When the World Feels Hollow After Loss

What happens after we die? It’s the question that keeps people awake at three in the morning, the one whispered after funerals, the one nobody really wants to ask out loud.

If you’ve found yourself here, chances are you’re not just curious, you’re aching.

Grief doesn’t come as a tidy wave; it guts you.

There’s the hollowed-out feeling, as if someone reached inside and took something essential you can’t name.

There are the small, stabbing questions: Why didn’t I say more? What if they didn’t know how much I loved them? Am I strong enough to keep going without them?

Loss shakes more than your memories of them, it shakes you.

The version of yourself that existed before they died no longer fits.

Suddenly, you’re navigating a different identity: part mourner, part survivor, part wanderer in a world that no longer feels quite real.

You’re not just grieving who they were; you’re grieving who you were alongside them.

And in the quiet moments, lying awake in the dark, folding laundry, staring into space, you might wonder: Where did they go? Are they still here? Will I ever feel them again?

That’s why I wrote this.

Not to hand you clichés or neat answers, but to walk with you through the 8 questions I hear most often in my work as a psychic medium about life after death.

These aren’t theories; they’re the questions people cry into their hands while sitting across from me, searching for signs, for reassurance, for something solid to hold in the storm.

This blog is a long read, about twenty minutes, but if you’re not ready for the deep dive, skim the bolded section headers and “Key Insight” boxes.

Either way, take your time, and read this all the way until the end.

The #1 insight might surprise you!

Let this be a pause in the chaos, a place to feel less alone as you try to make sense of the hardest thing we face: how to keep living when someone we love has stepped into the mystery.

If you want support that’s personal, grounded, and evidential, I’d be honored to sit with you.

We can explore your loved one’s messages, clarify the signs you’re noticing, and help you feel steadier in the days ahead. You can book a session here!

8. Why don’t my loved ones visit me in dreams after they pass away?

Dreams are spirit’s back door, but grief, fear, and control can slam it shut. Here’s how to gently reopen it.

Dreams are one of the clearest ways spirit connects.

Unlike waking life, your defenses are down. You’re not busy rationalizing or dismissing what you see, you’re open.

Visitation dreams stand out from regular ones.

They feel vivid, sometimes with color more vibrant than waking life.

Your loved one may not speak but simply radiate reassurance.

Often people wake up crying, not from sadness, but from the intensity of love that still exists.

If you’d like to invite a loved one closer, try this simple practice: before bed, write their name on a small piece of paper.

Place it beneath a glass of water on your nightstand. This serves as a quiet, formal invitation, your way of saying, “I’m open to seeing you if you’re able.”

Spirit often responds to these symbolic gestures, because they engage both your subconscious and your heart.

But it’s also important to understand that both you and your loved one are adjusting.

You’re learning to live with absence, while they’re learning how to navigate a new landscape in spirit.

For them, appearing in dreams takes an immense amount of energy. It may take time.

Unfortunately, grief itself can block dream connections.

When you’re caught in waves of sadness, doubt, or the frantic need for control, your emotions can become too volatile for subtle psychic impressions to reach you.

Love, not fear, is the real bridge.

Love softens the edges and opens the channel.

Key Insight: Dreams are not just imagination; they’re a bridge for connection, one that opens more easily when you invite with love and allow with patience.

If you’ve ever wondered what happens beyond the veil, you’ll find more insights here: What Happens After We Die? 12 Lessons from Spirit

7. What signs do spirits send to show they are still with us?

That bird, that song, that sudden scent? They’re not random. Spirit directs them into your path, your memories are the message.

The ordinary world is spirit’s preferred language.

What looks like a chance bird, a sudden scent, or a song on the radio is rarely random when it arrives with uncanny timing and an internal hit that makes your chest go quiet.

Spirits do not show up as the sign itself.

Instead they direct something in the physical world to catch your attention.

If an animal, insect, or sudden movement appears, imagine it as being gently guided by an invisible nudge.

