losing loved ones, but gaining spirit guides

when grief becomes a bridge to the other side

May 19, 2025

i lost my husband, finnius fay ingalls, on september 14, 2022. his death shattered me. and it cracked something deeper open too. that was the start of everything falling apart and also when something deep inside me began to stir again.

for a long time, i had stopped writing and i felt numb to my core. all i could do was to pull inward and i was doing what i had to do for the kids, for the house, and for the small thread of normal i was still trying to hold onto.

and yet, during this crazy time of deep grief and robotic going through the motions, something deep inside started to return to the surface. maybe you could say it was the voice beneath the voice, the one i first met when i was a teenager, emptied completely during a three-day solo fast beneath the high colorado mountain sky, surrounded by alpine flowers and stillness.

that first voice arrived like a wave, a force that rose up and moved through me. it felt like i was riding something ancient, something vast, something that had always been there waiting.

and after finn died, that wave started coming back. i think in the beginning i started by writing to him because it was unbearable to not have him living so i wrote to him instead. from across the veil of time and space i reached for him. and it wasn’t just journaling, it was a form of channeling, of listening, letting whatever was there move through me. it happened in a way that felt both mystical and also real, in a cellular, soul-level way. and it also felt very familiar and true at the same time. like this voice had always been waiting for me to pick up the imaginary phone and dial the call to my higher self, you might say.

so as i was working my way through this deep grief window, in early january 2025, someone else crossed over. we had both been mothers in the same school community. i had always felt her gentleness, her radiance, her deep love for her children. we weren’t close in the traditional sense, yet i noticed her and i felt her light and her softness.

and after she passed, i felt her even more. she came to me in presence that was more than memory, her visits felt soft, clear, unexpectedly near. like she entered a room in me i didn’t realize had been prepared.

and somehow, through these moments with her, i began to return too. i began to come back to my voice, back to community, back to a part of myself i had tucked away after losing finn.

this was her gift to me, and it’s still unfolding.

it’s been two and a half years since finn died. i can say now, without pretending or needing to wrap it in a lesson, i love my life again. the journey here has been unbearably painful. i still cry the deep, gut-wrenching sobs that only someone who has had their life torn open can understand.

because finn’s death didn’t just break my heart, it opened long buried and repressed trauma memories from my childhood.

in the space that followed, i began to remember things i had forced my young self to forget long ago. wounds so deep they lived inside my body, shaping the way i breathed, the way i trusted, the way i held myself together.

so in this time of healing after finn died, i remembered the betrayal of an early caregiver. it was the kind of violation that sends you to the bottom of something dark and dares you to come back whole.

and somehow, i did.

it wasn’t by any means all at once, it was more of a bit by bit experience where i began to crawl my way back to sanity and a life that was worth living again.

i remember feeling during this time that it was sometimes all i could do to keep breathing. and somehow i kept listening, and writing. i kept letting grief show me what i had once been too young to hold.

that is why i can feel what i feel now. that is why i can meet others in their grief. because i have walked the long way home.

last night, i dreamed of finn again. it had been a while. the dream started with him showing me how he sends me love songs, which he does often. then suddenly, he was beside me in our bed. his unmistakable presence and he felt so real i kissed him, so real i forgot it was a dream.

when i woke up, i didn’t remember at first. but then i heard an airplane fly low overhead and felt him swoop in. finn was a pilot and airplanes are one of the signs he regularly sends me. and just like that, finn reminded me of the dream in an instant.

that is how it works from the other side. they really are still with us. it just doesn’t feel like it most of the time. and it’s not the same as having their flesh and blood here to hold the weight of life with you.

but still, they come.

this is where my friend who died and her part of the story begins. what follows is not just about her death, but about her presence and the quiet ways she returned and keeps returning, and the moments she showed up when i needed her most. this story is about how, in those moments, she helped carry me back to myself.

the night my friend crossed over to the other side, it after all the texting and sharing of our group chat quieted down for the night, after my oldest child had gone to bed, that’s when the pain arrived. it bloomed in my chest, the kind of pain that can’t be explained, only felt. the pain of losing someone so special, so radiant, that i didn’t even get the chance to know her one-on-one, and still, i knew her.

i recognized her as a kindred spirit, a soul sister, a bright, shining star, a quiet warrior of the heart. she was a mother who would have died for her children.

but why?

the question tore from my chest. there was no logic, only tears streaming down my cheeks and an ache so deep i felt cut in two.

i cried because it hurts to lose a light so bright. i cried because it hurts to lose a mother so nurturing and attuned. i cried from all my losses in this lifetime, losses that have carved me down to the bone.

