Signs From Deceased Loved Ones. Was That You?

Learning to Notice the Signs We Find After Loss

Sometimes a sign isn't something you can prove. It's simply a moment that makes you stop and wonder, Was that you?

I have wanted to write about signs for a while.

And I've also avoided writing about signs for a while.

Not because I'm worried that you'll think I'm too woo-woo. At this point in my life, I'm pretty comfortable with my woo.

I've hesitated because I never want someone who is grieving to read one of my stories and think, Why doesn't that happen to me?

Why don't I dream about my husband?

Why haven't I seen the cardinal?

Why don't I smell my mother's perfume?

Why haven't my lights flickered?

Does that mean they're not around me?

Does it mean I'm doing something wrong?

Does it mean they can't reach me?

Or, maybe the most painful question of all, Does it mean they don't love me enough to come back?

No.

So, before we go any further, I want you to know that.

Not receiving a sign does not mean you were less loved.

Grief isn't a contest, and there isn't a prize at the end for whoever collected the most pennies, butterflies, dreams, and flickering lights.

I've had a lot of experiences after people I love have died. Some have been small. Some have been funny. Some have been so strange that, even now, I can't explain them.

And a few changed my life.

I'm going to tell you about some of them.

You don't have to believe what I believe.

Really.

I'm not here to prove the afterlife to you.

I'm just telling you what happened to me.

My Mother Came to Get Me Every Night

My mother died when I was a child.

It was sudden, and after she died, I stopped talking.

For almost a year.

But during that same year, I dreamed about her almost every single night.

She would come and "pick me up." I'm putting that in quotes because I don't really know how else to describe it.

After my mother died, I dreamed of her almost every night for nearly a year. Sometimes I wonder if those dreams gave a little girl the time she needed to say goodbye.

She would take me to heaven.

And we would just...be together.

We played. I got to spend time with her. I got to be her child.

During the day, I was this little girl whose mother had suddenly disappeared from the physical world. My grandmother was taking care of me, but I wasn't really fully back here yet.

At night, though, I had my mother.

That went on for about a year.

Then slowly, the dreams stopped.

And I started talking again.

I started being here again.

I've thought about that year many times as an adult.

The spiritual part of me believes my mother knew I couldn't lose her all at once. I needed a transition. I needed time with her until I was able to live in a world where she wasn't physically in it.

Someone else could say that my child's mind was protecting me. That I had experienced something traumatic and my brain created a place where I could continue being with my mother while I processed her death.

Okay.

Maybe.

I've never felt the need to fight about it.

Maybe our minds are capable of extraordinary things.

Maybe love is capable of extraordinary things.

Maybe spirit is.

Maybe all three can be true.

Turns Out, These Experiences Are More Common Than We Think.

This is the part that fascinates me.

Experiences involving someone who has died are actually quite common in bereavement research.

People report dreaming about loved ones, sensing them nearby, hearing their voices, smelling familiar scents, and sometimes even feeling physical sensations associated with them. Researchers have studied these experiences across different cultures and belief systems, and having them doesn't, by itself, mean there is something psychologically wrong with someone who is grieving.

There is also an idea in grief research called "continuing bonds."

For a long time, we talked about grief as though the goal was eventually to "let go."

Move on.

Find closure.

But relationships don't work that way.

Sometimes the relationship continues.

Not in the same form, obviously. But the person we loved becomes woven into who we are. We talk to them. We dream about them. We make decisions thinking about what they would tell us. We cook their recipes. We hear their voice in our head when we're about to do something they would absolutely tell us not to do.

And sometimes we experience something that feels like more than memory.

Science can tell us these experiences happen.

It can't necessarily tell us what every experience means.

That's where I think we have to leave a little room for mystery.

Then There Was Derek

Years later, after Derek died, I had another experience that I still don't really know how to put into words.

I was going through an incredibly difficult period in my life. I had taken time off from work. I had lost my memory for a period of time. My body was exhausted. My mind was exhausted.

One day, I remember feeling like I was just...done.

I want to be very clear about what I mean by that.

I wasn't going to hurt myself.

I wasn't making a plan to die.

My body was just tired.

My mind was tired.

I was tired of hurting.

There is a kind of exhaustion that happens when you've been carrying too much for too long, where even existing feels heavy.

