Grief cracks open a lot more than our hearts—it opens up our biggest questions about life, death, and what might come next.
Over the years, I’ve heard many people—clients, friends, even strangers—whisper questions they’re almost afraid to ask. Some come from skepticism. Some from heartbreak. Some from a place so deep, they barely have words.
In this post, I want to share five of the most common questions I hear about the afterlife—and how I respond to them, not with dogma, but with personal experience, reason, and what I’ve come to know after decades of exploration.
1. “But what if I don’t believe in an afterlife?”
I get this question more often than you might think—and not just from skeptics. Sometimes it comes quietly from someone who wants to believe but can’t quite get there. Other times it’s asked outright by someone who’s been hurt by religion, or who simply sees themselves as a rational thinker. I understand both perspectives.
When I was a kid in Sunday school, we were told that “faith” was the key. Faith wasn’t just important—it was required. But even then, I had questions. I’ve always been left-brained and curious about how things work. I wasn’t content to just believe because someone told me to. That hasn’t changed.
Today, belief doesn’t play much of a role in my understanding of the afterlife. What I hold now isn’t based on blind faith—it’s based on decades of investigation, experience, and reflection. I’ve spent nearly forty years exploring the question: What happens when we die? And I’ve examined it from nearly every angle.
I’ve studied:
* Mediumship
* Near-Death Experiences (NDEs)
* Terminal lucidity and deathbed visions
* Signs and synchronicities
* Instrumental Trans-Communication (ITC)
* Philosophy and metaphysics
* Quantum physics
* Cross-cultural spiritual traditions
* And yes—even revealed religions, although I don’t belong to or practice any religion myself.
What I’ve found is that all these sources point to the same conclusion: consciousness continues. We don’t cease to exist when our physical bodies die.
And maybe more telling than any of the evidence is the longing we feel. Across time, culture, and personal belief systems, there is a nearly universal sense that we’re not just temporary beings. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, we don’t typically long for things that don’t exist. A baby longs for food because food exists. We thirst because water exists. So why do we long for eternity, reunion, and meaning—unless something deep inside us remembers it?
I also want to gently say this:Sometimes disbelief isn’t about logic—it’s about pain. If you’ve lost someone and you're struggling to believe in anything at all, I see you. I’ve been there. When my daughter Shayna passed, I didn’t lean on religion. I relied on reason, experience, and the evidence I had gathered over a lifetime.
You don’t need to subscribe to a particular religion, or even call yourself “spiritual,” to be open to the possibility that death is not the end. Many people I speak with describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious”—or simply seekers. And seekers often arrive not at belief, but at something deeper: an inner knowing. I am no longer a member of any religion. I get that.
If faith is like walking into fog hoping there’s a bridge, what I’ve come to feels like walking that bridge every day, checking the supports, and realizing—yes, it holds.
You don’t have to believe. You just have to stay open.If your heart aches with the question, Where did they go?—you’re not alone. And there are good reasons to believe the answer may be more comforting, more beautiful, and more real than you’ve ever imagined.
In a court of law, the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt—not absolute certainty. And in science, we lean on Occam’s Razor, which says that the simplest explanation that accounts for all the facts is usually the right one.
For me, the simplest, most consistent explanation for all I’ve studied—and all I’ve experienced—is this:We don’t end. We continue.
I explore all of this more deeply in my course Love Never Dies, but for now, I’ll just leave you with this:
You’re not required to believe.You’re invited to wonder.
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2. “If the afterlife is real, why don’t our loved ones just prove it?”
This is one of the most natural questions in grief.
If our loved ones are still alive in some form… why don’t they just show up? Why don’t they give us a sign we can’t ignore? Why not speak clearly, visibly, audibly—so there’s no doubt?
I get it. I’ve asked that question myself.
But here's what the evidence—and my experience—suggests.
Many Near-Death Experiencers say the same thing: when we enter this life, we forget what we know. We forget our eternal nature, our divine origin, our soul connections. And we do this on purpose. Because in order to feel the full range of human experience—including loss, fear, separation, and yes, abandonment—we have to believe the illusion that we’re alone.
Where we come from, we are always connected. We’re always safe, always loved, always in communion with one another. It’s so constant, it becomes like background noise—something we take for granted. So we come here to feel something different. We come here to remember what love truly is by experiencing its apparent absence.
Years ago, I interviewed a young man who said something that has stayed with me ever since:“We come to Earth to experience abandonment.”
Not because abandonment is good or just—but because in its contrast, we come to treasure connection. We learn empathy. We deepen our capacity for compassion. It’s like a spiritual muscle that only grows through resistance.
