Animals Life After Life: Messages of Love from the Animals on the Other Side

By Jan Schipman

This unique and uplifting book takes the reader on a spiritual journey with animals that have passed over to the Other Side. The animals are still here in spirit to help us know we are never alone. They are giving us signs and messages of love and are by our side always. Hearing their stories will give people hope, fill their hearts with love, a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Jun 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885901055

Jan Schipman

Jan Schipman is a multi-sensory animal communicator working with animals all over world. She is a Reiki Master, an energy healer, and she works with animal sanctuaries. Her passion is working with animals to receives messages from them to heal their lives. Through their messages, the animals also help people tap into their inner selves for healing and strengthening the human-animal bond. Living in Phoenix, Arizona, Jan has been married for 43 years, and together they have one son. She loves to do anything in nature-outdoors.

Book preview

Chapter 1

My Journey with the Animals

M

y journey working with the animals began many years ago. I have had animal companions my whole life starting when I was a little girl. There has always been a deep connection to them. I received many lessons from each animal. Yet, it wasn’t until I was an adult that I began hearing their messages.

I grew up in a family of six: my parents, my older sister, my older brother, my twin sister, and me. We always had animal companions. My mom loved animals. She grew up in a small town in Oklahoma. Her constant companion and pal was Teddy, a tiny dog with curly white fur. When my parents got married, they always wanted to have an animal family member. They knew how important it was for children to grow up learning to love and take care of a family pet. My mom had a special way with the dogs who were a part of our family. She had a gentle way of training them. I do not know how she did it, but each dog that lived with us throughout the years knew they were to stay in the kitchen area and never go into the rest of the house. Every animal we had was gentle, kind, friendly, socialized, and so very loving. From the time I was in kindergarten until I was in college and moved away from home, we had many animals living with us. The first one I remember was Jet, a handsome, frisky, and lovable little black-and-white Boston Terrier. I was in kindergarten and we lived in a suburb of Chicago. Jet would follow us everywhere. He loved playing with us in the front yard chasing the ball. I loved how he would run in circles and jump high in the air to catch the ball. The summer before I was going to be in first grade, my family moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Jet had epilepsy and the summers of Arizona were hard on him because of the heat. Yet he loved running in the sprinklers with us to keep cool. I remember him having seizures, but at that time, I was so young I did not realize exactly what he was going through. I did know he was sick and it bothered me to see him going through it. It was a very sad day when our precious Jet passed away. He was our first animal companion. It was hard on all of us, especially my mom. It was about a year before another dog came to live with us, and in the meantime, we had rabbits. I can picture in my mind our sweet baby rabbits. I do not know where they came from; all I remember is sitting on the grass in the backyard holding one in my lap. We were all sitting in a circle, each of us holding one rabbit. A few days later, one of the babies passed away in my hands. I was devastated. My mom was so understanding and loving. She explained to all of us about life and death of animals. The cycle of life. As I write this, my eyes are filling up with tears and I am getting choked up. I know now it was a beautiful learning experience. These were the messages from baby rabbit, and from Jet, about death. They taught us that life goes on after an animal dies. Our mom talked to us about this. I love how Jet and baby rabbit connected to her to give us their love and messages.

We had been living in a rental house while our new home was being built. The day finally arrived for us to move. I remember there were no animals with us. I do not remember what happened to the rabbits. Maybe they passed away, or maybe my mom gave them to someone else who could care for them better than we could. Whichever way it was, the rabbits were filled with love in their new home here on earth or on the Other Side.

The desert was beautiful! Our house was in the middle of the desert with nothing else around. We were the first people to build in that location. There were wild animals of all kinds everywhere! It was awesome! My brother was in his glory, catching snakes and lizards. He would keep them for a while in large aquariums. They were fed crickets and other kinds of good food they loved. He took very good care of them. After a while they were always let go back into the wild. The cycle would go on with new reptiles joining our family. We learned so much from these amazing beings.

To this day I love lizards of all kinds. I still get a little creeped out by snakes. Yet I love them just as much as I love all the animals.

There were so many animals I had never seen before, or heard of. Bobcats, coyotes, Gila monsters, scorpions, javelina, cactus wrens, tarantulas, palo verde beetles, and others would come into our yard. It was fascinating to watch them. I remember watching a bobcat come up on the back patio to the arcadia door, which is a sliding all glass door. He sat and looked in at us, then proceeded to drink water out of the dog's water bowl. Tippy, our dog, was very curious but only sat and watched him. Soon the bobcat walked away. That was amazing! I loved seeing the beautiful wild animal on our patio! We were living in the wild animal's territory, their home, and we all learned to coexist together, throughout the years.

