Some might argue that it is strange to want to explore what happens to us after we die.

And their argument might be correct.

It is kind of strange, but it is also kind of beautiful.

To me, when someone dies and they go somewhere else, it is natural to want to know where they went.

It is as if they opened a door, went inside, and it closed behind them and you cannot go there.

I understand it is not my time to go through that door, but nothing should stop me from looking at the door, trying to open the door and ask others where the door leads to.

You see, love does not end when we die.

We love the person who died. Maybe even more than we did when they were alive.

Love goes through that door with them and goes wherever they are.

I see the door he went through when he died, and I hold all these keys trying to open it and go through it, not to join him, but to discover a little bit about the place he has gone to.

I am going to be honest and say that I am doing this for myself first and then for you.

I want to know for me.

And I want to know for you.

Would it change the way we grieve if we knew without a doubt that there is life after death? Would it allow us to re-enter life after loss easier?

Would it help to know that the people we loved and lost are experiencing a different state of existence and they are more than OK?

I think it would help.

It would help me to know this.

So I look at the door he went towards and look through the keyhole, through the gap under it. I put my head on to it to listen, just in case there are any sounds coming from the other side. And this is when I realize the door lives inside each of us.

The door is not outside of us, it lives inside.

All we need to do to find out what happens to us after we die is to close our eyes and use our imagination to see what is behind that door.

When I close my eyes I see that we never die, we never lose our awareness.

As a matter of fact it expands.

We are even more alive than when we were inside our bodies.

We feel more, see more and we do all of those things outside of time and space.

Without the past and the future.

Without a timeline of any kind.

Nothing ends and nothing begins.

It just is.

Writing this today makes me uncomfortable.

Makes me more vulnerable to the world.

But denying my thoughts, my own evolution and my own journey is not an option.

This letter to you every week has always been personal.

If you have lost someone you loved, the door to the other side lives inside of you, and you have access to it anytime you want. (Click to Tweet!)

What do I mean by that?

I mean that all you have to do is close your eyes and bring them closer to you.

Talk to them. Remember them. Ask them questions.

Spend time with them when you miss them.

But then say goodbye and go back to living your new life.

Go back and breathe the oxygen.

Go back and use your body to move, and run and thrive.

Today’s letter is for you if you question your ability to connect with someone you love who no longer is here. Don’t question it.

Just trust that you can go to them when you need to.

Yes, I know it is no longer the same.

They can’t hold your hand in the way they used to.

They can’t laugh with you at the movie theater. Or can they?

Maybe they can, but you can’t hear them. But wait…

Close your eyes and imagine them laughing with you.

Do this right now with me.

Close your eyes, remember their laughter.

I know you can hear it. I know you can.

And it is as simple as that. As easy as that. And as hard as that.

I am with you.

Learning to do the same as you, trusting my own ability to connect to the other side of that door.

With life,

Christina

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Christina

Christina

Christina Rasmussen is an author, speaker and social entrepreneur who believes that grief is an evolutionary experience required for launching a life of adventure and creative accomplishment.

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6 Comments

  • Patty Kennedy says:

    I understand your longing for confirmation of an afterlife. I have been a little obsessive about my search for proof of an afterlife since my Mom (my soul-mate in this life) died. We always told each other we would try to let the other know if there really was an afterlife and since no sign has been forthcoming I have begun to doubt the existence of the spirit even. My beliefs have been shaken to the core and I no longer know what to believe. I want desperately to believe she still exists on another plain and that I will see her again but with all my reading of NDEs and research, I still am no closer to any kind of proof. So, I simply have to try and hold on to the impact she had on my life and hope that death is not the end, but a new beginning. Your posts and book have helped me some during this time and I thank you for discussing death and what it’s like to go on after such a tremendous loss. I will continue to work on my faith and beliefs and hope that those who believe in a spiritual plain are right….
    Thank you,
    Patty

