I Have Arrived and I Am Home

Posted on September 12, 2017 by anniemattingley

“I’m okay, scariest earthquake ever.” (on Facebook from Oaxaca)

“B & M are in Wyoming. They’re safe.” (email about Florida)

“Pretty shaken up. We’re fine.” (on Facebook from Mexico City)

“T and his sisters have evacuated to GA.” (phone call about Florida)

“O’s dad and family are all right.” (phone call about Oaxaca)

“Mom (who has cancer) can handle the smoke if she stays inside.” (email about Portland)

“It’s 110 degrees. B got dehydrated and is in the hospital.” (phone call from Oakland)

“Everybody’s sold out of sandbags.” (phone call from Georgia)

I’m dizzied by keeping track of my loved ones, checking on hurricanes, fires, earthquakes, and extreme heat across the continent. I read rising death tolls in Texas, the Caribbean, the Isthmus of Mexico, Florida. The number of acres burning in the northwest is reflected by the smoky haze where I live in the southwest more than a thousand miles away. I am face to face with the risks of being alive, the reality of our mortality. Death looks over my left shoulder. It keeps clearing its throat to remind me of our impermanence.

I try to remember how to keep my balance. I note the beauty of my maxmilian sunflowers which just burst into bloom today, the red on the wings of a flicker flying past the window. I have my mantra practice, my own breath. I ask for extra hugs from my sweetie. A friend shares a mantra from Thich Nhat Hanh—I have arrived and I am home. Home is a place of safety and like it or not, home encompasses it all, including both life and death.

Years ago, during one of life’s particularly rough patches, a spontaneous meditation arose in my mind. In it, one by one by one, everyone I loved and everything I owned or depended on, was stripped away and completely removed. First, I was alone without family or friends, then I was homeless, yet I was okay. My car died. Walking, I fell to the ground with a minor injury to my leg. Still, internally, I was all right. When my body failed further, strangers took me to the hospital. When I could no longer continue living, I died. What remained was astonishing. Though I was aware that I had died, what I felt was a delicious sense of well-being, that everything was totally fine.

I had arrived and I was home, just as I had been before the meditation, and just as I am now, decades later. Storms, fires, floods, and earthquakes come and go. Life comes and goes. I am home.

Some of you who are reading this, perhaps many of you, may have experienced large losses recently in these natural phenomena or in other ways. May you each find your way through grief and loss to the peaceful center that is our true home.

The After Death Chronicles: True Stories of Comfort, Guidance, and Wisdom from Beyond the Veil. To be released by Hampton Roads on October 6, 2017. Pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound. Find out more on my Book Page.

My Mickey Mouse Car

Posted on September 5, 2017 by anniemattingley

This photo of me and Mickey Mouse was taken thirty-two years ago as he pretended to hand me the giant key to the Chevy Cavalier I’d just won. It was Disneyland’s 30^th anniversary, though I hadn’t paid any attention to the signs that said every 3,000^th visitor would win a Chevy during the celebration. The snapshot doesn’t do justice to the tug of war that had just gone on between us. Mickey may look benign, but he was strong, and he wasn’t about to let me have that key until the PR photographers had gotten this picture.

All that day I walked around the park in shock. That I, me, Annie, who had always driven second- or third- or fourth-hand cars, was actually the winner of a brand new one took a while to sink in.

So maybe it shouldn’t have surprised me that I didn’t shout out in delight when I received the first printed copy of my book. I leafed through it, standing up, nearly burning my spinach omelet. I was unsure I fit this “I-am-the-author-of-a-published-book” role. I’ve since recovered from my shock and become totally thrilled. I’m even easing into comfort in my new role, which I’ll need, to move with grace through all that’s upcoming. The first of my many events are listed below.

Here’s a tiny preview of next week’s blog that will focus on after-death communication through physical and electrical phenomena. These are true incidents when people’s dead beloveds made contact in ways that had particular meaning to the living person:

A woman invites her deceased daughter to join a family photo and later notes a circle of light in the picture, precisely where she’d asked her to stand, that by all logic should not be there.

A daughter smells trumpet oil. Her deceased father had been a trumpet player, so she instantly knows that odor can only come from him.

A cell phone flashes a woman’s deceased husband’s number as though he had called. She checks with her “tech guru,” who tells her this is impossible by normal means.

