Why Your Loved One Isn't Showing Up The Way You Want Them To

A client came to me with very specific instructions for Spirit.

Her loved one in spirit had to show up with one specific sign and she would know that was him. Well he didn't and today's episode we divide into that disappointment. 

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Transcript

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Welcome back to another episode of Seriously Dead. Today we're going to be talking about why your loved one isn't showing up the way you want them to. But before I dive in, as this episode releases, I am actually in a magical spiritual community in upstate New York with some of my dearest spirit sisters. And this is a time that I love to unplug and really connect and do work for myself, not just for spirit and for others. So if you've been following me on Instagram, there's a slight chance I've been posting some really behind the scenes of what's going on. But when I get back, I will absolutely do an episode about it and I will share all the things that I love about this beautiful community. But until then, we're going to dive into today's episode. A client came to me with a very specific instruction for Spirit. I didn't know this, but she had told Spirit that he had to show her the blue sobriety chip in order to know it was him. That was the test. She had set Spirit up. That is how she knew he would come in. That's how she knew it was really him. And while he did come through, and pretty much immediately he said his name, he described how he transitioned, he apologized for the things in his life. He acknowledged what was happening in her life right now, in that very moment, specific details that no one could have known. And at the end of the session, she told me she was disappointed. She told me she was disappointed because that blue chip never came. So I asked him right there as I was wrapping up, why didn't you show us the blue chip? And he said something that stopped me in the moment I was receiving the message. He said, because I'd not been sober for a while. He was not going to show a sobriety tip that he hadn't earned, even from the other side, even to give his mother the sign that she had asked for, because that wouldn't have been true. And spirit doesn't show up with things that aren't true. That's the entire foundation of today's episode, because it answers the question I get so often. Why is my loved one not showing up the way I want them to? The single biggest misconception I run into when it comes to spirit and communicating with them is that people think that when someone passes, they become entirely different. Something formless, something compliant, and available to show up however and whenever the grieving person needs them to. And I'm going to be gentle, but I'm going to be really clear with you. Spirit is still the same energetic person they were here in the human world. The same personality, the same sense of humor, maybe the same stubbornness, the same love, the same way of moving through the world that defined who they were when they were here. Now it doesn't mean that they didn't evolve. Maybe they made mistakes here as a human. Maybe they weren't necessarily the nicest person here. We can evolve and change even as humans, and we can absolutely evolve and change as spirit. But a lot of that person's personality still stays intact when they transition. They're just changing form from human to spirit. And doing that doesn't erase who they were. If anything, at times it can amplify it. Because of all the noise that was covering up who they really were, the fear, the ego, the human weight, that all falls away. And what is left is the most purest version of exactly who that person was really meant to be and possibly always was. So when you come to a reading with a test, a specific thing spirit must show or say for you to believe it's really them, you're not testing the medium. You're testing the spirit. The spirit's a person with their own sense of how and when they show up. A person who can see further than you can from where they are. A person who's not going to perform on demand just because you decided that you wanted to draw this line in the sand. The son who didn't show up with the blue tip was not failing his mother. He was being completely himself, refusing to represent something that wasn't true, even from the other side. That is not spirit letting you down. That is spirit showing up with more integrity than most humans manage while they're even alive. And here's what I want you to know today while you're listening to this. Just because your loved ones changed forms from human to spirit doesn't mean they've stopped being someone. They are still someone with opinions, with timing, with a specific way of showing up that is completely and entirely theirs. You would not program a living person with exact instructions for how to prove they love you. You would not tell your mother she must say this exact phrase or wear this exact color or bring this exact object before you believe she's really here. Spirit deserves the same respect, the same openness, the same willingness to receive them as they are rather than how you've decided they need to be. Let me talk about the specific expectations that I see get in the way of people receiving what spirit's actually sending. The first is the demand for a specific sign. You must say this exact phrase. You must show me this exact object. You must come to me in my dream. You must make the lights flicker three times. I understand why people do this. It feels like a way to protect themselves, to make sure they are not imagining things or being taken advantage of or projecting their grief onto random coincidences. But here's what that demand actually does: it narrows the channel so specifically