  • mohini ghosh says:

    My beliefs:that there definitely is what is called the SPIRIT /SOUL.It only takes looking at a dead body to confirm this understanding……of and on if we kinda connect emotionally,there presence can be felt….ur right when u say…the door is inside of us! Knock on the door..Open it….and look!!
    Read LAWS OF THE SPIRIT WORLD ……by Khorsheed Bhavnagri….to get an idea of the reality of death and dying….and reconnection. Reconnect if u wish to…there r ways of doing this!!!But i have never felt the need to reconnect…a chapter has closed…I lost my husband /lover, my mother , my father……yet i am at peace….we meet and live together for higher purposes…and when those learnings from experiencing life together have taken place ..each of us just moves on!!!in some way our accounts have squared up!!!
    Love n blessings to all!!
    m.

  • Josie says:

    At the funeral of my husband, love of my life and soul mate I experienced total peace as he was being lowered into the ground. I was dreading this moment so much but I just felt as if I was floating, total peace. I was so totally focused on what was going on there but did not know anything else. I did not cry. I couldn’t. I have cried everyday from the day we were told he was terminal but not at that time. Many strange things happened during the time of his death. I kept hearing a song, “the carneval is over” every night during my restless sleep until I wrote the eulogy and included the last verse in it, and then it stopped. Many other things happened and still happen. I moved within a year and within weeks I was sitting in the family room with the back door open when a butterfly flew in. It circled around me a few times and then flew out. Last summer I had a dragonfly, quite a big one, fly right into the house and flew around and then stopped to rest. I opened the window for it near where it was and it flew out. These, I am sure are signs that my loved one is still with me and will always be with me. Its still so hard to get through everyday but you do so. For your children even though they are adults. xxxxxx

  • I believe there is a door to the other side. Approximately six or seven month’s after the love of my life and soulmate passed, I got a sign. I was crying in bed late one night begging for a sign that he could hear me. After crying for a while I started to drift off. When suddenly there was a huge thud on my wooden foot-board that literally shook the whole bed with such intensive force! I bolted upright because I knew it was him! There is no other explanation. Later a friend helped me move furniture around in my bedroom. He said look your bed has moved from it’s original spot! That was obviously a huge amount of strength it must of took to give me this sign.
    Brian used to say that life here is a blink of an eye, and when we die we go to another plane.
    I have gone to talk to others that can reach the other side. Messages have come back to me that only he would of known. I do believe he exists somewhere, maybe heaven! It would make me feel better though if we could just get a little more incite that we will be with them again for sure! I guess it’s what we want to believe isn’t it?

  • Linda Strauss says:

    My husband (31 years together) was a troubled soul, torn between light and dark, ecstasy and despair, the desire to live and the wish to die. He was struggling, all the time, and the dark seemed to be winning in his last several years. Then, suddenly, he was on an upturn. One day, he was looking forward to moving to a beautiful country property we had bought for him. He was listening to the Concert for George–his favorite music, and he was reading a book by Hannah Arendt, a philosopher who is characteristically optimistic. He was surrounded by books about gardening, building, and art, and by his recent drawings–plans for arranging his house, building his garden, and his abstract drawings of archangels. He had been watching hummingbirds and creating a song about them on his guitar that morning. He was looking forward to my coming to see him that day. And then, without warning, he was stabbed in the heart by someone he had thought was a friend, who was angry and scared because my husband had told him that he would be moving away, and the friend had to find his own place. My husband died within seconds, two years ago. But I believed then, and still believe, that the universe recognized that he had moved, even if temporarily, out of the darkness and the struggle and fully into the light just at that moment, and I believe that the sudden energy of his death launched him onto a higher plane of existence, all at once. That is my comfort–the universe said yes, you are aimed and ready–go, now!

  • Lisa says:

    I cried when I thought of my beautiful husband’s laugh. He died 110 days ago of neck cancer. I’m crying now….

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