Yesterday I went to the ‘Healing Our Grief’ workshop at the Open Center. It was a beautiful sharing experience hosted by Sue Frederick author of Bridges to Heaven. Sue’s husband died age 37 from cancer and her best friend died the same year. These two tragedies transformed her life, reawakened her intuition and her spiritual side and prompted her to quit her job in journalism. She came to understand, she says, that, ‘We take the soul journey of loss with our loved ones for a divine purpose’. It sets us on a path to reinvention and reconnection with spirit. Over the day, the mood in the room turned from sorrow to uplift. Timidly at first, everyone began to share stories of their departed loved ones reappearing in their lives. Incredibly I was sitting in a Lucie-Laura sandwich; my neighbors were Lucille, Laura and Loredana. Loredana said roses magically grew around her window in time for her birthday after her husband died. Liz, who had just lost both parents, experienced her mother as a beautiful moth that sat by her side and rested in her palm. These delicate experiences are easy to pick apart or dismiss as fanciful imaginings with our cerebral left brains. But they are the tissue that connects us to our loved ones and the spiritual world. Once we stop doubting and see them for what they are, they are an amazing joy. Several people, including Sue, commented on how comfortable I am with all this. Of course, I’ve had the best spirit guide in Laura. She was holding my hand and tickling me during the day. But Sue also thought my intuition might have awakened earlier due to having battled Multiple Sclerosis for most of my life.  I’ve healed myself using alternative methods and a lifetime’s symptoms have vanished (that’s a story for another time) but shortly after I was officially diagnosed in 2004, I had a vision that a large piece of my head was missing, almost half my skull was gone. And then just as I was feeling sad, into this hole poured the most beautiful golden light. I felt that my illness had cracked me open and let the light in. That out of  this suffering, beautiful things would come. And they did.