Saturday, October 7^th, 2 pm, TAOS, NM, Book Release Party & Talking Circle on After-Death Communication, SOMOS, 108 Civic Plaza Drive

Sunday, October 8^th, 2 pm, QUESTA, NM, Book Release Party & Talking Circle on After-Death Communication, OCHO, #8, NM State Hwy 38 (just east of the Questa traffic light)

Saturday, October 14^th, 2 pm, SANTA FE, NM, Reading/Book Signing & Talking Circle on After-Death Communication, The Ark Bookstore, 33 Romero Street (by the Railyard)

Saturday, October 28^th, 2 pm, SANTA FE, NM, Reading/Book Signing, Talking Circle on After-Death Communication & Day of the Dead Altar (bring items for the altar), op.cit Bookstore, DeVargas Mall, 157 Paseo de Peralta

Thursday, November 2^nd, QUESTA, NM, 3-5 pm workshop (and ongoing until 7), Writing Letters to the Dead Workshop as part of Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebration, OCHO, #8, NM State Hwy 38 (just east of the Questa light)

Wednesday, November 8^th, 11 am, TAOS, NM, Reading/Book Signing & Talking Circle on After-Death Communication at Noetic Sciences Meeting, Unity Church, 69 Blueberry Hill Road

I would love to hear how your dead beloveds have visited you from beyond the veil that separates life from death. Please share your experiences with me at https://anniemattingley.com/participate/ If you’d prefer to tell me your story verbally, let me know and we can arrange for that.

On the Grace Surrounding Death

Posted on August 29, 2017 by anniemattingley

Today I’m continuing with the third in my series on the various ways in which our dead beloveds visit us. This week’s examples focus on what can occur just before and after deaths, during the dying process, and at the moment of death. Each example is a real experience that has happened spontaneously.

I’ll begin with a story I tell in my book about a young man who drowned. Neither he nor anyone he loved could possibly have been aware on a conscious level that this accident would occur. After his death, as his family and friends gathered to mourn, it was revealed that within the previous week he had gone out of his way to connect with many of his closest beloveds. He had given gifts and told many of them that he loved them. After the fact, it seemed obvious to everyone that he had been preparing them. This illustrates what I call the Grace which surrounds death and often helps to soften its blow.

The opposite can occur when we have an urge to visit or call someone, to make amends or apologize or say “I love you” and that turns out to be our last opportunity because soon after the person dies unexpectedly.

A drawing done hours or even years before a sudden, accidental death may later reveal details about the death as though the person had known when and how and where they would die. What does this say about time and its mysteries?

After a sudden death, we may realize a recent dream was designed to help us cope.

A child may burst into tears, saying something has happened to her father before being told of his sudden accidental death.

If we’re unaware someone has died, we may be informed of the death by vision or voice or dream before we are told by expected means like phone calls.

A family may “protect” a dying person from disturbing news like a miscarriage or a divorce or a death, yet the dying person may “see” the event and speak of it.

If we’re present at the death of a beloved, we may see or hear or be aware of those who come to greet the dying or have any number of invisible phenomena made known to us.

At a deathbed we may be aware, by means we cannot fathom, seeing with non-physical eyes, of when the person’s essence exits the body.

I experienced this last example at my father’s deathbed. I “knew” his essence (or soul or spirit) had left his body and risen up and passed through the ceiling. When I asked the ICU nurses to disconnect him from life support because of this, they too knew he had gone.

Watch for my focus in the upcoming weeks on physical and electrical manifestations and experiences of synchronicity.

I would love to hear how your dead beloveds have lit up the scene beyond the scrim that separates life from death. I invite you to share your experiences with me at https://anniemattingley.com/participate/ If you’d prefer to tell me your story verbally, let me know and we can arrange for that.

Nothing, No One, Is Ever Totally Lost

Posted on August 22, 2017 by anniemattingley

Fall is in the air, in the way the mornings smell and feel, in the crackling cry of the Clark’s nutcrackers. These noisy birds are annoyed if I come too close and interrupt their pinon harvesting. It’s too early for them, isn’t it? I’m not ready for fall yet. Does this all portend an early frost? Will the flowers be felled before what I perceive to be their time?

My drying peppermint. Note the afternoon rain on the window.

I harvested the peppermint this morning and hung it in the sunporch to dry. This is a late summer task, not a fall one, but still that word “harvest” bothers me.

What I’m really not wanting is what follows fall—winter, snow, ice, cold. Yet these cycles teach me about how nothing ever stays the same. The grape hyacinth and crocus are the first to bloom in spring and the first to fade. All through spring and summer beauty shines, then disappears—lilacs, daylilies, the tall yellow yarrow I love so. Our irises are still impacted by last year’s army of voles who also killed most of the rhubarb. We have not yet finished clearing away the branches that were broken off by our heavy, late spring, snow.

