A Personal Experience of Grief and After-Life Communication

One of my best friends died suddenly when we were 17, which is now 20 years ago. We had been in a fight and had not spoken in weeks or months. After their death I went from a star student-athlete with above a 4.0-grade point average to sleeping through all my classes, relying heavily on substances, and barely graduating high school. At the time, I did not connect the dots that I was grieving, did not have the support I needed, and so used maladaptive coping mechanisms. Although for a few years I already had been struggling with substance use, I had been a high-functioning addict until my friend’s death. 

I went to my first in-patient rehabilitation when I was 19. On the drive to the rehab center, a few hours away from my hometown, a song played on the radio that had been our song—we both related to its meaning and bonded through our shared struggles, and they had burned a CD for me with that song on it. In that moment, I knew my friend was with me. Synchronistic to my journey since their death, I felt my friend recognizing my experience through the lyrics: “I’m not crazy, I'm just a little unwell. Stay a while and maybe then you’ll see a different side of me.” In the devastation of my addiction the words offered a gift of hope for a better future and gave me just enough strength to continue my pursuit of sobriety. Jung’s theory of synchronicity as a meaningful coinciding of the psychic and physical, or inner and outer, worlds was connected to his idea of the psychoid (Stein, 1998). In synchronicity, psychic and material phenomena seem to emerge as simultaneous expression of a single source, which he called psychoid. Stein (1998) defined the psychoid as “an adjective referring to the boundaries of the psyche, one [side of] which interfaces with the body and the physical world and the other [side] with the realm of ‘spirit’” (p. 234). 

I had one experience shortly after my friend died where I saw them with my physical eyes. This is a rare occurrence as I had only seen a spirit with my physical eyes a few times in my life. I was looking in a full-length mirror in my room and I saw a shadow figure, like a crisp outline of my friend, lean out from behind me and wave. My friend’s hair had been distinctive and was matched by the outline of the shadow figure’s hair, and I could feel their familiar and playful demeanor though their gesture. This experience brought me both comfort and a sense of awe knowing that they were okay, alive, and with me. From that point on I would make a conscious effort to connect with them: talking with them in my mind or asking for their advice or for them to join me in daily activities. Sometimes I felt their presence next to me while driving my car or would invite them along. My friend enjoyed Lucky Strike cigarettes and I often smelled cigarettes when there was no evidence of smoke around me. 

Since my friend died, I have had dreams of them and could feel their presence at times when I was awake. I would write to them and use automatic writing to receive messages from them. “Automatic writing is the process or product of writing without using the conscious mind” and without conscious attention “to the actions of the writing hand” (New World Encyclopedia, n.d., para. 1). These are just a few examples of countless signs, synchronicities, and communications I have experienced with my friend since they have been on the spirit side—demonstrating they are alive and well in a different form—still actively involved in my life.

Since I was young, I have used journaling to process my emotions. I felt alienated and alone throughout my childhood, and writing brought me comfort. It was a way to sort out my thoughts and vent, and I would also write to myself as if connecting with a divine being who was bringing me comfort. During my grieving process, journaling and writing emotionally expressive poetry have been among my biggest comforts.

I credit meditation with a huge part of my healing from grief and addiction to meditation. In learning to sit and nonjudgmentally observe my thoughts and emotions as they pass through, returning to being present to my breath, I discovered the fear of feeling my emotions was greater than the actual experience of doing so. When I could sit with my feelings, I was able to begin addressing the root of my addiction and healing was able to occur. Later, I discovered that meditation as discussed below helps to develop mediumship. Huge comfort also came from mediumship readings. I had a family member who was a medium and would validate the experiences I was having and offer evidence about my friend they had no way of knowing. This was priceless to me, and I clung to these magical experiences during the darkest times of my life, when I was attempting to get sober and in early sobriety.

Nonetheless, I continued to struggle with grief. Due to the way my friend passed and the fact that we had been in an argument when they passed, I felt extreme guilt: It was partially my fault, I should have been there for them. The moment I found out they had died, the reason I was upset at them seemed so trivial. I felt deep regret. The combination of these things was a recipe for me to develop complicated grief. My ongoing battle with addiction spoke to my need to numb or dissociate from my more complicated feelings about myself and our relationship and my inability to move through the grief process and reengage in life without substances. Because I was stuck in unprocessed, repressed guilt, compounded by developmental trauma, I could not resolve the wound the guilt created in my relationship with myself and with them. The guilt kept me stuck in grief, not only for having lost them but also for having abandoned them and not having the opportunity to repair. Tying me in a psychological knot, while the guilt kept me in grief, the grief for the loss of opportunity kept me stuck in guilt. For the next 5 years, I relapsed more times than I can count. It took a second rehab, and multiple years in and out of sober living before I finally got and stayed sober. I now have 13+ years clean and sober.

I wish that long ago I had received a mediumship reading in which my friend told me I did not need to feel guilty. Although I have seen such a communication relieve guilt or infuse forgiveness, I know that usually it does not magically erase guilt or resentment; it takes time and inner work to release it. This work likely needs to explore where the guilt might be connected to an unconscious complex that held a belief, for instance, about needing to save or being responsible for others. This is the work of therapy.

Unfortunately, I did not receive adequate therapy support after the death of my friend. I can see now how beneficial that would have been. I had a lot of strange experiences with different therapists. I think one of the reasons for that is that it allowed me to reflect on what was not helpful, so I would not repeat that in my work as a therapist. The focus on controlling substance use triggers, on engaging in healthy activities, and on developing positive socioemotional supports did not create a secure therapeutic relationship in which I felt authentic regard and understanding from the therapist, nor did it address my guilt and its etiology in my history of relational trauma. The vital nature of my current (post-mortem) relationship with my friend and what might be discovered in that was not a component of therapy.

It is important to note here that I had begun to use substances before my friend’s death to help me cope with my unpredictable and often disturbing experiences of my mediumship abilities. In that vein, having a therapist who invited those experiences—and the numinosity of the connections I was having with my deceased friend—into therapy would have been profoundly helpful. In having a therapist compassionately see, respect, and safely hold my experiences, rather than pathologize them, would have allowed me to internalize their view of me as my relationship with myself. This might have gone a long way in helping me develop the ego strength and inner and outer secure base needed to face my feelings of guilt. I also see in hindsight, how proper mentorship about my mediumship abilities from a young age could have saved me a lot of strife unsuccessfully trying to manage them with substances.

This is an exerpt of my master’s thesis. Read the full version here: Spirit Therapy: Mediumship as an Adjunct to Depth-Oriented Grief Therapy

References:

New World Encyclopedia. (n.d.). Automatic writing. In New World Encyclopedia. Retrieved March 2, 2024, from https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Automatic_writing

Stein, M. (1998). Jung’s map of the soul: An introduction. Open Court.