Signs from Beyond– How Our Loved Ones Reach Us

There's a thin veil between what we can see and what we can sense—between the life we're living and the love that never leaves us. Sometimes, when we're grieving or searching or simply open enough to notice, the universe finds a way to whisper back.

We've just emerged from Scorpio season—that intense, transformative time when the veil between worlds grows thinnest, when we're invited to dive deep into shadow, death, rebirth, and the mysteries that lie beyond ordinary perception. It's the perfect time to share a story about signs, synchronicity, and the loved ones who never truly leave us.

My story begins with a name: Elsa.

The First Elsa– A Love Cut Short

She was my first cat, my companion in San Francisco, during those years when you're figuring out who you are on your own. But my housemate—a stranger from Craigslist who I thought I could trust—hurt her in ways I didn't understand until it was too late. I'd come home to find her having seizures, foaming at the mouth. She'd flee down the hallway at the sound of his footsteps, hiding beneath the bed where she thought she was safe.

One day, she ran. Down into the basement, into the darkness, away from the pain.

Weeks later, someone told me she had died there. Alone.

The grief was unbearable—the kind that sits on your chest and makes it hard to breathe. I carried it with me to a camp in the woods where I taught yoga, trying to find my way back to joy, to lightness, to anything that wasn't this crushing sadness. I was also nursing unrequited love for someone, that particular ache of longing for what can never be.

At the camp, I decided to receive a tuning fork healing. The practitioner asked what I wanted to release, and I told her: the grief over my cat, the heaviness of impossible love. Let me just have fun again, I thought. Let me be light.

The Second Elsa– A Whisper in a Little Girl's Hair

Five minutes after my healing session ended, one of the women organizing the camp approached me. She knew I was a hairstylist. Could I help with a little girl's hair? The other stylist couldn't manage it.

I knelt down beside this child and asked her name.

She whispered: "Elsa."

My heart stopped. Five minutes after asking the universe to help me release my grief over Elsa, here was another Elsa, looking up at me with trusting eyes.

And then—within that same surreal window of time—I met someone. A stranger, really. But it was love at first sight, that rare and electric recognition that defies all logic.

When I returned to San Francisco after the camp, I started noticing something impossible: we were in photos together. Old photos from nightclubs, parties, moments in time where we'd occupied the same space. We had been orbiting each other for who knows how long, two souls circling, never quite meeting—until the universe decided it was time.

Like sliding doors. Like parallel timelines finally converging.

The universe wasn't whispering anymore. It was speaking clearly: You are seen. Your grief is witnessed. Healing is already here. And love—real love—is waiting just beyond the release.

Leo– The Soul Returns on the Wolf Moon

Fast forward to another chapter. Another gift from the universe, wrapped in fur and loyalty.

My friend Toni called—he'd lost his job and needed a haircut. Of course, I said. Come over. As I cut his hair, he poured out his struggles, his life in shambles. I thought about the energy work I do, how much it might help him, but it costs $250 and I was already giving him this haircut for free. I stayed quiet.

When we finished, we walked out to his truck. And there, looking up at me with those ancient, knowing eyes, was an eight-week-old puppy.

Toni was keeping the sister, he said. But the brother—Leo—was available.

"How much?" I asked.

"$250."

We made the trade. Energy work for a soul in the form of a dog.

It was the full Wolf Moon. I literally received a wolf on the full moon—a creature of instinct, loyalty, and wild wisdom arriving at the exact moment the universe ordained.

Leo isn't just my dog. He's my soulmate. He has the most expressive, wise eyes. He understands every word I speak. He's beyond brilliant, beyond what we usually mean when we talk about animals. I'm pretty certain Leo is my first dog—the one I lost years ago—returned to me. Even his markings are the same, though that dog was a Springer Spaniel and Leo is Australian Shepherd, Border Collie, and Great Pyrenees mixed together into one perfect being.

The Third Elsa–Written on a Cardboard Box

Leo and I took a road trip to Washington State where I was teaching a yoga workshop. Meanwhile, back home, I'd made the difficult decision to send my senior cat—adopted from my sister—to kitty hospice. I didn't have the bandwidth to care for her properly in her final days, and I wanted her to be comfortable.

