Have You Ever Wondered if Past Lives Are Possible?
Photo courtesy of Pintrest
Since my book The Gathering Room - A Tale of Nelly Butler was published in 2022 I have found myself exposed to a lot of different ideas that I don’t think I would have given much thought too had I not written the book. Things like ghosts, psychics, past lives, etc and etc. I’ve met so many people who tell me their stories of the spiritual or supernatural that one can’t help but be intrigued by these ideas. Nelly’s story alone makes you stop and think about what life after death is like.
When I meet people they usually want to ask me if I think Nelly’s story is true. Do I think it really happened? Yes, I really believe that George, Lydia and all of the others were involved in some sort of paranormal, supernatural, if not spiritual experience. Where I’m still undecided is on what caused it. The next question I always get asked is do I think I channeled the spirit of Nelly Butler when I wrote this story? Oh I don’t think so. I’ll be honest, the whole creative process was strangely bizarre for me. I never thought of myself as a writer, author or even anyone creative! So to be able to fictionalize a piece of history, and in such a successful way, was a unique experience, but I don’t think I was told what to write by Nelly’s spirit. My story is fiction. If Nelly’s spirit was guiding my work, wanted her voice to be heard, don’t you think she would have shown me what really happened?
The Gathering Room - A Tale of Nelly Butler is written in a very realistic way. I hear that a lot. People tell me the line between fiction and reality is sometimes hard to find. Because of that the next question I get asked a lot is do I think I was Nelly in a previous life? Oh dear! Again I’m going to say that if I were Nelly in a previous life and I was lucky enough to remember that past life, I’d probably have written what really happened and not the magical story that has captivated so many people. The same holds true if you ask me if I was Lydia, or any of the other characters in a past life. I don’t believe so.
That whole line of questioning took off into the stratosphere after Bud entered my life. It’s not hard to understand why. The collision of our two lives, with the book in the middle, brought to life for a lot of readers the love story that were George & Nelly’s lives. So I can understand the “Do you think you guys are George & Nelly?” questions we get all of the time now. I’ll admit there are some moments, when the weird happenings even makes us pause, that we have looked at each other and said….”Do you think?” but then we laugh and shake our heads. Nah, not a chance.
But yet the thought lingered so I approached Bud about this idea of getting a Past Life Reading the other day. You know he is not only a really good sport, but I know he thinks about things just like I do. So I wasn’t surprised that, with one eyebrow cocked, he agreed to do it with me if we could find someone who didn’t know a thing about us. Despite everything we’ve been through, everything we’ve witnessed and experienced, we are both still skeptics in some way. So I set about booking an appointment, made sure not to give the woman any information about us that she could search the internet for and kept our real identities on the down low. Soon we had our chance to learn if we were indeed George & Nelly Butler!
Let me burst the bubble for you immediately….we have never been George & Nelly Butler! We are not them. The trials and experiences they went through in the late 1790’s belong to another two souls, not Bud and I. Neither are we George & Lydia, so that gets that right out of the way.
But the woman who gave us our past life readings didn’t tell us this, she didn’t say to Bud “You are not George!” she just didn’t mention any of them at all!! Afterwards I realized if I had sat there and she had told us we were George & Nelly I would have walked out of there even more skeptical then when I walked in. I would have laid blame on the internet or that she had somehow figured out who we were in real life. Told us what she thought we wanted to hear. Instead her reading walked us both down a path that we had never even thought of but it made so much more sense! We were both wary, was she speaking in generalizations that we were just eager to apply to our own lives? No, she was pretty darn specific! And specific on things that neither one of us had spoken about to each other, to our friends or family, let alone posted about on social media. It was comforting and incredibly peaceful all at the same time.
Whatever your belief structure is, it’s interesting to explore other ideas even if it’s just for the entertainment value. Bud and I walked away from that experience for the better I think. We have talked about it long into the night, on several nights. We do that a lot, talk.
I will tell you this, we may not have lived George & Nelly’s life, but our story was so much more better than that! So, so much better! If past lives are indeed a real thing….. I just may have to write that story next!