August 14, 2025 • 31 mins
Personal experiences with mediumship, signs from beyond, and finding comfort in continuing bonds. In this deeply personal episode of Peace of Mind for Pet Parents, Karen and Gail courageously share their own beliefs about death, dying, and what comes after—shaped by decades of loving and losing both human family members and beloved animals.
💜 Karen's Incredible Mediumship Journey:
- Powerful training experiences and spiritual connections
- The stunning purple butterfly message from a murder victim's sister
- Validation through a matching tattoo that gave her chills
- Weekly mediumship classes connecting with departed loved ones
✨ Gail's Profound Spiritual Experiences:
- Her young son speaking Russian in his sleep
- Two separate medium readings about grandmother's secret dressing table
- Ongoing signs from late husband Richard through music and solar lights
- Witnessing the sacred moment when animals transition
🐾 What You'll Discover:
- How animals seem to know when they're dying
- The beautiful "swan songs" pets offer their families
- What happens in those final moments of transition
- The three-day honoring process for departed pets
- "Calling out the ancestors" to comfort dying animals
- Practical ways to maintain connection after loss
This conversation validates the spiritual experiences many pet parents have but rarely discuss openly. Whether you're grieving a beloved pet, questioning what comes after death, or simply curious about life's deeper mysteries, this episode offers hope, validation, and comfort.
💕 Remember: You're not alone in your journey.
📌 Related Resource: Blog Post: When Grief Meets Wonder: Spiritual Experiences After Pet Loss
💬 If this episode touched your heart, you’re not alone. The BrightHaven Caregivers’ Hub is our supportive membership community for pet parents navigating caregiving, anticipatory grief, and all the moments in between.
We gather to share stories, ask questions, and care for each other as we care for our animals. If you’re walking this path, we’d be honored to walk it with you.
🔗 Learn more about the Hub: https://brightpathforpets.com/caregivers-hub/
📌Thanks for listening! Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review 🐶⭐🐱
Learn More from BrightHaven Caregiver Academy For free resources, upcoming workshops, and a supportive community dedicated to navigating life with your aging or ill pet:
- Visit our website: brightpathforpets.com
- Join us on Youtube: www.youtube.com/@brighthaven_animals
Connect with Us on Social:
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Disclaimer: This content is for educational purposes and not a substitute for professional advice. We are not veterinarians. While we do not provide medical diagnoses or treatments, we are experienced holistic caregivers. Our support focuses on helping you assess the situation, understand your options, and find clarity and calm in the middle of distress.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to Peace of Mind for Pet Parents, the podcast by BrightHaven Caregiver Academy.
I'm Gail Pope and I'm Karen Wylie and together we're here to support you in navigating life with your aging or ill pets.
We know how deeply you care for your beloved companions, and we're here to offer guidance, understanding, and resources for this meaningful journey.
(00:25):
Each episode we'll explore topics that address the daily challenges, emotional realities, and choices you face as a pet parent helping you and your pets find peace, comfort, and joy.
Whether it's making sense of a new diagnosis, adjusting to changing needs, or simply seeking a place to feel understood, you're not alone.
(00:47):
Thank you for being here with us.
Karen Wylie (00:50):
Hello and welcome to Peace of Mind for Pet Parents.
I'm Karen Wylie here as always with Gail Pope.
Today Gail and I are going to open up about our own beliefs about death, dying, and what comes after.
Ideas that are shaped by many years of loving, losing and learning from the animals that have been in our lives.
(01:15):
We hope our conversation will help you also reflect on your own beliefs.
Gail, shall we start?
I will as always turn to you to get us started.
Gail Pope (01:25):
You may not want to.
Karen Wylie (01:29):
We'll find out.
We'll find out.
When did you first start thinking deeply about death and what it means?
Gail Pope (01:38):
Good grief above.
Karen Wylie (01:39):
Yes, phrased a little differently.
Gail Pope (01:42):
That is a difficult question because I've got to route back to my childhood.
I think growing up and in my teens, I had maybe one or two experiences that made me go, "Ooh" and then even later on.
Probably not until really I was exposed to death and dying a lot with animals and then it all flooded back to me and made sense.
(02:07):
What about you?
Karen Wylie (02:08):
I think that sounds about right for me as well because I think for most of us, it's always a combination of our experiences with human loss as well as animal.
I certainly was not raised to think much about death.
Other than the formalities of a wake and when it is held and a funeral, and who goes to the cemetery.
(02:29):
And like there were rules in ritual but it was all very formalized and you didn't talk about grief.
None of that.
So for me too, it's when I started experiencing loss with animals especially one I've talked about in the podcast, Annie, who I was very attached to and I lost her when she was eight and a half months old with very severe hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
(02:54):
So that was a real shock to my system that you just do your best and everything's going to be fine and it wasn't fine.
Yet I had some experiences with her that opened up a lot for me.
So I think for me it was the animals as well that got me really starting to think about death and what
Gail Pope (03:12):
what might follow.
Yes.
Karen Wylie (03:14):
So do you believe there's life after death?
Gail Pope (03:17):
Yes, 100%.
I can say that because although I don't know what shape or form that is in and I guess I probably won't until I experience it.
But having had a lot of experiences that have really cemented the idea for me, the knowledge, it just feels that there has to be more.
Otherwise, a lot of things that happen in our world can't be explained.
(03:40):
It doesn't make sense.
So why do we push something away that we all really would love to believe in?
And yet it's, "Don't believe in that."
"Can't believe in that."
But it makes sense and normally if we learn something and it makes sense, we accept it.
But afterlife?
It does make sense, but we still struggle to accept it.
(04:01):
But no, I would say I do definitely believe that life goes on.
I'd love to know more about it.
So it's something that I am fascinated to read about.
Karen Wylie (04:11):
Yes, yes.
I've always been very interested in it, very intrigued in it.
I guess I always in general believed that there had to be something.
What you're describing with all the experiences we have on this planet, in this life, in these bodies, what's the point of what we learn unless we benefit in some way?
(04:32):
Because we don't always benefit in these lives.
Gail Pope (04:35):
Exactly.
Karen Wylie (04:36):
That kind of brings up, "Maybe there's another way we can learn?"
But I do have to say that entering mediumship training...
