Animals In Spirit
I never believed in an afterlife. I believed that when we died, that was it, lights out. I was unflinching in that belief. When I was in training to become an Animal Communicator my teachers regularly spoke about communicating with animals in spirit like it was a known fact that there is an afterlife. This gave me a little hope but I still didn’t really believe.
My soulmate, Lily, was sick with a very aggressive, terminal cancer at this time so during one of our conversations I told her that if she passes before me (I didn’t want to scare her or assume anything) that she should look for my sister Julie, who had passed ten years prior. Lily told me she knew who Julie was because she “sees her around sometimes”. Interesting.
Lily passed shortly after that conversation and though I was terrified to try to make contact with her, for fear that I would be met with silence, two days after she passed I sat on my bed, got quiet and reached out to her. When I made contact with her I was relieved to feel that familiar sense of love I always felt when I spoke with her. I asked her “are you with anyone?” and the response I received forever changed my life. Lily said only one word: “Jules”. “Jules” was my nickname for Julie. It was not a name I used when I spoke about her to other people. As a matter of fact, I likely hadn’t said that name in close to ten years - since my beloved sister passed. I knew immediately, when I heard “Jules” that my sister was with Lily saying “tell her you’re with Jules” - that by saying “Jules” I would know without doubt Lily was with her.
A few days later I spoke to Lily again. I asked her a second time if she was with anyone. This time I saw images of Julie’s life: flashes of “photographs” of her, spanning her entire life.
The next time I spoke with Lily I saw my grandfather’s very distinct nose, my grandmother’s famous rose bush, a glimpse of my mother, and then Julie herself. My sister appeared before me and looked lovingly at me for what seemed like a lifetime. I sat there, dumbfounded and awestruck. Knowing without doubt that I was seeing my sister, who had passed 10 years before, looking at me with all the love in the world. I hadn’t seen her beautiful face in ten years and suddenly there she was, and it was magical. Lily had made her way to Julie just like I had hoped, and that meant (at least to me) that Julie had her from here on out. I cried and cried and cried, and I knew in that moment that my life would never be the same.
I have since learned that during a communication with an animal in spirit it is not uncommon for animals to “bring in” family members to let us know they are ok and surrounded by our loved ones. In Lily’s case, she showed me she was with my sister, grandma, grandpa and mom. I’ve also found that it is often the case that during a first communication a recently transitioned animal can do something big to let us know they are in fact, ok.
Losing a family member is devastating. The void that is left - even if they’ve been gone for years - is very real. And the loss that never really goes away is deep and incredibly painful. They say that time heals all wounds. I don’t believe that, at least not with grief. It’s been my experience that we just learn to live with the weight of it. For me, the loss of great love, like Lily and my sister, feels like a wound that never really healed properly. It leaves a jagged and raised scar that aches nearly all the time - I’ve just learned to live with the look, the feel, and the pain of the scar.
We can’t turn back the clock to when those beautiful, perfect souls were earthbound with us but we can communicate with them in spirit. And for many people, myself included, that can be the thing that helps the ache feel a little more manageable.