the search for connection within and beyond

​So many people seek out mystics, mediums, ouija boards, spiritual practices, etc. to have the opportuninty to communicate with someone we have lost. It would mean so much  just to have one more chance to tell someone you love them, feel connected to them, understand what happened surrounding their death, or know that they are ok wherever they are. Our minds and souls just can’t bear to never get the chance to talk to or be with someone we love so much at least one more time. We want to make these connections to understand ourselves better whether we know it or not. We want to make sense of things past, present or to know what’s to come. The stories and connection to death form who we are.


Since I was a young child, I have had an interest in the spiritual world and what happens after we die. Looking back on it now, I know that this interest in the afterlife is a generational grief that has been encoded in my DNA. It is an ingredient for the fuel that has driven my life’s purpose. Some members of my close and extended family have been heartbroken and forever changed by the passing of key figures in their lives. Patterns and choices were informed by these deaths. Genetics, habits and personalities were changed in the wake of these losses. Some of these deaths took with them answers about who we are and why we do what we do. It has left us with pieces to pick up, storylines to paste together and wounds to heal on our own. We have to do this without the people we lost. We carry them deep within us always even if we didn’t know them while they were living. We know them through the stories and memories told or a deep knowing in our cells.


I didn’t fully realize why I had such an intense interest and connection to the spiritual world and death it until I became a Social Worker and understood the reality and pain of generational trauma. Throughout my career I have had the privilege of exploring family patterns with my clients. I, and many other people are formed, in one way or another, by the trauma our ancestors carried after someone close to them died in a tragic or untimely fashion or maybe even a death that was expected. There is  so much unspoken hurt and loss that I could feel held in my body even as a young child prior to experiencing a loss myself. It was thick in the environment of my family even if we didn’t say it out loud or even consciously know it. These deaths also sometimes leave people with undeveloped tools to more easily find who their way in life.


In 2021 an opportunity arose for a training in a modality called Induced After Death Communication. It’s a modality that uses the EMDR protocol in order to help people reduce the sadness after a loss and potentially have a communication with a lost loved one. What began as excitement to have the tools to do something that aligned with my interests in the afterlife has become something that is more rewarding than I can tell you. I have had the chance to be a witness to the power grief holds and how hard it is for people to cope with it. This modality offers permission to feel the sadness and grief so deeply and express it so fully that it heals or begins to heal them and change the way they grieve. This is a tool to help people connect to their deepest feelings and possibly get answers they are looking for from someone they love and miss. It’s an opportunity to maybe even get answers that simply come from the love they carry for that person inside their own heart. What a beautiful way to reconnect to ourselves and begin to mend generational trauma.