Some mediums describe this as a subtle influence on electromagnetic fields; whatever the mechanism, the point is the same: the sign is a pointer, not the messenger.

When a sign appears, don’t rush it. Pause. Notice what memory surfaces first.

Those memories are the message.

Maybe a cardinal reminds you of a joke your father told, or the smell of baking brings a precise afternoon with your sister.

The content that bubbles up is what they are offering you.

The feeling will be intimate and familiar, not theatrical.

It will arrive as if it were your own memory rather than a dramatic reveal.

That is how spirit speaks: through the nuance of your life.

Practical practice: when you notice a sign, stop and name it out loud.

Say the person’s name, then note the first three images or feelings that come.

Write them down in a small notebook.

Over time, patterns emerge. Those repeating threads are the language your loved ones are using to communicate.

Key insight: Spirit points with everyday things. The sign is a prompt. Pay attention to the memories and feelings that surface, because those are the true messages.

For those missing a beloved pet, this will help you recognize the first signs they may be reaching out: Do Pets Visit After They Pass? The Signs You’ll Notice First

6. Will I see my family and pets again in the afterlife?

Yes, reunion is real. Spirit often stays near for 40 days before moving into the light, and love keeps the thread unbroken.

This question carries both longing and fear.

The ache of missing someone you love, whether a parent, partner, child, or even a beloved pet, often comes with the hope that reunion is possible.

Most spiritual traditions affirm that it is.

Mediumship confirms it, too.

In countless readings, I’ve witnessed loved ones come forward with validations only their family would know, and pets bounding through with the same quirks they had in life, only lighter, freer, and without the weight of illness or pain.

What I’ve also come to know through both readings and personal experience is that we typically remain close to earth for around 40 days after passing.

During that time, spirit stays near the body, friends, and family, reassuring, adjusting, and beginning to understand their new form. Only after this initial period do they transition fully “into the light.”

My personal perspective is a little unconventional: I consider this world, the one we’re in right now, to be the afterlife.

When we die, we’re not cast into a foreign place, we return home.

It’s less about leaving and more about going back to where we began.

I often imagine it like droplets of molten glass moving away from the glowing mass: each of us takes on a temporary shape, an individual human life, to learn about fragility, depth, and oneness.

Eventually, we return, rejoining the whole.

What looks like separation is just a stage of becoming.

For those grieving, this matters deeply.

You’re not facing an eternal goodbye. You’re moving through a temporary chapter of distance, before an inevitable reunion.

That reunion is not theoretical, it’s already seeded in the bonds you feel now.

Key Insight: Relationships don’t dissolve after death. They expand. Spirit remains close at first, then transitions into light, waiting for the day we reunite, just as droplets of glass return to the glowing source they were born from.

If you’re noticing strange patterns or coincidences, this guide will help you decode them: Signs from the Universe: 10 Ways to Recognize Messages from Spirit

5. What do different religions believe about life after death?

Heaven, reincarnation, ancestors, beliefs differ, but the essence is the same: life doesn’t end, it expands. Spirituality proves it’s love, not fear, that guides us.

Beliefs vary widely.

Though the languages differ, the thread is the same: life doesn’t end, it evolves.

And yet, here’s where I need to be honest. Although I don’t consider myself religious, I’ve had experiences that some would call religious.

I’ve seen what looked like other cultures’ gods appear, clear, vivid, undeniable, and these moments were witnessed by others who stood beside me.

When enough people invest their emotions, reverence, and attention into a shared vision, it becomes something.

It develops weight.

It can take on form, an entity of sorts, one that can oversee, comfort, or even guide.

For me, this isn’t about subscribing to a religion’s rules.

Anything that tries to control you tends to come from fear.

Fear says: obey, or else. Fear says: follow the path, or be punished.
Love, on the other hand, never controls.

Love is unconditional.

That’s why I lean away from religion and toward spirituality.