as i lay on the floor in front of the fire in this quiet condo, away from the community i’m just beginning to trust with my fragile, broken heart, i wept for what i never had and what i was now losing.

i wept for the mother i longed for. for what it might have been like to be held by someone like her, even for a short while. to have lost her as a friend before we could fully begin.

and then i felt her, so strongly, so clearly.

her presence descended like a soft wave of light and warmth. she cradled my head in her arms. she wiped the tears from my face and gently stroked my hair.

she was a fairy godmother. but she was still her, she was just expanded. she had become this too.

she stayed with me, stroking my head, patting my broken heart. and i cried, not from fear anymore, but from beauty. from the sacred ache of being human.

i wish i could rise up out of this broken-hearted body, i sobbed.

i know, she said.

not in words, but in presence. in the way she held me while i cried in her lap.

and i knew, in a bittersweet way, that this moment was only possible because she had crossed. because she was now beyond flesh. because she could reach me in this way.

what i didn’t expect was what came next.

i shared this with our signal group chat the next day. and in the days that followed, i spiraled into what felt like past-life or cellular memory. deep persecution panic, as though i had been exiled for sharing these kinds of visions before. i was terrified that i would be ostracized, cast out. i was swept away with a deep, delusional fear that i might even killed for speaking this truth aloud.

it felt ancient. and it felt real.

but i also know this: these fears arise at the threshold of the sacred, right when we’re about to reclaim something powerful, and right when we dare to say, this happened to me, and i believe it was real.

so i’m sharing it now.

i don’t share to prove anything, or to convince anyone. i share to document this love, this mystery, this midnight moment when she held me, and i let myself be comforted. and it cracked me open.

this is how i know grief is sacred. because it brings us face to face with the invisible and somehow it lets the invisible hold us back.

in this next visit i had seen a soft, glowing photo of her on her facebook page. something about it stopped me. the way she was smiling behind the wildflowers felt both gentle and otherworldly, like a window had opened. i didn’t know why it moved me so deeply, only that it did.

later, when someone shared the song, wildflowers, by tom petty in our group chat, i felt called to post the image alongside it. at the time, i didn’t realize it was the same photo her family had chosen for her celebration of life.

maybe for me, the image of her smiling behind the wildflowers was how she chose to arrive this particular time. each visit from a loved one who has passed seems to come in its own way, woven through dreams, memories, music, or quiet symbols that echo inside us. sometimes it’s a feeling, and sometimes a flash of knowing, while other times an image that opens something ancient.

and once again, i felt her with me.

while feeding the chickens at sunset, i was given a rare moment alone to feel it all.

the sky turned gold. the grain poured into the trays. and that photo came back to me, her face framed by wildflowers, her expression soft and knowing. she looked younger in it, from a time before i knew her and yet there was a timelessness in her gaze.

even though our time on earth together was short, i could feel her more deeply than ever before. in those final months of her life, i remember seeing something new in her, a glow, a soul pouring forth through her eyes. i saw it. i felt it.

was it her soul preparing to cross?

as i stood there, letting the thoughts swirl, i suddenly felt it again.

a full-body chill, goosebumps, a flutter in my chest like helium rising.

it was her.

this time i couldn’t stay composed, i was submerged in sobs.

the loneliness i’d carried all day washed over me, not in coldness but in warmth. her warmth, her loving presence, her way of sitting beside me again.

i cried from sadness. and i cried from the beauty of feeling something so pure.

this wasn’t mundane. it wasn’t hallucination. it was sacred.

and i’m learning to recognize it now- her visits. her energy feels different from finn’s. it feels different from my grandmother’s too. but she’s there, a quiet soul-sister, a flame that keeps choosing to show up.

she stayed with me as i cried. and then, just as gently, she whispered, not in sound, but in knowing.

yes, that image chosen for the celebration of life is so much a part of me too. you don’t have to have known me then to know what i feel like. because i’m here with you now.

and the tears kept coming, but this time they felt like a return, a remembering, a restoration of something ancient and true.

this is the gift, and it’s still unfolding.

this next visit is one that touched a part of me i’ve been working to reclaim for years.

i was having a hard morning. i came home after school drop-off, tears already pooling behind my eyes, and let myself cry on the couch in the sun. it was a rare pause, a rare moment of softness.

and that’s when i felt her again.

this time, she came with the same unmistakable warmth but also with a new kind of clarity. the second i dropped in to feel her, it was like a blooming from inside my heart. and then i saw her, just as vivid as breath. in my mind’s eye i saw her pointing straight at me, like the old uncle sam poster, but softer. it was radiant, her eyes unwavering.

i choose you, she said.
the words were clear, direct.
i choose you. and you are worthy of love.

