How Soon Can You Talk To Spirit After They Pass?

A client booked a reading with Jenny months in advance. Two weeks before they were scheduled to sit down her brother in law passed away suddenly at their family lake house.

He came through immediately. Beer in one hand. Cigarette in the other. Laughing at a campfire.

And the first thing he said was the joke is on me now.

Because this was a man who thought mediums were a joke. Who had no time for any of this. And here he was two weeks after passing with his personality completely intact and a message for the people he left behind.

In this episode Jenny Shanks answers one of the most common questions she gets asked. How soon can you talk to Spirit after they pass? And the answer is going to surprise you.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Seriously Dead. I'm Jenny Shanks, a spiritual medium, and I talk to dead people for a living. This podcast is your beyond the grave look at what your loved ones in spirit actually want you to know. And spoiler alert, after 10 years of doing this work, here's the truth. Your spirit family wants you to know they're okay and you are too. How do I know? Because the dead are a lot of things, but one thing they're not is quiet. So get comfortable before you press play because we're getting seriously dead with your loved ones in spirit right now. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Seriously Dead. All right, today we're going to talk about how soon can you talk to Spirit after they've passed. And remember that all of the content in Seriously Dead is my own perspective, schools of thought, and what I have learned in reading at this point thousands of people in spirits over the many years. I had a client book a reading with me many months in advance. And two weeks before we were scheduled to sit down together, her brother-in-law passed away, suddenly at their family late counts. She showed up to the reading not knowing exactly what to expect, not sure if it was too soon, not sure if he would even come through. And while she had expectations on who she wanted to come through prior to his transition, showing up that day, she really wanted to hear from him. So guess what? In true spirit fashion, he showed up immediately. Beer in one hand, cigarette in the other, laughing, sitting around a campfire at their lake house, and enjoying life. And the first thing he said was that he wasn't going to get in trouble anymore for the beer and cigarettes. But then he said something that made her look at me like she could not believe the words that came out of my mouth. He said, The joke's on me now. Because this was a man who thought mediums were a joke, who had no time for any of this, who would have been the first person in the room to roll his eyes at the idea that the women went to talk to the media. And there he was. Two weeks after passing, showing up with his beer and cigarette and a sense of humor completely intact. That story answers almost every question I get about what happens after someone passes. And today I want to use that as a foundation for the conversation that I think a lot of grieving people actually need to hear. Because here's what I know. After doing this work for a long time, we put timelines on everything. When we should grieve, when we should heal, when we should be ready to move forward, and when we should or should not try to communicate with someone we've lost. I'm going to talk about that today, and I want to give you permission to put the damn timeline down. The most common assumption I run into is that there's a waiting period, that spirit needs time to settle in before a connection is possible, that reaching out too soon after a loss is somehow premature, that a grieving person needs to wait a certain amount of time before booking a reading or expecting any kind of connection. I want to gently challenge that. Actually, no, I want to freaking challenge that assumption. The brother-in-law I just told you about that came through two weeks after passing. I've had spirits come through the day after they've passed, not occasionally, more than once. And here's what I've learned from these experiences. There is no logical timeline for when spirit's ready to communicate. The timeline is entirely based on spirit, on how quickly that particular soul wants to show up, on what a loved one in spirit feels their person needs to hear, and how urgently spirit feels the need to deliver it. What I experience most often, especially in the early days after a loss, is spirits wanting their loved ones to know here on earth that they're okay. There is almost a sense of urgency, a sense of needing to make sure the person left behind understands where spirit is and that spirit's not suffering. The grief on the earth side is real and spirit feels it. And very often, spirit shows up quickly, specifically because of that grief. Because a loved one in spirit cannot bear the idea of someone they love carrying the weight without knowing the truth. Stop putting a timeline on when you should or shouldn't try to connect to spirit and your loved ones. That timeline is a human invention. Spirit doesn't operate on a human calendar. Spirit shows up when spirit is ready, and spirit is often ready much sooner than humans would even expect. She passed very unexpectedly, very tragically. The majority of the people in my