Religion tells you what to think. Spirituality invites you to feel what is true.

Religion draws borders. Spirituality dissolves them.

When you step back from dogma and look at the lived experiences, dreams, signs, mediumship, near-death testimonies, you’ll see the same pattern repeating: we continue. We’re guided. We are loved.

Key insight: Across cultures, the consensus is continuity, not extinction.

To understand how grief reshapes us, read my reflections here: Grief Isn’t Linear, and It Rarely Looks How We Expect It To

4. Do near-death experiences prove an afterlife?

From tunnels of light to life reviews, NDEs show us consciousness may outlast the body, science can’t dismiss what survivors testify as “more real than life.”

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are some of the most compelling testimony about what happens when the body shuts down.

Across cultures, millions describe the same themes: tunnels of light, life reviews, overwhelming love, reunions with loved ones, and a peace that feels more real than life itself.

Skeptics argue it’s just brain chemistry, but many who’ve had NDEs recall verifiable details that happened while they were clinically dead, things they couldn’t have known otherwise.

Actor Jeremy Renner’s 2023 snow plow accident is a powerful example.

He described “exhilarating peace,” a life review, and an intense desire not to return.

He admitted he was “pissed off” to wake up in his body again.

The experience reshaped his life, leading him to focus on love, relationships, and living on his own terms.

That kind of transformation is strikingly common among NDE survivors.

Science can’t yet measure consciousness beyond the body, but the consistency of these accounts is hard to dismiss.

Key Insight: NDEs don’t give us lab proof, but they offer consistent human testimony, strong evidence that awareness continues beyond death.

3. Can you communicate with loved ones who have passed away?

Communication is subtle, like a whisper, not a shout. Stillness, meditation, and love make space for the bond to break through.

For many, this is the most urgent question.

Mediumship exists to answer it.

As a psychic medium, I’ve witnessed countless moments where names, birthdays, phrases, or even inside jokes come through with clarity no guesswork could explain.

Some of the greatest psychic medium readers I’ve ever met are mothers who have lost children.

Their devotion drives them to do anything to feel their child again. In the early months of grief, the pain can be too raw, but after processing that first year or so, many discover that cultivating stillness opens the channel.

Using breath and heartbeat as anchors, developing a consistent relationship with meditation, this is what begins to “unlock” their sensitivity.

It doesn’t always come with fanfare.

It’s subtle.

A sudden sense of their presence, hearing a voice in the quiet of meditation, or feeling them in a way that validates their life continues beyond this state of being.

This subtlety is why psychics are sometimes called “sensitives”, they attune to whispers, not shouts.

People want reassurance that their loved one is safe, at peace, and still aware of them.

Communication doesn’t mean the dead are stuck here, it means the bond of love continues, breaking through in ways both gentle and unmistakable.

Key Insight: Love outlasts the physical body. With patience, stillness, and openness, communication becomes possible, because love always finds a way through.

For a deeply personal story about how spirit shows up when we least expect it, explore: Dragonfly Story: Grief & Spiritual Healing

2. Is there scientific evidence of life after death?

Studies of cardiac arrest survivors, terminal lucidity, and past-life recall suggest something undeniable: consciousness isn’t confined to the brain.

Science, by design, studies what can be measured.

The afterlife can’t be placed under a microscope in the same way we analyze cells or blood.

But that doesn’t mean science hasn’t brushed up against the mystery.

In fact, some of the most credible evidence we have comes from the overlap of medicine and human experience.

Take near-death studies.

Thousands of patients brought back after cardiac arrest have reported verifiable perceptions, describing doctors’ clothing, instruments, or conversations that took place while their brains registered no activity.

This is difficult to dismiss as hallucination.

A well-known study in The Lancet led by Dr. Pim van Lommel followed hundreds of cardiac arrest survivors and concluded that consciousness may exist independently of the brain.

He compared the body to a receiver: the brain processes consciousness but isn’t its source, much like a radio picking up a signal that continues whether or not the radio works.

