Sara
I said I don't believe in #angels, not in the biblical, beautiful yet terrible winged messenger of God sense. What I do believe in, which I suppose some would refer to as angels, is a bit more complicated.
Many faiths believe in #reincarnation, and this is definitely at the core of my own beliefs. I think the Buddhist explanation best describes it, in that you keep living over and over again, as different types of sentient living things, learning mostly through trial and error, until you gain an understanding of life and death that allows you to consciously choose to either continue incarnating, or simply remain in what a some of the earliest witchcraft books have called the “otherworld”. Heaven, limbo, the afterlife, the spirit world, whatever you want to call it, it's all the same thing. Although, I think calling it “heaven” in the Christian sense of the word, is not at all accurate.
On the flip side, as I alluded to in my previous post, some souls go the other direction, devolving, becoming more and more angry and lost, and become what a lot of religions would refer to as a demon. These souls can still save themselves, but it's a long road.
Reincarnation is a lot more nuanced than that, and it does require a bigger discussion about what is actually “you”, and what is all the baggage you picked up in this particular life, but that's the bones of it.
So some souls, which have achieved that higher level of understanding, choose to remain in that other place, but continue helping the rest of us schleps still floundering around the living world. Many cultures refer to them as “spirit guides”, which I think is a bit more apt. They don't always appear as people. Many indigenous cultures saw them as animals. And of course, every culture and religion has different stories about what they do, and where they come from.
I've had one of these tagging along with me my whole life. I've mostly just seen her in dreams, but she has, very rarely, reached out during waking hours as a very strong voice in my head, warning me against something or urging me toward a decision or a direction. In my dreams, she has always appeared as a woman, with dark hair and brown eyes, and always my age. So when I was a child, she was a child as well. When I was a teenager, she was about the same age. When I became an adult, so did she. She grew up with me. When I see her now, she looks to be in her forties.
She usually shows up when I am in some pretty terrible emotional turmoil, and there was a lot of that growing up. At first, she just spent time with me, playing games or sitting with me. As I got older, we actually started having discussions. Each time she would visit, she always knew me, but it would take a moment for me to realize that I knew her, and remember who she was. She would interrupt whatever my mind had conjured up for that particular dream, and we would step away to talk. There was usually hugging, this feeling that I was reunited with an old friend, and the sense that she loves and cares for me very deeply.
As usual, I always blew this off as something my brain was doing. Some sort of coping mechanism I'd developed. It wasn't until my thirties that I started to get an inkling of what she is. I had no idea what her name was, but the name “Sara” was really sticking in my head, and that's what I started calling her.
I learned that I could call to her, just before going to sleep, and at some point in the night she would visit me. Sometimes just for a moment, to acknowledge that she'd heard me, and then she's gone. The first such instance of this, the first time I called her, I was dreaming about being on a road trip, and at some point I found myself sitting in the passenger seat of a red sports car. Sara was driving, very fast. She had long hair, which stuck out because the time before that, she had very short “boy cut” style hair. She was wearing a short red dress and knee-high black boots.
Sara told me that she was just saying “hi”. Then she pulled my head over to her and kissed my left temple, and then the dream very quickly moved on, morphing into something else entirely different, as dreams do, and Sara was gone. That part though, riding in the car with her, is all that I remember with any clarity.
In all of these dreams, Sara has a presence to her. It's a feeling that is very distinct, very recognizable, and very her. As I said, she has poked me during the day, while I'm awake, but very rarely. She may have done so a few times when I was younger, but I may not have recognized that it was her at the time.
During these instances, I feel a very strong push in my head. An inclination to do something, or say something, but sometimes I hear her talking to me. When this has happened, I have felt that presence I mentioned, just for a moment.
The last time she visited me during the day, was the summer of 2023. My partner and I were travelling through Oregon. It was getting late, the sun was going down, and we were trying to locate a campground near Diamond Lake. We turned off of the main highway, onto a road that had clearly not been well maintained in quite some time. The pavement was uneven, and full of cracks and potholes. Every sign we passed was covered in plastic. If you've ever seen Forest Service signs covered in what looks like large garbage bags, you know the ones I'm talking about.
We'd only been on that road for a few minutes, when I began to get uneasy. The further we went, the worse it got, until finally, I heard a very distinct voice in my head, and I felt Sara. What she said was very clear, and her tone was very insistent.
“Turn around. Turn around NOW.”
I braked harder than I'm normally comfortable doing when pulling our little camper, veered off the road, and did a wide U-turn. When we were headed the other direction, I laid on the gas pedal, with that feeling of danger still very strong. My partner said, “I take it this road is creeping you out too.”
That feeling subsided as we pulled back on to the highway. I have no idea what was down that road, but I'm sure I was better off not finding out.
I have several theories about who Sara might be. She may have once been a relative, probably way back up the family line, long before my parents, or my grandparents were born. Or, in one of my previous lives, we may have been married or otherwise coupled. It's also entirely possible that both scenarios are true. In any case, in this life, she's been taking care of me for as long as I can remember, and I definitely know her.
-Tom Blueleaf