Soul Friends: How Do We Talk to the Ones Who’ve Left Too Soon?
Shamanic wRites: Transforming estrangement into life, blessing, and prayer
J was my drummer. He and I could spend hours, just the two of us, jamming on a single riff. Exploring, experimenting, creating, discovering. He was my favorite person to play music with, and that’s exactly what it was—play, in every sense of the word.
When he and I closed the doors to our rehearsal room, we shut out pessimism and refused to let it poison the sound. Behind those doors, we created a safe space for possibility—one where new life could grow.
While we weren’t consciously aware of this at the time, we could feel that playing music together was a ritual of invitation. It invited the innocent, forgotten, and lost parts of ourselves to return, following the vibrations along the thinnest of threads. Those threads were a connection to what came before.
After a long and complicated battle with health issues, J committed suicide. And whether someone actually dies or just experiences the “death” of connection and innocence, this is how addiction plays out. It severs our tether to possibility. It cuts us off from ourself and estranges us from others. It eliminates feelings of safety and replaces them with a voice that tells us we’re not enough.
Even now—decades later and decades since I got sober—the void left by the loss of my connection to J remains. Each relationship is a dance, and he’s the only person who I fit together with in exactly that way. While we can try to recreate the same steps with another partner, it’s just not the same.
But I don’t believe that’s the end—not entirely. While our dance partners may no longer be with us on this earthly plane, it’s never too late to send invitations of reconnection and beauty.
If nothing else, we might offer such invitations for the sheer joy, magic, and medicine of play. It also reopens possibility and helps us reconnect with lost Soul Friends.
But first…
How did we get here? And how did we find our true Soul Friends?
Well, as addicts, one of the reasons that we dull our awareness with substances and actions is because we feel too much. We have a specific brand of sensitivity that’s reactive to a specific brand of pain.
This kind of pain comes from the wounds of trauma. Those wounds linger just beneath the surface of everyday life and consciousness. Ready to break through at any moment, they hold the secrets of a hidden and painful past. When laid bare, they wreak havoc on “normality” and disrupt the status quo.
In order to keep the status quo humming, we shove such feelings back under the surface. When things feel like too much, we numb them through using our addictive substance or behavior of choice.
Trauma. Secrets. Pain. Sensitivity. Using. The cycle perpetuates more of the same.
This kind of thing is easy to spot—especially if you’ve experienced it firsthand. We recognize others with a kindred sensitivity. We relate to their situation and form a connection. This place of connection holds possibility.
I’m not talking about hanging out with other addicts who are mindlessly reacting from trauma. I’m proposing that this recognition of shared sensitivity, pain, and addiction offers an opening. It’s an invitation to know and a doorway into an older, deeper, truer form of connection.
This soul-level resonance is like a musical note emanating from the instrument of one’s spirit and matching the vibration of another’s spirit. The reverberating harmonics of related frequencies bounce back and forth in song between two people. Both souls recognize a felt, mutual experience.
This familiarity goes beyond addiction, transcends rational knowing, and feels older than our present life and experience. It’s a seeing and knowing of another’s true spirit that I like to call a Soul Friend.
This is the brand of sensitivity I’m speaking about. It doesn’t require an explanation, and the two parties usually don’t speak of it or even fully recognize it when the bond is alive and well. A Soul Friend is someone who sees us and sees past all the crap; there are moments of deep connection without having to wade through the muck of processing.
It’s a kind of magic—like a brief and momentary touch of Grace from the Gods. We just don’t realize it at the time so, like most healing, it requires circling back and doing the human, hands-in-the-dirt work that we skipped.
Unfortunately, when it comes to addiction, these connections are often broken too soon. We lose this Soul Friend to an overdose, suicide, or the aptly termed “death by misadventure.”
What now? How do we talk to those who’ve left too soon?
When you were young and your heart
Was an open book
You used to say live and let live
You know you did
You know you did
You know you did—Paul McCartney and Wings, “Live and Let Die”
When I lost my friend J, I always thought I’d find another to fill in that blank. Someone to take the place of my Soul Friend so that I could again be seen and known—because, after all, that first go-around was so natural, so easy to make, and I was so young…so, this should be a snap, right? There must be another right around the next corner.
There wasn’t.
And so, the part of us that’s expecting the Universe to provide another stays in waiting and stays frozen—not only waiting for another to appear, but also waiting to be seen, to be shared, to be known. All that, and without having to do the work.
Now, there are two problems:
The Soul Friend is gone.
The part of me that was connected to them is frozen in place and in a state of waiting.
I’m going to have to stop waiting, do the work, unfreeze that part of myself, and reconnect with what I have now. I will send out the “notes” I play as words, phrases, and blessings so they may resonate in harmony with life, love, Nature, and soul.
Ready to join me?
Do you have a Soul Friend who left too soon?
Is there a part of you still waiting to be seen and known in the way that they saw and knew you?
Let’s wRite.
The work we do during the Shamanic wRites part of the Program is part of this process. Here’s one way to perform this particular exercise addressing your Soul Friend.