Gail Pope (04:43):
I was just going to ask you about that because I think that must be a very interesting story.
So come on.
Share.
Karen Wylie (04:51):
I'm never going to be hanging a shingle out there as a medium because I'm not like the ones who were perceiving everything from the time they were children and can sustain a connection with other dimensions for a half hour or an hour.
However, I struggle to maintain it for 30 seconds at a time and then it glitches for me, and then I can get it back but I'm just not that skilled at it.
(05:16):
But I had enough positive experiences to reinforce for me that there is indeed life after death.
The first big time that I had a learning was in a psychic and mediumship class.
We are trying different techniques, different tools that would basically open up the intuitive side of your brain rather than the logical side.
(05:38):
Because it's your intuitive side that is able to connect and reach other vibrations.
So they paired us up with members of the class, although they didn't tell us ahead of time who we would be paired with.
But the instructor guided through Spirit had us all paired up and we would have five minutes to receive an image, and so we all had our paints, our watercolor paints or pastels or whatever we wanted to use.
(06:05):
Through the meditation, whatever image, colors, whatever we got, we were to draw it.
Then afterwards, they would assign us to whoever was supposed to receive that particular message.
So I'm hoping I'm going to come up with something and a big purple butterfly came into my mind and I'm like, "Okay."
(06:28):
So I painted the Purple Butterfly.
When I was paired up with this lovely young woman, I showed her my purple butterfly.
She immediately teared up and she said, "That's from my sister. She was murdered three months ago."
And I was, "My God, I actually got something from someone who passed over and she's verifying that this is true." But it wasn't just her words.
(06:54):
She turned around and she took her hair away, turned around to show me a purple butterfly tattoo that she had put on her neck the week before.
Gail Pope (07:05):
Oh my goodness.
Karen Wylie (07:07):
Yes.
I'm getting chills as I described it.
Gail Pope (07:09):
Yes, I do too.
I just went all goosey.
So it's totally true.
Karen Wylie (07:12):
I'm in this Zoom room with my co-participant and I'm just trying to take in that this was real.
It was real.
I had received something, I had painted it, I showed it and it was real.
Our instructor was there and just popping into the different zoom rooms to see how everybody's doing.
And I said, "Did I receive that from my fellow student or did I receive that from her sister?" And she said, "Oh no, her sister was here.
(07:40):
Her sister is here.
You got it from the sister."
And so I was like, "Okay."
Because I could have perhaps gotten it from the fellow student but that's not how that particular class was working and it's not how Spirit came through.
Not to belabor the point but then I was in mediumship training once a week for two hours every week with other people who wanted to learn how to receive information from those who had passed over.
(08:04):
One of the amazing things is when you're all there, it's usually about between 8 and 12 people in a group, a class.
All your relatives and all your friends show up, and so you go into a meditation for 10 minutes.
You share what you have received and who you think it's for and then they confirm for you.
(08:27):
They verify for you.
I had people bringing my father through my Uncle Tommy, my dear friend Carol, who I often speak about, who was our veterinarian for 15 years.
So all of these fellow mediums to be were receiving this information from people important to me.
A couple of my aunts came through at different times and they would be sharing with me what they were being told.
(08:54):
It was true.
Gail Pope (08:55):
How they just were for you.
Karen Wylie (08:57):
Yes.
It's how would somebody in Ireland or Sydney, Australia— they were from all over the world every Sunday night.
I didn't know any of them.
They didn't know me.
And yet here they'd be describing my pony when I was eight years old.
Seriously!
So I have absolutely no doubt about life after death.
Any qualms I have will be how I die because none of us knows what that's going to be like and what that could be.
(09:23):
But a lot of times they say that they step out before a lot of pain and they are themselves on the other side.
Their personalities, their memories, everything.
So that's probably more information than anybody wants to know but I completely have had it validated to the extent I need that there is life after death.
(09:44):
So I believe that for our animals as well.
Gail Pope (09:47):
I'm sitting here listening to you and it's reminding me of experiences that I had that have gradually shaped my belief.
Gosh, I think probably the very first one I remember, which is a little bit bizarre and different, but our son, Justin, he was, I don't know how old, I mean he was probably maybe four or five at the most.
(10:10):
We heard him talking in the night and I got up to go and see what was going on and he was fast asleep talking in what sounded like Russian.
So I called Richard, "Listen, what is this?" And he's "What?"
And that came back to me.
I hadn't thought about that for a long time.
(10:31):
Again, that's one of these spooky things.
Then, in my twenties, I actually saw a medium.
My father— stepfather, introduced me to a spiritualist church and I thought it was a little bit voodoo.
I ended up having a personal reading with the good gentleman called Clive.
(10:52):
Long story, but he described a dressing table that my grandmother had that as a child I used to sit at and it had a secret draw and he described it.
I mean, nobody could have known that.
Then literally not long after Richard died, I went to see a medium here with my daughter and we had a wonderful time.
The things that she told me and they were all underscored basically by the fact that one of the first things she said was that, "I have a lady here. She's coming to you on as I think a grandmother level and she wants me to describe a piece of furniture."
(11:27):
She described this same dressing table, and I've gone goosey again.
Those two things together really stand out for me.
And oh gosh since my husband died, all sorts of strange things that I realize, and you can probably help me with this, because it seems to me that Richard can reach me via music occasionally by making something that play music suddenly come on and play something or I have a solar hummingbird lights in the garden and he can make one of the colors come on.
(12:04):
It's just interesting because the music that might come on is his music or music that we loved and just a snatch of it and then it will go away.
So do you believe that there are certain channels that we can use to connect back to the people on the earth plane maybe?
Karen Wylie (12:21):
Yes supposedly, even if you think back to old movies where lights would be blinking.
Apparently, if electrical things and electronic things are more easily modifiable by other dimensions.
And yes, I totally believe that certainly could be him especially with the music he has brought to your attention.
(12:43):
That's all your music.
Gail Pope (12:45):
Yes, you have to describe stuff like that when it's so close and personal to you as magical and the word magic has the same kind of connotation.
So I think it all fits together.
But I think when you, for me anyway, being present at the deaths or the transitions I should say of so many animals and also my mom and dad at the end of their life, again, that totally reinforces everything for me because it just seems so darned obvious that they're not here one minute, dead the next.
