Dreams of long-departed relatives

[ph1966]

When I was 7 years old, I lost an uncle to cancer and the world had been taken out from under me. He was related to my family by marriage as he married my youngest aunt.

Although I love my aunt dearly, I also felt as though her late first husband was related to me by blood because he was the love of her life and they were very happy for the short time they were together - they were separated by his death. He treated us kids in the family as his own nieces and nephews and not just thought of us as his wife's relatives.

Years passed and I continued to remember good times we all had together with him, before his condition deteriorated and his quality of life was diminished. Then when I was 21, I had a dream where we had a conversation. I was experiencing some career dilemmas and I was unsure about giving up on my accounting course.

In this dream, I had this vivid conversation with my late uncle, James, and he asked me what I'm doing with my life now. I told him that I was studying accounting and that it was the best thing I ever did. The strangest thing about this is that I didn't really feel that way in real life, I was about to quit.  I was talking in past tense as though I'd completed the course.

His response was very positive, he said, 'Good on you' and he smiled in a way that showed me his approval of my career choice. After this point I was very confused, but I continued with the studies, I completed my diploma because I felt God was guiding me through the words of an uncle I loved. I would definitely listen to him.

Even now that many years have passed (I'm in my early 40's with two children of my own), I sometimes still get disillusioned with my job in accounting. Looking back, though, it's opened a lot of doors and given me constant work. Even if I do consider trying to get work in the communications field because I like writing more than balancing books, I still will not completely give accounting up.

One thing which freaked me out recently is my brother and I were discussing about this same uncle with our mother because we didn't know much about him while we were growing up. We asked about his occupation out of curiosity because we didn't know what kind of work he did before he starting becoming seriously ill. From what my mother remembered it was accounting or finance. How bizarre. That probably explains why he gave me so much support when I said I was studying accounting.

I really believe I communicated with my uncle that night through that dream, I have no doubt whatsoever. He even liked some of the same music I have enjoyed since childhood and I didn't know about that connection either till recently.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that with anyone that also finds it fascinating to hear about dreams of those we've lost. I hope you find something comforting about this and share something you have also experienced which has brought you comfort for many years later, as this has for me.

Patti

[Kelly]

Dear Members,

We are excited to mention that we are moving to a more new and improved message boards on MONDAY MORNING AUGUST 9th! The boards will be done for a few hours while we are making the conversation. Remember we posted information about this move a month ago. For some of you this might seem a bit sudden,  but when we were reviewing the site we determined the current message board you are using is out of date and the company that designed it is no longer in existence. The good news is this new message board will have new features that have been requested in the past like more fields we can add to your profiles and a chat room up to 20 people at one time. If we find the chat room is bursting at the seams we will add additional room for extra people. All your old posts, private messages and such will be migrated to the new message board. You might have to put up your profile picture again but not sure. The new company will be doing the migration for us. Here is a short list of some of the new features on the board:

- Custom Profile Fields

- Users can customize their profile pages by selecting a background color or background image, with tiling options.

- Facebook and Twitter Integration

- users can respond to multiple posts at once with "mini-quote"

- Pinned discussion threads - like welcome to our board etc.

- Announcements made across some boards or the entire message board

- Search: Users can easily find all content generated by a particular member, by clicking the 'Find Content' button that appears on the main profile page, or in the Mini Profile Popup which can be accessed throughout the board. The results page allows content to be filtered by application, as well whether the member created it or merely participated in it.

- Privacy: allows users to sign in anonymously, hiding them from the online users list. Users also have the option to disable personal conversations and user-to-user emails, as well as ignore other users if necessary.

The next exciting piece of news about the new message board is it will have a new domain name of www.grieving.com for search engine optimization purposes. It will still be apart of Beyond Indigo and can be found through www.beyondindigo.com. We will be redirecting your current URL's to this new domain name but we might miss a few. If that is the case simply go back to www.grieving.com or www.beyondindigo.com to find your message board thread. We will try to make the transition as seamless as possible.

The bottom line is the new board will give us room to grow our community and more options to interact better with each other.

If you have any questions please direct them to feedback@beyondindigo.com.

Kelly Baltzell, MA

CEO/President

Beyond Indigo Family