that spirit has almost no room to work. Spirit's not going to show up with a blue chip that wasn't earned. Spirit's not going to say a phrase that was not actually theirs to say. Spirit is going to show up as themselves with the signs and the details and the moments that are so specific to who they actually are and what they actually know about your life. And if you're so focused on the blue chip that you cannot receive the name, the transition, the apology, the acknowledgement of your current life, you are going to leave that reading feeling like spirit wasn't there when all along they were. You just couldn't receive what spirit brought because you are waiting for something different. The second expectation that gets in the way is the timeline. Spirit must come to me in a dream. I have been doing everything possible to hear from my loved one, and nothing has happened yet. Why is spirit not showing up? And here's what I have learned about that silence. Sometimes the grief is too thick to see what's right in front of you. The signs are already there, the moments are already happening, but the weight of the loss is so heavy that it is creating a kind of static that makes it hard to receive anything clearly. Spirit is not absent. Your ability to receive is temporarily overwhelmed. And that's not a failure. That is grief doing what grief does. And sometimes the timing is simply not right yet. Spirit doesn't align to human timelines or human expectations. Spirit shows up when spirit knows it will land with the most impact. When you are in the right state to receive it, when the messages will be undeniable rather than easy to explain away. That's not spirit ignoring you. That's spirit loving you enough to wait for the right moment. I want to go a little deeper into this story because I think it holds so much of what I want every grieving person to understand about how spirit actually works. This mother had lost her son, and she came to that reading carrying something that a lot of people carry when they walk through my door. A test. A specific thing that would prove beyond any doubt that it was really him. The blue sobriety chip. I understand why she chose that. It was very specific to him. It was meaningful. It was something only someone who knew him deeply would have known to show. But here's what she may not have fully considered when she sent that test. And to her shock, maybe something that she didn't even really know. Her son wasn't sober when he passed. And Spirit, her son specifically, was not going to show a chip that represented something that wasn't true at the time of his passing. Even to give his mother peace, even to pass her test, because that would have been a performance. And spirit doesn't do that. What he did instead was show up with everything that was true. His name, true. His transition, true. His apology for the things in his life, true. The acknowledgement of what was happening in her life right now, very true. Every single thing he brought through was real, specific, and undeniable. And it wasn't enough because it wasn't the blue chip. I want to pause here in this story because as I'm sharing this story with you, I'm having this realization that we often put these expectations on people to be something that they aren't. In this case, she thought he was sober. She thought the blue chip would be the exact sign that could connect them. And she found out at the time of his transition, he wasn't sober anymore. He hadn't been for a while. And there, in that moment, in that room with me, we both came to realize that she had been carrying this weight on her shoulder of an image of what she wanted him to be that he wasn't. After she told me about the chip and I asked him directly why he hadn't shown it, and his answer was so completely human. We both sat there with what he said for a while. He hadn't been sober. He wasn't failing when he showed up that day. That was a son who showed up with complete integrity, who loved his mother enough not to show her something else false, even when showing it would have made her feel better in the moment. Spirit is not going to tell you what you want to hear. Spirit is going to tell you what is true. And sometimes the truth is more loving than the comfort would have been. That mother walked out of the reading that day disappointed because she didn't get the blue chip. But what she actually received was a full reading from her son. His name, his voice, his apology, his love, his complete and total presence. Something she struggled to get when he was here as a human. The chip was never the point. He was the point. And he listened and he showed up fully and complete that day for her session. I want to give you a way to think about this that I hope maybe will bring some relief. Picture a cloudy sky. You know on the other side of all of those clouds is the sun. You've seen it a million times. You know that it has not disappeared just because you cannot see it right now. But the clouds are thick and heavy and they are blocking the light in a way that makes it hard to feel the warmth, even though the warmth is real and present, it hasn't gone anywhere. That is grief. And your loved one in spirit is the sun. The sun has not gone anywhere. The connection has not disappeared. Your person is still there, still present, still reaching out in the ways they know how. But the grief cloud is thick right now. And until it starts to part, until some of that weight begins to lift, the signal that is always being sent is just harder to receive. This is why I want you to stop putting a timeline on when your loved ones should come through. Not because the connection isn't real, but because the connection is always real. And the timing of when you are able to receive it clearly is tied to where you are in the grief, not to whether