(13:22):
I think we are living in an age now where science is meeting spirituality.
We are learning so much from science that endorses all these little strange spooky things that have happened.
It's a wonderful learning to have, isn't it?
Karen Wylie (13:37):
Yes, it's like I'd say every few months or I'll read something that validates something I've seen or heard or felt or believed.
It's like science is validating so much.
You and I have talked several times on the podcast about our belief with our own experiences with our pets that they seem to know that they are dying.
(13:58):
That's why we have swan songs that are provided to us where there's special moments, special experiences that many pets provide to us.
Then in my case, the next day they're gone.
They've died in their sleep.
I typically will feel when they leave the planet, it's if I'll wake up with a start and I just take within 5-8 seconds.
(14:23):
It's like the vibrational world around me is different than it was when I went to sleep.
And it'll be like, "Oh, they're gone."
Gail Pope (14:31):
I mean, obviously that really underscores it but I see and feel that when an animal dies and I'm sitting there with them.
Everything is winding down, everything's soft and gentle, and the breathing is ebbing.
Sometimes it's difficult to actually spot when the actual last breath comes.
But I don't know, I've just had such a strong sense of them "being."
(14:57):
Once the body— it's like they've stepped out of that house but now I can feel them.
It's a very comforting feeling.
Karen Wylie (15:04):
It is and it's very different to feel it in that room.
Gail Pope (15:08):
Yes, it is.
That's why we started the three day process to honor the physical body after death for our animals.
That was very strange when we first started doing that because a lot of people were almost offended by the idea.
Now people are starting to really embrace it and it does make sense.
It does make sense because one of the things that science has taught us is that when the brain is dead, which is called death clinically, the mind is still alive.
(15:39):
There have been so many experiments happenings in the medical world that prove that the mind is still alive after clinical death.
Karen Wylie (15:49):
And looping back to what I was mentioning earlier, in a mediumship conversation, if someone is able to convey to you certain memories that the medium is being given by one of your relatives or one of your friends and they're relaying it to you and you're saying, "oh my God!"
Then they're confirming that they crossed over but they crossed over with a whole lot of their personality, their mind, their memories.
(16:16):
It's really amazing to think of it that way.
How do you, I don't know that we've talked about this specifically, you've described the silver cord and trying to maintain a spiritual connection with a pet that has passed while allowing the physical connection to stop, to break so that the physical death can take place and the spirit can move on.
(16:40):
So how do you think or how do you imagine the human animal bond continuing after a pet leaves the planet?
Gail Pope (16:49):
Obviously it's part memory but the biggest, it's heart, isn't it?
People say, "My heart hurts" and "My heart's singing."
We relate those things to our heart but we don't take it seriously.
Maybe it is serious and maybe that is the connection, isn't it?
Or they reach us in our mind, in our dreams.
(17:10):
We dream and dream and very often it is of animals or people from our past.
So it's hard to know where does the dream end and where does reality step in.
Karen Wylie (17:22):
So true.
So true.
It's something I've been wondering about at various times especially since we've been doing the podcast the last six months.
I'll be talking with Tim, my husband, about the various topics that we explored in a particular day and there've been three or four out of the 24 so far that I guess I brought up Mr. Hope, a cat that we lost two years ago now.
(17:49):
We had him in hospice care for two and a half years which was wonderful.
So I'll be telling my husband that I brought up Mr. Hope and what story about Mr. Hope I used to convey a particular learning.
I'll see Chey and Livvy, the two Aussies, they'll hear me say Mr. Hope.
(18:10):
I see them just kind of like they heard me, it's been two years and four months since he's been gone.
So it's not just like last week.
So then I'll look at them and I'll say, "We loved Mr. Hope, didn't we?
We loved him.
Is Mr. Hope here?
Have you seen him lately?"
And it is just so strange because the two of them, they don't look to the cat tree, they don't look to Mr. Hope's beds on top of their crates.
(18:35):
They don't look up at the window where he used to like to roost in the morning sun.
Both of them turn and they look up at the ceiling to the right of our fireplace.
It happens every single time his name is ever mentioned.
They're looking there.
Mr. Hope never was 12 feet up in the right hand corner on the ceiling near the fireplace.
(18:56):
So it's just so consistent that's where they look for him.
So for me, that's giving me some goosey, I know that at those moments is real and it's real for the pups.
Gail Pope (19:09):
Yes, oh my goodness.
You just reminded me of, oh my goodness gracious again, an experience that isn't it funny we have these mind blowing types of experiences?
Then I guess our mind remembers them but our brain actually don't seem to sit in that kind of intelligent learning.
(19:30):
I just remembered an experience that I had back in again in my 20's around the time when my father had introduced me to the Spiritualist church.
I think I'd stopped going.
I don't know about you but once I feel comfortable with something then I move on.
I accepted what I'd learned and thought it was absolutely wonderful and then didn't really think about it anymore.
One evening I was sitting in a rocking chair in the living room and reading a book.
(19:57):
I can picture it very clearly now, and I was sitting reading completely engrossed in what I was doing, and then all of a sudden it was like a "Oh!" I was bent over and it's like my body was against a wall.
I was caught between the wall and the ceiling, and my head was down.
There was a feeling of shock and then seeing myself sitting in the chair reading the book.
(20:19):
Then boom, I was reading my book.
Gosh, I've forgotten about that for a long time.
A similar thing, I was up in that corner of the room.
Karen Wylie (20:29):
It is very interesting, isn't it?
If we think of when our animals are on the path to dying and they're declining and my goal as is yours is always to allow for a natural transition at home whenever possible.
So that's what's happening and the last week of most of my pet's deaths, I find them staring off into space.
(20:55):
Always a particular part of a particular room.
I, for whatever reason, have started assuming that they are seeing their relatives and other animals that they knew in their lifetime that had passed on before.
Just like we have humans who are in hospice care in a hospital or dying at home and they start staring out into space or even reaching their arms out.
(21:21):
Then if someone asks them "What's going on?" Or "Who are you talking to?"
They say, "I'm talking to my mother" or "I'm talking to my sister."
So we know from humans that when they get close to that point of physical death, I think of it as they are in both dimensions.
