Just a couple of days ago a friend wrote me anonymously. She has recently lost a very dear loved one and she has been getting amazing signs. She feels reluctant to share them for fear people will think she’s crazy, but since I publicly post my craziness, she felt comfortable sharing them with me. I recommended to her my friend Roberta’s book “The Fun of Staying In Touch” which is all about after death communications. She is not crazy. Far from it. She’s blessed. Not only is she receiving astounding signs, she’s open enough to recognize them and to feel her brother with her.
Yesterday Tywana and I agreed to start a chapter of Helping Parents Heal. I posted about that. I briefly mentioned some of the signs that led me to believe that was the right thing for us to do. Today, as I was queueing up a Podcast I found the next one on my list was actually about synchronicities. Tywana and I share an iTunes account and she had listened to this one and marked it played, so I almost missed it. As I was listening to it, I realized I should document the path that led us to Helping Parents Heal.
Shortly after Shayna passed a friend on Facebook recommended that I write to Mark Ireland. Mark is an author who wrote two books after his son Brandon (my brother’s name) passed suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 18. Brandon was on a hiking expedition and had an unusual asthma attack that caused his heart to stop. Mark was most gracious to me. He took the time to exchange several emails with me. He also mentioned a foundation he had started “Helping Parents Heal”. At the time I was involved in private counseling and with Companions On A Journey locally. So, I wasn’t looking for another support group. Besides, they weren’t local. So I just filed that away. Mark and I continued to stay in touch occasionally. Then I ran across a Podcast by Roberta Grimes. I listened regularly and wrote to her with a question. Roberta and I became friends. She introduced me to Susann Wilson who I had an unbelievable reading with. Sometime around the time I had the reading with Susanne, Susanne and a woman named Elizabeth Boisson were guests on Roberta’s show. I listened as Elizabeth told the story of how she had met Susanne. Elizabeth’s son had passed also unexpectedly, from altitude sickness. The story of their meeting is incredible enough, but this is going to get long- so I will skip it. But, here is the synchronicity for me, as I listened. Elizabeth mentioned that she knew Mark Ireland and is one of the co-founders of Helping Parents Heal. Here it was again.
I looked up Helping Parents Heal and the closest chapter was in Columbus. Tywana and I decided to make a trip up to attend a meeting. This was the April meeting. As it turns out the only people there were the co-leaders and Tywana and me. A couple of days after the meeting I got a call from one of the people who had been a co-leader and she informed me they were at least temporarily shutting down the Columbus chapter. Bummer. Well, I guess it was a good thing we made that particular meeting. They mentioned this guy, Mark Pitstick, who had started the Columbus chapter. Mark is a chiropractor who lives in Chillicothe, OH (not too far from us). I had heard his name, but it really hadn’t registered with me.
Totally unrelated to this, Tywana and I had decided to attend the Victory of Light Conference in Sharonville the next weekend. Our plan was to get there early, but you know how that goes. Instead of getting there by 10 o’clock it was more like 11 o’clock. The place was packed. We had to wait in line to get in. We were meeting friends. It took us a while to find them. By the time we said hello and caught our breath it was 11 o’clock on the nose. We thought we’d wait until noon and catch a presentation then. I glanced at the program to make our plans for noon. We’d walk the expo floor until then. Guess who was speaking at 11 o’clock? Mark Pitstick. I hate being late, but I wasn’t going to miss this opportunity to hear Mark. We walked into his Q&A session five or ten minutes late. Mark mentioned Unity church during his presentation. OK. This is weird. We had never heard of Unity until last summer. Tywana stumbled across their Podcasts and we’ve been attending a Unity church since then. After it was over, he had to hustle off to another presentation.
Later, as we were walking into a different presentation, we caught Mark in the hall and introduced ourselves. By this time I think I had become friends with Elizabeth on Facebook. I wrote to Elizabeth telling her about our run-in with Mark.
Mark and Elizabeth agreed with us that we thought it would be good to start a chapter of HPH in Cincinnati. I don’t think either of them knows the full story of how we came to that conclusion. But, the synchronicities don’t end there. Yesterday, as we were talking with Mark he mentioned breath work. He had mentioned it in his newsletter which I (quite frankly) hadn’t read because I get SO much email. I made a note to look it up and he agreed to send me another link to it. As I walked back into my office 15 minutes later and got on Facebook, the first post I saw was from another totally unrelated friend recommending breath work.
This morning as I was listening to the Podcast which is all about how these seeming coincidences are actually messages from God/Spirit/Loved Ones/The Universe whatever you want to call it, I was reminded of how this came together and prompted to share it. The fact that this particular Podcast came to me today was another message. Then, Roberta, during the interview, used the phrase “off the reservation”. This interview was done before Hillary Clinton’s use of it earlier this week and that phrase had caught my attention enough that I made a Facebook post about it. I cannot tell you the last time I heard that phrase at all, let alone twice in the same week.
There are some who say there are no coincidences, no accidents. Swedenborg says everything is planned/known down the roll of a die. I’m not sure about that, but I do want to say that it behooves you to look for (and ask for) signs. For so much of my life I thought I was on my own with no roadmap. The sign posts are there, if we just learn to take the time to read them.