spirit is present. The dream visit you've been waiting for, the sign you asked for that hasn't arrived yet, the reading you left feeling like spirit was not there. The cloud was thick. The sun was always behind it. Give the grief time to part, not by rushing through it or bypassing it or forcing yourself to feel better before you're actually ready to, but by honoring it as exactly what it is: a season, a cloud that moves at its own pace, and trusting that as it begins to thin, the light that has been there all along will start to come through. Your loved one has not left. They are just waiting for the sky to clear. What if my loved one didn't believe in any of this when they were alive? What if they thought mediums were a joke? What if they had no spiritual practice, no belief in the afterlife, no framework for what comes next? Are they still able to come through? I hear these questions often. And my answer after doing this work for over 10 years, the spirit is yes, every single time. Because spirit doesn't require belief to exist. Spirit does not require a person to have been open or spiritual or even curious about what comes after. Spirit just is. And when someone passes, they arrive into the spiritual world as they are, with their personality intact, with their love intact, with their presence completely whole. The skeptic arrives and finds out there is more than they expected. And the first thing most of them want to do is come back and tell you that they're okay. Remember the man from a few episodes back who showed up two weeks after passing with a beer and cigarette at a campfire saying this the joke's on me now? He thought mediums were a joke. He had no framework for any of this, but he showed up anyways within two weeks. Full personality, love, and specific details. The belief does not create the connection. The love is what does. And if you've been holding back from trying to connect with a loved one in spirit because you're not sure they would have believed in this, let that go. Their belief while they were here has no bearing on their presence from the spirit world. The more you talk to them, the more they'll come through. The more you believe the connection is possible, the more clearly you'll be able to receive it. Talk to them out loud, in your head, in the car, in the quiet moments of your morning. Tell them what is happening in your life. Ask them to show up in a way that feels like them. And then stay open. Not for the specific sign you decided on, for whatever comes through that is undeniably, completely, entirely them. So if spirit's not going to show up the way you demand, how does spirit actually choose to show up? The same way a person would. Think about the people in your life you love most, the ones who know you better than anyone. When they want to get your attention, they don't follow a script. They don't show up in a specific way you would have requested if you had known about it in advance. They show up in a way that is most them, the way that is most likely to reach you, the way that communicates not just a message but a presence. And spirit works exactly the same way. Your person knows you. They know what will stop you cold, they know what will make you laugh, they know what will bring you to your knees with recognition, and they are going to use that knowledge. Not a generic dream visit, not like lights flickering because that's what spirit's supposed to do because that's what the movie show does. But something specific, something that could only come from them, something that makes you think there's no way that's a coincidence. The dime in the dog mouth, the olive trees in the hotel lobby, the castle, the name Mary Rose hidden inside a babysitter's full name. None of those were requested. None of those were on anyone's list of acceptable signs. And every single one of them was undeniable because it was so completely specific to the person it came from. That is how spirit shows up as themselves with the details that only they would know in the moments when you were open enough to receive them rather than in the moments that you have decided they're supposed to ride. Stop programming the channel, but start paying attention to what's already coming through. I hope that you've gained this one thing from today's episode, and that is that your loved one in spirit is still a person with a personality, with integrity, with their own sense of when and how to show up. And they are not going to perform on demand or show you something that is not true just to pass your test. What they are going to do is show up as themselves with the signs and the details and the moments that are specific to who they actually are and what they actually know about your life. The grief is the cloud. Your loved one is the sun, and the sun's not going anywhere. Give the cloud time to part and trust that the light that has been there all along will start to come through. Stop waiting for your blue chip and start receiving what's already being sent. All right, my friends, you know the game here. If this one landed for you and you feel inspired to share it, then let's not keep it in the spirit vault. As always, I love hearing from you. So don't forget you can always leave me fan mail by checking out the show notes below where you can send me a text or a voice message. And if you feel inspired enough to leave a review, I would be honored. If you are ready to start receiving more clearly from spirit, you first have to start with your intuition. And if you want to learn five ways to develop your intuition, you can grab my free guide at jenishanks.com slash five. That's F-I-V-E. Until then, I'll be back next week with another episode of Seriously Dead. Stay open, stay curious, and remember the dead are not quiet. You just have to learn to listen to the first time.