They're leaving physical dimension and they've got kinda like one foot in the next that allows them to see, feel, and hear from the other side while they're still leaving their body which could take many more days or another week or so.
(21:53):
But because of that, I think I've interpreted the same kind of thing happening for my animals.
That's what led me to start doing what I call "Calling out the Ancestors" where when I see them starting to look out into space and be fixed for a few minutes, I start using the names of cats or dogs that I know they knew in life.
(22:16):
Say also, "Has Sissy come back to see you?" and so forth.
I start using the names and I have the sense that is exactly what's happening for our pets as well.
When we talk about our own, the human animal bond and connection to the other side, I think I really do think our pets also are continuing to connect with other pets on the other side.
(22:37):
Maybe if I leave sooner than some of my pets, maybe they'll be looking for me.
Gail Pope (22:42):
I bet they will.
Karen Wylie (22:42):
I can connect with them.
Gail Pope (22:45):
I think that this conversation brings a warmth to us.
But then it also makes us realize that it takes away a lot of the fear that we have of death.
So the more we learn about these spooky things that happen, the more we embrace them, the more it takes away the fear.
Karen Wylie (23:04):
Yes.
Gail Pope (23:05):
It takes away the fear.
For some reason, Frazier's coming back into mind at the moment.
I'm sure you've heard his story and probably everybody else has too.
But you know when you're a cat and you get to the age of 34, you play games for at least six months with your family by dying, stopping breathing, dead.
Then you open your only one eye that you've got and you say, "Hi, fooled you!"
(23:29):
And you come back to life.
Things like that in those days when that was happening, it was pretty scary and it was just plain weird.
But now looking back, it's so reassuring.
All of these things are reassuring stories for us, aren't they?
Karen Wylie (23:45):
They certainly are.
Gail Pope (23:46):
There is more to life than we know.
It's fascinating and exciting!
I think we just live in a part of the universe where we're on a certain wavelength and who knows what's functioning on other wavelengths around us.
And when we step out of our bodies, we presumably step into a different.
What's the word?
Karen Wylie (24:06):
Vibration or frequency.
Gail Pope (24:07):
Vibration.
That's right.
Yes, it's a different vibration which is maybe when you are working in mediumship, you are tuned to that other vibration.
Karen Wylie (24:20):
Correct.
That's exactly what happens.
It's when we're picking up intuitively from a living person that's one frequency and one vibration.
But when we're picking it up from someone who's passed over, that's a different frequency or vibration and I'll say it's the same with animals.
It's one thing to communicate with a living animal and a different vibration or frequency to an animal that is passed over.
(24:44):
Just because someone is able to do one doesn't mean they do all of them equally well or equally as often.
I think given the experiences that you and I have had over several decades time, it's one of the reasons we continue to want to do this work and why we want to continue to help other people because the mystery of both life and death has been put in front of us for us to experience in.
(25:12):
So often when one of our pets is dying, we all we want to prevent them from leaving us.
We want to have every minute possible with every one of them.
But when we're focused on fighting the process that is going to ultimately take them, it can cloud or totally block the possibilities of understanding how you can continue to have a relationship with them after their physical body is no more— they have left, they have transitioned.
(25:44):
As you were saying, that was something you were saying when we started out, whether we're feeling them through our heart.
Whether we're thinking about them through our mind and our memories, and we're connecting with them in that way, or whether we're stating their names and invoking them in some way.
Like I was describing with my Aussies looking up to the ceiling when I talk about their cat, their Mr. Hope.
(26:06):
There are ways to continue to have that relationship in some level that you're comfortable with and that you want.
That's one of the things I think keeps me wanting to share this with people and help people become more comfortable with the loss of our pets because it's not a complete loss.
Gail Pope (26:25):
Exactly.
I hadn't really put it all together until now.
This is a fascinating conversation, but one of the things that I always share with people is the idea of looking at the body you’re living in as your house.
Then when you're dying, you are stepping out of that house.
I think when people can embrace that idea because it does make sense— if you have a belief that something else is there, then it really forms a really good foundation to help you be less fearful of death.
(26:59):
None of us know exactly what it feels like.
I guess unless we've come back and we talk about it and then nobody else believes anyway.
So
yes until we've had the personal experience of near death or death and returning, it's hard for us to know exactly what to expect.
So fear is always going to remain.
(27:20):
But I think if you have a strong belief in all the things that we've talked about today happening, to so many people say, "Oh no, I don't believe in that."
But when they get into a conversation like this, suddenly they're, "Oh, I remember this or that when I was young. I wonder what that was?"
Karen Wylie (27:36):
Right.
That's the thing, I don't think you have to have a strong belief in what comes after.
In fact, I don't think you have to have a knowing about what it is that may come after but if you're just open to the possibility,
Gail Pope (27:50):
It helps.
Karen Wylie (27:50):
Then you have that possibility of restoring some level of connection with your pet that has crossed over which is really a wonderful thing.
I just always assume it's possible.
I don't wonder about it anymore.
I just know it is possible.
I should spend more time linking up with everybody over there instead of writing and analyzing situations.
Gail Pope (28:15):
I'd like to, please, book a session?
I'm ready.
Karen Wylie (28:21):
I'm better at helping other people figure out how to do it themselves than to do it for them.
But my training was with the Spiritualist Church in the UK as well.
I think I told you that almost all of my training has been from that tradition which is really strong and wonderful.
So now I'm trying to figure out how we end this conversation because we've really looked at so much today.
(28:46):
It's wonderful that we've had these experiences with other people who've passed on and with so many of our pets that have passed on that we have these wonderings validated.
I think it's especially as I age, I think the more important it is to just have that positive attitude and believe that so much more is possible than we possibly know about now.
Gail Pope (29:10):
It's hard to round out the conversation but I think the old saying— I have two things that I always feel are complimentary to almost everything that we talk about
(29:31):
Taking everything slowly absorbing, moving on, and just living with love.
Because love is the greatest healer.
You put love and baby steps together into this world of the "don't knows" and the "might know", and all the spooky things.
They fit.
They fit beautifully, don't they?
Karen Wylie (29:49):
They certainly do and our pets were all about love.
Every minute they were alive— in their houses, in their bodies being with us.
Gail Pope (29:58):
Yep.