There are also cases of “terminal lucidity,” where patients with advanced dementia or brain injury suddenly regain full clarity of mind in the hours before passing, something science struggles to explain if the brain alone produces consciousness.

Add to this the consistent global reports of children recalling verifiable past-life details, and the suggestion grows stronger: our awareness is not confined to biology.

While skeptics point to brain chemistry, the data keeps nudging in another direction.

Science may not yet have the language to describe it fully, but it’s leaning closer to what spirituality has long said: consciousness continues.

Key Insight: Evidence from medical studies, survivor accounts, and neurological anomalies suggests consciousness isn’t bound to the brain, raising powerful support for life after death.

1. What happens when you die?

Death isn’t an end, it’s a reunion. We come here to learn love in its rawest form, and when our time comes, we return to the love that never left us.

It’s the question we circle around our whole lives, sometimes with dread, sometimes with wonder.

From what I’ve witnessed as a psychic medium and sitting at the bedsides of the dying, death is not an end.

It is a reunion.

The moment the soul releases, the room changes, peace settles in, and a presence far greater than ourselves seems to gather us back home.

And maybe you’re thinking, Well, if it’s so great, why not go there now?

The answer is because you’re here for a very specific reason.

We come to earth to learn about love, the messy, imperfect, human kind.

To discover the depth of our emotions, to stretch into grief and joy, heartbreak and healing.

It isn’t easy, and it isn’t meant to be.

The price of experiencing life in a body is loss, just as the price of knowing love is grief.

I believe this loss mirrors something larger: the same ache felt by what many would call God, Source, the Oversoul, or the spark of life itself when each of us incarnates here.

A piece of the whole separates to learn and grow, and in that separation, even the divine feels the absence.

Your grief, no matter how crushing, is not lesser or greater than anyone else’s.

It is shared. You are not alone in it.

No psychic on earth can tell you exactly why the timing played out as it did.

That mystery belongs to something larger than us.

What we do know is that timing has a rhythm, even when we can’t hear the beat.

Part of living is learning to trust that rhythm, to find your footing within it, so when the day comes to step through that door, it will not be fear you feel, but love welcoming you home.

Key Insight: Death is not an end but a reunion. We are here to learn love in all its fragile, human forms, and when our time comes, we return to the love that never left us.

Closing Thoughts

Life after death isn’t a subject of idle curiosity, it’s a mirror to how we live right now.

Whether you’re grieving someone you’ve just lost or quietly wrestling with your own mortality, these questions remind us that love, connection, and meaning don’t disappear when a heartbeat stops.

Yes, the unknown will always leave room for doubt.

But in the stories carried back through near-death experiences, in the validations that come through mediumship, and in the quiet, everyday signs that stop you in your tracks, a deeper truth emerges: we continue.

Love outlasts the body, and reunion is not just possible, it’s inevitable.

If you’d like to take the next step in your own healing, you can read more about what to expect in a reading with me. And if you’re ready to experience it firsthand, you can book a session now.

Written by Chris Bennett, The Tarot Medium

Chris Bennett is an internationally recognized psychic medium and tarot reader based in Canada, known for delivering accurate psychic readings and compassionate guidance. With thousands of sessions worldwide, Chris has built a reputation as the best psychic medium for those searching for clarity, connection, and comfort. His work has been described as life-changing by clients seeking the best tarot reader near me, clairvoyant readings, and genuine psychic insight.

Through his blog, often called the best psychic blog and the best tarot blog, Chris shares deep reflections on grief, spiritual growth, and intuition. His writing weaves together lived experience, evidential mediumship, and psychological insight, making his articles some of the most trusted resources in the field of psychic and tarot guidance.

Whether you’re looking for an accurate psychic reading online, exploring spiritual mediumship, or curious about life after death, Chris offers an unparalleled blend of authenticity and skill. Learn more or book your own session at thetarotmedium.com.