That's where I was.

And then I dreamed about Derek.

Except this didn't feel like any dream I had ever had.

I could smell him.

I could smell his sweat.

I could feel his breath.

I could feel his hand in mine.

We were in something like a restaurant, and as we walked, I could feel other people bumping into us. I could feel my feet moving. I could feel myself walking up the stairs.

Everything was solid.

Everything was real.

And he basically said to me, If you're ready, let's go.

So, I held his hand.

We walked up the stairs toward a door.

I remember putting my hand on it.

I remember moving through the threshold.

I even remember feeling the air change as we started going through it.

And then I stopped.

I said, No. I have to stay.

I knew I had to stay because I had to help other people.

And I came back.

You can decide what you think happened.

Maybe it was a dream.

Maybe my subconscious understood something that the conscious part of me hadn't figured out yet.

I know what I believe happened.

But what I can tell you for certain is that I was different afterward.

That experience became part of the road that eventually led to A Light in the Chaos.

I stayed.

And eventually, I understood that maybe some of what I had survived could become a light for someone else walking through their own darkness.

I reached the threshold and knew I wasn't ready to leave. I had something left to do here.

And Sometimes Your Sign Happens in Sephora

Thankfully, not every experience I've had has involved the meaning of life.

Sometimes it happens in Sephora.

There is a Donna Lewis song called I Love You Always Forever. It came out in 1996, long before I knew Derek, and there was one particular line in that song about someone's unbelievable blue eyes.

For some reason, that line always stayed with me.

I was in another relationship at the time, but I remember having this strange knowing that the person I would ultimately be with would have these beautiful, crystal blue eyes.

Years later, there was Derek.

With crystal blue eyes.

So that song became connected to him for me in a way that would probably mean absolutely nothing to anyone else.

And that's important to this story.

Because years after Derek died, I'm standing in Sephora. It's 2026. I'm missing him. I'm feeling him around me.

And this thirty-year-old song starts playing.

But it wasn't simply hearing the song that stopped me.

It was the part I heard.

The blue eyes.

And I knew.

Hi.

Could Sephora simply have a playlist that includes a ridiculously good song from 1996?

Of course.

That's kind of the point.

A sign doesn't necessarily arrive with thunder or a flashing neon announcement from the universe.

Sometimes what makes something feel like a sign isn't the thing itself.

It's the history behind it.

It's the timing.

It's what you were thinking about five seconds before it happened.

It's the one line in a thirty-year-old song that means something to you that nobody standing beside you could possibly understand.

That's why I don't think anyone can hand you a list and tell you exactly what signs from your loved ones are supposed to look like.

The language is personal.

Maybe that's part of how we recognize it.

The One I Still Can't Explain

After Derek died, I kept our house phone number.

I still have it, actually. I still pay for it today.

At the time, we had an answering machine connected to the house phone, and Derek's voice was on it. I wasn't ready to lose that too.

Eventually, I disconnected the actual phone, but I kept the number.

One night, the police came to my house.

They told me they had been receiving calls from my home number.

According to them, when they answered, they could hear breathing. It sounded as though someone was in distress.

So they came to check.

I had been asleep.

And I had been choking in my sleep.

That's the story.

I don't have a neat explanation for you.

There wasn't even a phone connected in the house.

The police said they received the calls.

I was, in fact, having trouble breathing.

Make of that whatever you want.

I know what I make of it.

Sometimes We're Looking So Hard That We Miss It

When I was doing readings on A Light Heart Tarot, and when I've worked with students, I've often described connection like trying to find a radio station.

There's a frequency.

There's you.

There's the person you love.

And sometimes there is a whole lot of static in between.

In my spiritual practice, I believe we're physical beings living in a very dense physical world. We have bodies. We touch things. We see things. We're here.

I believe spirit exists differently.

I sometimes describe it like a balloon floating above you.

You're standing on the ground, and the balloon is floating just beyond your reach. You can't quite reach it from where you are. And the balloon can't simply come back down without something changing either.

Somewhere, you have to meet.

You don't have to believe in energy or frequencies or any of that for the metaphor to still make sense.

Because grief itself can create an enormous amount of static.

When we lose someone, especially in the beginning, we are so focused on the person who isn't there.

I want my mother.

