When You Need a Sign

​ Sometimes the smallest moment can carry the biggest message.

 

 

“K                      

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After all these years, this is still one of the questions I am asked most often about our loved ones in the Spirit World.

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A song comes on at exactly the right moment. A familiar scent suddenly fills the room. Their name appears somewhere unexpected. You have a dream that feels completely different from an ordinary dream. Something happens that stops you in your tracks, and for one brief moment, you simply know.  Then, almost immediately, the mind steps in. Was that really them? Or am I making this up because I want it to be them?

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I understand the question. We are taught to trust what we can see, touch and prove. I also believe discernment matters. I do not think every feather, every bird, every repeating number or every flickering light is automatically a message from Spirit. And more importantly, I don't think every clock I see is a sign; sometimes a clock is simply a clock.

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What can distinguish a meaningful sign from a random occurrence is the timing, the history and the deeply personal meaning behind it. I learned that lesson in a way I will never forget.

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Not Everything Is a Sign

For me, context matters. Timing matters. And most importantly, what happens inside of you in that moment matters.

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A meaningful sign often has a personal quality to it. It may involve something connected specifically to you and your loved one. It may happen immediately after you were thinking about them, speaking to them or asking for reassurance. Sometimes several unlikely circumstances come together in a way that makes you stop and pay attention.  And very often, before your mind begins analyzing what happened, there is simply a knowing.

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A Sign I Couldn't Explain Away 

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My mother was incredibly proud of the work I did as a psychic medium. When my first book came out, she was living in a rehabilitation facility. She kept a sample copy of my book underneath the seat of her wheelchair because she did not want to let it out of her sight. She wholeheartedly believed in the work I do and encouraged me to use my gifts since I was a child.  My mom would often retell stories to her friends about readings she witnessed me doing over the years that gave many families healing and hope. That was my mom. So I knew she would figure out how to get through to me somehow. The question was, when and how?

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Then There Was Her Clock

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Years earlier, while visiting Las Vegas, my mother found a very unusual, ornate clock in a gift shop. She loved it so much that she bought one for herself and one for each of her children.

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It was not exactly something I would have chosen for the decor of my own home, but it was from my mother, so I proudly hung mine anyway. If you read my book "The Happy Medium",  you know I raised three boys. You can probably guess what happened.  At some point, a football was thrown in the house, hit the clock and shattered it. Mine was gone. My sister's disappeared somewhere along the way, and my brother lost his during a move.  But Mom's clock survived everything.

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Everywhere my mother moved, that clock went with her. It was with my parents in their Florida home. It hung across from my father while he was receiving hospice care in their living room. Later, it followed my mother to the nursing facility.

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This was not an ordinary clock. Every hour on the hour, it played carousel music, including “It's a Small World.” It was ornate and unmistakable. It was not the kind of clock you saw everywhere.  My mother cherished it.

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As she got older, the clock began having problems. My sister once rigged part of the battery connection with a small piece of aluminum foil to keep it working. Eventually, although the clock continued keeping time, the music stopped.

 

One of the last times my youngest son saw his grandmother alive, she pleaded with him to fix her clock. Even the maintenance man at the facility had not been able to get it working properly.

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After my mother passed and we cleaned out her room, there was no question in my mind about who should have it.  My son.  He still has his grandmother's working clock hanging on his wall today. But that is only the beginning of this story.

 

About a year after my mother passed, I was missing her terribly. I had been talking to her, and I remember having a conversation with her.  First of all, I thought, "Where the heck are you?  Where is my sign?  I remember giving her very specific instructions. "Mom, if you're going to send me a sign, you're going to have to make it personal". "Something I will know is you".

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After all, I am a psychic medium. I have spent decades hearing extraordinary stories about the ways loved ones make their presence known. For one person it may be a cardinal that appears at exactly the right moment. For another, a butterfly, a song on the radio, a particular number or a familiar scent can carry a meaning so personal that nobody else could possibly understand it.

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I'll admit something else. I was starting to get annoyed.  Here I was helping other people recognize messages from their loved ones, and my own mother couldn't give me one unmistakable sign?

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I even wondered if I was being unrealistic for wanting the Mac Daddy of signs. One thing I knew for sure: I was a little harder to convince than most.

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I've seen and heard enough to know there is no such thing as an insignificant sign when it means something significant to you.  But knowing myself, I also knew how quickly my mind could explain something away. So I asked my mother for something that I would recognize. Something personal to our history. Something that would make even her psychic medium daughter stop questioning and simply know.

 

Like anyone waiting for a sign from their loved one, I wanted reassurance.  Are you okay? Did you make it there? Are you with everyone? Are you happy?  And then I waited.  Nothing happened that convinced me. Maybe I had a dream or two, but nothing that made me stop and say, That's my mother.​

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Then one day, after returning to Long Island from Florida, I went to have my nails done at my regular salon, only to discover that while I had been in Florida for the winter, my nail salon had undergone major renovations and was closed for business.