her message hit the most tender part of me. the place that still wonders if i belong. the part shaped by early trauma, by not knowing how to receive without guilt or fear of rejection. that quiet longing to be chosen, to be trusted, to be enough.

she kept speaking.

it’s ok if others don’t understand, or always respect you. everyone has their role to play.

and just as i was crying harder, her warmth poured in stronger.

yes, you are so very loved.

i looked out the window through my tears, and just then, a white hawk soared over the house. it was the same kind we saw at the singing and fire circle in lyons, held in her honor after she died.

and then, moments later, a small plane passed overhead.

immediately i felt finn enter my consciousness too. his presence layered in gently, like it always does.

yes, he said. i’m here too. we are always here for you.

and just like that, i was held again. not just by her, not just by finn, but by the reminder that i am worthy of this love, of this closeness. i am worthy of walking beside those who are still here, and those who are not.

i am chosen. and i’m choosing to believe it.

on the eve of mother’s day, she came to me again.

i had just finished tucking in the kids, and i was lying beside sophia. her breath had that heavy, almost raspy rhythm it sometimes gets when she’s deeply asleep. as i listened to her breathing, something in me shifted.

and then i was there again.

not just in this room with my sleeping children. but in a room many years back, in the hospital room, with the machines. the memory of sophia as a six-week-old baby, fighting for breath. i was back in that moment as if i had never really left. the feeding tube in her nose. the oxygen covering her tiny face. my milk drying up. my body pressed next to hers in that impossible bed, trying to give her comfort i couldn’t quite offer with arms alone. it was all back in an instant.

and that’s when she entered.

she came powerfully, like breath, image, and presence all at once.

i felt her through the memory of sophia’s body. through the shared knowledge of what it feels like to almost not breathe. and then she layered her own truth on top of it.

she showed me a flash of something, like a poetic image, but grounded in sensation. the feeling of being trapped in a body that won’t do what it’s supposed to. i was given a glimpse of ash, still resting somewhere, a stuckness, a soul half-lifted but held down by breathlessness.

it was all overlapping, grief memory, soul memory, breath memory.
and she wasn’t just showing me, she was entering.

she showed me that she could do this because i could hold what others might turn from. because i had walked the hospital corridors, because i had stayed alive when finn’s body failed and my heart did not, because i didn’t flinch.

and then the message came. it wasn’t in a sentence, it was a knowing.

we are sisters of the same flame.

she wasn’t here to guide me. she wasn’t above me, wiser, holier, beyond reach. she was beside me now, as equals. reflecting back the same light i had been trying to carry alone.

and just as clearly as i felt her settle into me, she turned toward melody, my oldest daughter.

mel was born on mother’s day.

she then played blue in my mind, the song mel always reaches for when everything inside her starts to ache too loudly. i saw her wrapped around her like a cloak. she was quiet, strong, not fixing, just holding.

she showed me that as i have been supporting her loved ones here, she is now supporting mine. that we are co-carriers of each other’s people. that this is what soul sisters do. that we do not always arrive in time for each other’s lives, but we show up when it matters most.

it was one of the most embodied experience of sacred reciprocity i’ve ever known.

and the contrast to what i had recently walked away from was sharp. there were people i believed were collaborators, partners, soul-level equals. but their love had terms. they wore the mask of shared mission, yet in the end, it became clear they wanted me to carry the cost of their wounds.

she came with nothing but presence. and in doing so, gave me everything i didn’t know i still needed.

and then the moment shifted. her presence didn’t vanish. it just softened. it became still.

she had soaked into me and receded again, like water returning to the ocean.

what remained was a deep, anchoring strength. and a message i could finally feel in my own bones.

do not dim.

she poured this thought into me as a felt-sense message.

this time she hadn’t just come to comfort me, or to choose me, this time she came with permission.

to speak.
to rise.
to radiate.
to hold my full voltage, even if others aren’t ready.

because grief isn’t only something we pass through. sometimes, it’s the ground we rise from. and light like ours, the kind forged in hospital hallways and long silent nights, it was never meant to be hidden.

if you are grieving, i hope this message can comfort you too.

for there is no rush, nor fixing, only a returning to ourselves that was once buried long ago.

and we heal sometimes one breath at a time, or one visitation at a time. it is one choice to stay soft in a world that taught you to harden.

this is the long way home, and you are not walking it alone.

so let the ones we’ve lost come close and let their presence be a soft warmth, instead a sharp wound, let their memory be a bridge, and let your heart keep breaking open, as it must. because what comes through the cracks might be the light of your own becoming.

thank you for being here, it truly means the world. i love hearing your thoughts, if you feel called to comment.

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