The veil is thin: how to feel your loved ones in spirit this Samhain and All Souls

A gentle way to feel the people you love in spirit at Samhain and All Souls, the signs they send, and what they usually come to say. From a Catholic girl who woke up to her gifts at 33.

Your loved ones have not left you. They just don't have a body anymore. Samhain and All Souls are an invitation to sit with them, light a candle, ask your question, and notice what you notice. No séance, no spooky stuff. Just love.

What does "the veil is thin" mean? Samhain is the old Celtic festival at the turn from harvest to winter, when people have long said the veil between the worlds is thin. All Souls is the day the Catholic church sets aside to remember and pray for those who have passed. Here's how I describe the veil.

So, the veil is thin. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I'm talking about the veil between the dimensions.

Think of a house with thick, soundproof walls. A thin veil is pretty much like having just one thin wall, like being in a tent.

So this is not a post about Halloween. It is about love, the questions women ask me at this time of year, and a simple practice for the night. Take what resonates.

Is the veil only thin once a year?

Here is the myth. The myth is that once a year a door creaks open, and if you don't catch it, you've missed your chance.

Here is the truth.

Spirit is always talking to you. They're not just visiting on anniversaries, Christmases, or birthdays. You might not know this, but spirit is actually here. They don't go up. No, you've just been told they go up. What is up anyway? Spirit are right here in another dimension and you can access that.

So why do so many of us feel them more at this time of year? Because we stop. We light a candle. We get the photos out. We think about them on purpose. And when we come into our hearts, we finally notice what has been there all along.

What if spirit is not up there? What if spirit is not out there? What if spirit is here? Here with you, but in a different dimension. The thing is the fifth dimension isn't up. It is here and it is accessed through here. To know spirit is to know self. And your presence is your greatest power. Come into your heart. come into your presence and realize that they didn't go anywhere.

That is the invitation of Samhain and All Souls. Not a door that opens once a year. A reminder to turn around and say hello.

Can a Catholic girl become a medium?

Because I was raised Catholic. It was all Hail Marys and Our Fathers and going to the church.

I was fascinated with the apparitions of the Virgin Mary and all the things that came with the church, the Catholic church that I belonged to. It was very magical. Very fantastical. But me? Nothing.

I was a hairdresser for 18 years in a little town in New Zealand. And honestly, I was brought up Catholic. So around 33 years old, after my son, Christian, was born, ironic, I decided to put religion and the beliefs that I'd been taught and brought up with to the side and find my own way, meaning, what do I truly believe? And the reason I did this was because I had what I call my Big Bang Awakening. I was getting the songs looping, the buzzing in the ears, the numbers, the recurring numbers, as well as the feathers and the butterflies and all the things. And I thought, maybe I'm going crazy or maybe I am psychic.

And the one who woke me up was a loved one in spirit. Not mine. A girl called Emma.

How I really got propelled into this journey was a girl I went to school with passed and she wanted me to give a message to her mum. The synchronicities and signs went on for a whole entire year. It became so prominent that I wasn't just seeing the feathers. I would go into a room and the whole room in my third eye, like in my head, was full of feathers.

And eventually I talked to the mum. And the minute I sat down with the mum of the girl who had passed, the spirit came through and I felt the emotion and I felt the tingle. And then I could tell her, oh my goodness, she wants to say this to you. It's not me. I'm not special. I'm just the medium in the situation.

That moment of giving a Mum a present from her daughter who had passed and me finally being brave enough to say hey can I talk to you changed my life forever.

If you grew up with All Souls, with candles lit for the people you lost, you already know the first step: thinking of them on purpose.

Have your loved ones really left you?

No. This is the one thing I want you to take from this whole page.

The afterlife is not a particular place. It is a state of energy. And your loved ones are still loving you. They have not left you.

You are spirit. Literally, you just happen to have a body. And spirit, our loved ones, just don't have a body anymore.

We lose the body, but we don't lose the spirit. They're still the same person. They don't have that body. It's just the essence.

I said it on one of my very first podcast episodes, and I'll keep saying it. But it's time we know that they haven't really left us.

So don't worry, you never lose your loved one to a different experience because their blueprint is always available for you to tune into at any time.

What do your loved ones usually come to say?

We expect a big speech. A reunion. Instructions for our life. It is usually so much simpler, and so much more beautiful.

They're coming through to give you a subtle message. And that is usually, I love you and I'm okay, and you're going to be okay too.

And sometimes that's all it is. They don't have a big profound, like, vision to tell you about the future. They're just like, I'm here to love you and support you. Isn't that enough? Because that's what they would do in real life.

Emma helped me explore how to bring depth into mediumship. The message is not the show. The love is.

What are the signs a loved one is close?

The signs are usually small, ordinary and perfectly timed. That is the point. They are using what they have.

Quite often it's subtle because it's quite hard to get through to us. It's like Morse code. You know, you've got to know the the language of it. So, when you see the feather, when you smell the thing, even if it's just a moment, that is them curating this frequency, doing their Morse code to get our attention.

Here are the ones I see most.

• Feathers. The feather that lands right in front of you when you were thinking about someone you loved.
• Songs. Now, this song came on the moment you thought about them, but you passed it off as a coincidence. But, here's the thing. It wasn't just about the song. It was about the exact timing of the song.
• Smells, photos and the little things. So when you are constantly thinking about your gran who passed and you're thinking about them over and over and over again, and then next minute you're at your mum's and you open up a photo album, there's a picture of them. And then all of a sudden you, you can, oh, yeah, that lady's wearing the same perfume my gran used to wear. And, oh, those beautiful roses. My gran loved her garden. It's her saying, hi, I'm right here.

