Tag Archives: healing from grief

Gifts

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What good is a beautiful gift if it is hidden away? That’s what my book The Messenger was – a gift, a beautiful story, for which I can take no credit. I didn’t write it.  I wrote my own story, but the story that took place in Egypt 200 years after the death of Christ was given to me by my Spirit Guide, Lukhamen.  The two stories are side by side in the book, mine and his, because they are connected, because I am connected to my Spirit Guide, as we all are connected to teachers, guides, and loved ones who look after us, love us, guide us, and give us messages. Whether you believe this or not does not matter. It happens anyway.

Has a thought ever entered your mind that seemed odd in its timing or subject matter, random, out of the blue, connected to nothing in particular, but was a bit of information that came in handy later, or actually saved you from harm?  Did you ever hear something in your head that whispered “Watch out!” or “Stop!” when you weren’t paying attention but needed to put the brakes on? Did you ever wonder where these little warnings came from? Did you think it was your subconscious operating in a futuristic way? Was your internal warning system operating independently? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps it is something much more improbable, something a little more miraculous, something coming from a love you can’t see or touch.

This reminds me of the title of a book written by a man named Michael Mirdad. He’s the spiritual leader of the Unity of Sedona Church here where I live. It’s called, “You’re Not Crazy, You’re Just Awake.”  Sure, the messages may sometimes seem mundane and trivial, but what is important is that you heard them. You were awake to something more than your physical senses.

I’ll tell you something I’ve noticed. People who never heard these “messages” before begin to hear them when a loved one dies. Or when they have experienced some kind of trauma. Or when they are in despair or depressed. And sometimes what we get are not thoughts. They’re feelings. Hints. Clues. Even impulses. How many times have you heard someone say, “Something told me to…” or “I don’t know why I did that but…” Have you ever felt compelled to go to a certain place, and discovered when you got there that there was a reason for you to be there – then – at that time? Or just the opposite. Have you ever felt strongly that you should not go somewhere and later found out that it would not have been good for you to be there – then – at that time? I invite you to take notice of these things. I invite you to consider the idea that something wonderful is close to you at all times, loving you, protecting you, guiding you, talking to you. I invite you to take notice of coincidences (as if there were such things). On the day of your mother’s funeral, did a hawk suddenly appear above you in the sky? And did you remember that your mother always said that she would watch you like a hawk? That happened to a young woman I know. She told me her story just yesterday. And many more, all related to her mother, all little signs that would mean something only to her. Her children had their own signs, gifts from that loved one who was now looking on with love, making sure they knew that she wasn’t Gone for Good.

We need to tell each other these stories of comfort, hope, and yes, improbable little miracles – and the big ones – that are given to us. We need them, especially if we are in grief, or have known grief. Or loneliness. Or despair. I have been told that I will do something to create small (or large) groups of people like myself who want to talk to each other, people who have suffered, who are suffering, grieving, feeling alone in their sorrow, but looking, searching, and finding hope and comfort, people who want to share their experiences, their gifts. People who want to feel loved again. And last night, in the middle of the night, it came to me that I would call them The Messenger Groups.

There will be more about this as it is revealed to me. I’m listening.

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Read The Messenger: The Improbable Story of a Grieving Mother and a Spirit Guide by Helen Delaney.  Find it at www.Amazon.com or on her website: www.themessenger.space.

You Can Do Almost Anything

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You can do almost anything if you don’t hurry.  That’s a line from a movie I saw yesterday. I love movies. The title of this blog, “Nobody’s Gone for Good,” was taken from a movie. I’ll take wisdom wherever I can find it. It doesn’t have to be dressed up in guru’s robes or spiritual books. It can come from a child, or from an airline pilot, like the one in the movie who said, “You can do almost anything if you don’t hurry.”

I can take these little gifts of wisdom from the Universe now, but there was a time when I couldn’t. It was when I was in the throes of grief. When you are overtaken by grief, everything is on hold—your brain, your heart, your consciousness. Thank God people didn’t offer me their favorite truisms when I was in the midst of grief. Wait. That’s not exactly true. One of them did. I had lost my child. After the funeral service, as I was sitting in the car waiting to go to the cemetery, she mouthed through the car window, “God loves you.” My angry thought was, “And just how do you know that?”

Years later, I lost my husband. By that time, I had learned of lots of things about life, and death, and grief, and faith. But at the time, the awful days and months after his death, I was too raw to remember them, too captured by pain to let them into my consciousness. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in what I had learned; it was that I couldn’t hurry my return to normalcy, to the fact that God really did love me. I had no idea that a slow, steady climb out of pain would be the path the Universe would lovingly offer me.

I suppose you can do almost anything if you don’t hurry. I don’t know why that is true. I just know that it is true for me. I know that in my everyday life, when I hurry, I lose time, because I make mistakes. Inevitably, I will lose my car keys, or my glasses, or I will (like I did yesterday) hurriedly respond to a text I thought was from my daughter. In it, I said something embarrassing about the person I actually sent it to. Yikes. I apologized, but I still feel bad about it. If I had not hurried, I would have seen that the number was not my daughter’s. If I had not hurried, I wouldn’t have said something embarrassing in the first place. I would have had time to think. Hurrying for me is like running through a maze with blinders on. I miss a lot. I lose my way and have to start all over again.