I want my husband.

I want my child.

I want my friend.

I want them back.

Of course we do.

And when you're hurting like that, you're looking for them in the form you recognize.

You want their voice.

Their arms.

Their number to appear on your phone.

You want the impossible thing.

You want them to walk through the door.

And while we're looking at that door, sometimes we don't notice what's happening through the window.

Maybe You're Waiting for the Wrong Sign

Maybe the language of connection isn't universal. Maybe it's personal.

This is why I'm cautious about all those lists telling you what signs from loved ones are "supposed" to look like.

Pennies.

Cardinals.

Butterflies.

Feathers.

Sure.

Maybe.

But why would everyone communicate the same way?

Maybe your person never cared about cardinals.

Maybe your connection has its own language.

Maybe the woman standing in front of you at the coffee shop has the same unusual name as your mother.

Maybe someone sits next to you at a restaurant and starts telling a story that sounds hauntingly familiar.

Maybe you're terrified about something, and suddenly, through a series of coincidences you couldn't possibly have planned, everything works out.

Maybe it's a license plate.

Maybe you're driving through a storm and suddenly the clouds open and the sun hits in a way that makes you think of them.

Maybe you open a book to a random page, and there it is, something your person used to say all the time.

Maybe a song starts playing in Sephora.

The thing I've learned is that sometimes we become so busy looking for the sign we've been told to expect that we miss the one that would actually mean something to us.

So How Do You Know?

You don't.

I know. That's probably not the answer you wanted.

But I don't think our job is to become paranormal detectives.

I don't walk around examining every dragonfly and demanding identification.

Sometimes a dragonfly is just living its little dragonfly life.

What I've learned instead is to notice what happens inside of me.

If something makes me stop, I stop.

What was I just thinking about?

What was I feeling?

Why did that particular thing catch my attention?

Does it have meaning that would make absolutely no sense to anyone else?

Did I have to convince myself it was connected to my person, or did the recognition come first?

Sometimes it's just this immediate feeling.

Oh.

There you are.

And then I let it be.

I don't need another sign tomorrow to prove today's sign was real.

I don't need to convince you.

And I don't think you need to convince yourself.

If something brings you comfort, you are allowed to receive the comfort.

If, You Haven't Received a Sign, Please Hear This

This is the reason I've been hesitant to write this article.

Because I know grief.

And I know what we do to ourselves when we're hurting.

You can read all of my stories and then sit in your house tonight waiting for the lights to flicker.

Please don't.

You may never have a dream like the dreams I had with my mother.

You may never smell your person's cologne.

You may never hear a voice.

No dragonfly may follow you to work.

And your lights may remain annoyingly, relentlessly functional.

That doesn't mean anything about how much you were loved.

It doesn't mean you're not spiritual enough.

It doesn't mean you're grieving wrong.

And please don't make yourself responsible for somehow becoming happy enough, healed enough, or "high vibe" enough for your person to reach you.

Grief is heavy because grief is heavy.

You are allowed to be sad.

You are allowed to be angry.

You are allowed to miss them so much that you wouldn't notice a marching band of your ancestors walking through your kitchen.

There is nothing wrong with you.

Maybe one day you'll notice something you couldn't notice before.

Maybe you won't.

Your relationship with the person you lost isn't measured by how many signs you receive after they die.

It's measured by the love that existed while they were here, and the ways that love continues to live inside of you now.

Was That You?

Sometimes we're listening so hard for the voice we remember that we miss the quieter ways love still speaks.

After everything I've experienced, I still don't have answers for all of it.

I actually think I'm okay with that.

I know what I believe.

I believe love and connection continue after we leave these bodies.

I believe I've experienced people I love after their deaths.

I believe my mother came to me when I was a little girl who wasn't ready to lose her.

I believe Derek has found some pretty creative ways to say hello.

But belief isn't proof.

And I don't need it to be.

Maybe that's why I love the question:

Was that you?

There's something beautiful about not needing to force an answer.

So if something happens one day that makes you stop, just stop.

Notice it.

Maybe smile.

Maybe cry.

Maybe roll your eyes because, honestly, that would be exactly like them.

And if all you can say is...

Was that you?

Maybe, for now, that's enough.

Because love doesn't always need to be explained to still be felt.