When my first born daughter Maila Angela Viana Morais died at 36 weeks and 5 days of pregnancy, the first words I told my mum were “I gave birth to a baby to simply put in the bin”.
To this day these words sting.
I hate that this is how I referred to my baby, moments after giving birth to her, but I can’t hide the truth of what my birthing experience was like. I got all the way to that point, with only 4 weeks to go and this is how it ended.
Once, I had left the hospital and was left to deal with the whirlwind of emotions and realities from the real world. The first thing I remember searching was “how can I connect with my daughter spiritually”. A friend had implanted this idea in my head, because when her Mum and Grandma died she went to see a Medium. This was particularly strange to me, because my friend had always been pretty skeptical of many things, in my eyes she was an atheist, and to think she would believe that anyone could communicate with our relatives in “spirit” was beyond me. However, I took in her every word, after our conversation she had absolutely convinced me that this was possible and I had absolutely nothing left to lose anyway.
I took her Medium’s contact number, he was only contactable via a landline number and has no social media whatsoever - very old school to say the least. It had been exactly a month since I had given birth to Maila the 29th of December 2022. I left a voicemail, told him my first name and that I was hoping to have a reading with him.
It would take another month until I’d hear back from him, at which point I had even forgotten about it. In fact I started to delve into a spiritual journey of my own. I was not about to let this be the end of mine and my daughter’s relationship. I needed my baby to hold, hug, smell, kiss and look after. I was restless, I could hardly breathe it was driving me mad.
So my journey started with incessant Google searching, no where could I find someone talking about this spiritual connection I was so eager for. I had always known and believed that we are all spirit having a human experience in a physical body. So why is it that I can’t keep a relationship with the human and spirit who was growing inside of me.
For the most part I came across YouTube videos that talked about spirit babies, which is a belief that our babies choose us in the spirit world before they are born into a physical body. However, there was nothing about a baby who had died and was now in spirit, if there were it was really hard to find in 2023 and as a grieving mother there are only so many pages I can scroll through until I get exhausted. Grief is heavy, especially early grief - it is a tiredness you can’t explain, it has the power to leave you absolutely immobile.
I did eventually get somewhere, my first salvation was Fleur Leussink’s book “Moving Beyond: Access Your Intuition, Psychic Ability and Spirit Connection”, this book became my crutch - it gave me everything I was hungry for. I read it back to front several times, dog eared it, highlighted and made notes. It taught me that my baby will always be right by my side, not in that vague, dismissive way people often say just to gloss over the depth of your grief. I knew for a fact, she was and that she was receiving the love and longing I was projecting to her.
Of the many things I learned from Fleur - who is a well respected Medium, in the US is that you don’t really need a medium and that our loved ones are always connecting to us and showing themselves to us through signs. In fact as I sit here and write this you probably wouldn’t believe that a butterfly just landed on my window or that as I typed the name Angela at the start of this blog, someone named Angela appeared as a notification on my TikTok.
The first instance I realised just how real this all was, was when I did one of the suggested meditation exercises in Fleur’s book.
The OSHO meditation
This meditation is very different to the traditional sit down in stillness and try to calm down the monkey brain. This is a dynamic mediation, that encourages erratic movement, which for the rage that lives in the belly of a grieving mother, where have baby had been - was the perfect release.
There are 5 stages;
- Uncontrolled Chaotic nose breathing - 10 minutes
- Explosion - screaming, crying, shouting, laughing, dancing, singing, punching whatever - 10 minutes
- Arms raised, jumping and shouting “Hoo!” “Hoo!” to exhaustion - 10 minutes
- Freeze! Wherever you are and in whatever position - 15 minutes
- Celebrate in expression with music and dance - 15 minutes
*Ideally you should use an OSHO meditation YouTube video or Spotify playlist to guide you.
From my experience every time I did this meditation, I was able to receive very specific signs from Maila. Often things would happen that felt like coincidences, but I knew were far bigger than that. The very fist day I did this meditation, I felt inspired to visit the local theatre as I wanted to find a big enough free space to do these meditations alone - my room felt too small. Not sure why I needed this at all, I already felt ridiculous and embarrassed doing this in my room by mysel, let alone finding a public place to do it.
However, I went with the impulse.
Upon entering the theatre I picked up a programme and to my surprise one of the main events that were due to happen the following month was a reading by Tony Stockwell, a well known British Medium - so well known that his name was written at the front cover of Fleur Leussink’s book stating that “Fleur is one of the best mediums in the world… accurate by sheer work and endeavour”.
A coincidence! I think not.
Up until this point in my life, I have never been interested in mediums, I didn’t know names and had actually found it to be make believe. I never even noticed Tony Stockwell’s name until I saw it on the programme.
How could all of a sudden, the one medium mentioned at the front of a book written by an American medium, a book I just happened to randomly buy, be presenting at a random local theatre in East London and I found this program because I was inspired after a mediation from said book.
This felt specific, like a message to say there is indeed a connection to be had.
Of course I bought tickets to see this show.
These were my first steps into finding my footing as a parent with a baby in spirit.
This is the beginning of a series where I’ll share everything I’ve experienced: from signs and synchronicities, to the readings I’ve received, memory-making and building a relationship with my daughter beyond the physical world.