04/13/2026
I highly recommend this book if you’re loved one has passed away. 🦋
I didn't pick up this book expecting to cry. I didn't expect to put it down and immediately start noticing things I'd been blind to for years. And I certainly didn't expect to become someone who believes in signs.
But here we are.
Laura Lynne Jackson is a medium. I know, that word comes with baggage. But she's not the kind of medium you see on television, shouting predictions at a studio audience. She's a high school English teacher from Long Island who happens to communicate with people who have crossed over. Signs is her attempt to teach the rest of us how to recognize when the other side is trying to reach back.
The book is built on a simple, radical premise: our deceased loved ones never truly leave. They send messages constantly, through feathers, coins, songs, butterflies, license plates, dreams, and a thousand other small disruptions of the ordinary. The problem isn't that the signs aren't there. The problem is that we've forgotten how to see them.
What This Book Gave Me:
1. The penny on the floor is not just a penny.
Jackson tells a story that still gives me chills. A grieving father, weeks after losing his son, finds a penny on the floor of a restaurant. He almost ignores it. But something makes him pick it up. The date on the penny? His son's birth year. He asks for another sign, something more specific. That night, his daughter finds a penny in her shoe. Same year. The universe, Jackson explains, speaks in the language of the person listening. For some, it's pennies. For others, it's cardinals. For one woman in the book, it's the sudden, inexplicable scent of lavender, her grandmother's favorite perfume, in a room where no lavender exists. These aren't coincidences. They're conversations.
2. You have to ask, then let go.
Here's the part I got wrong for years. Jackson teaches that asking for a sign works best when you don't demand. You don't bargain. You don't say, "If you're really there, make the light flicker right now." That's pressure, not prayer. Instead, you ask softly. You say, "I miss you. If you're around, could you send me a sign? Something I'll recognize." And then you release it. You go back to your day. You don't stalk the universe. The most powerful signs, Jackson writes, arrive when you've stopped clawing for them. They arrive in the quiet. In the surrender.
3. Dreams are the clearest phone line to the other side.
Jackson devotes an entire section to what she calls "visitation dreams"—dreams that feel different from ordinary ones. In a visitation dream, you remember everything. The colors are brighter. The loved one looks healthy, whole, young. They often speak in complete sentences. And they almost never say goodbye. They say, "I'm okay." Or "I love you." Or "You're going to be fine." One man in the book dreamed of his late wife standing in their kitchen, smiling, holding a cup of coffee exactly the way she always did. He woke up knowing, not hoping, that she had come to see him. Jackson says we receive these dreams more often than we realize. We just talk ourselves out of believing them.
4. The universe has a sense of humor.
This surprised me. I expected a book full of solemn, tearful messages. And there is plenty of grief here, honestly held. But Jackson also shares signs that are funny. A woman asks her deceased husband to send her a sign that he's still around. She asks for something specific, a red balloon. The next day, she's stopped at a red light. A truck carrying a load of... red balloons... pulls up next to her. Then another truck. Then another. She's surrounded by red balloons, laughing and crying at the same time. Her husband, Jackson writes, was showing off. That's love, too. Not just comfort. Playfulness.
5. You don't need a medium to receive a sign.
This is Jackson's most liberating message. She is a medium. She could easily tell readers that they need someone like her to interpret the other side. Instead, she spends the entire book teaching people how to listen for themselves. The tools are simple: pay attention. Keep a journal of synchronicities. Notice when something feels like a wink from the universe rather than random chance. Trust your gut when it says, "That wasn't nothing." You already have the ability. You just have to give yourself permission to use it.
Late in the book, Jackson describes a woman who lost her son to su***de. For months, she was consumed by guilt and despair. Then she started noticing cardinals. Everywhere. At her window. On her morning walk. Sitting on her car's side mirror as she drove. She looked up the spiritual meaning of cardinals and found an old folk belief: cardinals appear when a loved one from heaven wants to visit. She didn't fully believe it. But she started talking to the cardinals anyway. She told them about her day. She said her son's name out loud.
One afternoon, she was sitting in her garden, deep in grief. A cardinal landed on the fence in front of her. It tilted its head and looked directly at her. And then it spoke. Not in words. In a sound she had never heard a cardinal make before. A soft, almost human chirp. Three notes. The same three notes her son used to whistle when he came through the front door to let her know he was home.
She knew. Not hoped. Not wondered. Knew.
Jackson writes that signs aren't proof. They're not meant to convince skeptics in a laboratory. They're love notes. Personal, specific, intimate. They're the universe's way of saying, You are not forgotten. You are not alone. Keep going.
I finished Signs and started noticing things. A feather on my car seat with no explanation. A song on the radio at the exact moment I was thinking of someone I'd lost. A dream where my grandmother hugged me and I could feel the warmth of her hands.
Maybe it's all coincidence. Maybe it's confirmation bias.
Or maybe the universe has been talking to me my whole life, and I finally learned how to listen.
Either way, I'm paying attention now.
BOOK: https://amzn.to/4cihK3T
