Golden Messenger

Joy often arrives softly, feather by feather. You need not seek wonder—it already knows where you live.

The goldfinch has become a meaningful symbol of my connection to my sister, Kristy, who passed away in 2011.

She sat on these very same steps where I am sitting right now in my front garden. She was visiting my home with her family when she got the call from her doctor that her breast cancer had metastasized into terminal liver cancer.

She took that devastating news and turned it into an eternal promise and connection of love between sisters. She told me that she would come back to visit me after she passed. She would send a golden finch. The finch is the bridge and promise of love across space and time.

The finch has a beautiful song of sweetness as it flies up and down. The song is joyful, bright, and reminds me of Kristy. She is no longer burdened by cancer... she is free and sings, "I am still here." "You are not alone." She had a huge smile and infectious laugh.

The day after she passed in Ohio, I got on my red Peugeot ten-speed and rode to the middle school where I worked. I could feel her presence on the back of my bike as I rode down the hill on the path leading me five miles towards school. I could feel her arms spread out wide and the words, "I am free," releasing her from the toll of her long, 12-year illness and the feeling of pure joy radiating as her spirit was riding on the back of my bike.

As I get on my bike and ride now, oftentimes, finches fly ahead of me and overhead guiding my path for miles through wooded areas and prairies where thistle grows abundant and wild. Finches build their homes with thistle and nourish their bodies by eating the thistle seeds. The wild beauty of nature validating her promise. She is letting me know that she is eternally with me.

I introduced her to yoga on a trip to Ohio before her surgery, and she began to practice. She won some scholarship money at her college and asked me what training I took to become a yoga teacher. She used the money to take a weekend training, and she never looked back. Yoga brought her renewed hope and invited her to live in a different way. She taught for years, and the college still offers free yoga classes in her memory.

After she passed in 2011, I signed up for a 9-month-long, 230-hour yoga teacher training. I finished what she could not. Amongst my loss and grief, I took the next step in my yogic journey when I didn't see the staircase. During an 11-minute Kundalini yoga meditation in my yoga program, Kristy came to me in a lotus position in my heart. She was showing me that she was guiding my way on this new staircase. I was never alone.

Lotus is a symbol for peace, light, and enlightenment. It grows in the mud towards the light. Love was the portal that she showed up in my heart in a lotus position that memorable day. The mud of the cancer was gone and she blossomed in her unblemished spirit. She was letting me know that she is completely at peace, whole, and enlightened.

She is woven into the healing fabric of my life. The lilting joyful song of the finch is a high vibration reminding me to tune into my heart and intuition. I usually hear the finches before I see them. She was preparing my spirit with her sweet song before I see her winged messenger presence.

Her showing up during my Kundalini meditation in a lotus pose in my heart chakra is a message of transformation and higher consciousness. I cleared the noise of the outside world through the meditation and was able to tune into her frequency. Love is the portal between the physical and spiritual world. Stillness will open the door.

She is no longer here on the physical plane but she is my breath, my movement, my yoga, and my joy. Introducing her to yoga years ago became her sanctuary amid the storm of the cancer. She returned the gift by appearing in my heart in lotus pose during meditation.

We have rewritten the family tree in a heart-centered and energetic way. No past. No future. No cancer. Same frequency. Love shared between sisters as we became each other's teachers. Truth, light, and freedom.

True beauty comes from the depth of the Soul. My garden is a sanctuary of healing, mindfulness, forgiveness, remembering, honoring all of life and death, but mostly it is a sanctuary of LOVE. This is my sacred ground. And so it is. Aho.