Recently, Jill got a call from a friend involved with a human rights organization. The group had had a really challenging year financially, and they were struggling to meet their operating budget when an urgent humanitarian situation arose. The situation needed their immediate help. The friend asked Jill if she knew anyone who might be willing to step up to help them generate resources. Jill told her friend, “Let me see what I can do.” And then, as Jill puts it, “I kind of sent the message out to the universe.”
Within just a few hours, Jill got a phone call from a different friend who wanted to know what they could do to make an immediate impact and help children in need.
“As a matter of fact,” Jill said, “I may have just the place.”
Jill made the connection, and within just a couple of days an airplane was hurtling through the skies, delivering essential supplies to some very grateful children.
When I heard that story, I marveled at how quickly the universe used Jill to make something magical happen. She is a true light worker, contracted by the Other Side to make vital connections here on earth.
And yet, aside from her heightened sense of spirituality, Jill doesn’t possess any superpower that is unique to her.
On the contrary, the abilities that make her such a powerful connector are abilities that we all possess.
* * *
—
Just as we can all receive signs and messages from our Teams of Light, we can all be connectors for the Other Side.
Sometimes—as is the case with Jill—we will be aware that we are serving as a kind of conduit for signs and messages. But many times, we won’t be aware of it—it will just happen. All our paths extend beyond our own lives and intersect with other people’s life paths, creating endless opportunities for us to play meaningful roles in the journeys of others. Our lives aren’t just about us—they are also about our connections to other people.
We need to understand that we can meaningfully affect others’ lives by simple gestures—a smile for a stranger can have far-ranging consequences. I recently read a story about a woman who stopped by a Dunkin’ Donuts, saw a homeless man, bought him a cup of coffee, and sat and talked with him for five minutes. That was it—a cup of coffee and five minutes.
She then went to place an order to go, and as she was getting ready to leave, the homeless man pushed a small, crumpled note into her hand, then walked out. The note said he’d been planning to kill himself that day, but their brief conversation—a simple acknowledgment of his existence and his worth as a human being—had changed everything for him, and kept him alive. I have heard many, many other stories like that. Stories about how simple acts of kindness can have consequences far beyond what we can imagine. A smile, a word, a gesture, a gift, can change everything.
And, yes, they can save a life, if they haven’t already.
We cross into one another’s paths for different reasons. If we approach these moments of connection with open hearts and minds—with the understanding that what we say and do may have an exponentially larger impact on someone’s life path than we can even know—we will better honor our roles as connectors for the Other Side.
It has been said that people cross our paths and enter our lives as either a blessing or a lesson. Often, it is both. Either they have something to teach us, or we have something to teach them, or, at best, we have something to teach each other. That is how this great chain of light and interconnection works.
And here is one of the most beautiful things about signs and messages: The Other Side needs our help to make them strong and powerful. Our Teams of Light need us to be aware and open and receptive, not just for our own signs, but also to help facilitate signs for other people. We are meant to live lives of interconnectedness—put simply, we are all in this together.
“We belong to each other,” as Mother Teresa said.
My friend Jill is a remarkable expression of this. But the truth is that we can all be light workers and connectors. The universe is ready to use every one of us. We just have to be ready to join one another’s Teams of Light.
Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.
—ANATOLE FRANCE
19
ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL
I’M often asked if our pets cross to the Other Side and if they, too, can send us signs. The answer to both is yes. The animals we loved so dearly here on earth are indeed on the Other Side. And once they’re there, they can—and do—send us amazing signs.
I have encountered pets in hundreds of readings, and they always appear as happy bundles of light and energy. While they’re with us, they are our teachers, sharing profound lessons about unconditional love—lessons they are uniquely suited to teach. And when they cross, they remain connected to us in real and powerful ways, providing hope and comfort and support and, of course, everlasting love.
It may seem strange, but animals can actually be better at sending signs than humans. Why? Because they are beautifully unspoiled. They are unfettered by analytical thinking, so they remain free to engage in the energy of our connection to them—as infants do, before their logical brains kick in.
Because of this innocence and freedom, animals are keenly perceptive to the flow of energy in our universe. The Other Side has taught me that we see only about 15 percent of what is around us here on earth. The rest is unseen energy and light connections. Animals, however, can see much more than just 15 percent. For instance, animals have been known to react days before earthquakes and other natural disasters. Think about it—have you ever noticed your dog or your cat suddenly sit straight up and react to some imaginary noise or event? As if they saw or heard something you didn’t? Chances are, they reacted to something very real.
Animals can also sense and see the energy of spirits visiting us on earth.
Not long ago, I read for a woman who had recently and tragically lost her son. In our reading, her son came through and had me tell his mother that the reason their dog acted crazy the day before was because the dog had seen him—or rather, had seen his spirit.
“Oh my God,” the woman said. “That happened. That really happened. The dog went absolutely crazy, and we were all like, ‘What in the world is the matter with the dog?’ We actually wondered aloud if maybe he was seeing or sensing our son visiting us.”