In Washington, right after the rain, Leo pulled me toward a yard where four kittens were playing—three black, one gray. The woman who lived there explained she was moving to Oregon but had gotten all the kittens spayed and vaccinated. Would I like to take any?

I chose two. She went inside to find a box.

When she emerged, she was breathless. "Look at this!" she exclaimed, holding up the cardboard box and pointing to the image printed on its side– Elsa from Frozen.

She didn't know my first cat's name. She didn't know the significance of what she was holding. But the universe did.

The universe, it seemed, was making sure I didn't miss the message.

The Fourth Elsa– A Neighbor's Kindness

My orange tabby, Jack—a wild man of a cat—had been staying at my partner's farm. He disappeared for two months. When I finally brought him back to my place, he escaped and vanished for a week.

Then a neighbor reached out through Nextdoor. She had Jack. He was safe.

Her name? Elsa.

Sweet Child O' Mine– A Father's Last Song

But Elsa isn't the only name that follows me. Sometimes the signs come through music, through memories we thought we'd forgotten.

When I was in sixth grade, my dad found my Guns N' Roses tape—Appetite for Destruction, with its controversial upside-down cross on the cover. My father wasn't particularly spiritual, but something about that tape disturbed him. In his thick Bolivian accent, he declared: "I will not let you listen to the Satanic music. I will not let you listen to this heavy steel."

I smile now, remembering how he got it all wrong and yet so perfectly right in his own way.

My dad transitioned in 2020, around the solstice—that liminal time. The next morning, I got up to teach my yoga class, grief still raw and fresh. I turned on the radio.

The first song that played was "Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns N' Roses.

My father, who wouldn't let me listen to "the Satanic music" all those years ago, was somehow making sure I heard it now. Telling me, in his own way: I'm here. I see you. And maybe I understand now what I didn't understand then.

What the Universe Is Trying to Tell Us

Four times now, Elsa has shown up in my life. A Guns N' Roses song plays at the exact moment I need to hear from my father. Leo arrives on the Wolf Moon with the same soul I've known before.

This isn't coincidence. This is the universe speaking in the only language it has–synchronicity, symbols, names that repeat until we finally pay attention.

I believe Leo is my first dog, returned to me in a new body. I believe Elsa—my sweet, traumatized cat—has been reaching out across the veil, letting me know she's okay, that she forgives me for not being able to protect her, that love doesn't end when a body does. I believe my father found a way to send me the very music he once forbade, transformed now into a message of love and presence.

The signs are everywhere if we're willing to see them. They come in whispered names, in $250 trades on full moons, in cardboard boxes that strangers don't realize hold sacred meaning, in the kindness of neighbors we've never met, in songs on the radio that make us cry and laugh at the same time. They come in photos from years ago that reveal we've been dancing around our destiny all along, waiting for the exact right moment to finally meet.

The veil between worlds is thinner than we think. Our beloveds—whether human or animal—don't leave us when they die. They simply change form. They become butterflies that land on our shoulders, songs that play at the exact right moment, names that echo through our lives like prayers. And sometimes, they clear the path for new love to enter—love that was always meant to find us, once we were finally ready to receive it.

Opening to the Messages

As a yoga teacher and energy worker, I've learned that we must cultivate receptivity to receive these messages. We must quiet the noise of the rational mind that wants to explain everything away as coincidence. We must trust the tugging of our intuition, the way Leo pulled me toward that yard full of kittens, the way my heart recognized the name Elsa even before my mind could process it, the way a song from childhood can carry a father's voice across dimensions.

The signs from beyond aren't always dramatic. They're often quiet, gentle, repetitive. They ask us to pay attention. To notice. To remember that we're never truly alone, that love transcends the boundary between life and death, and that our beloved companions—those soul-deep connections—will find their way back to us, again and again and again.

So when you find yourself wondering if that cardinal on your windowsill, that song on the radio, that name you keep hearing over and over is really a sign—trust yourself. It is.

The universe is whispering your name. And if you're very quiet, very open, very willing to believe in magic, you'll hear your loved ones whispering back: I'm here. I never left. And I will find you in every lifetime.

In memory of the first Elsa, in gratitude for every Elsa since, and for my father who finally let me listen to "the heavy steel." May we all be blessed enough to recognize love when it returns to us, again and again, in forms we never expected.