They gave them to us.
Karen Wylie (30:01):
They gave to us every moment of every day.
I think in many ways each of them still does.
Especially in the memories that you and I have of various animals and the lessons we learned that we share.
Gail Pope (30:12):
That's another conversation.
Karen Wylie (30:14):
It is another conversation.
So we're going to stop here.
I guess I want to say that whatever you believe what might come after physical death, as Gail says, it's the love that is going to carry us through all the time.
We hope today's conversation may have brought you some comfort, maybe some connection with us and the connection thinking about pets that have passed on.
(30:38):
And all of it, I think is a reminder that we're not alone, that you're not alone.
We'll look forward to seeing you next week.
Thank you for being with us.
Bye-bye.
Gail Pope (30:50):
Thank you.
Goodbye.
Thank you for joining us on Peace of Mind for Pet Parents.
We hope today's episode has offered you support and insight as you care for your aging or ill pets.
Remember, it's not just about the end.
It's about living well at every stage of life.
To continue your journey with us, explore more resources at BrightHaven Caregiver Academy's website— BrightPathForPets.com, where you'll find guides, assessments, and a caring community of pet parents like you.
(31:27):
Until next time, may you and your pets find comfort, connection, and peace in every moment.
Take care.
Welcome to Peace of Mind for Pet Parents, the podcast by BrightHaven Caregiver Academy.
I'm Gail Pope and I'm Karen Wylie and together we're here to support you in navigating life with your aging or ill pets.
We know how deeply you care for your beloved companions, and we're here to offer guidance, understanding, and resources for this meaningful journey.
(00:25):
Each episode we'll explore topics that address the daily challenges, emotional realities, and choices you face as a pet parent helping you and your pets find peace, comfort, and joy.
Whether it's making sense of a new diagnosis, adjusting to changing needs, or simply seeking a place to feel understood, you're not alone.
(00:47):
Thank you for being here with us.
Karen Wylie (00:50):
Hello and welcome to Peace of Mind for Pet Parents.
I'm Karen Wylie here as always with Gail Pope.
Today Gail and I are going to open up about our own beliefs about death, dying, and what comes after.
Ideas that are shaped by many years of loving, losing and learning from the animals that have been in our lives.
(01:15):
We hope our conversation will help you also reflect on your own beliefs.
Gail, shall we start?
I will as always turn to you to get us started.
Gail Pope (01:25):
You may not want to.
Karen Wylie (01:29):
We'll find out.
We'll find out.
When did you first start thinking deeply about death and what it means?
Gail Pope (01:38):
Good grief above.
Karen Wylie (01:39):
Yes, phrased a little differently.
Gail Pope (01:42):
That is a difficult question because I've got to route back to my childhood.
I think growing up and in my teens, I had maybe one or two experiences that made me go, "Ooh" and then even later on.
Probably not until really I was exposed to death and dying a lot with animals and then it all flooded back to me and made sense.
(02:07):
What about you?
Karen Wylie (02:08):
I think that sounds about right for me as well because I think for most of us, it's always a combination of our experiences with human loss as well as animal.
I certainly was not raised to think much about death.
Other than the formalities of a wake and when it is held and a funeral, and who goes to the cemetery.
(02:29):
And like there were rules in ritual but it was all very formalized and you didn't talk about grief.
None of that.
So for me too, it's when I started experiencing loss with animals especially one I've talked about in the podcast, Annie, who I was very attached to and I lost her when she was eight and a half months old with very severe hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
(02:54):
So that was a real shock to my system that you just do your best and everything's going to be fine and it wasn't fine.
Yet I had some experiences with her that opened up a lot for me.
So I think for me it was the animals as well that got me really starting to think about death and what
Gail Pope (03:12):
what might follow.
Yes.
Karen Wylie (03:14):
So do you believe there's life after death?
Gail Pope (03:17):
Yes, 100%.
I can say that because although I don't know what shape or form that is in and I guess I probably won't until I experience it.
But having had a lot of experiences that have really cemented the idea for me, the knowledge, it just feels that there has to be more.
Otherwise, a lot of things that happen in our world can't be explained.
(03:40):
It doesn't make sense.
So why do we push something away that we all really would love to believe in?
And yet it's, "Don't believe in that."
"Can't believe in that."
But it makes sense and normally if we learn something and it makes sense, we accept it.
But afterlife?
It does make sense, but we still struggle to accept it.
(04:01):
But no, I would say I do definitely believe that life goes on.
I'd love to know more about it.
So it's something that I am fascinated to read about.
Karen Wylie (04:11):
Yes, yes.
I've always been very interested in it, very intrigued in it.
I guess I always in general believed that there had to be something.
What you're describing with all the experiences we have on this planet, in this life, in these bodies, what's the point of what we learn unless we benefit in some way?
(04:32):
Because we don't always benefit in these lives.
Gail Pope (04:35):
Exactly.
Karen Wylie (04:36):
That kind of brings up, "Maybe there's another way we can learn?"
But I do have to say that entering mediumship training...
Gail Pope (04:43):
I was just going to ask you about that because I think that must be a very interesting story.
So come on.
Share.
Karen Wylie (04:51):
I'm never going to be hanging a shingle out there as a medium because I'm not like the ones who were perceiving everything from the time they were children and can sustain a connection with other dimensions for a half hour or an hour.
However, I struggle to maintain it for 30 seconds at a time and then it glitches for me, and then I can get it back but I'm just not that skilled at it.
(05:16):
But I had enough positive experiences to reinforce for me that there is indeed life after death.
The first big time that I had a learning was in a psychic and mediumship class.
We are trying different techniques, different tools that would basically open up the intuitive side of your brain rather than the logical side.
(05:38):
Because it's your intuitive side that is able to connect and reach other vibrations.
So they paired us up with members of the class, although they didn't tell us ahead of time who we would be paired with.
But the instructor guided through Spirit had us all paired up and we would have five minutes to receive an image, and so we all had our paints, our watercolor paints or pastels or whatever we wanted to use.
(06:05):
Through the meditation, whatever image, colors, whatever we got, we were to draw it.
Then afterwards, they would assign us to whoever was supposed to receive that particular message.
So I'm hoping I'm going to come up with something and a big purple butterfly came into my mind and I'm like, "Okay."
