Jillian Chantal

Join me today as I welcome a special guest, Julie Tetel Andresen. I think you will very much love her post. She shares a very important part of herself and how she used this experience in her latest book. I was very moved when I read it. Thanks for sharing such a personal story, Julie.

Losing a Love:

My latest romance, Love After All (May, 2016), is the story of how Gino, a widower, and Laurel who is divorced find love again in mid-life.

The story behind this story requires me telling you that I’ve been going to an energy reader for years. She’s the real deal. Her name is Sherrie Dillard, and here’s a link to her website: http://www.sherriedillard.com/main.html

One February a few years ago I signed up for one of Sherrie’s Intuition seminars. A good 15 people signed up. The plan was for the group to meet for two hours one Sunday a month for nine months. I told her up front I could only come to the first four sessions, because my husband, Marcel, and I would be in France for the summer.

One of our first activities was a guided meditation about healing. Following Sherrie’s instructions I found myself on the beach in company with my husband. We began walking along the edge of the water. Following Sherrie’s instructions I turned away from the beach at one point and headed toward a gazebo. Marcel didn’t come with me. He kept going forward, and for a moment or two I watched his back as he walked down the beach away from me.

I went to the gazebo and was instructed to invite someone who needed healing to visit. I called my husband, because he had a few health issues, but nothing serious. He didn’t come. Instead, my brother showed up. I sent him whatever healing energy I was told to send. Then the guided meditation was over.

Marcel and I never made it to France that summer, because he died of a very aggressive pancreatic cancer in May. His first symptoms showed up in March.

I ended up going to all of Sherrie’s Sunday seminars. Maybe I missed the one in May – I don’t remember now. In July we had a drawing exercise. When our anonymous drawings were randomly distributed to be interpreted, the person who received mine entitled it “Memories of Being Loved.”

I was completely amazed by this interpretation. Sherrie was the only one in the group who knew my husband had died. I didn’t really know the other participants, and I didn’t want to deal with any further expression of sympathy. It was only after the person titled my drawing that I realized what it was about: the loss of love.

That August I had a dream about Marcel. In Love After All I attribute this dream to the one Gino had about his wife, Rosie. Here’s the passage:

“In August I had a strange dream. Rosie and I were out in the country on bicycles. In all our married life we never once bicycled together. But this was a dream, so anything can happen. As we rode along, I looked over at her and wondered if she was alive or a ghost. I looked at her bicycle seat. I reasoned that if she were alive, then her weight would cause an indentation on the surface. I couldn’t quite tell if there was an indentation there or not. It didn’t think to reach out to see whether I would touch living flesh or if my hand would go through an apparition.

“The dream ended. As I left the sleeping state I wondered whether in reality Rosie was alive or dead. In her final months I had the constant background thought she might die while I was at work. So it had been a habit to worry about her health. Anyway, when I came fully awake, I knew she was dead.

“My shrink said the dream showed what he called integration. My conscious and unconscious had now both processed her loss and were on the same page about it. She was gone, and all of me knew it. That moment marked a change. I wasn’t happier, but I was less disoriented.”

This dream is part of a larger passage and the only one in Love After All that I devote to Gino’s grieving process. After all, as the title says, the story is about his new love, not his lost love.

The Intuition seminar turned out to be a wonderful space where I confronted and dealt with loss.

In the short weeks leading to my husband’s death, I was comforted by the image I had of him walking down the beach alone. Already in February – before any evident symptoms of a serious illness had appeared– my intuition told me that he and I had traveled together for a long while, but now our paths were going to part, with me turning to go to the healing gazebo and him going on down his own path without me.

By the way, Gino’s new love turns out to be really something. I hope you’ll take the time to discover it in Love After All.  

How to reach Julie:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorjulietetelandresen

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JTAbooks

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/654435.Julie_Tetel_Andresen

Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/110836139498903771104/posts