My dad David Proulx, a writer-PR-media genius so bright he skipped two grades at the same time one year in elementary school, died when I was 17.
He was such a gifted talent that an essay he wrote, “My Idea Of Canadian Citizenship”, as a 13-year-old in 1950, was selected from thousands of competing works and read by Prime Minister St. Laurent over the CBC. I have many yellowed letters of congratulations, from St. Laurent and others in the House of Commons, and many weathered newspaper articles about the “remarkable” little boy. My favourite is the one headlined: “Orphan Boy Made Happy”. His dad died in a car accident just before he was born, and his mother passed when he was just eight.
Dad died of esophageal cancer at 49, early on a hot summer morning a couple weeks before my birthday. My mother found him collapsed on the floor, woke me up, and we heaved him – so heavy! – into a chair; she called an ambulance. Mum raced from the house to make sure paramedics found our impossible-to-spot 1/2 mile-long driveway off the nondescript dirt road our home stood way back from, hidden in trees on 150 acres of land.
My younger brothers were still sleeping. It was just me and him, alone in a room at dawn, and as I sobbed “I love you Dad”, a full freak-out rising rapidly within me, he gasped lightly and passed away.
I did love him and he loved me, but we had an extremely volatile relationship. He was an intense alcoholic, living in a brilliantly creative but tortured mind. I wasn’t like all the other boys, and had a quick mind, lippy mouth, and a rebel heart. The older I got the more I refused to back down from him as we fought and fought. He also didn’t understand – and so didn’t pretend to like – gay people and I knew I was gay people and he knew I was gay people.
It was a rough ride he and I took together.
Since his death, in the – god 30 years ago, this July – I’d felt little about him except negative emotion. Until a couple of years ago, when I was on a flight home from Mexico City – Madonna concert! – when I was listening to Abraham via Esther Hicks, who was discussing what really happens when we die: there is no death. (The basis of all my #ThoughtRevolution work are from the teachings of Abraham.)
I had always thought death equalled over until I began studying Abraham – who use every analogy, joke, example, story they can come up with – to insist that there is no death, not the way most of us think, anyway.
At 30,000 feet above Texas, I heard Abraham make their case yet again that there is no death – but in a different way than I’d heard before. What happened next was so overwhelmingly powerful to me I learned once and for all there is no death. >Tweet this!
My dad has never been gone – and I found proof of this so irrefutable it shook me to my core. It changed my relationship with my dad for the better forever, healing me mid-air.
Last June, Patrick and I flew to Chicago to attend an Abraham / Law of Attraction workshop; I felt (I knew) that if we did I would be selected to go up for a chat in the hot seat – I have once before – to share my story in full with Abraham, and hear what they had to say.
I did get picked, and the video below shares my full story and what Abraham had to add to it. I’ve never shared it publicly because it is so intensely personal. When Father’s Day came last week I felt the time was right.
This is why I am so passionate about the power of a #ThoughtRevolution, the power of alignment, of allowing, everything I talk about here and in speeches – because, as you will see, what you can manifest as a result is so MUCH more than what we have ever dreamed. You can be, do, have anything – watch the video and see.
I dedicate this post to everybody out there who carries wounds from having “lost” someone they love. May you know what I do – that the “loss” is just an illusion, that access to who you love who “died” is yours to have, and may you and carry the feeling of peace and joy this deep knowing keeps giving me, always.
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- Related: Give Up Being Right
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Wow, just wow! What an amazing story and video Shaun. We all share special relationships with one another and the most rewarding feeling is the release of negative emotion and replacing it with positive remembrance and the realization of connections that bind us forever. Thank you for sharing!
Thanks Andria.
It has been my experience that loved ones who have passed are with me still. Sometimes remarkably close. The most. generous gift we can give to them and ourselves is understanding that they are more than the experiences we had with them. Thanks for sharing your story Shaun.
Thanks Krista 🙂
As an older man, I find I think about my parents more and more. So many of the things I do, the things I say, the talents that I have, I recognize as coming from them. I look in the mirror to shave every morning and I see my father’s eyes.
I have always felt that they are a living part of me, helping me to make the right choices, choose the right path for me. You confirm this subconscious understanding. Thank you so much.
Thanks Leo, especially given the mentorship you’ve always given me – I appreciate it. X
Shaun, you are such a beautiful soul. Thank you for this gift. It was brave to share such a deeply personal experience. I’ve followed Abraham and the Hicks for about 10 years now. At times, my old skeptical side steps in and doesn’t know how it flows, but my IB says it isn’t for me to know the how. Ester amazes me. As one who has witnessed this in person, can you describe the change you see in her when Abraham comes in? Are there changes other than her calm, emotionally disconnected (therefore non-judgmental) state? Just curious here. I hope to be able to attend a workshop myself someday. There is much love here for you, dear one. <3
Polly thank you for your kind words. In answer to your question, the morphing from Esther to Abraham is now slight (years ago it was much more like something physical was entering her). As I have watched, her head simply shifts and there’s Abraham. What is completely different is tone of voice and personality. Clearly not the same being. I appreciate you writing in!