The Dead Will Keep You Alive

In light of recent events, I feel the need to share this with my fellow humans.

Right now, in light of COVID-19, the coronavirus that’s plaguing our world, there are a lot of people caught up in mass hysteria and panic. It is very evident with the empty grocery store shelves, the toilet paper shortage, and people acting as if the end of the world is upon us.

Trust me - the end of the world is not upon us. In my most recent sessions with Spirit, our ancestors and loved ones are still communicating from the Other Side, telling us to build a future, go back to school, plant the gardens, take care of ourselves...all of the things they were telling us before this crisis hit. The world is changing - we are in uncharted waters, places we’ve never seen in our modern society - but the world isn’t ending.

That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be concerned - we should absolutely be concerned. We should be safe, we should stay aware, and we should stay clean, as best we can. This particular coronavirus is a distinct threat to a significant portion of our population and because of that, we should take it very seriously. And it could very well be here for a long, long time.

But we shouldn’t panic. We should absolutely not panic. I don’t know how to stress this enough.

Since I began walking this path of communicating with Spirit about three years ago, I’ve done so with my ancestors at my side. In fact, most of you know that my path all started with a DNA test and subsequent ancestry research - as soon as I started digging into family trees and genealogy, as soon as I started to learn about my great-grandparents and further back, I began to sense and “hear” things about others that weren’t very clear to me before then. 

I consider myself very lucky to have found this path, but to clarify, I consider myself very lucky that my ancestors found a way to me. Prior to this DNA test, prior to this ancestry research, I wasn’t spiritual whatsoever. I wasn’t an Atheist, but I wasn’t spiritual. I was just a dude who liked scary movies and read horror novels, and I’ve been that way since I was about three years old. Whatever you want to call it, I have liked the “Other” my entire life.

Sadly, I fell into the trap that our modern, Christianized society sets for us - if it doesn’t fall within the definition of science, it’s hokum. If it doesn’t fall inside the boundaries of “God and Jesus” it’s “The Devil and Demons.” Not that I’ve ever been religious, not that I’ve ever been Catholic or Christian or Baptist or Methodist, but I certainly am a product of a society that dictates that those religions are the truth.

Just look at our money in the United States - whether you’re Christian or not, we all carry around currency that tells us “In God We Trust.” It’s very hard to get away from that programming, even if you didn’t grow up with it in our households, like I did not.

With all that said, I never found spirituality or “The Other” because of religion. I found it when I found my ancestors. That’s why I’m such a proponent of ancestor veneration and honoring them. When these gifts of mine presented themselves to me and others, they freaked me out. I am clairvoyant, clairsentient, and a medium. I can look at someone and know their shoulder hurts, or their hands hurt. I can hear from and communicate messages for those that have passed onto the “Other Side,” wherever that may be.

When that happened to me, it freaked me out. I will never be one of those people who claim to have heard or seen spirits since they were 5 years old. That’s just not my story. I don’t pull punches about this process of mine, or these gifts - it freaks me out and almost three years later of doing this work professionally, it still leaves me in awe. And when it first started to happen to me, I pulled back from it - I didn’t want to embrace it, I didn’t want to use it, because I didn’t know what it was for. Like I’ve often said, I’m a big believer in an ecosystem in our society - carpenters build houses, nurses heal people, bakers feed people. I had no idea what this was for, and it scared me. I did what anyone else does when we’re scared of something: I pulled back from it and didn’t want to use it. 

But I kept working with my ancestors. I kept researching my ancestry. And I found out amazing stories of my ancestors. My father, who is still alive, was born in 1958. When he was born to a family of farmers in Dalton, NH, his mother was 47 and his father was 52. Can you imagine that? That’s amazing to me and I often think of the fact that my father (and by extension, me and my sister) shouldn’t be here. My father lost his father when he was 8 years old, when his father was 60. My father’s father was a WWII pilot, something that both my father and I knew.

Doing this ancestry work lead me to another amazing story - my grandfather’s father was also in WWII, something my father and I didn’t know. Even more incredibly, he was also in WWI. Imagine that - going through two World Wars, one with your son, while you’re leaving your wife and children home to take care of a farm. Awe-inspiring, really.

It was these stories of my ancestors, stories of their struggles, their fights, their pains, that helped me realize that all of my gifts - from my psychic gifts and mediumship, to my height, to my eye color, to my sense of humor - all come from my ancestors. Everything we are, everything we are made up of, comes to us from our ancestors, and because they struggled so. 

If we deny our gifts, if we don’t use them to try and make this world a better place for our families and our communities, we dishonor our ancestors. You won’t be able to convince me otherwise. Why else would they struggle for us to be here, in this day? If we are self-centered, self-involved, and selfish, we dishonor their struggles. We dishonor them.

And that’s why I ran towards my gifts, instead of away from them. I found out what they were for. Just like a nurse heals, a carpenter houses, and a baker feeds, the gifts that I bring to people are for this: to bring connection, clarity, and direction. And I’ve brought that to thousands of people since I began walking this path in earnest.

