In this episode of Dear Guides, we’re answering the question so many of us carry quietly: what happens when we die? According to psychic medium John Holland, no one crosses over alone. Someone is always there to meet you, guide you the rest of the way, and walk you through what’s known as a life review, a full-body remembering of the life you just lived.
John Holland has spent almost thirty years communicating with people who have crossed over, reading for thousands of grieving families, and drawing on accounts from people who experienced near death experiences. In this episode, he breaks down what actually happens the moment we die, what happens to our soul, how we reincarnate and how to reach a loved one who has passed.
What Happens When We Die, According to a Psychic Medium
Here’s what John told me, and he was careful to say this is what he’s learned from spirits themselves and from people who experienced near death experiences and came back to describe it.
When you die, you are never alone. Someone is already there to meet you.
“No one ever, ever goes home alone. There is somebody there to help them cross. Always.”
John has heard this pattern hold across almost thirty years of readings: a parent, a grandparent, a spouse, a friend who passed before you, standing right there the moment you leave your body. He says even mothers who’ve lost young children, and worry there’s no one on the other side to greet them, hear the same thing. Someone is always there.
He describes it like this: you leave the physical body, you float above it, and for a moment you can’t quite believe it’s you. Then someone takes you the rest of the way. That’s when, according to what he’s been told, the life review begins.
What Is a Life Review?
A life review is the part of dying that John says stays with people the most, especially the ones who’ve come back to talk about it.
You don’t just remember your life. You feel it, from every side of it.
That means feeling the good you put into the world, and feeling the moments you caused someone pain, from their point of view. John put it simply: you become your own judge and jury on the other side.
I love how he framed the takeaway. If more of us actually knew we’d feel the exact impact of our actions on another person, we might think twice about how we treat people here. That’s not meant to scare you. It’s meant to wake you up to how much this life, right now, actually matters.
Your Deceased Loved Ones Are Still Your Spirit Helpers
One thing John said early in our conversation reframed grief for me in a real way: the people you’ve lost don’t stop being in relationship with you. They just show up differently.
He calls them spirit helpers.
“I like to look at relatives, friends and family on this side as spirit helpers.”
Their job, as John describes it, is to nudge you toward the right place at the right time. A feeling to call someone. An unexplainable urge to take a different route home. A thought about someone right before they text you.
What Spirit Helpers Can (and Can’t) Do For You
This part matters, because it’s easy to romanticize this and expect too much.
John was blunt about the limits. Spirit helpers can guide you, comfort you, and let you know they’re near. What they can’t do is live your life for you or make your decisions for you. He told me about a woman who asked, during a reading, if her late father could help her with money. His answer, through John, was essentially: he wasn’t good with money here, and passing away didn’t make him an accountant.
Another woman wanted her mother, in a reading, to tell her whether to leave her marriage. John was clear that’s not what these connections are for. The people who’ve crossed over can send love and guidance. The actual lessons, the actual choices, are still yours to make while you’re here.
How to Ask For — and Actually Recognize — a Sign
If you’ve lost someone and you’re aching for proof they’re still around, John has a practice for that, and you don’t need to be a medium to do it.
The Happy Photo Practice
Find a photo of your loved one from a genuinely happy moment. Set it in front of you somewhere quiet. Put your phone in another room. Light a candle if you have one. Then, in John’s words, just invite them in.
“When the mind is quiet, the soul speaks.”
Say their name. Say something simple, like “I’m ready.” Then wait, without rushing it and without demanding a specific response. John says people often feel a breeze, a sudden warmth, or what he calls a “whomp” of sensation, and then immediately start looking for a logical explanation, like the air conditioning. His advice: notice it, and let yourself accept it instead of explaining it away.
He also told me something practical that I hadn’t thought about before: our loved ones take their cues from us. If they sense that a certain sign would upset you rather than comfort you, they’ll hold back. So being open matters as much as asking.
His memorable line for this whole practice: don’t look, don’t stare, be aware. Give it a few days. Signs tend to show up sideways, not on command.
Common Signs of After-Death Communication (ADC)
After-death communication, often shortened to ADC, describes a spontaneous experience of contact from someone who has died, without a medium, ritual, or device involved. John and I talked through the signs people report most often:
- A specific recurring image, like a butterfly, a cardinal, a penny, or a dime
- A sudden warmth, breeze, or physical sensation
- A strong memory or thought that arrives out of nowhere
- A felt sense that someone is in the room with you
- A song, show, or moment of unexpected timing that answers something you were just thinking about
For me, blue butterflies are the sign for my son, Owen. During our conversation, John was holding a card deck with blue butterflies on the cover, and I felt him with us the entire time we filmed.
Can Our Loved Ones Hear Us? Mental Telepathy, Explained
I asked John directly whether people on the other side can actually hear us, and his answer was yes, though not in the way we might picture it.
He explained that mediumship works through what he calls mental telepathy, because the people he’s connecting with no longer have a voice box. They send thoughts, images, and impressions, and he receives them the same way. He calls the technique mind mapping: holding onto a single image for just a second, the way one picture can carry a thousand words, instead of naming it too quickly.