And in order to truly feel that, we need a veil—something that separates us just enough to make the experience feel real.If our loved ones on the other side could speak to us on demand, show up in physical form, or intervene every time we cried out—it would shatter that veil. It would be like flipping to the back of a textbook and reading the answers before working through the problems. You might pass the test, but you’d miss the learning.
Another analogy?
It would be like someone telling you the ending of a movie before you’ve seen it.That’s called a spoiler. And the reason we don’t like spoilers is because they rob us of the experience. They collapse the tension. They remove the uncertainty that makes the journey meaningful.
That doesn’t mean our loved ones aren’t with us.It means they respect our process.
Their messages often speak in the language of subtlety, not spectacle—because subtlety invites discernment, and discernment deepens trust.
They show up in quiet ways: dreams, signs, synchronicities, feelings, memories, even unexpected encounters or words from strangers. They whisper, they nudge, they remind us—but they don’t overwhelm us.
Because the journey of remembering who we are is something we have to take for ourselves.
We didn’t come here to skip the story.We came here to live it.
3. “Why would a loving God let someone die young?”
This might be the most agonizing question of all—because it isn’t just a question.It’s a cry.A cry from the heart that’s just lost someone too soon, too suddenly, too unfairly.
At its core, this isn’t about philosophy—it’s about love.It’s about the unbearable absence of someone who should still be here.
But let’s gently step back and take a wider view.
Time, as we experience it here on Earth, is relative. We tend to think of a “full life” as 80 or 90 years—because that’s what our biology and culture have taught us to expect. And thanks to modern medicine and safety, we’ve grown accustomed to believing that everyone deserves to live to a ripe old age.
But from the soul’s perspective—from the perspective of eternity—this time we spend in a physical body is less than the blink of an eye.What feels like a lifetime to us is a single breath to the soul.It’s like watching a movie in real time… versus seeing the whole filmstrip at once.From our side of the screen, it drags. From the other side, it’s over in a flash.
So what is the “right” amount of time for a life?
Is it 100 years? 50? 15? 5 minutes?
What if the answer is simply this:Enough time to fulfill what we came here to do.
Most of the world’s spiritual traditions—and much of the afterlife evidence—point toward reincarnation. We don’t just get one chance at life. We return to this world again and again, taking on new roles, new lessons, new opportunities to grow and give.
A soul might come for decades.A soul might come for days.A soul might come just long enough to be held in the womb and never take a breath.
As Christian Sundberg shares in his account of being a miscarried soul, even a life that never reaches birth can have profound impact. His brief time in the womb shaped the mother’s path, affected her family, and rippled outward in ways no one could have predicted. That life served its purpose—not despite its brevity, but because of it.
From the soul’s view, there are no wasted lives.
But from the human view?
We grieve.We ache.We want more time—because love always wants more time.
And that’s okay.
Telling someone, “It was their time,” doesn’t comfort a mother whose child is gone or a partner waking up alone. That kind of truth can feel like a slap if it arrives too soon, or without tenderness.
Because while the soul may understand, the heart still breaks.
And it’s meant to.Grief is the price of love.And part of our journey here is to feel that grief……to walk through it……to grow deeper in love because of it.
You don’t need to rush to make it make sense.Just know this:
Their time here mattered.And your love for them?It still does.
4. “What if I miss the signs from my loved one?”
This is one of the quiet fears that almost everyone carries after a loss.Maybe you've wondered it yourself:
What if they’re reaching out, and I don’t notice?What if I’m too broken, too blocked, too disconnected to receive anything at all?
First, let me say this: You are not alone in that fear.And second: You are not being punished.
Signs from our loved ones—or any kind of afterlife communication—are real. But they’re also more complex than we often expect.
Think of it like this: Our loved ones are now operating at a higher frequency. Using that analogy, reaching into our world is like trying to lower their frequency just enough to interact with this dense, physical reality. And that takes effort, skill, and energy on their part. Some souls are more naturally gifted communicators than others. Some get better with time. Some are still learning how.
And on our side, when we’re deep in grief, our own frequency is often much lower than usual.That’s not a judgment—it's just how energy works.Grief is heavy. Grief is consuming.And it can make it harder to recognize the subtle ways our loved ones are reaching out.
One of the best analogies I’ve heard comes from the world of scuba diving. If you’ve ever been diving, you know that the deeper you go, the more pressure you feel. Communication becomes harder the deeper you descend. A skilled diver can go deeper and stay longer—but even then, there are limits.For our loved ones in spirit, reaching down to us is like that.The deeper we are in grief, the more pressure they feel trying to connect.Some can handle it better than others—but it’s never effortless.
