Life, Death, and Spirituality

Signs and Synchronicities of Death Gave Me Rebirth

To embody divine feminine energy, I had to let some things die

On a cold morning in the dead of winter, I took a walk at a suburban lake where I came shockingly upon a lifeless deer lying belly-up in the snow. Its leg was caught in a wire fence. I imagined it fighting and wriggling for hours, trying to free itself from the snare. Clearly, a predator had arrived at some point because it had a large gash in its abdomen and its entrails were scattered in the snow under the trees; a grey, dull color. I guessed that it had met its end recently — and violently.

And what was I doing, the observer of this surprising manifestation? I was enduring a struggle, too. At that moment in my path, the predators of my life were happy to tear my guts apart and leave me lying in the snow.

Back then, I was still new to the concept of synchronicities. The messages we sometimes get from the universe had recently become a topic of extreme interest for me. Animal energies and the archetypes that animals embody filled my daily ponderings.

I just barely understood that animals like deer could appear in front of me as messages from the divine realm. Lessons could be delivered from forces I don’t always fully understand.

As I walked away from the deer, feeling the change of the wind descending upon my life, I knew enough to understand that a dead animal doesn’t symbolically represent death. In nature, death isn’t bad. Only humans perceive it as bad because we’ve forgotten our eternal nature.

As a sign from the universe on this cold day at the lake, it represented the end of something.

A dead animal in my path gives me the message that something I’m holding onto must be allowed to die. Violently, perhaps.

Deer are gentle and meek creatures. They don’t hurt anyone. They run when they see you because they just want to be left alone. At certain times in our lives, these can be healthy personal qualities.

Over a small incident, deer enter fight-or-flight mode. They protect themselves instead of standing in their power. This was my problem.

I had never been one to stand in my power. For far too long, I’d been unable to connect with my authentic voice.

I was in a vicious cycle of people-pleasing.

I hated confrontations.

When I was forced to do things I didn’t want to do, I would grumble about it and go along with it until I exploded with the anger that I’d been bottling up. It was not healthy. Not at all.

I kept reacting in the same way to situations, never realizing that there was another way. Never knowing that I could let that part of me die so that a new, happier me could blossom.

Slowly, I was beginning to understand that the cycle must be broken.

So, what did this dead deer mean for me? It was the end of the era of people-pleasing. I had to let that part of me pass away and then embody the divine feminine goddess that I truly am.

At the time I saw this dead deer, I was caught in a prison of my own making. At my job, all interactions left me feeling unheard and powerless. I was about to lose that job, too.

I had bosses, romantic partners, and even friends who didn’t seem to respect me at all. I invited people into my life who were happy to abuse me.

I didn’t say “no” easily. I used the word “sorry” way too much. I didn’t believe in myself. I was fading fast.

Every day, I was being presented with opportunities to grow and leave this people-pleasing cycle by the wayside, yet I wasn’t quite healed enough to start a new path of empowerment for myself.

It was my own fault. I was living in a karmic loop of inability to express my personal sovereignty over situations in my life, resulting every time in defeat of some kind. I have no one else to blame except myself for playing the victim.

The deer was an omen of things to come, there’s no doubt in my mind about that. I had already felt them beginning.

Then came the cleanse.

Yeah.

I went to an extremely-intense-raw-vegan-detox health retreat center in Florida, and that’s when everything changed. I surrendered so much from my physical body that I could finally remember who I was.

I sat in the sauna for an hour in the morning and another hour in the evening. I meditated twice a day. I ate bean sprouts and avocadoes. I swam in the mineral pools. I slowed down and felt the breeze on my face. Every afternoon, a monsoon of a storm would sweep through the place to clean out anything stagnant and let me start again.

My physical habits were completely reset so that my mental and spiritual habits had no choice but to follow suit.

One day, about halfway through the two weeks I spent there, I felt my mind changing. It was a liberated mind at that moment.

Blockages were removed. People didn’t scare me anymore. I could feel my inner voice becoming stronger. My world was limitless.

I felt so good that I don’t think there was a cell in my body that wasn’t glowing.

