Perhaps the greatest secret to a love-filled life is to cherish the relationships we already have—including relationships with those who have passed. Here is a simple yet profoundly healing exercise for anyone who has lost a loved one.
I’ve often heard people say they can feel the presence of loved ones who have died. I admit to feeling a pang of envy when I hear these words. For me, when a loved one dies, the door simply shuts; not on my grief, but on my sense of access to that relationship. After reading Love Never Dies: How to Reconnect and Make Peace with the Deceased by Dr. Jamie Turndorf, I find that’s beginning to change, though unlike Dr. Turndorf, I remain an agnostic on the subject of actual communication with those who have passed.
Our cultural training around death can close down a wealth of available love and inner guidance that arises from a sense of connection to those we have lost—whether or not we believe that their spirit is still alive. Almost none of us have been taught about the power of creating an inner dialogue with those we’ve lost.
In the spirituality of many Eastern religions and in that of many indigenous cultures, there are strong beliefs that an ongoing connection with our ancestors links us to the very core of our life’s meaning. Yet few of us are taught how to create that connection. In Turndorf’s words, “When we don’t reconnect and work out unfinished business with those who have passed, we limp through life dragging our unhealed wounds.”
I have found that when loved ones die, they became somehow elevated in my mind, and this holds me back from cherishing my connection with them as fully as I would like. When these loved ones were alive, I reached out to them as often as I liked. After their death, I lost the inner freedom to converse with them in my own mind. I began to feel not only awkward, but somehow less deserving because of guilts that became magnified when there was no more chance to make them up. Was I a good enough friend, grandson, mentee? Those doubts led me to deny myself inner access to their presence. Once the sharpest waves of grief had passed, I began to place my loved ones on a precious but dusty shelf, relegating our relationship to the past.
Once the sharpest waves of grief had passed, I began to place my loved ones on a precious but dusty shelf, relegating our relationship to the past.
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In her book, Turndorf teaches a method for dialoguing with the departed which holds tremendous healing potential for everyone who has lost a loved one. Turndorf is passionate in her certainty that we can actually communicate with those we’ve lost. I hope that’s true but I’m not banking on it. What I have found, though, is that my relationship with lost loved ones comes to life again through this process of dialoguing. Old wounds can be healed, and the warmth of past love becomes a thing of the present.
My 90-year-old father is a holocaust survivor. He was a just a teenager when he and his mother were wrenched apart in an unimaginable way. After that day, he never saw her again. Somehow, he went on to create a life full of love, family and success, but the unspeakable pain remained inside him. Fifty years after liberation from concentrationcamp, he attended a workshop in which he was asked to have a conversation with a loved one who had died. He chose to “speak with” his mother. Remembering her vividly, he spoke to her, perhaps for the first time since he saw her last. And he realized without a doubt exactly what she would say to him. That moment was life-changing. He imagined his mother looking at him and his life, and he knew she would say, “Eric, look what a beautiful family you have created, what a good life you have now. I’m so proud of you.”
Those exercise brought a profound healing to my father; one none of us could have ever imagined possible. We all felt the change in him after that day. It was as though a knot inside him had finally become untied.
Since reading Love Never Dies (which describes the dialogue process in great detail) I’ve used Turndorf’s technique and it has opened life-changing doors for me. It’s a powerful process, and I encourage everyone who feels ready to try it.
Dr. Turndorf generously agreed to share her instructions for this process. In her words:
First, make an effort to be more still and quiet.
The idea is to create “Pockets of Peace,” moments in which you sit in silence. To do this, turn the TV, the radio, your cellphone, and your computer, if only for 10 minutes. And sit in this silence.
In “Love Never Dies,” I share many exercises for connecting with loved ones in spirit. The most powerful is my Dialoguing with the Departed technique.
To dialogue, first find your stillness, as I described, and then speak back-and-forth with whomever you wish to contact.
Speak aloud and make a first statement; then be open to what comes back in. It could be a picture, a thought or a sensation.
Write down or record not only what you say but also what you hear, speaking aloud both your part of the dialogue but also what you hear (or imagine)coming back.
Keep dialoging back-and-forth for as long as you wish.
You can dialogue to get support and guidance, to just reconnect, to say farewell to the physical body if someone was ripped from you due to suicide or sudden accidental death or illness. Above all, you can dialogue to heal unfinished business.
The good news is you don’t need to force forgiveness on yourself. Using this technique, you just pick up where you’re stuck and continue talking back and forth until you achieve resolution.
Through repeated use, this technique helps heal any negative emotional issues that may still remain for you.
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After reading Turndorf’s book, I tried this dialogue with two loved ones; my dear friend Michael who died of AIDS in 1991 and my grandmother, who died at 99, right after learning that my son’s adoption in Cambodia had been finalized. In both cases, just the act of remembering how it felt to be with them brought a warm, living memory of their presence. Did I feel their actual presence? Was this “real”? That question didn’t concern me, because the love we had shared was unequivocally real—and during the exercise it felt almost as alive as it ever had.
In that conjured sense of living memory, I felt their loving concern for me. It was as though I received a current dose of their familiar and wise guidance. Their presence moved me, as it had so many times during their life. I was struck by the fact that I had denied myself this poignant, wonderful gift for so long. There was a world of rich relationships, hard-won, crafted over decades–and still available to me. Their kind (yet sharp) wisdom could be resurrected in present time just by remembering them and having a dialogue.
Though the room was filled with his loved ones, I gave myself the gift of some very intimate last moments with him. Bending down toward his ear, I whispered a stream of gratitude to him.
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Recently, I was privileged to spend days with my dear friend and mentor John McNeill as he died. John was a brilliant priest, philosopher, and LGBT activist. He changed my life, and the lives of countless others. I had to leave John the day before he died. Though the room was filled with his loved ones, I gave myself the gift of some very intimate last moments with him. Bending down toward his ear, I whispered a stream of gratitude to him. I told him how he had changed my life, how he had brought me back to the “me” I had given up in childhood. I told him how he had helped me overcome old childhood shame not just at being gay, but an even deeper shame at being me. I thanked him for growing me back to the parts of myself I had given up so many years ago; parts that allowed me the gift of my current personal and professional life. Feeling a resolve to never put our relationship on that old dusty shelf, I drank him in; looking into his kind face and filling myself with him as much as possible. I knew I’d be coming back to visit him. That was a gift that I no longer had to deny myself.
© Ken Page, LCSW 2015
To learn more about Dr. Turndorf’s book Love Never Dies: How to Reconnect and Make Peace with the Deceased click here
To learn more about my book, Deeper Dating: How to Drop The Games of Seduction and Discover The Power of Intimacy, click here
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This article originally appeared on Psychology Today
Photo credit: Getty Images