If you already have a spiritual writing practice, please feel free to undertake the work however it feels best for you and however you connect with spirit.
Also, I felt like drumming today, so here’s a new audio file to let your writing ride the drums!
Make an altar.
Gather items that remind you of your Soul Friend. These can be pictures, talismans, concert tickets, etc.
Arrange these items on an altar that will be in front of you when you’re writing.
If possible, include a picture in which they are looking directly at the camera.
Set aside the time, space, and writing materials.
Pick a time when you won’t be interrupted and turn off all devices.
If you have special writing materials, have them close by and in front of your altar.
Spend time at the altar and connect.
Looking at your altar, bring up memories of your Soul Friend in detail.
Close your eyes, breathe, and deepen this connection.
Call in your Soul Friend and call upon your frozen part, so you can meet again.
Listen to the drums.
Play the above drumming audio.
Receive the prompt.
Open your eyes and say the prompt aloud three times, sending the words directly into the eyes of your Soul Friend (either through a picture on the altar or in your mind’s eye).
Write down the following prompt: “Dear [Name], My Soul Friend, you are not forgotten. The gifts you brought sparked my life. It is important that I remember you and these gifts now because…”
Write.
From this place of connection, put pen to paper and let it rip.
The drums will continue for about 9 minutes—keep writing.
There will be a break in the rhythm, 4 sets of 7 beats, signaling that it’s time to finish.
Put your pen down.
There will be 1 minute of rapid drum beats—close your eyes, disengage, and send thanks into everything you’ve seen and done.
Another 4 sets of 7 beats signal the end of the session.
Finito.
Feel yourself in your body and breathe.
Take time to look over what you’ve written and digest what arose. Don’t jump back into the everyday. Give yourself the gift of receiving all that arose from this reconnection.
Client Example: Transforming Estrangement into Life, Blessing, and Prayer
Here’s an example from a client. S was generous enough to share how she worked through a couple of roadblocks that many of us run up against: the feelings of guilt and the expression of grief.
Her Soul Friend, IG, had recently passed. She had been estranged from him due to disagreement and miscommunication. This is a common consequence of addiction and compounds feelings of guilt and suppression of grief. There are some relationships—even those we hold closest—in which amends don’t occur.
Maybe you can relate?
For S, this Shamanic wRites exercise facilitated healing through expression, release, forgiveness, and word-gifts of praise.
Sitting in front of her altar, this is what she wrote, spoke, and sent to IG with intention:
IG, you lived this life unabashedly.
Full tilt. Wind at your back, face towards the sun.
All in, all the time.
Your gift to deeply connect with people was unprecedented.
You not only saw a person’s spirit, you told them so.
You led. And we followed.
You are my brother eternally and I love you so very much.
Love for real not fade away.
She voiced the above three times in succession. Taking a few breaths after each reading, she brought in new memories of their Soul Friendship, refocused on connecting directly to his eyes, and sent forth another round of heartfelt medicine.
After the final waves of rising and falling emotions subsided, we sent thanks to all of the spirits involved and closed the ritual. For now, this was good. At the same time, S knew it was something she’d need to put into practice going forward.
And this is all we can do on this side of life and death: express from our Hearts, send our message with love and blessings, and know that it is providing notes of harmony that are powered by our best human efforts—ones that perhaps will find their way to and resonate with our Soul Friend.
If not, we failed beautifully. And that’s never a failure.
Important Shifts
In this method of writing, we shift from writing about a Soul Friend to writing directly to them. They are not a fixed-in-place object.
This is what shamanism in the 21st century is all about.
This is what The Sober Shaman and Shamanic wRites is all about.
This is what the necessary shifts in spirituality are all about.
It doesn’t matter whether you call it shamanism or spirituality, or even if you incorporate it into the religion that works for you.
It’s all about reclaiming our direct connection to and our inherent relationships with our helping and compassionate spirits.
Spirits are not something to be written about as much as they are to be faced, recognized, remembered, and written and spoken to.
When we write about something, it’s an it, an other, and an object—which on the page makes it captured, static, and stagnant.
In contrast, writing in relationship with is a surprise. It’s alive, moving, and ebbs and flows. We enter into an exchange and a give-and-take. We feed and are fed. We nourish and receive nourishment.
When I was a young man, this came naturally and without explanation or effort in the presence of my Soul Friend J. Glimpses of these moments today serve as reminders that I have a practice needing tending.
Now You.
Some people do the writing portion of this work at a gravesite, and some take it to the gravesite to say aloud. Some speak it from the place where their Soul Friend’s ashes are spread or the place where they first met. Or perhaps where they played music together or shared food. Or maybe carried out into the Wind or the River or the Canyon or the Wood.
Wherever you do this practice, remember to write to your Soul Friend rather than about them. Make it a living, breathing, vibrating connection. See what arises. See, know, and connect with your Soul Friend’s true spirit.
I always love hearing what people receive from this work. If you feel called, please share what you’ve gotten below or send me an email: spirit@randallyons.com
With blessings,
Randal