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Now I had to find somewhere else to go.  I searched online for a nearby salon with good reviews.  I found one a town over and made an appointment. After I pulled into the parking lot, I realized I had actually been to this salon before and had not particularly liked it. But I was already running late, so I stayed. As soon as I walked through the door, suddenly, I did not care about my nails. I did not care about the appointment, and I certainly did not care about who was available.

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Because hanging on the far back wall of that nail salon was my mother's clock. Not a similar clock. The exact same clock as my mother's. Everything around me seemed to disappear. There it was! The sign I had been waiting for.  No one will ever convince me that this entire nail salon excursion was simply about getting a good manicure.  Think about everything that had to happen to get me there. My regular salon had to be closed. I had to search online for another one. And somehow, that search directed me back to a salon I would never have knowingly chosen because I had been there before and wasn't happy with the service.  

 

As far as I'm concerned, I did have an appointment that day. It just wasn't for my nails. My mother had set the time and the place, and I showed up right on schedule.

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I should have known the sign would have something to do with Mom's clock. In that moment when I saw my mother's clock hanging on a random nail salon wall, I understood something about signs in a completely different way.

 

Sometimes the power of a sign is not simply in what appears. It is in the history behind it. It is in the timing. It is in the circumstances that brought you there. And it is in the deeply personal meaning that nobody else in the room could possibly understand.

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To everyone else in that nail salon, it was simply a clock on the wall, keeping everyone on schedule. To me, time stood still. I knew my mom had received my message.  See a picture of mom's clock on the bottom of this page.

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Why I Tell You This Story

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I do not share this story to suggest that every unusual coincidence is communication from Spirit. I share it because people often expect a sign to arrive in a certain way.  They ask for a cardinal. A feather. A particular number. A song. And sometimes those things can carry tremendous meaning. But the object itself is not necessarily what makes an experience meaningful.

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Our relationships have their own language. There are memories, objects, sayings, songs, jokes and experiences that may mean absolutely nothing to another person but everything to you.

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That is why I tell people to pay attention not only to what happened, but to the circumstances surrounding it.

 

What were you thinking about? What had you just asked? Why were you in that particular place? What does the object, song, number or experience mean specifically to you? And what did you feel in the instant it happened, before your mind had time to talk you out of it?  Sometimes the object simply gets your attention. The meaning comes from your connection to it.

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How Spirit May Get Your Attention

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In my experience as a medium, people describe meaningful moments in many different ways. It may be a song with a personal connection, a familiar scent, a vivid dream, a significant date or number, an animal that carries a particular memory, an object that appears at an extraordinary time, or a series of circumstances that feel too specific to ignore.

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The important part is not collecting a list of symbols and deciding that each one has a universal meaning. A butterfly does not have to mean the same thing to you that it means to someone else. The relationship is personal, so the language of that relationship can be personal too.

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The sign is not powerful merely because something appeared. It becomes meaningful because of when it appeared, what it means to you and what was happening in that moment.

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But What If I'm Just Imagining It?

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We can talk ourselves out of almost anything.  You can experience something that stops you in your tracks, immediately think of your loved one, and thirty seconds later your mind begins building a case against it.  That was probably just a coincidence.  That song plays all the time.  I only dreamed about Mom because I've been thinking about her.  Of course there can be ordinary explanations. That is why discernment matters. But I also do not believe we have to become so determined to explain away every meaningful experience that we refuse to receive any comfort from it.  You do not have to prove every meaningful moment in order to allow it to touch your heart.

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Don't Chase the Signs

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There may also be times when you ask for a sign and nothing seems to happen. Remember, I waited almost an entire year for the sign from my mother. I didn't know what she would choose, but I was excited to see how creative she was going to be. If there is one thing I have learned over the years, it is patience. Spirit doesn't necessarily work according to our timetable.

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So please don't turn the silence into, “They're not here. They can't hear me. They forgot about me.” Not receiving the sign you asked for, when you asked for it, does not mean the connection is gone.

Sometimes grief makes us hyperaware. Sometimes it makes us numb. And sometimes we're looking so hard for the exact thing we've decided the sign must be that we leave no room for anything else.

Be open. Pay attention. Use your discernment. And when something meaningful happens, allow yourself to receive the comfort without immediately putting it on trial.

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If there is one thing my work has taught me, it is that love does not become less important because the physical relationship has changed. For me, signs have never been about chasing phenomena. They are about recognizing those moments that remind us that love, memory and connection can continue to have a presence in our lives.

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Maybe that is what signs are really about. Not proving something to the rest of the world, but experiencing a moment so personal that you understand exactly what it means to you.

Everyone else in that nail salon saw a clock. I saw my mother.

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“Spirit doesn't always communicate by giving us something extraordinary. Sometimes they simply use the ordinary in an extraordinary moment.”

 

Kim Russo

"The Happy Medium"

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