What’s more—they have to learn how.
Psychic medium Susanne Wilson and others speak of actual schools on the other side, where souls study how to communicate with the physical world. They might learn how to gently influence your environment, or even merge their consciousness with an animal to guide it to cross your path.A cardinal. A butterfly. A sudden visit from your pet acting strangely.These things might be far more than coincidence.
But signs aren’t always flashy. Often, they’re incredibly subtle:
* A song on the radio you needed to hear
* A phrase someone says that echoes your loved one’s voice
* A dream that feels more like a visit than a memory
* An inner nudge, a tingle, a peace that comes from nowhere
It helps to be open to all kinds of communication—and to learn the language of signs.
If you're looking for guidance on how to do that, I highly recommend two beautiful resources:📘 Hello From Heaven by Bill and Judy Guggenheim – a foundational collection of After-Death Communications (ADCs)📘 Soul Smart by Susanne Wilson – practical, heart-centered tools for recognizing signs and building connection
But most importantly, please remember this:Your loved one is not testing you.They’re not sitting on the other side waiting for you to “pass” a spiritual quiz.
They love you.They know your pain.And they are trying, in the ways they can, to remind you that they’re still near.
You don’t have to be perfect to receive a sign.You just have to stay open.
5. “Do they still care about what’s happening in my life?”
This one comes from a place of quiet ache.Not “Do they exist?”Not “Are they okay?”But something far more personal: Do they still care about me?
It’s not uncommon to wonder if our loved ones have “moved on” to something so big, so beautiful, or so advanced that our everyday struggles and celebrations might no longer matter to them. Especially if the signs or dreams begin to fade, we can start to feel forgotten.
Let me assure you: you are not forgotten.They haven't moved on from you—only ahead of you.
We are more likely to grow restless or bored than they are, because time doesn’t work the same way on the other side. There, it's either non-existent or moves so differently that what feels like weeks, months, or years to us might pass in the blink of an eye to them. If you've ever waited just five minutes for someone you love to come home—you know how differently time can stretch or shrink depending on where you stand.
Just because they’ve changed locations doesn’t mean they’ve changed who they are.Their personality, their quirks, their love for you—all of that remains intact. In fact, it may have even deepened now that they’re seeing things from a broader perspective.
A popular book called The Afterlife of Billy Fingers describes a soul who evolves rapidly after death and gradually stops communicating with his sister. I read that book early in my grief journey. And while it comforted many, something about it didn’t sit right with me—even before I came to know what I now understand. In my experience—and from the hundreds of stories I’ve heard and witnessed—our loved ones don’t drift away into some cosmic sea of bliss.If anything, they lean in closer.
Ancestors you’ve never even met in this life still care for you.They may be part of your spiritual team. They may be the ones who nudge you forward or quietly protect you. And they’ll likely be among the first to welcome you home when your time comes.
The love your loved one had for you does not end just because they’ve moved out of their body.
Now, that doesn’t mean they’re hovering around constantly or micromanaging your life.In my understanding, they’re incredibly respectful of our journey. They’ll give you space. But if you want their help—you have to ask. And not just once. Be intentional. Be open. Be repetitive, if you must. It’s not about begging—it’s about inviting.
I want to share something personal here. When my daughter Shayna passed, her sister Kayla was quietly heartbroken by a very human fear: Would Shayna miss the big moments of her life?Graduating. Falling in love. Getting married. Having children.
Kayla didn’t speak this out loud. But in a reading with a gifted medium, Shayna answered that unspoken question.
She assured Kayla that she would be with her through it all—every high, every low, every ordinary moment—experiencing life alongside her, living vicariously through her sister’s journey.
That kind of love doesn’t vanish.It transforms—but it does not fade.
So if you’ve ever wondered whether they’re still interested in your life, the answer is simple:Yes. With all their soul.
In Closing
These questions are sacred.They rise from the same place as grief: the heart.
You don’t need to have all the answers. You just need to keep asking the right questions—honestly, courageously, and with curiosity.
And maybe, in time, the answers will come.Not just in words. But in signs. In knowing. In presence.And most of all—in love.
If this message speaks to you, many of these questions—and more—are explored in greater depth in my course,Love Never Dies.It’s a self-paced journey through the evidence, the insights, and the lived experiences that point to one truth:Death ends a life, but not a relationship.
You're not alone.And love never ends.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit grief2growth.substack.com/subscribe
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit grief2growth.substack.com/subscribe
