Every October, my social media is inundated with familiar posts.
“The veil is thin. Ancestor season is here. This is the time to connect with your loved ones on the other side.”
Each October I reflect on the woman who speaks to her deceased mom daily whether in the car, while showering, or at the grocery store when she spots her mother’s favorite crackers, or the woman who reads those posts and feels, in silence, that she may need permission to connect since it’s this season.
She hasn’t done anything wrong, she just knows differently. The veil didn’t suddenly become thin. She has been part of a culture that has stopped denying the feelings she has always experienced.
This is the focus of this post. October isn’t the month to speak to Spirit, it’s just the most commercialized month.
Cultures That Never Forgot How to Grieve in Community
Before we talk about what October means spiritually, I want to talk about what it actually is because these traditions didn’t emerge from a general spiritual aesthetic. They came from specific peoples, with specific losses, and specific ways of refusing to let death sever what love built.
Samhain is a Celtic and Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest and the beginning of the dark half of the year. In its original practice though, it was understood as a time when the boundary between the living and the dead was permeable, and ancestors could cross back for the time being. The community would set up places at the table and leave offerings at the threshold. It wasn’t spooky gathering, nope. It was a communal act of maintenance that focused/focuses on tending the relationship between the living and the dead as an ongoing responsibility, not a once-a-year sentiment.
Día de los Muertos belongs to Mexican and broader Mesoamerican communities, rooted in Indigenous Aztec tradition which was later woven together with Catholic observance. The ofrenda which is the altar built with photographs, marigolds, food, water, and objects of the deceased loved one/ones isn’t a decoration. It’s a true act of welcome. The dead are believed to return, and the living prepare for that return the way you prepare for any loved guest. There’s nothing passive about it. It’s active, embodied, communal grief that has never needed a clinical framework to know what it was doing. (This is discussed in The Psychospiritual Grief Method for BIPOC Clients Training)
What all of these have in common is this: they’re grief technologies. They’re the structures that communities built to hold what individuals can’t hold alone. It’s the ongoing reality of loving someone who has transitioned. They answer the question that no one talks about enough, which is: after the funeral, after the casseroles, after everyone goes home and expects you to be moving on — how do you keep loving them?
These traditions say: you light a candle. You set a plate. You say their name. You do it every year, in community, so no one has to carry it alone.
Why Signs Feel Louder Right Now
As an Evidential Medium, I get asked every October why people seem to hear from their loved ones more clearly during this season and it’s not what you’re probably thinking.
Part of it is attention.
It occurs when:
When you are actively looking
When you have lit the candle,
Set out the photograph, or when you
Speak the name
because you’re tuned into a frequency that you normally would have dialed down. Let’s not forget about that cardinal who was on the fence back in March or your loved one’s favorite song that came on when you were thinking about them. I challenge you to listen to Spirit with your entire body in a way that the rest of the year doesn’t give you permission to. Attention isn’t nothing. Attention is actually how most of the relationship works.
Part of it is collective permission. There’s something that happens when an entire culture turns toward the same thing at the same time. Grief held in community moves differently than grief held alone. The rituals of Samhain and Día de los Muertos aren’t superstition. They’re coordinated attention. When millions of folks are simultaneously saying I remember you, I haven’t forgotten, I’m still here, something in the field responds. I’ve seen it too many times in readings to dismiss it.
Now part of it, the part I want you to hold onto is that the connection you feel in October isn’t created by October. It’s just revealed by October. The line between you and your deceased loved one/s isn’t seasonal, it’s constant. What changes is whether you’re willing to tune in and be present for it.
The Hunter’s Moon rose yesterday in Taurus, and it rose in the sign of Scorpio, which means we’re sitting inside a moment that has both the releasing energy of the full moon and the fullness that’s coming. Taurus asks us,
Where are you rooted?
What have you built?
What does the body know that the mind has not caught up to yet?
For those of us in grief, Taurus asks a quieter question underneath all of that: can you let what is solid hold you while you reach toward something that not?
This is the season for that. Not because the veil is thin, but because you’re finally paying attention.
What Happens to Grief When the Light Fades
It’s also crucial to mention a clinical aspect since this community encompasses both spiritual and psychological dimensions….