family who had cameras at their doorbell started to have something, the same thing, show up around the same time the day she passed. We knew it was her. We knew she knew we needed to hear from her. I had a friend many years ago whose father had passed. Now, let me preface this by saying I had done a reading for her when her mom passed. I didn't know her mom. I'd done this reading like maybe 10 years after her mom passed. We became fast friends, very close friends, and are now best friends. And I knew her dad. And when her dad transitioned, he died very unexpectedly too. He immediately started to come to me. And I knew she needed to know that he was okay, even though their relationship was questionable more often than not. So we were on the phone a couple days after he transitioned. She had already gone to the funeral home and made arrangements. And she said to me, if you hear from dad, please tell me. I knew at that point this was my invitation to talk to her. I wasn't going to reach out to her, even though he'd already been coming through and say, hey, he's got things to say. I don't work that way. She creates that invitation and I started to share with her things that he was saying, things that would connect to him. But then I said, he keeps saying, thank you for putting me in blue. Thank you for putting me in blue. And she lost it. Come to find out, that day at the funeral home, she picked out his casket, which was a navy blue. I thought when he said thank you for putting me in blue, that whatever clothes she'd sent to the funeral home, that they were going to dress him in something blue, had no idea he meant this coffin, essentially. So this is how spirit works. I want to share a few other stories that I think together paint the most completed picture I can give you of what a transition from human to spirit actually looks like. The first is the brother-in-law. You already know him, the beer, the cigarette, the campfire, the joke's on me now. A man who didn't believe any of this, who had a sudden heart attack at a family lake house, who said himself he had no idea what happened until he was on the other side. And yet he showed up two weeks later laughing. The second story is completely different. A grandmother who had been ready to go for a while, the kind of woman who made peace with her life and with the end of it in a way that most people spend their whole lives hoping to achieve. Her family had planned to visit her, and she called them and told them not to come that day. She wasn't up for going out. She needed a quiet day. That night she passed in her sleep, peaceful, serene, completely at ease. And within weeks she came through in a reading. And what she said was simple. It was just time for me to leave. No drama, no unfinished business, no urgency to explain or apologize or resolve anything. Just a woman who had lived a full life and knew when it was time to go, and she went. Now I want you to notice something between these two stories. The brother-in-law didn't believe. The transition was sudden and unexpected. He had no framework for what was happening. And he showed up quickly, full of his personality and humor and love, and specific details that left no question it was him. And then there was a grandmother who believed. She knew exactly what was happening. And she showed up quickly, too, with the same quiet certainty she had carried through her whole life. Two completely different people, two completely different deaths, two completely different personalities. Both showed up within weeks because spirit doesn't follow a formula. Spirit follows love. And love does not wait. What happens when the death was sudden or tragic? This is a question I get asked a lot, most often by people who lost someone very unexpectedly: a heart attack, an accident, a death that came without warning or without any chance to say goodbye. And the fear underneath that question is always the same. Did they suffer? Are they confused? Are they okay? Here's what I have experienced in readings when spirit passes suddenly or tragically. Those spirits almost always want to come in quickly. Not because they are unsettled or confused or reaching out in distress, but because they know. They know how their passing landed on the people that they left behind. They know the shock of it all, the absence of preparation, the way a sudden loss tears something open in a completely different way than a death that had time to be processed. A spirit wants to close the gap as fast as possible. The brother-in-law at the lake house who had a heart attack, sudden, unexpected, he had no idea what happened until he was on the other side. His first instinct was not confusion or distress. His first instinct was to show up for his wife and his sister-in-law and let them know he was okay. With a beer, with a cigarette, with the campfire, and that laughter that were so completely him that there was no question who was in the room. That is what spirit does when the death is sudden. Spirit moves towards the people left behind as quickly as possible because the spirit understands the specific weight of that kind of grief and wants to lift it. The transition may have been unexpected, but spirit adapts, spirit shows up. And here is something I want every person carrying a sudden loss to hear directly. Your person did not suffer on the other side. Whatever