(06:28):
So I painted the Purple Butterfly.
When I was paired up with this lovely young woman, I showed her my purple butterfly.
She immediately teared up and she said, "That's from my sister. She was murdered three months ago."
And I was, "My God, I actually got something from someone who passed over and she's verifying that this is true." But it wasn't just her words.
(06:54):
She turned around and she took her hair away, turned around to show me a purple butterfly tattoo that she had put on her neck the week before.
Gail Pope (07:05):
Oh my goodness.
Karen Wylie (07:07):
Yes.
I'm getting chills as I described it.
Gail Pope (07:09):
Yes, I do too.
I just went all goosey.
So it's totally true.
Karen Wylie (07:12):
I'm in this Zoom room with my co-participant and I'm just trying to take in that this was real.
It was real.
I had received something, I had painted it, I showed it and it was real.
Our instructor was there and just popping into the different zoom rooms to see how everybody's doing.
And I said, "Did I receive that from my fellow student or did I receive that from her sister?" And she said, "Oh no, her sister was here.
(07:40):
Her sister is here.
You got it from the sister."
And so I was like, "Okay."
Because I could have perhaps gotten it from the fellow student but that's not how that particular class was working and it's not how Spirit came through.
Not to belabor the point but then I was in mediumship training once a week for two hours every week with other people who wanted to learn how to receive information from those who had passed over.
(08:04):
One of the amazing things is when you're all there, it's usually about between 8 and 12 people in a group, a class.
All your relatives and all your friends show up, and so you go into a meditation for 10 minutes.
You share what you have received and who you think it's for and then they confirm for you.
(08:27):
They verify for you.
I had people bringing my father through my Uncle Tommy, my dear friend Carol, who I often speak about, who was our veterinarian for 15 years.
So all of these fellow mediums to be were receiving this information from people important to me.
A couple of my aunts came through at different times and they would be sharing with me what they were being told.
(08:54):
It was true.
Gail Pope (08:55):
How they just were for you.
Karen Wylie (08:57):
Yes.
It's how would somebody in Ireland or Sydney, Australia— they were from all over the world every Sunday night.
I didn't know any of them.
They didn't know me.
And yet here they'd be describing my pony when I was eight years old.
Seriously!
So I have absolutely no doubt about life after death.
Any qualms I have will be how I die because none of us knows what that's going to be like and what that could be.
(09:23):
But a lot of times they say that they step out before a lot of pain and they are themselves on the other side.
Their personalities, their memories, everything.
So that's probably more information than anybody wants to know but I completely have had it validated to the extent I need that there is life after death.
(09:44):
So I believe that for our animals as well.
Gail Pope (09:47):
I'm sitting here listening to you and it's reminding me of experiences that I had that have gradually shaped my belief.
Gosh, I think probably the very first one I remember, which is a little bit bizarre and different, but our son, Justin, he was, I don't know how old, I mean he was probably maybe four or five at the most.
(10:10):
We heard him talking in the night and I got up to go and see what was going on and he was fast asleep talking in what sounded like Russian.
So I called Richard, "Listen, what is this?" And he's "What?"
And that came back to me.
I hadn't thought about that for a long time.
(10:31):
Again, that's one of these spooky things.
Then, in my twenties, I actually saw a medium.
My father— stepfather, introduced me to a spiritualist church and I thought it was a little bit voodoo.
I ended up having a personal reading with the good gentleman called Clive.
(10:52):
Long story, but he described a dressing table that my grandmother had that as a child I used to sit at and it had a secret draw and he described it.
I mean, nobody could have known that.
Then literally not long after Richard died, I went to see a medium here with my daughter and we had a wonderful time.
The things that she told me and they were all underscored basically by the fact that one of the first things she said was that, "I have a lady here. She's coming to you on as I think a grandmother level and she wants me to describe a piece of furniture."
(11:27):
She described this same dressing table, and I've gone goosey again.
Those two things together really stand out for me.
And oh gosh since my husband died, all sorts of strange things that I realize, and you can probably help me with this, because it seems to me that Richard can reach me via music occasionally by making something that play music suddenly come on and play something or I have a solar hummingbird lights in the garden and he can make one of the colors come on.
(12:04):
It's just interesting because the music that might come on is his music or music that we loved and just a snatch of it and then it will go away.
So do you believe that there are certain channels that we can use to connect back to the people on the earth plane maybe?
Karen Wylie (12:21):
Yes supposedly, even if you think back to old movies where lights would be blinking.
Apparently, if electrical things and electronic things are more easily modifiable by other dimensions.
And yes, I totally believe that certainly could be him especially with the music he has brought to your attention.
(12:43):
That's all your music.
Gail Pope (12:45):
Yes, you have to describe stuff like that when it's so close and personal to you as magical and the word magic has the same kind of connotation.
So I think it all fits together.
But I think when you, for me anyway, being present at the deaths or the transitions I should say of so many animals and also my mom and dad at the end of their life, again, that totally reinforces everything for me because it just seems so darned obvious that they're not here one minute, dead the next.
(13:22):
I think we are living in an age now where science is meeting spirituality.
We are learning so much from science that endorses all these little strange spooky things that have happened.
It's a wonderful learning to have, isn't it?
Karen Wylie (13:37):
Yes, it's like I'd say every few months or I'll read something that validates something I've seen or heard or felt or believed.
It's like science is validating so much.
You and I have talked several times on the podcast about our belief with our own experiences with our pets that they seem to know that they are dying.
(13:58):
That's why we have swan songs that are provided to us where there's special moments, special experiences that many pets provide to us.
Then in my case, the next day they're gone.
They've died in their sleep.
I typically will feel when they leave the planet, it's if I'll wake up with a start and I just take within 5-8 seconds.
(14:23):
It's like the vibrational world around me is different than it was when I went to sleep.
And it'll be like, "Oh, they're gone."
Gail Pope (14:31):
I mean, obviously that really underscores it but I see and feel that when an animal dies and I'm sitting there with them.
Everything is winding down, everything's soft and gentle, and the breathing is ebbing.
Sometimes it's difficult to actually spot when the actual last breath comes.
But I don't know, I've just had such a strong sense of them "being."
(14:57):
Once the body— it's like they've stepped out of that house but now I can feel them.