Our pets, it turns out, are pretty good at picking up on spirit activity while here—and communicating with, and sending signs from, the Other Side.
* * *
—
One of my former students, Melissa, texted me a story about her beloved dog, Heidi, who lived for twenty-one (yes, twenty-one!) wonderful years. Heidi was a rescue who was playful and loving and liked chasing butterflies. Her crossing was devastating for Melissa. She had been part of so much of Melissa’s life journey. Melissa missed Heidi so much that the idea of getting another dog was something she couldn’t even entertain.
Two years after Heidi’s crossing, Melissa checked her Facebook page and received an important event reminder. That day would have been Heidi’s twenty-third birthday. While remembering Heidi, and celebrating her love for her, a beautiful thought formed in Melissa’s mind: It might finally be a good time to rescue another dog.
That day, Melissa downloaded an application from a dog rescue organization and took it with her to her job as a lifeguard. “Just as I was filling it out,” she says, “a butterfly flew right over my head and danced around. I always connect butterflies to Heidi.”
Because Melissa was open to messages from the Other Side, she knew what the butterfly meant. It was a sign from Heidi, giving her a blessing, celebrating with her, and affirming that she was doing the right thing in rescuing another dog. Melissa went on to adopt a new dog, and since then, her life—and the dog’s—has been meaningfully enriched.
This is one of the most important tasks our
beloved pets on the Other Side undertake—they help us relinquish any guilt we may feel about their loss, and steer us toward decisions that will make us happy and expand our experience of love in the here and now—specifically the decision to get another pet. Just like all our loved ones who cross, our animals on the Other Side want us to be happy.
So if you are facing that situation and wondering if you should get another animal, don’t be afraid to ask your pet on the Other Side for a sign.
* * *
—
My mother’s connections to the many dogs she has loved over the course of her life are strong, too. Their presence remains in her life long after they have crossed. Lightning was a tiny toy fox terrier—a totally adorable black, white, and tan little guy with crooked legs and inexhaustible energy. My brother had picked him out to be his own dog, but Lightning attached himself to my mom.
“He just decided that I was his person,” she says.
My mother brought Lightning on a family vacation to Lake George. She wanted to take a boat out on the lake, so she put Lightning in a second-floor bedroom and closed the door. I was sitting outside on the porch when I saw a dark shape suddenly drop out of the sky and dart across the lawn. It was Lightning! He had jumped out the window and off the balcony and dashed through a meadow, just to get to my mom on the lake.
Another time, my mother left Lightning with a dogsitter whose backyard was enclosed by a six-foot-tall fence. No one thought Lightning could scale a six-foot fence, but of course he did, and he ran away in search of my mother. Since my mother was hours away, my aunt (who is psychic, too) left work to search for the dog. She was drawn to the harbor in Huntington and sure enough saw Lightning walking along the water. She opened her car door and called to Lightning, and he jumped right in.
Lightning lived a long and active life before he crossed. By then, my mother had gotten a second dog—a big Lab named Cassie. Lightning had always slept at the foot of my mother’s bed, while Cassie slept in a dog bed on the floor. At bedtime, Lightning would jump into Cassie’s bed, and Cassie would look at my mother as if to say, You see? You see how Lightning is messing with me? My mother would shoo Lightning out of Cassie’s bed, and Lightning would jump up on the bed and settle down to sleep.
The night Lightning crossed, at bedtime, Cassie went into my mother’s room but refused to get into her dog bed. “She was clearly agitated,” my mother recalls. “I said, ‘What’s the matter? Lightning’s not here, you can go to sleep,’ but Cassie just kept looking at me and looking back at her bed with distress in her eyes. She was eighty-five pounds with short legs, and she could never jump high enough to get in my bed, but that night she somehow managed to leap onto my bed rather than go anywhere near her own. She looked spooked. I couldn’t see anything, but something had really unnerved her.”
Was it Lightning, still teasing her from the Other Side?
The day after Lightning passed, my mother got out of the shower and heard little whimpering sounds on the other side of the bathroom door. Lightning, she remembered, used to stand outside the bathroom and whine until she came out. But Lightning was gone, so who was making these sounds? “I know Lightning’s noises,” my mother says. “I know all his sounds. And these sounded like him. But of course when I came out of the bathroom, no one was there.”
Several months after Lightning crossed, my mother got a new dog, a Chihuahua-poodle mix named Dobby. Dobby slept at the corner end of the bed, in the very spot where Lightning used to sleep. “In the middle of the night I moved my foot and without realizing it, must have accidentally hit Dobby, because I heard her jump off the bed. ‘Dobby,’ I called, ‘come back up, I’m sorry,’ but I heard nothing.” She knew that Dobby liked to hide underneath the bed if she felt threatened, so she figured that was where she had gone.
My mother tried to go back to sleep. When she stretched out, her foot hit something heavy. She was puzzled—had she left a book on her bed? She reached down to feel what was there, and it was Dobby, fast asleep! She was a little unnerved. “I know I’m not crazy, but I also know that I heard a little dog jump to the floor from my bed. How many times had I heard that familiar noise over the years with Lightning? I lay back down—and then I heard little doggy footsteps going down the creaky floor of the hall—I really did!”
