a beloved child. No parent should ever have to live through it and yet we know that the number of us in this situation grows every day.

To every other parent who is going through this, I offer my deepest condolences for your loss. I know that there are no words that I can say that can lessen your pain. I do want to share what helps me, however, for there is something that gives me great solace that I refer to as connecting up.

I have long believed in a spirit realm. In 1971, I was healed from 4 years of debilitating illness through the efforts of Spiritual Healer Harry Edwards in England and his team of spirit doctors.

Up until this time, I did not believe in anything spiritual; however, in my desperate attempt to save my life, I contacted this healer, and the subsequent healing changed my life and my entire outlook. From that time, I studied and explored both spiritual healing and medium-ship, learning much about existence on the other side.

After Dan passed, I knew what I had to do. Believing as I do that Dan would go on into spirit, and knowing a reliable medium whom I trust implicitly, I made an appointment with Glenn Dove. One week after Dan passed, I was able to be connected up with him.

It was so helpful. In the past two years since that time, I have sat with numerous mediums. Most of them are very good and if the medium is a true medium, Dan is always Dan as he jokes, cajoles, and outright teases the mediums, cracking them all up constantly!

With each session, I am more convinced of my son’s survival in the realm of spirit. In Dan’s case, it actually sounds like a transformation has taken place!

I’ve also gained a great deal of confidence in the thoughts and feelings that come to me directly from Dan because they have been confirmed through the mediums. The idea is to learn how to open up to this on our own because our loved ones are around us, not the medium. They come to the medium because we are there.

I do believe that we can all connect up through our thoughts, feelings and dreams, and that we do it all the time; however, we easily discount it as our imagination.

The first thing I suggest is that you consider the possibility that your child has not been erased from the entire universe, but has gone on into the realm of spirit. You don’t have to believe this with certainty; just allow for the possibility and remember, faith always involves believing in that which you can’t see. If something is visible and self-evident you don’t need faith.

I thought you might find the following message given to me interesting. It is taken from a recording I made at a session with the medium Reverend Hoyt Robinette on May 1, 2010. Dan had come through and the medium was speaking to my husband Jerry. Then he began to address me. By the way, my real name is Sheryl, and Danny liked to call me by that name sometimes.

Hoyt: Okay, I want to speak to you, Sheryl, because I feel like he says, You don’t feel anything, I am here.He is very very much here. He says, I am going to give you words to say to those people, give you words to say to those people.He says, You know there are some people who are devastated and I want you to be able to give them the right words the right encouragement. We are here. We are as close as, we are as close as your breath. But I want those people to understand that. It’s not something we haven’t been removed and taken away and torn out of their heart. We’ve been torn out of their sight, out of their grip, but we have not been torn out of their heart nor have we been, nor is our spirit removed from theirs. We’re as close now as we were before. Sometimes it’s very painful to us the mourning to be taking place when we’re so close.

What a thought! Our children are as close as our breath. It gives you cause to ponder, and if it is a totally new thought for you, I hope you will think about it.