That’s not all I get from my ancestors though. I get so much more from them than just the ability to recognize these gifts and to bring them to others.

My grandmother, my mother’s mother, was the only grandparent that I ever came to know well. She passed away a few years ago at 87, leading a tough, tough life. She buried two sons, her husband, was on her own at a very young age, and working right up until a few months before she passed away. A tougher woman I have never known. A smarter woman I have never known. A more resilient woman I have never known.

I count my blessings every day, and that I came to know and love her well is among them.

And this is why I believe the Dead, those honored and well-intentioned ancestors, with their wisdom and resiliency, will help to keep us alive. We all come from ancestors who struggled, whether they were noble and well-intentioned, or whether they were less-than-noble. In fact, we all come from ancestors who were both people of integrity and people who were not. Yet, none of us would be here if the people who came before us didn’t know strength of some kind. Imagine all of our ancestors who didn’t have doctors, grocery stores, hospitals or any of the modern conveniences we take for granted. Imagine the difficulties they would have had, the insecurities, the lack of stability they would have had, both in raising families and keeping families alive.

Through all of these difficulties, we are all here because our ancestors didn’t panic. Sure, they knew worries at times, they were human just as we are. Yet they had resiliency. Tenacity. A way to look at crises with a clear mind, without panicking, so they could make the best decisions they could for their families. We all come from mothers and fathers who approached a situation with calm and collectedness, and that’s what we have to cultivate right now.

Have to.

Living in fear, whether it’s fear of the coronavirus or fear of any other unknown variable, compromises our ability to critically think, and it compromises our immune system as well. Both our ability to critically think, along with our immune system, are vital in times like these. We must not stress but strategize. We must not panic, but plan.

I don’t want to come across as someone that’s “holier-than-thou,” or someone who isn’t feeling the feelings of panic or stress around me. I am. As an empathetic and sympathetic human being, it would be almost impossible not to. Yet, when I do, when I feel the edges of panic and hysteria creeping in...I imagine my grandmother. I imagine her steadfastness, of her living with the land. I think of her basement full of pickles and canned goods, of maple syrup and other goods. I imagine my grandfather, a pilot in WWII. I imagine his father, in both World Wars. I imagine the strength of their wives, who kept their families and homesteads intact while they were away.

If there’s anything good that comes from this virus, it’s a realization that our society is indeed fragile. I’ve bemoaned the fact that we have lost so much with my grandmother’s generation, so much practical knowledge, so much strength and resiliency, and there’s no more time than right now that shows that to be true. My grandmother’s generation, at risk of romanticizing them too much, wouldn’t have stormed the grocery and department stores for toilet paper, with blatant disregard for their fellow human.

If there’s anything this virus will do, much in the same way that 9/11 did, is to make us realize again how much we are dependent on each other. How we’ve always been dependent on each other. How we should be self-sufficient, as much as we can be. How we should prepare. How we should have foodstuffs in our house for our families, First Aid supplies, and medicine. How we should work with the land to help sustain us. How we should work with our Unseen Allies to bring about beneficial change and protection for our families and communities without raping and pillaging the Earth from which we’re born. How we should build communities that don’t depend on the whims of corporations and governments, but who lean into one another in times of crisis. All of these skills and attributes were something that our ancestors, generally speaking, were very good at. We need to lean into them to bring back the Old Ways that have sustained us for so long.

The Dead have so much to teach us. I remember the stories my Dad used to tell about his father, the little he knew about him. The Simonds of Dalton, New Hampshire were stewards of the land, and of their community. My grandfather, upon hearing of a family who was going hungry, would go shoot a deer and bring it to them, no questions asked. I think of him and what he would do right now, in this situation. I know he wouldn’t panic. I know he wouldn’t stress. He would strategize. He would plan.

So here’s my suggestion to you. Whether you have ancestors like myself that you can look up to, please reach out to them for guidance and clarity. I have plenty of friends who don’t have parents or grandparents that they can idolize, who they can look up to, but I can guarantee that they come from, somewhere in their line, people who were noble and strong. I can guarantee it - they wouldn’t be here otherwise.

Now is the time to take those pictures of your grandparents and set them up in a place where you can sit with them in stillness. Now is the time to light a candle in their honor, asking them to come close to you and yours so they can guide you in this time of chaos. Your ancestors are proof of the adage - necessity is the mother of all invention. In times of need, we either sink or swim. We are in need right now, as a people, and we all have to dig deep, deep into the ancestral well from which we sprung, for ourselves, our families, and our communities. We have to hold each other up in these times - we’re in uncharted waters and we need each other to see ourselves through

Strategize, don’t stress. Plan, don’t panic.

Hold onto your families. Hold onto your communities. Become the strong strands of fabric in both that will hold them together through these tough times.

And hold your Dead close to you, now more than ever. Hold their wisdom and resiliency close to you.

They will help keep you alive.