My mother is very open to signs and messages, too, and it didn’t take her long to figure out what had happened.
“It was Lightning,” she says. “He was trying to tell me that he was still around. And he didn’t stop until I finally figured it out. And once I did, the noises all stopped.”
A few weeks later, my mother was visiting my sister at her house in New Jersey. As she arrived, she accidentally dropped Dobby’s leash and Dobby took off. Dobby was a rescue dog, very insecure and very scared of people. She had never been to this area, so she would not know how to get back to the house even if she wanted to. My mother and sister and a few neighbors searched and searched for her for two days, but couldn’t find her. Even worse, it was the dead of winter. After two days, my mother knew she’d have no choice but to go back home to New York because she had to go to work. She was frantic.
“I was heartbroken,” she says. “I was driving around, looking for Dobby and crying. I said, ‘Please, Lightning, you got lost twice and somehow we found you—and each time it felt like a miracle. Now I need one more little miracle. Please help us find Dobby.”
Two hours later, there was a knock at my sister’s door—a neighbor who was a runner thought she had spotted a little dog in the nearby woods. She stayed in that spot and called her husband on her cellphone, and he came and got my mom and sister. They all drove to the woods and started searching. But there was no dog in sight. Dobby was little, very insecure, and liked to hide—and her tawny color would camouflage her. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, the man spotted what looked like a little dog swimming toward a tiny island in the middle of a pond. Then the dog seemed to disappear. But she had to be there! The neighbor and my mom managed to balance on several fallen logs, making their way to the tiny island. And there, hiding deep in the underbrush, they found shaking, cold, wet Dobby. “She was shivering and freezing—who knows what would have happened if we hadn’t found her,” my mom said. “And she was so completely hidden that finding her truly was a miracle.”
My mom knew Lightning had answered her plea for help. “Lightning helped bring me my miracle. He helped me find Dobby.”
* * *
—
When our pets cross, they want to let us know that they are okay. If they were infirm or in pain and suffering at the end of their time on earth, they want to let us know that they are now pain-free and once again frolicking and jumping and running. And when they cross, they want us stop doubting ourselves or feeling misplaced guilt. Our pets know that every decision we made was made with their best interest at heart. They know we did everything in our power to make their crossing as comfortable as possible. They want to assuage our grief and heal our broken hearts. And the way they do this is by letting us know they’re still with us.
I’ve also learned that when it is our time to cross, our pets are often the first ones to come bounding and leaping and fluttering up to greet us. I’ve seen it time and time again during my readings.
My friend and fellow psychic medium Joanne Gerber recently shared a story about her beloved dog, Louis. Louis was a West Highland white terrier, and he was central to Joanne’s life. I had become accustomed to, and looked forward to, all the adorable pictures of Louis that Joanne posted on her Facebook page. So I was very upset when I read about Louis’s diagnosis of a brain tumor, and his crossing four months later.
Louis’s crossing was devastating for Joanne, but in the weeks and months that followed, she reported that Louis had come to her several times and showed her that he is happy, mobile, and pain-free.
One night, just a few weeks after Louis’s cro
ssing, Joanne was in a horrible three-car accident on Highway 90 in Connecticut. The car in front of her suddenly hit the brakes, and Joanne swerved to avoid a crash. Her car spun out on the black ice into three lanes of oncoming traffic. One car sideswiped her, then a tractor trailer hit her on the passenger side, and her car crashed into a meridian barrier. The airbags deployed, but Joanne remained conscious. She kicked the door open and crawled out onto the snow. Miraculously, she only suffered cuts and bruises.
First responders helped clear the scene of the accident, and a tow truck driver arrived to remove Joanne’s mangled car and drive her home. The driver was about to load the rear bumper, which had come off, into the backseat of Joanne’s car when he abruptly stopped and asked her if she had a small dog in the back of the car…because he thought he saw a small white animal there.
But there was no animal in the car.
Immediately, Joanne knew—it was Louis!
“I know that I had angels protecting me,” she wrote of that night, “and Louis was one of them.”
Joanne’s story stunningly illustrates that our pets never stop trying to protect us and make us happy. The unconditional love is still there. Our connections to them remain strong. They will try anything to let us know they’re still with us. And if we need a miracle, they might just fetch one, too.
I am quite confident that the most important part of a human being is not his physical body but his nonphysical essence, which some people call soul…The nonphysical part cannot die and cannot decay because it’s not physical.
—RABBI HAROLD KUSHNER
20
GROUNDHOGS
I MET Julie, my editor, not long after she acquired my first book. I came to her office in Midtown Manhattan prepared to read for her, but she quickly told me that she didn’t want the reading that day. “I’m already a believer,” she told me, “so you don’t have to read me to convince me.” But my literary agent was there, too, and she insisted that Julie should have a reading with me. Julie reluctantly agreed—but I could tell there was a reason why she initially resisted, though I didn’t press her.
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