“I’m someone new,” I said to myself. “Or maybe I am who I was always supposed to be.”

By making physically healthy choices, I was released from the things I’d been carrying for years that had entered my field of energy, and I was given a path to move into the light.

Who knew that I was actually carrying my self-destructive cycles in my body? This is how karma works.

A yoga instructor sat at our table for dinner one night at the retreat center. He spoke with slight arrogance as he hovered over his plate of raw vegetables and vegan soup. “The time in my life when I was the most ripped was when I was working out ten hours a day,” he told us.

I said calmly, “Ayurveda tells us that too much exercise can actually impede our digestion, and I believe that.” He tried to interrupt my words, and then abruptly got up from the table and left.

It was a weird interaction, but I was unphased. Before, I would have been angry or regretful. I would have felt guilt for speaking my mind.

For the first time, I knew I’d done nothing wrong. It wasn’t really my problem if someone didn’t like my ideas, you see. My inner strength was becoming pronounced. My divine feminine energy was amplifying.

People in my vicinity could feel this intensity and the fact that I wasn’t afraid to be me anymore, so the only thing they could do to “win” was to walk away.

You can’t imagine how much I smiled when I understood that this was happening.

Someone else at the retreat center tested my boundaries. They went too far. They wanted me to do things like colonics and wheatgrass implants in my rectum that I simply wasn’t willing to do. And they weren’t showing any signs of giving up on pressuring me.

Instead of reacting with anger as I had before so many times, I reacted with self-love and compassion for them. Clearly and consciously, I communicated my intentions with gratitude and then walked away.

This person continued to try to force me into their way of thinking, but I stood my ground with love. I forgave them.

Walking away from this conversation, a toad appeared. It was as if the universe was there to tell me something. It was a giant toad. I had never seen such a toad! It was the size of my head and looked like it was a ninety percent flab.

It stayed long enough to deliver its message. I knew it was saying to me that this was a big evolutionary step today. Frogs and toads teach us that we can be born in one form and transform into another later in life. I’d become something very new.

It hopped away heavily into the forest. I said my goodbyes.

I emerged from the raw vegan cleanse as a new human being — someone who was no longer a chronic people-pleaser. Compassion is everything, but bending over backward to make people happy isn’t. It’s more compassionate to be an authentic force of love than to be anything else for people.

Returning from Florida, I went on yet another walk. Now it was summer, and life was teeming all around my every step. Dragonflies, butterflies, and frogs found me in my path — all creatures of transformation.

A new opening had been created in the thicket of the forest. A sort of a portal. Something had physically trampled and flattened branches that once formed a wall of vines and bushes. It beckoned me to enter.

I stepped through with some caution.

Just a few steps in, I located a skull leaning against a rock. What was it? It was the skull of a deer. It was white. It had been there a long time.

I looked around the serene forest. Like the dead deer I saw in the winter months, the body of this one had also been scattered about. Other white bone fragments lay around in the dirt, some broken. I imagined its bodily tissues had gone into the bellies of scavengers years ago.

It was shocking. I just stared.

Breaking the silence, a little thrush appeared on a nearby branch and did its best to voice its concern for me. I knew it was warning me, “Get out!”

I ran as fast as my legs would go! I didn’t want to be in that portal any longer. I got the message I came for, and I was done in there. I’d gone deep enough into the shadows of my psyche.

There are still skeletons in my closet. There is still a trace of the old me. Remnants of past cycles stay. I’m not totally free yet.

Healing is hard. It’s the most painful part of life.

Clearing out an old cycle is the most transformative, powerful thing you can achieve in this existence. But you’re not alone. The whole universe is here to give you signs. Mother Nature will create reminders for you to stay on the path.

When you see death in nature, remember that something is being released in you that is no longer serving your highest purpose. Your task is to let it go intentionally.

Hi, I’m Emily. I write about wellness, consciousness, and existence. I have a graduate degree in philosophy, I’ve lived around the world, and I teach meditation. Visit my website or follow me on Instagram to find out more.

The divine in me recognizes the divine in you.