My resident house-ghost, Joe, arrived a few days ago with his latest group of “recruits.” Joe and I struck a deal some months back, whereby he brings troubled souls to me, and I help those souls make their peace and ascend. I have ascended two such groups so far (see My Ghost Joe and My Ghost Joe and the Impatient Horde and He’s Baaack), the second being more troubled than the first. And now the third such group arrived in my attic. And, oh boy, what a group it was: four suicides.
In general, dead is dead, and a spirit is a spirit is a spirit. BUT, suicides are a special class of spirit, as they are universally troubled and carry a great deal of spiritual baggage. I have done psychic readings for suicides before, and have helped those individuals make their peace and ascend. I am proud of this work, but those readings are always long and incredibly intense. What I haven’t done is help a suicide that was a complete stranger — unknown to me or the person on the other end of the phone line. Joe’s group posed a sobering challenge in this regard, as suicides have a lot of guilt, and are often reluctant to talk. I was not sure how far I would get with them, but I agreed to try.
First up was a 17-year-old woman who hailed from the Midwest and said her name was Margaret, but to call her Mo. She rocked a 1980’s vibe, very Madonna-meets-punk-rock, and killed herself with pills and then a slash of her wrists.
With a little prodding, she told her story: Her parents were uber-controlling, boxed her in, and left her feeling suffocated. She was allowed no freedom of movement, no freedom to make and have friends, and limited freedom to go to school. She felt like she had been buried alive her whole life. She was malnourished, abused “every which way,” and locked in her room most of the time. She just wanted to be free. She said that after she killed herself, she haunted her parents in an attempt to drive them mad. But they were kind of oblivious. And now they’re both dead.
There were things I felt she needed to know: I told her that all of us have limits, and she needed to forgive herself for having them and for reaching hers. I told her that she needed to accept the fact that she did the best she could at the time, and to forgive herself for the regretful things she did and did not do. I told her that she could probably see another way to handle things now, but that she needed to accept that she couldn’t see it then.
I asked a lot of questions: Can you forgive yourself for only seeing one way out? Can you forgive yourself for killing yourself instead of killing your parents? Can you forgive yourself for opting out of your life? Can you live with the fact that the things you were supposed to learn and the growing experiences you were supposed to have, you will still need to have in a future life? If you reincarnate into a do-over life, can you live with that? Have you learned anything and grown as a person in this lifetime?
She thought about each question and eventually answered, “Yes, yes, yes.” She said that she would have a better escape strategy in her next life — one that didn’t involve drinking and drugs, but running away to a neighbor or relative. It was the last question that really got to her, though. She had felt her life was a complete waste. But she could see the things she learned and ways that she had grown, and this pleased her. As the negativity cleared, I asked one final, “Is there anything else that you need to forgive yourself for?” And she replied, “My brother. My death really messed him up.” I told her to accept responsibility for that, and told her that after she ascended, she could come back to him and make things right by acting as a guide and protector for him. I told her that through ascension, a person becomes the embodiment of light and love. She liked the sound of that, and eventually was ready to ascend. I opened a portal and up she went, finally happy and at peace.
I did not have it in me to do three more suicide ascensions right then, so I left the three other spirits in my attic overnight and got back to them the following afternoon. I expected to deal with them one by one, but they wouldn’t separate. Apparently, they had been listening — really listening — to what I said to Mo the day before, and they spent the night talking to one another. I found this astonishing, as suicides carry so much baggage that they don’t talk to anyone. But the three of them talked, found common threads in their stories, and discovered a shared loneliness. And they decided that they wanted to ascend together — to do this one big thing NOT alone.
The group consisted of a man and two women, ranging in age from 18 to 28. I wasn’t as clear on names for these three, but the man seemed to be named Mike, and died on a motorcycle, the result of driving intentionally fast and reckless. The older of the two women was fair-haired, possibly named Allyson, and died of a drug overdose. “I wanted to medicate my problems away. But I had a few too many problems.” And the younger woman was short with short, dark hair, and said to call her Ramona. She died by hanging. She told me she agonized for months over choosing the method, not wanting anything “too messy.” I asked how it was that nobody talked her out of it that whole time, and she said that everybody thought she was just quiet. She said nobody knew she was in agony.
They made a joint statement: “We talked everything through. What we did, what we didn’t do; what we knew, what we didn’t know; who hurt us, who we hurt by dying on purpose. We all did the best we could with the information we had to work with at the time. But we see things differently now. Like the blinders are off.”
I needed to see them individually, to make sure that their guilt, shame, and regret was gone, and that their energies were “clean” and ready to ascend. Mike stepped forward first, announced that he missed his friends (two guys), and said he was ready to go. His energy was very different from the day before, and I confirmed his readiness.
Allyson stepped forward next, announced, “My mom cared more than I thought. She just had a lot of problems of her own to deal with. Or not deal with. I’m ready to go now. We talked about everything last night.” And from her energy shift, it seemed that they had.
And then Ramona stepped forward and said, “It was good to talk to the other suiciders last night. It really helped me. My funeral was pretty big, for feeling so alone all the time. I’ve had a hard time with that, with how I couldn’t see it when I was alive.” And she, too, appeared “clean” and at peace.
I asked them to thank my ghost Joe for bringing them here, which they did. Final good-byes said, I opened a portal for them, and there was quite a crowd gathered on the other side to greet them. Mike yelled, “Dude!,” Allyson spotted her grandmother, and Ramona, her mother. I bid them blessings on their journey, and up they went. After crossing over, they high-fived each other and hollered a “That was so cool!” back down to me.
I talked to Joe afterwards, and asked again if he was ready for his turn to ascend. He said not yet, that he had one more group he wanted to gather up and bring to me. Can’t wait to see what he brings me next….