Dear Grief Guide, I Get No Signs From My Loved One

Hello and welcome to Dear Grief Guide,

A podcast where each week I answer one anonymous letter from a listener feeling lost,

Stuck,

Heartbroken,

Or overwhelmed in the midst of grief.

My name is Shelby Forsythia.

I'm a grief coach and author,

And I'm here to help you create a life you love from the life loss forced you to live.

Let's get to today's letter.

Dear Grief Guide,

Have you ever heard of a grieving person not getting a single sign,

Dream,

Or feeling of their lost loved one's presence?

My mom died on May 12th,

And I desperately want to experience anything that would connect me with her again.

But all I feel is an icy,

Cold absence.

I can't find her or see her in anything.

Other family members dream about her and feel her presence all the time,

But I only feel pain and nothingness.

I'm jealous of their ability to connect so easily with her,

And I wonder if she's not appearing to me for a reason.

I talk to my mom every day,

But I never get any sense that she hears me or is communicating anything to me.

Do you have any tools that could help me?

I feel like I've been left here all alone.

Sincerely,

Too Quiet,

In Quebec Hi there,

Too Quiet.

First off,

I definitely want to encourage you to go back and listen to episode 15 of Dear Grief Guide.

I received a letter from another grieving person who was struggling to feel her best friend who died after she died from cancer.

I'm noting,

Just because you mentioned your loss in terms of a date and not in number of years,

That this loss,

It seems,

Is still really new.

And I'm not sure how old you are or if you've experienced losses before,

And sometimes those things matter,

Sometimes they don't.

But I wonder if in this case,

If in some capacity,

Your nervous system,

Your body,

Your ability to see beyond this present moment,

To survive beyond this present moment,

Could be impacted by shock or mere exhaustion.

Grief is freaking exhausting.

And something that is hard for us humans to do when we're tired and exhausted and in shock,

Where our brains and our bodies are literally protecting us from a reality that we cannot fathom,

Even though it is very much true,

Is that our higher abilities to see signs and put meanings together and feel as if we are surrounded by higher powers,

Those things are often very diminished in the immediate aftermath of a loss.

I totally hear you in this envy of your friends and family members who are already seeing signs from her,

And we can't know,

You can't know,

The loss experience or the grief experience that they're having.

I know that for some people,

This meaning making is an immediate reach,

An immediate need to fill the void of a person's death with something,

Anything.

And for a lot of people,

They believe these experiences to be genuine and real,

And they may very well be.

I want to tell you something that I recently discussed with a one-on-one client who was grieving her father and her brother,

And she was struggling to feel connected to them.

One's death was kind of expected,

The other one's was not at all,

And they happened so close together that she was really reeling and feeling disconnected from both of them,

And as if she had been left alone on planet Earth.

And we came up with this what-if circumstance,

And I don't know if this resonates with you,

But I really want to tell you anyway,

Because it seemed to resonate with her.

And it is this.

For as much as it takes us to adjust to being here on Earth without them,

It might be helpful to think about them needing time to adjust on the other side,

In the afterlife,

Wherever they may be,

To figuring out how to communicate with us.

It may be that your mom has ways to easily connect with other friends and family members,

Or that they're more easily able to connect with her for some random reason,

And she's still working out her own unique and special way of connecting with you,

And I don't know if that's comforting.

But sometimes it can help to visualize the people we love,

Especially if the loss was sudden,

Being on the other side,

Trying to figure out,

Alright,

How does this thing work?

How does this new communications technology,

This new phone,

This new switchboard,

This new telegram sender,

How does this work to get all the way back to Earth?

I'm trying to figure it out.

I will say this too,

Sometimes,

Especially at the beginning,

When we're hearing nothing,

It can be helpful to manufacture a little bit of the signs and symbols that you want to see,

As a way of training your brain to look for signs and symbols all around you,

To the point where someday you may see ones that you didn't plan for,

That are unexpected,

But feel like messages from her and help you feel surrounded at a time when you're feeling really alone.

So I encourage you on a day when you feel like you have the bandwidth or the capacity to do so,

To just take out a piece of paper and write down a list,

Maybe of 10 things that remind you of your mom.

I would encourage you to use multiple senses,

If possible,

Smells that remind you of her,

Lights that remind you of her,

Sounds,

Certainly,

Maybe tastes,

Certain foods or spices or herbs,

And then touches,

Fabrics or tiles or anything that reminds you of her,

Anything that helps you feel connected.

And then when you are out in the world,

Play I spy with this list,

Oh,

That person is wearing her favorite color red,

For instance,

Or I just ordered a cocktail with basil in it,

And oh my gosh,

She loved basil.

And to start looking for these things and doing these things based on things she loved,

It trains your brain to start to see her in small ways and to remember things she loved in the world you're living in now,

Without her.

And you can also do this with people,

Taking out a separate piece of paper,

Making another list of traits that you loved about her or admired in her,

Kindness,

Generosity,

Humor,

It,

Whatever the case may be,

And each time you spot it in another person around you,

Whether they be someone you know,

Or a stranger,

You can say,

Ah,

There's a glimpse of my mom for a second.