Hail clattered everywhere last Sunday. I held my breath, remembering the baseball-sized hail that crashed through roofs and totaled cars in Colorado Springs last August. Sunday’s hail passed through without doing more than knocking off a few flower buds and petals.

Miscarriage, birth, life, death, illness, injury—they are all reflected in nature. If I can’t be present with change, I will suffer constantly. My garden and yard, the seasons, the moods of the sky and the mountains remind me of this at every turn. I don’t mourn the sun when it sets each night. I did not mourn it when it eclipsed on my birthday either. Why? Because I know the light always returns.

Last week I noticed a new volunteer hollyhock, not two feet tall, blooming a brilliant red. Another gift to be grateful for until the frost takes it away.

I look back at a journal entry about the despair I felt six years ago as I approached the first anniversary of my daughter Randi’s death—before her time. There have been so many steps and stages since then. Tears still arise unexpectedly as though from a bottomless well, yet even then I feel astonishingly blessed by life, and amazed and pleased that I can feel so blessed despite her death. I still often and regularly sense her presence to remind me that nothing, no one, is ever totally lost, totally gone.

This October 6^th, the seventh anniversary, will include a new quality, since that’s when Hampton Roads is publishing my book. I think of this as bringing light to the darkness of that hellish day. Interviewing for and writing this book supported me through the winter of my grief and into its spring. I composted my sorrow and used it to nourish and feed my project. Now it is about to come into full bloom.

My prayer is that The After Death Chronicles will nourish all who read it, just as so much and so many have nourished me and it. Isn’t it ironic that I shrink away from fall for fear of the winter that will follow, when fall is my favorite season?

If you have after-death communication stories, I invite you to share them with me at http://www.AnnieMattingley.com. Just click “Share A Story” in the menu and follow the instructions. If you’d prefer to tell me your story verbally, let me know and we can arrange for that.

More Ways our Beloved Dead Come to Visit

Posted on August 15, 2017 by anniemattingley

Today I continue the series I began last week on the myriad ways that our dead beloveds can visit us.

I’ll start with a mini-story. When Thelma (not her real name) inherited her father’s home, she moved into it temporarily and felt his presence nearly constantly. His garden had been his favorite place. I love that he once pointed out to her that a particular tree (I believe it was one he’d planted.) needed watering. I could use that kind of help, since I often fall behind on my watering. Thank goodness for this rainy August.

Practical info is just one way dead beloveds can participate in our lives though. They may also assist us in much more significant manners.

If we’re struggling with a difficult decision, a solution may arrive with a memory of the person or just a sense that we’ve been helped by them.

If we have a particular route we usually travel, a nudge to go a different way may come. Sometimes we’ll never know why. At other times we might hear later that a bridge had collapsed or an accident or a crime had occurred just when and where we would have been had we not changed our route.

We may ask for help from our beloved with an important transition like a divorce or career change or move, receive advice that defies logic, follow it, and have it work out just as our beloved had suggested.

If a nudge or advice or solution comes in a voice, we may hear words either inside our heads or externally in the person’s voice. Sometimes it simply feels like our own thoughts.

Our dear beloved may give us a message—directly or in a dream—that we’re unsure we should deliver. When we do, it may be received with joy and gratitude and tears.

When we’re unsure whether after-death communication is even possible, a book on the subject might fall off a library shelf at our feet. (Yep, this really happened, as all these incidents did!)

The sense of someone we’ve lost connection with may be felt so vividly we search the Internet for news of them and, to our shock, come upon their obituary.

We may hear our dead beloved’s happy laughter.

Looking at what was happening or being said at the precise moment that lights go off and on without discernable cause, may reveal meaning.

A hug or a kiss in a dream may feel as real on awakening as if the person were right there in the physical.

Of course, these contacts are comforting. But when we discern levels of meaning within them, the comfort is deepened, because meaning reveals an unseen order we yearn for. Little feels more out of order than death. Each time we discover meaning we straighten the house of our grief by one small increment.

Watch for more examples in upcoming blogs.

If you have your own stories I would love to hear them. I invite you to share them with me at http://www.AnnieMattingley.com. Just click “Share A Story” in the menu to write about your after-death communication. If you’d prefer to tell me your story verbally, let me know and we can arrange for that.

Annie Mattingley

after-death communication researcher, author, & speaker

Tag Archives: Grief