It's a very comforting feeling.
Karen Wylie (15:04):
It is and it's very different to feel it in that room.
Gail Pope (15:08):
Yes, it is.
That's why we started the three day process to honor the physical body after death for our animals.
That was very strange when we first started doing that because a lot of people were almost offended by the idea.
Now people are starting to really embrace it and it does make sense.
It does make sense because one of the things that science has taught us is that when the brain is dead, which is called death clinically, the mind is still alive.
(15:39):
There have been so many experiments happenings in the medical world that prove that the mind is still alive after clinical death.
Karen Wylie (15:49):
And looping back to what I was mentioning earlier, in a mediumship conversation, if someone is able to convey to you certain memories that the medium is being given by one of your relatives or one of your friends and they're relaying it to you and you're saying, "oh my God!"
Then they're confirming that they crossed over but they crossed over with a whole lot of their personality, their mind, their memories.
(16:16):
It's really amazing to think of it that way.
How do you, I don't know that we've talked about this specifically, you've described the silver cord and trying to maintain a spiritual connection with a pet that has passed while allowing the physical connection to stop, to break so that the physical death can take place and the spirit can move on.
(16:40):
So how do you think or how do you imagine the human animal bond continuing after a pet leaves the planet?
Gail Pope (16:49):
Obviously it's part memory but the biggest, it's heart, isn't it?
People say, "My heart hurts" and "My heart's singing."
We relate those things to our heart but we don't take it seriously.
Maybe it is serious and maybe that is the connection, isn't it?
Or they reach us in our mind, in our dreams.
(17:10):
We dream and dream and very often it is of animals or people from our past.
So it's hard to know where does the dream end and where does reality step in.
Karen Wylie (17:22):
So true.
So true.
It's something I've been wondering about at various times especially since we've been doing the podcast the last six months.
I'll be talking with Tim, my husband, about the various topics that we explored in a particular day and there've been three or four out of the 24 so far that I guess I brought up Mr. Hope, a cat that we lost two years ago now.
(17:49):
We had him in hospice care for two and a half years which was wonderful.
So I'll be telling my husband that I brought up Mr. Hope and what story about Mr. Hope I used to convey a particular learning.
I'll see Chey and Livvy, the two Aussies, they'll hear me say Mr. Hope.
(18:10):
I see them just kind of like they heard me, it's been two years and four months since he's been gone.
So it's not just like last week.
So then I'll look at them and I'll say, "We loved Mr. Hope, didn't we?
We loved him.
Is Mr. Hope here?
Have you seen him lately?"
And it is just so strange because the two of them, they don't look to the cat tree, they don't look to Mr. Hope's beds on top of their crates.
(18:35):
They don't look up at the window where he used to like to roost in the morning sun.
Both of them turn and they look up at the ceiling to the right of our fireplace.
It happens every single time his name is ever mentioned.
They're looking there.
Mr. Hope never was 12 feet up in the right hand corner on the ceiling near the fireplace.
(18:56):
So it's just so consistent that's where they look for him.
So for me, that's giving me some goosey, I know that at those moments is real and it's real for the pups.
Gail Pope (19:09):
Yes, oh my goodness.
You just reminded me of, oh my goodness gracious again, an experience that isn't it funny we have these mind blowing types of experiences?
Then I guess our mind remembers them but our brain actually don't seem to sit in that kind of intelligent learning.
(19:30):
I just remembered an experience that I had back in again in my 20's around the time when my father had introduced me to the Spiritualist church.
I think I'd stopped going.
I don't know about you but once I feel comfortable with something then I move on.
I accepted what I'd learned and thought it was absolutely wonderful and then didn't really think about it anymore.
One evening I was sitting in a rocking chair in the living room and reading a book.
(19:57):
I can picture it very clearly now, and I was sitting reading completely engrossed in what I was doing, and then all of a sudden it was like a "Oh!" I was bent over and it's like my body was against a wall.
I was caught between the wall and the ceiling, and my head was down.
There was a feeling of shock and then seeing myself sitting in the chair reading the book.
(20:19):
Then boom, I was reading my book.
Gosh, I've forgotten about that for a long time.
A similar thing, I was up in that corner of the room.
Karen Wylie (20:29):
It is very interesting, isn't it?
If we think of when our animals are on the path to dying and they're declining and my goal as is yours is always to allow for a natural transition at home whenever possible.
So that's what's happening and the last week of most of my pet's deaths, I find them staring off into space.
(20:55):
Always a particular part of a particular room.
I, for whatever reason, have started assuming that they are seeing their relatives and other animals that they knew in their lifetime that had passed on before.
Just like we have humans who are in hospice care in a hospital or dying at home and they start staring out into space or even reaching their arms out.
(21:21):
Then if someone asks them "What's going on?" Or "Who are you talking to?"
They say, "I'm talking to my mother" or "I'm talking to my sister."
So we know from humans that when they get close to that point of physical death, I think of it as they are in both dimensions.
They're leaving physical dimension and they've got kinda like one foot in the next that allows them to see, feel, and hear from the other side while they're still leaving their body which could take many more days or another week or so.
(21:53):
But because of that, I think I've interpreted the same kind of thing happening for my animals.
That's what led me to start doing what I call "Calling out the Ancestors" where when I see them starting to look out into space and be fixed for a few minutes, I start using the names of cats or dogs that I know they knew in life.
(22:16):
Say also, "Has Sissy come back to see you?" and so forth.
I start using the names and I have the sense that is exactly what's happening for our pets as well.
When we talk about our own, the human animal bond and connection to the other side, I think I really do think our pets also are continuing to connect with other pets on the other side.
(22:37):
Maybe if I leave sooner than some of my pets, maybe they'll be looking for me.
Gail Pope (22:42):
I bet they will.
Karen Wylie (22:42):
I can connect with them.
Gail Pope (22:45):
I think that this conversation brings a warmth to us.
But then it also makes us realize that it takes away a lot of the fear that we have of death.
So the more we learn about these spooky things that happen, the more we embrace them, the more it takes away the fear.
Karen Wylie (23:04):
Yes.
Gail Pope (23:05):
It takes away the fear.
For some reason, Frazier's coming back into mind at the moment.
