When the Dead Want Our Attention

(they sometimes have to be loud)

These days the dead connect with me very quietly and easily. A man who gave me my first job out of college pops into my head for no reason at all that I can fathom and I know to give him a google—and I’m not at surprised to find out that he died on that exact day the year before. I dream of a teacher or an aunt or a grandmother and I know that I have experienced a visitation, something I am able to process quietly over coffee the following morning. But when I first started working with the dead, I wasn’t very good at noticing when they showed up—so they had to show up in ways that were dramatic and even, sometimes, frightening.

More than once, in decades past, I woke up screaming convinced someone had actually been in the room—which they had, of course. Which I talked myself out of knowing. So the next time this soul had to make an even dramatic appearance. That’s the way it goes. If we are listening, the dead can whisper. If we aren’t they sometimes have to shout.

One day my son, who was uncertain about his mother’s devotion to the dead, was in the house by himself. It was a still early summer day with a not a breath of air. He was making himself a sandwich in the kitchen which is right next to the dining room where my ancestor altar abides. He looked up because he “felt something” and an instant later every single photo fell off the ancestor altar at the same moment. Not one of them broke. To say that he was unnerved would be an understatement!

But what did it “mean”? Was it a warning, an omen, a haunting? Or simply the ancestors way of saying, “We are here! We see you! Do you see us? We want you to see us!” Since that day my son has been completely open to the work I do and cultivated his own relationship with the dead.

When he was just a baby, I had a direct encounter with an actual ghost, an experience so unnerving that I, too, was changed forever in how I relate to my ancestors. What I learned in that moment was that every encounter with someone from the other side asks us to make a choice between fear and love…and when we choose the latter, we may find ourselves living in an entirely transformed world.

It’s a story I tell in my book that’s coming out in September TAKE BACK THE MAGIC: CONVERSATIONS WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD and it’s a story I will be telling on June 20 at a Solstice Party hosted by my publisher. I’m inviting you all to join me! It’s FREE and not only that—the publisher, Running Press, will be giving away books, readings, and oracle decks. It should be a lot of fun and a way to invite in a whole new conversation with the unseen world. Please join me!

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This is the FREE edition of my newsletter. There is also a paid edition that includes a monthly online conversation with me about working with the dead. Also, if you pre-order my book from Running Press you will be invited to a special one-day seminar I’ll be offering on “How to Grow a Miracle.” More about that in the next few weeks!