What if the highest form of communication isn’t words, but touch? No, silly.  Not that, or rather, not JUST that kind of touch.  I’ve often said to people I love – ‘I read you through your skin’.  Because I feel a deep non verbal connection just by holding hands or snuggling. Laura spoke wordlessly to my soul.  I thought it was an exchange of energy.  But I’ve been rereading Michael Newton’s extraordinary book Journey of Souls.  It is based on over 30 years research and 7,000 accounts of the afterlife related to him by people from all over the world, people of all faiths and no faith. And the stories are remarkable in their similarity (and often very intricate in their detail). The book relates how  our souls communicate telepathically. But there is also something more personal called ‘touching communication’, where ‘souls can send private thoughts by touch which pass between them as electrical sound impulses.’

What if telepathy and this ‘touching communication’ are also  available to us here on earth? I knew as a kid I should be able to hear other people’s thoughts (telepathy). But touch was complicated for me.  As a little  girl I didn’t really like to be touched, at least not by strangers.  It felt incredibly invasive if someone reached out to touch my arm or kiss me. Too intimate. Almost a violation. Was I trailing memories from the spirit realm where this kind of communication is reserved for the most precious encounters?  Inversely, as an adult I am increasingly moved by the simplest gestures of touch. With Laura, one of our favorite things to do was to read laying against one another.  We walked everywhere arm in arm or holding hands. And even in hospital,  at the very end of her life, the highlight of our day was if Laura could put her head on my shoulder.  We were ‘in touch’.  But so much more than that, I felt as if my soul was being charged with her beautiful energy. Since she died, I’ve become ‘the hug thief’ (as I wrote in an earlier post of that name). Nowadays I steal hugs from people (often people I barely know). And I’ve found, as my friend Loredana says, if you hug someone for 20 seconds, there is a deep and soothing connection.  As if two hearts attune to the same rhythm.