And let's be honest with each other, because I always want you to be in your power with this. So, let's just keep it real for a minute. Sometimes a shiver is that we're cold. It's a human body thing, right? It's like goosebumps can be that we're cold as well. Sometimes a feather is just a feather. A floating leaf is just a leaf. Sometimes sadness is because we are going through something or maybe we are grieving and it's like a little wave of grief. It's not always spirit.

So how do you know? You feel it in your body, and you watch for the repeat.

Was it a dream, or was it a visit?

This one is close to my heart. My granddad passed when I was 15. We were very close.

I had a dream that my granddad was sitting on his chair and I was sitting on his knee. I was a little girl and he was rocking because that's what he did on his rocking chair and would sit there and just kind of relax into his chest and get a cuddle. And I said to him, "Granddad, I don't want to go." Cuz he told me I had to go. And I said, "Because then I won't be in this dream and I miss you so much." And he said, "This isn't a dream and I love you, but you have to go now." I woke up and I was like, "That wasn't a dream. That was real."

How do you tell the difference? It's a knowing, it's a feeling, and it's exactly about what that knowing and feeling is when you wake up, before your brain comes in and says it was just a dream. Honey, it wasn't just a dream. It was a message.

This is why when we're falling asleep or when we're waking up, it is the perfect time to connect into our loved ones and ask questions or simply receive love and connection.

Why is it harder to feel your own loved ones?

If you've been reaching for your Mum, your Nan or your Dad and getting nothing, please hear this. It happens to me too.

Why is it easier to connect to spirit of somebody else's loved one than to our own? This is something that I have been really looking into because when it comes to connecting to my own spirit, my heart is so aching to connect and talk to them. And often that will take us into our head.

The truth is your loved one in spirit is literally within your heart and the moment the second that you ask them to connect with you, they are then you must come into a presence of self so you can hear them because they are here and all you need to do is listen.

I was sitting on the beach. I was journaling and I was trying to tap in to my granddad. I was full of doubt. And all of a sudden, it was like something touched me on the head, like an electrical little kind of spark full of love, and it just trickled all the way down my body. Some would say this is the energy of the Holy Spirit. And this energy was like the Holy Spirit. All right. The Holy Spirit of my granddad. And what happened was all of a sudden my heart opened up and I heard a whisper within my own mind. And it said, I am here with you. I am in everything and I'm always with you when I need you.

Feel over see, always. You don't have to be a medium or hear a voice or see a vision to connect in with them. You can do this in your own way. All you have to do is feel into what you feel because love is a frequency and that is the frequency that we can connect to our loved ones in spirit.

Is it okay that you're still grieving?

Yes. Being a medium has never meant I stop missing people.

I once said this to a woman who was missing her dad, and I'll say it to you. Your human has to grieve. But of course, you know, he's with you and you can talk to him.

I was standing there happy, and my granddad's passed away. Yeah, yeah, he's no more pain, I'm smiling and talking at his funeral, and I realized everyone else is grieving, and I was like, oh, oh, of course, they have to grieve.

We will have our loved ones that leave us, and we have the beauty and the privilege to feel pain and grief. And although death is not real, and in essence, it's always transformation, we still have to grieve. We have to, because this is, we are born to be compassionate, loving, caring, magnificent souls.

That grieving, it doesn't ever go. It just kind of softens a little bit as time goes on because we have to keep living our life.

So let your tears come on this night. Your body is missing them. Your spirit knows they're right there. Both are true.

Try this on Samhain or All Souls night

You don't need the perfect setup. A candle, a photo and a few quiet minutes is plenty.

• Light a candle and sit with their photo. Think of them on purpose. If they pop into your mind, it's because they're with you. So when that happens, you just turn around and say, hello, I can feel you there.
• Ask one question. And then you can also, if you wanted to, you can shut your eyes and you could say, is there something that you want to say? And then put a full stop at the end of your sentence that you've said to them and listen. Not just listening with your ears, but listen.
• Hand on heart. Hand on heart, and say, "Thank you. Thank you for showing your love to me. Is there anything you want to share?"
• Notice what you notice. A warmth, a memory, a song in your head, a smell, a word. Messages are usually felt within the body. Seeing spirit is usually in the imagination. Hearing can often be with your own voice.
• Write it in your spirit dictionary. Create your own spirit dictionary. Your personal library of meaning built one entry at a time. And I realized that quite often people would say a monarch butterfly means that my grandma's around. And I'm like, to me, it means that a spirit called Emma is around. Your signs are yours.
• Take it to bed with you. As you fall asleep, say their name. In the morning, write down what you remember before you talk yourself out of it.

That's it. Simple, not necessarily easy. And if nothing comes on the night, that is okay too. They are never ever really gone. They are always with you.

Watch Victoria teach this on YouTube →

Questions women ask me

Is it safe to connect with loved ones when the veil is thin?

Your loved one in spirit comes in with the best intention in mind for you and the world. Fear doesn't exist when it comes to spirit communication of the beautiful benevolent spirits. Your power is your protection. You don't need a protective bubble.

Do I have to see them to know they're with me?

No. Some people don't see. As well as they hear. Some people don't hear. As well as they feel. You felt them because they were with you.

What if I sit with them and nothing comes?

If nothing is coming through, it is all divine. Time is not real. Let the night be about remembering them. That is love too.

Your loved ones have not left you. To know spirit is to know yourself. Everyone is a medium, including you.

Read next: Everyone Is a Medium, How to Read the Signs Spirit Is Sending You, Your Spirit Team