The diminishing daylight has a real impact on the nervous system. Reduced light affects serotonin levels and circadian rhythms (Sleep cycles), and for those who are grieving their nervous systems are already under considerable strain. Then add the onset of autumn which can feel as though grief has increased without a clear cause. This response is not without reason. It’s your body reacting to signals it has been detecting long before you had the words for it.
Then there’s what grief experts, like me, identify what’s known as anniversary reactions. This pertains to the way grief aligns itself with specific dates, seasons, scents, or even the quality of light availability. If your loved one passed in autumn, or if your last Thanksgiving or Christmas with them is still vivid in your memory, your body will start to brace for that loss again as the season shifts not because it’s malfunctioning, but because it’s behaving exactly as a nervous system conditioned by love is meant to.
This response is normal. The resurgence of grief in October doesn’t signify a lack of healing. It demonstrates that you loved someone, that love is embodied, and that your body retains its memory.
What ancestral traditions recognize and what psychology is gradually beginning to understand is that the approach to seasonal grief isn’t about management. It’s about ritual. It involves providing grief with a dignified and intentional outlet, on that is affirming such as, I acknowledge your presence, I’m creating space for you, you don’t need to catch me off guard in the cereal aisle😁.
A Year-Round Relationship Practice
If October has opened something that you don’t want to close by November 3rd, here’s what I propose. Not just a singular ritual but a practice that you revisit.
Light a candle weekly. Select one candle, choose a specific color, scent, or something that reminds you of them or your relationship. Light it weekly, ideally on the same day. Not for a specific reason. Just as a signal: I am present. I have not forgotten. The line of communication remains open. There’s no need for words; the act of lighting it is the prayer.
Speak their name. Out loud. In the car, in the kitchen, wherever you naturally converse with them. Speaking the name of someone who has passed is one of the most subtly powerful acts of grief in a culture that quickly stops mentioning it after the funeral.
Designate a chair or display a photograph. It doesn’t have to be an overwhelming shrine. Just a single photograph placed in an area you pass daily. A chair at the table that is recognized rather than discreetly avoided. A tangible reminder that they remain part of this household, this life, this ongoing narrative. The ofrenda tradition embodies a wisdom that Western grief culture often neglects: the deceased require a space within the home. When we eliminate all reminders because they are too painful, we aren’t healing. Instead, we’re practicing a form of forgetting that grief doesn’t need.
Engage on ordinary days. This one is the most vital. Not only on anniversaries, not just in October, and not just when grief overwhelms you. On a Tuesday. While showering. When you see the crackers. Allow these moments to be contact points rather than disturbances. They are not signs of your mind failing. They signify a relationship that persists in its current form.
Journal Prompt
If I didn’t require a holiday to allow it, how would I maintain communication with my deceased loved ones?
Write freely without revision. Be specific, not “I would honor them more” but focus on tangible actions, real actions. Use the candle. The chair. The Tuesday morning chat in the car. What does this relationship look like when it exists throughout all twelve months, rather than just one?
Coming this Thursday in the Grief Sanctuary I’ll be discussing the importance of the ancestor altar practice. We’ll collectively build altars this week: discuss what to include, how to activate them, and how to utilize them as a living practice instead of a seasonal ornament. This Thursday post will be accessible to all Grief Sanctuary members.
The Elements of Grief course launch date has been pushed up due to LIFE. The course will explore elements of Earth, Water, Air, Fire, Spirit and serve as frameworks for the intricate nature of grief, including the ancestral work we are currently engaging in. Join the waitlist here
🌿 The Grief Sanctuary
The weekly Thursday practice, the ancestor altar ritual this week, and the community of BIPOC women doing this work together year-round not just in October. This is where the ongoing relationship practice lives.
🔮 Individual Mediumship Readings
If this season has you wanting contact, not just the candle, not just the journal prompt, but an actual reading individual readings are available for the work that needs a private container. NOTE: Consultation is for me to share my reading options with you, NOT to gather information.
📚 The Elements of Grief Course
Waitlist is now open. Built for the grief that the sympathy cards never touched.
With care and intention,
Amber
