It’s been 9 ½ years since you died.  You left us so suddenly.  First, you tried to kill yourself, overdosing on heroin and methamphetamines but you ended up at Sacred Heart Hospital.  Was there even a River Bend back then?  I don’t remember.  They discharged you too soon.  You were overwhelmed by some little thing, a headlight that was out on your car, someone told me.  You left work early, went grocery shopping for your grandparents, and bought drugs.  Apparently, you only wanted to escape the pain.  You weren’t intending to kill yourself this time. 

            But you did.

            Now, 9 ½ years later, grief continues to skulk around me, creeping up silently on padded paws, to attack.  Thank God it doesn’t happen all the time anymore.  I can talk about you sometimes with faith that you’re still there, available in the spirit world.  You’ve shown me in dozens of ways that there is a “beyond the veil”.  There is a spirit world.  I am absolutely confident of that now.

            In Spirituality 101, they want you to believe that you only feel grief when you think about what you’ve lost, who you’ve lost, when you think about the death of your loved one.  But. that’s. not. true.  That simply isn’t true.  Sure.  Sometimes you think about them and feel sad, maybe even miserable.  But there are plenty of times when grief sneaks up behind you when you least expect it and pounces.

            Those times, you may have been feeling off somehow, but not in any clear way.  You may have felt a little tired or heavy, cranky or irritable.  Or you may have had an ache in some very private part of yourself that is uniquely related to the person you love who died.  If you’re a mother who has lost her child, your uterus might hurt, or your breasts, or even your vagina.  These were the first parts of yourself that were given to your child as you grew them inside of you, birthed them, and then fed them.  The body keeps the score.  The body remembers, even when your brain isn’t thinking about your beloved child, spouse, sibling, or parent.  Your grief and sadness are secondary to the subconscious memory.

            Don’t let them fool you into thinking your sadness is your fault.  Sadness is inevitable.  But it doesn’t have to be constant.  And it definitely isn’t your fault.  It’s a healthy reaction to a horrific situation.  It’s something you slog through, dragging your feet, head bowed, tears making trails down your cheeks or falling into your ears.  Maybe you write about it, like I do.  Or maybe you make music, draw, or paint to help let the grief out in other ways besides tears.  Maybe you garden and pull weeds, pulling out the misery within you.  There are thousands of ways to process grief.  It doesn’t matter how you do it, only that you do it.  And please learn EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) because it helps flush it out after you’ve done some work to process it.

            They used to think there were five phases of grief: shock and denial, depression, anger, bargaining, and acceptance.  For those of you who have been through those phases, you’ll know they missed one.  But, eventually, someone communicated the sixth phase of grief: finding meaning. 

            In my case, that meaning has been found in a deeper belief in the spirit world, which my son helped me cultivate.  If you go back and read these pages from the beginning, you’ll read about the many things he did to show me the other side. He showed me there is an energetic world, an invisible place to the physical eye, where beings/energy/love abound, and where there is guidance regarding how to make miracles come true.  He made the expression: “pennies from heaven” a reality where coins, and sometimes paper money, fall into my path.  He showed me miracles in many shapes and sizes.  He did this, I believe, to help make up for the pain of his departure.

            Since his death, clients who have experienced the death of a loved one, particularly an untimely death, seem to come to my therapy office in a way they never have before.  I believe that is Spirit, sending them to someone who can help, someone who understands, someone who despite the loss of a child, is still able to help others through the love in her heart, a heart that isn’t completely shattered anymore.

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            I hope you’ll contact me and share your stories about how your deceased loved one showed you there is a spirit world and it is real.  Do that here: https://ericalhernandez.com/contact-erica/