I was not allowed to rush through my grief. I had to take it a day at a time—pain, despair, hopelessness, and all. Only now can I see how wise that was. A loving Universe fed me small, digestible bits of wisdom as I was able to take them and keep them down. With every small bit of love, I was able to let go of a small bit of bitterness and despair. Bigger bites were not possible for me.

It took me almost thirty years to understand and truly believe that there is no death, that there is only life, and that perfect Love and Wisdom reside within me. In all of that time, I read, I stayed close to people who knew about such things. I meditated and sought the wisdom of my own soul and that of the spirits that look after me. I still do that, for my human tendency is still to want to know answers and to be comforted when things go wrong. I want them to be fixed. Right. Now. But there is no real comfort in that. The best answers come when I am able to understand them.

I write this blog for anyone who has lost someone they love. I write it for anyone who has lost anything—a home, a marriage, a job, money, health. What I know is that the long, slow road out of loss and grief is the surest. It leads to a lasting peace. Anything else, anything hurried, is temporary, and frequently unwise. But I also know that, like me, you will discover that you can do almost anything if you don’t hurry.

***

Read The Messenger: The Improbable Story of a Grieving Mother and a Spirit Guide by Helen Delaney. Find it at www.Amazon.com or www.themessenger.space.

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Showing Up

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I am meeting the people in Sedona I thought I would meet. Kindred souls. For instance, there is the lady shaman, who talks to animals. I asked her to help me with my cat, Dorian Gray, who isn’t terribly happy about our situation. Back in Maryland, where I came from, Dorian was a free-range cat. He came and went as he pleased, and gladly suffered the price of freedom (wounds from captive prey and subsequent shots from the vet). He was king of the neighborhood.

Dorian is confined now to a two-bedroom condo with a small patio out back,  newly screened in. And here’s the thing: he howls. His howling is loud and other-worldly, awful and weird. I’m always afraid the neighbors are going to call the police, fearing someone is being murdered. He starts out of my sight, in another room. (The middle of the night is the worst!) As soon as I appear, he stops and meows like a normal cat. Luckily for me, he did this during the shaman’s visit. “He’s having a temper tantrum,” she said. Whew. I thought he was suffering some awful psychic pain. Dorian is, after all, eating well, eliminating VERY well, and in between yowls, playing with rubber bands and a fishing rod with a mouse on the end. The shaman looked at him and said, “There’s a new sheriff in town now, Dorian.”  The bottom line is, she’s going to work with him. And me. I need as much work as Dorian does. The fact is that I have spoiled him. A good cat whisperer, like any other whisperer, knows that there is as much work to do with the “mommies” as with the animals. And so I am presented with another occasion to look to myself, to admit my part in this play, and to remedy it. I have to show up for duty.

But I have a new friend. The shaman and I talked for hours. She told me stories about herself and her practice of healing, and I told her my story, of channeling my spirit guide, Lukhamen, and how that whole experience saved my life after the death of my son. They call Sedona the Mecca of Spirituality, a place where these kinds of conversations are not extraordinary. I knew that before I moved here. This is why I am here, to meet and connect with people who have had similar life experiences. To be encouraged. To experience more. To write the second book.

This morning, I met a woman who was in grief. A sister she’d raised like a daughter had just lost her husband in a car accident, and her heart was broken for this sister, and for herself. She had, after all, lost her brother-in-law. I shared my story with her, telling her of the loss of my son and my husband. Afterwards, she turned a face full of pain to me and asked so innocently, “What can I do to help my sister?” She had said before that she had assigned herself the jobs of filling her sister’s dishwasher and taking out the garbage. “Just be with her,” I said. “Just be there. Fill the dishwasher and take out the garbage. Just being with her will be enough.” She thanked me with relief and tears in her eyes. Just keep showing up, I guess I was saying.

I had my own moment of loss on Thursday. It was the seventh anniversary of my husband Bill’s passing over. And I remembered the wise, loving people who surrounded me afterwards. Our children, of course, and dear friends. And what they did and what they said was perfect. They were just there. And in the making of food and talking about ordinary things, there was perfect love. Someone came and filled my house with flowers. She didn’t say anything, just came with flowers and vases and put them all over. I will never forget that, Nancy. A friend came all the way from Brussels and just sat with me on the porch, rearranging flower pots to give our guests more sitting room. Ordinary things. But staying close. That’s what we need. Just the physical presence of love. Just the sight of the faces we love. There is no cure for grief, except time. There is loss, and there is that space. But, in time, some of us come to realize that there is no death. There is only life. And that, in those times of loss and pain, showing up is an act of perfect love.

Yes, I am in Sedona, that magical, sacred place among the red rocks, and wonderful things have already started to happen. I have a new friend, a shaman who knows that there is no death. She came to help my cat and stayed to help me. On Monday, I will visit my other shaman friend, the one who pulled grief from me six years ago. I am going to retrieve two beautiful rocks he found for me in the desert, one white, one black. He said he would save them for me until I had a place here. Now they have a home.

I still have boxes to unpack and pictures to hang, but there is no doubt that I am where I belong. All I had to do was show up.

***

Read The Messenger: The Improbable Story of a Grieving Mother and a Spirit Guide by Helen Delaney. Find it at www.Amazon.com or www.themessenger.space.

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