Don't forget — you can communicate with their loved one too. If your client says they can't hear their mom, start speaking to her yourself. I always open with, "Hi, I'm Sue. Thank you for coming. It's nice to meet you." Then to my client I say, "They can hear me, but I can't hear them."
That setup almost always gets the conversation moving. Once, I had a client who had lost her husband about a year before, and she was still very angry at him. She didn't even want to see him because of her anger. I gently told her it would be very healing.
Eventually she agreed and invited him to join her at the beach. She told him she was furious that he left her with a newborn child to raise alone, and that she was having a hard time forgiving him. His answer to her was that this was all he had been there to do — he had fulfilled his purpose by giving her a child to love and laugh with, and once he gave her that child, it was his time to move on.
He went on to tell her that she would meet someone and be very happy in the long run. This was both his and her soul's desire — a lesson for the two of them. She was finally able to release her anger and gave him a big hug.
Seeing it from that higher perspective was what allowed her to let go. I love when my clients can release their pain this way. Another client lost her husband in a plane crash, and she had always been curious about how it happened.
When she was communicating with him on the beach, he explained that his friend was too big for the seat, and his knee had moved the throttle. By the time he realized they were losing altitude, it was too late. He said his soul popped out of his body, and he and his friend watched the plane go into a tail spin and crash. He felt no pain.
Hearing that brought my client tremendous relief. Her deepest fear had always been that he suffered before he died. Knowing that he didn't was profoundly comforting. Many of my clients ask their loved ones for advice, and it's always interesting to me that the loved ones fully know what's going on in their lives.
Another client, Sofia, came to me carrying nearly thirty years of unresolved grief. She had lost her two dearest friends, Sigrid and Gretchen, when they were young women — Gretchen in a car accident that had been so violent her body was dismembered. Sofia had never really recovered. She was depressed, anxious, terrified of dying, and had not truly cried about the loss in decades. I settled her into a beautiful garden with violet flowers, and almost immediately her face changed. "They're here! Both of them are here! I can see them." Sigrid, the older of the two, told her it was time to end the turmoil, to see herself as whole, to gain a little weight, and — she laughed through her tears — to go get some Prozac. Then Sofia gasped: "Look! They have arms and legs. They're whole again." Seeing Gretchen with her body restored was the piece Sofia's subconscious had been waiting almost three decades for. The grief she had swallowed for her entire adult life came out in one great wave of sobbing, and when she opened her eyes she said, "They hugged me. I felt their arms around me. How incredible." She walked out of that session lighter than she had walked in years.
Then there was Miriam, who arrived angry at life and convinced this lifetime had no purpose. She had lost twin boys — one stillborn, the other lived only 36 hours and she was never allowed to hold him — and she had never cried, not once, about any of it. In the garden her mother appeared holding the hands of two little boys. "They're my boys," she whispered, and her whole face changed. I asked if she would be willing to hug them. "They're hugging me now," she said. "I can love them now. I can feel their love and it's intense." Thirty years of unshed grief moved through her in a few minutes. She even learned their real names — Mark and Anthony — the names her soul had known all along. She left knowing her boys were safe, loved, and still hers.
Stories like these are why this work matters. A grieving client can spend a decade in talk therapy and still not touch what a single garden reunion can release. Your only job is to hold the space, watch the pronouns, and trust what unfolds.
Two quick notes on logistics. Sometimes the client will ask if they should communicate out loud or silently. Although it's always up to them, it is easier for me if they speak out loud so I can continue to monitor the conversation. And keep watching the pronouns — make sure your client is talking to the loved one, not to you. (If a deceased loved one was the source of your client's negative emotions, make a note of it — we'll cover cutting and shrinking those cords in a later module. For now, stay with the reunion and the healing conversation.)
Practice
Choose someone you have lost. Write out the exact words you would use to bring them into the garden and open the conversation.