I'm sure you've heard his story and probably everybody else has too.
But you know when you're a cat and you get to the age of 34, you play games for at least six months with your family by dying, stopping breathing, dead.
Then you open your only one eye that you've got and you say, "Hi, fooled you!"
(23:29):
And you come back to life.
Things like that in those days when that was happening, it was pretty scary and it was just plain weird.
But now looking back, it's so reassuring.
All of these things are reassuring stories for us, aren't they?
Karen Wylie (23:45):
They certainly are.
Gail Pope (23:46):
There is more to life than we know.
It's fascinating and exciting!
I think we just live in a part of the universe where we're on a certain wavelength and who knows what's functioning on other wavelengths around us.
And when we step out of our bodies, we presumably step into a different.
What's the word?
Karen Wylie (24:06):
Vibration or frequency.
Gail Pope (24:07):
Vibration.
That's right.
Yes, it's a different vibration which is maybe when you are working in mediumship, you are tuned to that other vibration.
Karen Wylie (24:20):
Correct.
That's exactly what happens.
It's when we're picking up intuitively from a living person that's one frequency and one vibration.
But when we're picking it up from someone who's passed over, that's a different frequency or vibration and I'll say it's the same with animals.
It's one thing to communicate with a living animal and a different vibration or frequency to an animal that is passed over.
(24:44):
Just because someone is able to do one doesn't mean they do all of them equally well or equally as often.
I think given the experiences that you and I have had over several decades time, it's one of the reasons we continue to want to do this work and why we want to continue to help other people because the mystery of both life and death has been put in front of us for us to experience in.
(25:12):
So often when one of our pets is dying, we all we want to prevent them from leaving us.
We want to have every minute possible with every one of them.
But when we're focused on fighting the process that is going to ultimately take them, it can cloud or totally block the possibilities of understanding how you can continue to have a relationship with them after their physical body is no more— they have left, they have transitioned.
(25:44):
As you were saying, that was something you were saying when we started out, whether we're feeling them through our heart.
Whether we're thinking about them through our mind and our memories, and we're connecting with them in that way, or whether we're stating their names and invoking them in some way.
Like I was describing with my Aussies looking up to the ceiling when I talk about their cat, their Mr. Hope.
(26:06):
There are ways to continue to have that relationship in some level that you're comfortable with and that you want.
That's one of the things I think keeps me wanting to share this with people and help people become more comfortable with the loss of our pets because it's not a complete loss.
Gail Pope (26:25):
Exactly.
I hadn't really put it all together until now.
This is a fascinating conversation, but one of the things that I always share with people is the idea of looking at the body you’re living in as your house.
Then when you're dying, you are stepping out of that house.
I think when people can embrace that idea because it does make sense— if you have a belief that something else is there, then it really forms a really good foundation to help you be less fearful of death.
(26:59):
None of us know exactly what it feels like.
I guess unless we've come back and we talk about it and then nobody else believes anyway.
So
yes until we've had the personal experience of near death or death and returning, it's hard for us to know exactly what to expect.
So fear is always going to remain.
(27:20):
But I think if you have a strong belief in all the things that we've talked about today happening, to so many people say, "Oh no, I don't believe in that."
But when they get into a conversation like this, suddenly they're, "Oh, I remember this or that when I was young. I wonder what that was?"
Karen Wylie (27:36):
Right.
That's the thing, I don't think you have to have a strong belief in what comes after.
In fact, I don't think you have to have a knowing about what it is that may come after but if you're just open to the possibility,
Gail Pope (27:50):
It helps.
Karen Wylie (27:50):
Then you have that possibility of restoring some level of connection with your pet that has crossed over which is really a wonderful thing.
I just always assume it's possible.
I don't wonder about it anymore.
I just know it is possible.
I should spend more time linking up with everybody over there instead of writing and analyzing situations.
Gail Pope (28:15):
I'd like to, please, book a session?
I'm ready.
Karen Wylie (28:21):
I'm better at helping other people figure out how to do it themselves than to do it for them.
But my training was with the Spiritualist Church in the UK as well.
I think I told you that almost all of my training has been from that tradition which is really strong and wonderful.
So now I'm trying to figure out how we end this conversation because we've really looked at so much today.
(28:46):
It's wonderful that we've had these experiences with other people who've passed on and with so many of our pets that have passed on that we have these wonderings validated.
I think it's especially as I age, I think the more important it is to just have that positive attitude and believe that so much more is possible than we possibly know about now.
Gail Pope (29:10):
It's hard to round out the conversation but I think the old saying— I have two things that I always feel are complimentary to almost everything that we talk about
(29:31):
Taking everything slowly absorbing, moving on, and just living with love.
Because love is the greatest healer.
You put love and baby steps together into this world of the "don't knows" and the "might know", and all the spooky things.
They fit.
They fit beautifully, don't they?
Karen Wylie (29:49):
They certainly do and our pets were all about love.
Every minute they were alive— in their houses, in their bodies being with us.
Gail Pope (29:58):
Yep.
They gave them to us.
Karen Wylie (30:01):
They gave to us every moment of every day.
I think in many ways each of them still does.
Especially in the memories that you and I have of various animals and the lessons we learned that we share.
Gail Pope (30:12):
That's another conversation.
Karen Wylie (30:14):
It is another conversation.
So we're going to stop here.
I guess I want to say that whatever you believe what might come after physical death, as Gail says, it's the love that is going to carry us through all the time.
We hope today's conversation may have brought you some comfort, maybe some connection with us and the connection thinking about pets that have passed on.
(30:38):
And all of it, I think is a reminder that we're not alone, that you're not alone.
We'll look forward to seeing you next week.
Thank you for being with us.
Bye-bye.
Gail Pope (30:50):
Thank you.
Goodbye.
Thank you for joining us on Peace of Mind for Pet Parents.
We hope today's episode has offered you support and insight as you care for your aging or ill pets.
Remember, it's not just about the end.
It's about living well at every stage of life.
To continue your journey with us, explore more resources at BrightHaven Caregiver Academy's website— BrightPathForPets.com, where you'll find guides, assessments, and a caring community of pet parents like you.
(31:27):
Until next time, may you and your pets find comfort, connection, and peace in every moment.
Take care.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2
Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.