From the moment you become a parent there are two questions that become foremost in your mind: Where is my child and is he or she okay? Even when you are dealing with an infant who seldom leaves your side, you still get those moments. I can remember watching my babies when they were in deep sleeps to make sure that they were still breathing. Whenever I left them with a babysitter or at nursery school, throughout the time that I was separated from them, I would wonder where they were and if they were okay. I simply had to know.

It’s a constant theme that permeates everything else that you do, once you become a parent. Even when your children are a little older and seemingly more responsible, periodically throughout any given day you raise those questions. If your child ultimately reaches the teen years, all hell breaks loose as it becomes increasingly hard for most parents to answer those questions. However, if all goes well, despite an uneasy evening for you, your child returns to the roost and for a little while anyway, you can put those questions to bed.

What makes parents nearly lose their minds after the loss of a child is that they cannot answer those questions! They have no clue where their child is, if their child is, or whether he or she is okay, and that is primal agony for parents. Even worse than missing this child is the parental hell of not being able to rest in the knowledge that their child is somewhere and that he or she is okay.

If it were not for the fact that 40 years ago, when I was 20 years old, I experienced a life-changing spiritual healing that demonstrated to me the presence of a spirit realm, I would not be saying what I’m about to say. I did, however, experience a healing of a non-physical nature that was so profound that as a result I delved into a 40-year exploration of spiritualism, with an emphasis on spiritual healing and mediumship.

As a result, I have witnessed numerous demonstrations of life after death and at this point in my life, I firmly believe in the survival of the personality. By that I do not mean some vague, nebulous resemblance to someone you once knew. On the contrary, what I am speaking of would be described as the unique personality of the person you loved, minus one major detail, his or her physical body. And as parents, we do love that physical body. We love their eyes and we love their smiles and we love their hugs. It is unfathomable to us to consider living out the rest of our lives without their hugs.

But, when I think about it, I ask myself, Was it the hug itself that you loved, or was it the love behind the hug that meant so much? Was it his arms that you loved or the love those arms expressed?

My answer is always that it was both, the physical arms and the love that animated them. What helps me to cope now is my firm belief that what animated Dan’s arms still exists and is actually very close to me. And I believe that what animated Dan’s hugging arms was his spirit and that his spirit has survived passage from physical reality into the realm of spirit and that he is there and that he is okay.

I cannot define the spirit realm as a destination in which I can say, my child is right here, two blocks west of Broadway, nor can I definitively explain to you what or where the spirit world is, but I can tell you this: it exists. It is where my child is now and he is okay and if you have a deceased child, it is where your child is now and he or she is okay. Even if your child took their own life, trust me on this, your child is okay. There is help and support on that side and from what I have learned, no matter what, no one crosses alone.

Faith always implies a leap of trust in an area that is not readily visible, for if it were visible and self evident, there would be no need for faith! So, if you will, imagine opening your mind just a small amount to consider the possibility that your child does exist, with his or her consciousness intact, in another form, in another dimension. Of course, your relationship cannot be the same, for you will no longer look for your child through your physical eyes, but with your inner eyes. But you can connect with your child through numerous means and when you do, you will ease some of your pain as well as theirs; for just as their suffering was always yours, now your suffering is very much theirs.