happened in those final moments here, spirit arrived somewhere else. Spirit without a plan and the fear and the confusion of the human world. And very often the first thing spirit wants you to know is exactly that. I'm okay. I got here and I'm already looking for a way to reach you. I want to talk about something that goes beyond readings and spirit communication because I think it applies to grief in a general way and to the way that most humans move through loss. We put timelines on everything. When we should stop crying, when we should get ready to go back to work, when we should start dating again, when we should be over it, when we should feel better, when we should be ready to connect with the person we lost. And those timelines are not coming from spirit. They are not coming from any kind of wisdom about how grief actually works. They are coming from a human world that is deeply uncomfortable with the openness of loss and desperately wants to put a container around it. Grief does not fit in a container, and neither does spirit communication. There is no right time to reach out to your loved ones in spirit. There's no too soon or is it too late? A person who books a reading two weeks after a loss is not being impulsive or inappropriate. A person who books a reading 10 years after a loss is not waiting too long. Spirit is not a schedule. Spirit is not looking for a calendar and deciding when it's appropriate to show up. Spirit's already present, already reaching, already looking for the opening. The only question is whether you are ready to receive what comes through. And ready looks different for every single person. For some people, ready comes quickly because the connection is the thing that will help them process the grief. For others, ready takes time because the grief needs space before the connection can land. Neither is wrong. Both are human. What I want you to let go of is the idea that someone else gets to tell you your timeline and what your timeline should be, when it's appropriate to reach out, when you should be done grieved, when the right amount of time has passed. Your grief is yours. Your connection to your loved one in spirit is yours. And the timing of both belong entirely to you. I want to come back to the brother-in-law one more time before we close today, because I think his story answers something that a lot of skeptics carry quietly. The fear that if a person does not believe in any of this, if someone spent their whole life rolling their eyes at a medium and spirit communication and everything that cannot be explained by logic, then the connection will not be available to them when they pass. He did not believe. He thought this was a joke. He said so himself from the other side. And he showed up anyway. Two weeks after passing, with that beer and that cigarette, that campfire and that laugh, and these details that immediately made the person getting the reading know it was him. Spirit does not require belief to exist. Spirit does not require a person to have a spiritual practice or to have been open or have spent their entire life cultivating a connection to the other side. Spirit just is. And when someone passes, they arrive in the spirit world exactly as they are, with their personality intact, with their humor intact, with their love intact. I remember my aunt once telling me, someone in our family who judged what I did as a medium. My aunt came to me and she said, you know, Jenny, they've never lost someone that they desperately want to hear from. That's when it changes. The skeptic arrives in spirit and finds out the joke was on them all along. And the first thing they want to do is come back and tell you. That is the thing about spirit. It doesn't matter what you believed here. What matters is that you are loved. And love does not stop at the edge of the human world, it just keeps going. If you walk away from this episode with one thing, please let it be this. Put the damn timeline down. There is no right time to grieve. There's no right time to connect. There's no too soon or it's too late. Spirit doesn't have a clock. They're not watching a clock. They're watching you. And spirit's already looking for your opening to connect. Your loved one is okay. Whether they passed yesterday or 20 years ago, whether their death was peaceful or sudden or complicated, whether they believed in any of this, or as the brother-in-law did, thought all of it was a joke. Spirit is okay. And spirit wants you to know that they are okay. All right, my friends, let's not keep this one in the spirit vault. If this one lands for you, share it with your friends, tag me on Instagram, or leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. I love getting your reviews. I love getting your fan mail, and I'm honored when you take the time to share it. If you're ready to start to build your own connection to your intuition, which is the portal that spirit comes through, I've got something for you. And guess what? No email required. That is my new thing. I'm so tired of someone saying, Do you want this? But give me your email. Go to genyshanks.com slash F I V E, JennyShanks.com slash five for my five ways to develop your intuition. I'll be back next week with another episode of Seriously Dead. Until then, stay open, stay curious, and remember the dead are not quiet. You just have to learn to listen.