There she is.

And to start to train your brain,

I'm going to say it again,

To see bits and pieces of her all around you,

Because what that does,

Kind of like looking for red cars,

When you're on a road trip,

You start seeing red cars you would have never seen before,

Simply because you've asked your brain to start searching for them.

I also want to tell you some stories,

One story,

No,

Two stories,

I'll give you two stories,

From my own life after the death of my mom.

Even having my own signs and symbols for her,

Pennies,

Sparrows,

Songs,

She showed up to me in some weird ass ways after she died.

The first one was numbers.

I did not ask for numbers,

She and I had no numerical connections or symbols whatsoever.

But in the first year,

Especially following her death,

I saw nothing but palindromes.

My first address was 424,

Here in Chicago,

When I moved out to be by myself.

The bus I took to work today,

The 151,

I would regularly be on streets,

Or see numbers in newspapers,

Or see numbers in the airport,

Or on public transit,

Or on my phone,

I'd look down at the clock,

And palindromes would appear,

The same forwards as they were backwards.

It's 3.

23pm.

I would wake up at the same time in the morning,

At 4.

54,

And not understand why I kept seeing this over and over and over again,

And so I started researching,

And did some deep dives.

I was like,

What on earth do palindromes mean,

After the death of a parent?

And I realized,

After being on,

You know,

Some online forums,

Some reddit threads,

Wherever I landed,

In the corners of the internet,

That another palindrome is mom.

M-O-M,

454-151-323.

So after that,

I sought out palindromes,

Like I was thirsty,

And they were water.

Everywhere in the world I could see them,

Even if it felt like I was making it up,

Even if it didn't feel magical.

Every time I saw a palindrome,

I would say,

Hey mom,

Or there she is,

Or I'm right here,

I feel you.

And they were added to my personal library of signs and symbols,

As a way to connect with her.

I did the same thing,

Creepily enough,

With spiders.

I cannot tell you,

In a major city too,

Spiders aren't the pests we generally have here.

They are other things,

Like rats.

But I can't tell you how many spiders I saw,

In the first few years after my mother's death,

They would descend from the ceiling,

Right in front of my face,

At my first job as a receptionist.

They would be climbing all over my apartment windows,

Making beautiful webs.

I would go for runs in the park,

And I would see them on fence posts,

With the morning dew still hanging on their creations,

And I'm like,

What on earth are the spiders about?

Jesus Christ.

I could not understand,

I said,

Okay,

What's with the spiders?

So again,

God bless Google,

Because it has helped me so much in my grief,

Even just speculate about what things mean.

But the library is great for this too,

Friends and family members who are spiritual,

If you have an ancestral tradition of signs and symbols with numbers or animals,

Really helpful to ask the people around you.

But I found out that spiders are a symbol of feminine,

Creative energy,

Sometimes even motherhood energy.

So I chose to see these spiders,

Creepy as they may be,

As much as they've wigged me out my whole dang life,

As symbols from my mother that she wants me to keep going and to keep making beautiful things,

Which is something that I promised to her in her dying days,

Is that I will keep going,

I will keep singing,

I will keep trying.

And I did,

And every time I saw a spider after that,

I was no longer intent on squashing it,

But on taking a deep breath and recognizing it for the sign and symbol,

Not necessarily that it was,

But that I wanted it to be.

And gradually those two things became one thing,

A symbol for my mother,

Whether I manufactured it and made it up or whether it really is a sign from her,

Who's to say?

I have no certainty and I cannot have certainty in that department,

That is something that grief has asked me to release.

But I'll tell you this,

It makes me feel surrounded.

It makes me feel closer to her.

It makes me laugh at her because she didn't like spiders in life either.

That I don't understand,

That I still do not comprendo,

That makes no sense to me at all and choosing to believe that has helped me feel like she is still present and that our bond of sorts continues.

So if you can piggyback on the signs and symbols that others are getting,

Maybe they see powder blue on a makeup counter that makes you think of your mom,

And so you start thinking of your mom every time you see powder blue.

Maybe other people are having their light bulbs blow out spontaneously,

Go buy a pack of light bulbs just in case,

Prepare for that to happen to you.

Maybe they hear certain songs,

Start playing those songs in your house,

Draw her closer,

Invite her in for your own dictionary of signs and symbols and maybe piggybacking on others too and making it something that you share with them as opposed to a reasoning for them being the blessed chosen ones and you being left out in the cold.

I don't know much about you and I don't know much about your mother,

But from having lost my own mother,

I'll tell you at some point in some way,

And it may not be a way you expect,

But that love will force its way from the other side to you.

Whether you feel it or see it through a sign and symbol,

Whether you receive it through somebody else's experience,

Whether it comes to you in a totally unexpected flash,

I am holding out trust for you,

Even if you can't hold that right now.

That something is coming your way.

May it happen soon.

May it be so loud.

Ask for this.

Make it so loud and so big that I can't miss it,

Mom.

I'm right here.

I'm right here.

Marco,

Waiting for a polo.

I am right here.

And too quiet in Quebec,

I am right here with you.

I am wishing you luck.