Catherine from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, asked:
Hi Julie,
The internet is a wonderful thing. Through a series of podcasts and health and fitness related blogs, I found your podcasts and website. I’m enjoying listening to your shows.
In one of your early podcasts you mentioned a book. I was driving and unable to write the name. Was it was something about wings? I couldn’t find the title on your blog or in the show notes.
I’m a registered nurse, and very much believe in the spirits that surround us. I used to practice Therapeutic Touch, but I have been busy raising my children and not practicing.
My mother in-law died almost 3 years ago, and I stayed with her in palliative care for about a week before she passed (she lived in a different city).
The night before she died, she was restless (not speaking at this point). I sensed fear and held her hand for part of the night (I was lying in a cot next to her bed).
I have 2 questions about this:
1) Do spirits leave the body before the heart stops? I felt like she left that night (not the next evening when her heart stopped).
2) Spirit-wise, is she something else besides my mother in-law in this life? I have felt her presence several times over the last 2.5 years, especially when I was competing in a triathlon about 6 months after she died.
I believe she knows how much her grandchildren and I miss her.
I’m sure you are very busy, so “thank you” for taking the time to read my questions.
Hi Catherine,
I’m delighted you found my podcast and to hear from you. Thanks for your kind words about the show.
Regarding your questions, spirits depart after the heart stops beating and your mother-in-law is always around you, your children, and other loved ones. She is basically the same, only now she’s without her body. Any (what we humans perceive to be negative personality traits) are now non-existent. They stay with the body. In spirit form, your mother-in-law (like all of us) is a limitless being of pure positive love and acceptance.
What a loving, kind, wonderful gift you gave your mother-in-law by staying with her and doing something as simple as holding her hand while she was dying.
Many of us are afraid of death. Watching a loved one go through the dying process is unnerving, especially because it forces us to confront our own mortality. We like to have control of our lives and our environment, and we often find not knowing an outcome to be frightening. After all, humans interpret ambiguity as a bad thing, when it’s simply just a lack of information.
It has been my experience both personally and with countless friends and clients that the dying process always contains a glorious component. What’s better than having your loved one be surrounded by angels, their deceased family, friends, and pets’ spirits and to have an angelic escort to Heaven?
Please check out the illustrations for the Twelve Phases of Transition on my website and you’ll see what I’m describing.
Also, the book I mentioned during an earlier show was Hands of Light by Barbara Brennan, PhD.
Dr. Brennan is a former NASA physicist who was able to make complicated energetic theories understandable for those of us with non-scientific minds. She founded an accredited healing arts school where people come from all over the world to study her methods. You can even get a Bachelor’s degree there.
Hands of Light was a book that launched my interest in energy medicine more than 20 years ago and happened to be the first text book used when I began my medical intuitive education.
I am a graduate of the School of Healing Arts in Nashville, TN and was taught by a graduate of Dr. Brennan’s school, Susan Austin-Crumpton.
Hope this information is helpful.
