When a baby – or a child – passes, the most loving thing a mother can do is grieve, accept that it has moved to spirit, let go and put it in a place where the experience can be healthy. Of course it is an awful thing to go through, but living in a shrine to a lost loved one, or spending every minute of every waking hour thinking of them, helps no one – including the soul who has passed over.
Here are some ideas of ways in which you can move through your grief by making a connection with your child in spirit.
Writing a letter to spirit is a lovely thing to do – you can keep it, burn it, let it drift away, it doesn’t matter. It’s the intention that counts.
Take some quiet time to think of all you loved about your child and the happiness you feel when you think of them– focus on the positive. I’m not suggesting that there isn’t hurt, but it will help you so much to take a moment to think only of the good things. If the pain is very new or very raw, you may only be able to do this for two minutes, one minute, even thirty seconds at a time. That’s fine. Do what you can, and you can build on it. If you lost a baby through miscarriage, think of the joy you felt when you got your first positive test – your baby will feel that joy. If you went through the agony of stillbirth, think of those times when your baby kicked inside you – your baby will feel that joy too. Your pain is real, but you did have happy moments; don’t lose them, because they were real too.
Send out love and thanks to your child, and tell them that you give them the freedom to move on in spirit. This will help you, because by them moving on they will be able to make their presence felt to you much more often and much more explicitly.
Recognise that they are with you and look out for signs of this – a feather where one shouldn’t really be, things moved when you know you put them somewhere quite specific, a breeze on a still day, a rainbow when there has been no rain. Those in spirit love to communicate with us and get terribly frustrated when we don’t see what they are doing – help them!
We’re all here to live, we’re all here to experience, and if we don’t do that we can’t move on. I knew of one woman who had two children with her and two in spirit. Whenever she met anyone new she would say that she was a mother of four – which she was. However, this prompted the other person to ask questions and she would then have to explain that two had passed. Every new relationship she formed began with her bringing up her grief and becoming upset. Now I fully accept that she is a mother of four, but there is something to be said for not allowing that way of thinking to define you. It becomes a habit, like carrying a sack of coal on your shoulders that gets heavier and heavier with each day. It becomes a learned behaviour – but learned behaviours can be broken.
When a woman comes to me who has a child in spirit, I will always count that child amongst the ones she ‘has’, because that is appropriate in the context of a reading. If I say, ‘You’ve got three children,’ and she replies, ‘No, I had three, but one died. I have two now,’ I will refute that as I can see three when I look at her; she has three in her universal family. It’s about recognising the right things at the right times in a way that allows you to make the most of your time on this plane and to progress in your life’s journey. A mother who is constantly upset about a baby she has lost doesn’t love that child any more than a mother who can see the beauty and happiness in life. Love can’t be measured that way.
I once met a woman called Harriet, who came to me for a general reading. She was a lovely lady, but it quickly became clear that she had a child’s energy around her, which was affecting every part of her life. I could see that the baby had been a stillbirth. I did what I always did and provided Harriet with information that I couldn’t possibly have known unless it was being passed to me, and then I had to move on to the very difficult subject of her baby. The reason it was so difficult to broach was because Harriet was still badly affected by the loss of her child. The little one had passed almost ten years earlier, but Harriet carried the grief in her mind and her heart every single day. The baby who had passed wanted her mother to move on – not to forget, but to get to a stage in her life when she was allowing happiness and welcoming the future, rather than always being bogged down in the past. I knew that Harriet herself would find this a very hard message to receive – in fact, I wasn’t sure she would welcome it at all.
In the event, when I described her beautiful daughter in spirit and provided her with evidence of what I knew to be true, she was more open to the words her daughter passed through me than I had anticipated. Maybe it was time for the past to be put to rest. Sometimes people come for a reading at exactly the right moment in their lives. Often they will begin our chat by saying, ‘I don’t really know why I’m here,’ or ‘I’ve never done this sort of thing before but I just felt I had to come and see you.’ They don’t seem to realise that the spirits facilitated their visit for a reading. The signs and messages may have been there for some time, but a moment arrives when all is aligned and suddenly even someone who has previously been terribly closed will open up to the wonder which exists all around us.
This was the case with Harriet. She didn’t make rash promises – I’m not sure I would have believed her had she done so – and she didn’t commit to changing overnight, but she left with some of the weight lifted from her shoulders. I reassured her that her daughter was happy, and that she had a right to be happy too. In some ways, it was hard for her to accept that her child was happy as she still felt the loss so keenly, but she took the first steps on her journey to recovery that night.
There will be many women reading this who have lost babies before it was their time for this world, and these words may bring up old memories for them, but I hope they have found comfort over the years. It doesn’t matter what age a woman is; she never forgets the ones she has lost. I imagine many men feel the same way, but most people who come to me for readings are women, so that’s the area I know best. What I would like those parents to do is take a moment to send their love to the babies they have lost. If you have never allowed them to go, to grow in spirit, try to find the strength for that to happen now. As they grow, you will grow too. As you send them love, you will receive love. In no way will this mean that you have forgotten – that will never happen – but you are acknowledging and honouring them. You are giving respect by saying how lovely it was that they were here at all. Of course, you are sorry that they had to pass, but you can still hope that they are growing in spirit and that you will make a commitment to grow too.
There will still be a connection; there always will be. You can still love your child. Speak to them as much as you ever did, if that’s what comforts you, but do it with a lighter heart. Tell them what you intend to do that day, point out the flowers and the sunshine when you go for a walk, and understand that your child wants to see you happy.
If this chapter has triggered anything for you, then please take it in a positive way. Follow the practical advice in Chapter 3. Write a letter to your baby. Light a candle to them. Go to the beach and shout to them as the waves crash. Then move on. You can go back whenever you want – nothing is closed off – but try to see the wonder in this life too. I can assure you that’s what your baby in spirit will want.
Lucy’s brother
Children who pass over often become the spirit guide for someone in their family. I’ve come across this time and time again. On one occasion I was doing a reading for a woman in her mid-forties called Lucy. Like most people who come for readings she wanted to know about work and romance, and everything was coming through pretty easily. Then I stopped because I got a very clear sense that she was more in tune with the spirit world than she was letting on.
‘Do you ever feel the presence of a spirit with you?’ I asked, knowing full well that she did. When she admitted