He also said something that stuck with me. Our loved ones aren’t tracking our every move. They’re not watching us shower, as he joked. But when we think of them with real emotion attached, especially love, he says that emotion helps the connection travel faster.
“Energy is energy. And when you pass away, that energy is still there. Love is the bridge.”
That’s actually the title of John’s book, Bridging Two Realms, and it’s the clearest way I’ve heard this described: two realms, one bridge, and love is what it’s built from.
Does the Soul Reincarnate? The Oversoul Theory
This is where the conversation went somewhere I didn’t expect, and I think you’ll find it as fascinating as I did.
John doesn’t believe a soul simply leaves one life and enters the next in a single, linear line. He described something closer to what he calls an oversoul: a larger version of you that a single lifetime is drawn from, the way one file is pulled from a hard drive. When that lifetime is complete, the experience goes back into the larger soul, and another piece can come forward into a new life.
He used the image of a sun with rays. Every ray is a different lifetime, and every ray is still connected to, and still part of, the same sun.
That’s why, he explained, a medium can still connect with the specific personality of someone who has passed, even if some part of that soul is already living another life or has moved into a different role, like becoming a guide.
There’s no fixed answer for how long a soul waits before returning. John has seen it happen almost immediately, and he’s seen cases researched over roughly two hundred years apart, and that reincarnation seems to be a choice rather than a fixed rule.
Talking to Kids About Death and the Afterlife
John told me that children often start asking about the afterlife and angels around age seven, and he thinks it’s less about fear and more about their own soul waking up a little more to what’s beyond this life. His advice to parents is simple: let the conversation happen naturally, the same way you’d talk about anything else in daily life. Don’t force it, and don’t push a child to perform being intuitive if that’s not where they naturally are.
I shared with him that my own son has openly told his friends I talk to angels and God, and that I try to normalize it without insisting it’s the only way to see things. Some kids might believe it, some might not, and that’s okay. What matters is that the door stays open.
A Guided Meditation to Reach a Loved One: The Heart Pull
Toward the end of our conversation, John led me through a practice he calls the heart pull, and I want you to actually do this one, not just read about it.
Sit somewhere quiet. Relax your shoulders and your face. Picture someone you’ve lost, someone specific to you. Imagine a cord running from your heart to theirs, tight and real, connecting you.
Say their name in your mind. Then place both hands on your heart and press in gently, three times, slowly.
On the first pull, silently say: I feel you. On the second pull, say: I love you. On the third pull, say: speak now.
Then ask two questions, and wait for whatever comes, without rushing it: What do you want me to feel right now? What do you want me to remember right now?
When I did this with John, I felt my grandmother almost instantly. She showed me her patio in Florida and a clean bathtub from my childhood, small, ordinary images that meant everything, because they were about feeling safe and cared for. That’s often how these messages arrive: not as a dramatic vision, but as a specific, familiar feeling.
John’s advice afterward: write down what came through, even if it seems small. You can return to this practice any time you want to feel that cord again.
If you’re grieving someone right now, I hope this gave you something to hold onto: you are not
disconnected from them, and you don’t need anyone else’s permission to try to feel them again.
Resources
I recommend John’s book Bridging Two Realms and card deck Spirit Messages
You can learn more about John’s work here.
I also recommend the book Journey of Souls by Michael Newton.
Want to go deeper? Join me for Dear Guides Live on Nov 21 in NYC for a day dedicated to developing your psychic abilities. Get all the details here.
Get my free meditation to connect with your spirit guides
Frequently Asked Questions About Life After Death
What happens when we die, according to psychic mediums? John Holland describes leaving the physical body and being met immediately by someone from the other side, so that no one crosses over alone. This is typically followed by what people describe as a life review.
What is a life review? A life review is an experience reported by people who have had near-death experiences, in which they see and feel the full impact of their life, including how their actions affected other people, as if living it again firsthand.
Can you communicate with a deceased loved one? John says you don’t need to be a medium to try. Sit quietly with a favorite photo of your loved one, light a candle, and invite them in, then stay open to whatever sensation, memory, or feeling arrives.
What are common signs of after-death communication (ADC)? People commonly report a recurring image or object (like a butterfly, cardinal, penny, or dime), sudden warmth or a breeze, a vivid memory arriving unprompted, or a felt sense of presence.
Do our loved ones know when we’re thinking about them? John says yes, especially when the thought carries real emotion. He believes love is what helps that connection travel.
Does the soul reincarnate? John describes the soul as multidimensional, like a larger oversoul that individual lifetimes are drawn from, the way rays come from the same sun. Each life stays connected to that larger soul rather than existing as a single, separate loop.
Is there suffering on the other side? John states plainly that there is no suffering on the other side, regardless of how someone lived or how they died.
About Gabby: Gabrielle Bernstein is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and the host of Dear Guides, a show dedicated to spiritual connection, healing, and remembering who you really are. She’s spent years teaching people how to trust their intuition, connect with their guides, and live a more spiritually aligned life.