Soon more families began to build and live in the area where we lived. With them came their dogs and other animal companions. For many years all the backyards were open; we had no fences. The dogs roamed all over but never seemed to venture too far. There were never lost dogs signs around, like there are now. The neighborhood dogs were all friends! They were socialized and got along great with people too. The wild animals still came around. It was wonderful to see how everyone, people and animals, got along. What great lessons the domestic and wild animals taught all of us. If only we had known to listen, observe, and learn from them during those years. I do know now I did hear them. I kept those lessons tucked away in my subconscious until they were ready to come forward.

We have more to learn from animals than animals have to learn from us.

~ Author Unknown

During my growing up years, our family also opened our home to many cats. I wish my mom was alive today so I could ask her where she got all our wonderful kitty animal buddies. It seemed one day she came home, and there was a new cat or dog. We only had one dog at a time. When a cat came to live with us, they became best buddies. It was amazing. My mom had this gift with animals. She knew how to train them, socialize them, and best of all give them love, so much love. I learned so much from her and our furry friends. When our cat, Cheetah, passed away, it was so very sad. He was our first kitty. He grew to be an adult. The day he passed on, my twin sister and I took his body, wrapped it in a blanket, placed him in a box, and walked out into the desert. There was a wash near our house which was dry most of the time. It was lined with palo verde trees and desert bushes. We found the perfect spot to bury our Cheetah. We dug the hole as deep as we could; it was easy because the ground was soft and had sand in it. We gave him a proper burial, which included many tears. To this day, every time I take a drive through the neighborhood, going down memory lane, I tell Cheetah hello, as I drive by the wash. The spot is exactly the same, with the same tree over his grave. We picked a beautiful spot for him.

I have lived with several Zen Masters —

all of them cats.

~ Eckhart Tolle

My twin sister and I were bedridden for nine months when we were in the fourth grade. We had Valley Fever. The doctor wanted us to be as calm and quiet as possible because our lungs were affected by this disease. During this time, we had two precious tiny turtles as companions. They lived in a turtle bowl with plenty of large rocks to climb on, water so they could swim, and gravel at the bottom. Timmy and Titus kept us company and entertained us for hours each day. They taught us how to be calm, how to relax, patience, and, most of all, about unconditional love and peace.

My brother raised homing pigeons. He built an awesome walk-in pigeon coop for them. Each pigeon had a name and I knew them all. Bill took great care of them. He banded each of them with identification. Training them to know their way home from long distances. I loved going out into the coop to help feed them and watch my brother work with them. This was the start of my love for pigeons, these beautiful beings that are so misunderstood and unloved by so many people. I love them. They have so many different colors of feathers, which shine in the sunlight. There are different shades of rainbow colors—browns, purples, blacks, whites, and grays. Today as I fast-forward for a bit, we have a family of pigeons living in the palm tree in our front yard. They have been here for years. They raise their young each year. The babies when grown up go live somewhere else. Yet the parents have been here always. Although, I do not know how long a pigeon's lifespan is. Therefore, the ones who live there now could be offspring of the original parents. Whatever it is, they are my friends. I take very good care of them, watching over my special friends making sure the tree trimmers do not kill them or hurt them. Now, going back to my brother's pigeon friends. Our family had a cabin in the mountains of northern Arizona. It was in the forest with a creek down the hill. We would go spend weekends or longer vacations there. Bill brought a couple of pigeons each time. Soon after arriving and settling in, he would release them hoping they would return home after all the training they had together. After our wonderful time at the cabin came to an end, we headed home and we were all curious to see if the pigeons would be there. Yes! They always made it safely home waiting for Bill to get back to let them in the coop. I have many wonderful memories of our pigeon family!

Living in Arizona, cowboy country, we had to learn to ride horses. Our family took riding lessons from Weldon's Stables, which at the time was out in the middle of the desert, not too far away from our house. That was the beginning of my love for horses! One evening as the group of us were headed back to the stables after the lesson was over, my pony decided he was ready to get home. I was in first or second grade at the time. He took off at a fast gallop with me hanging on for dear life. But I loved it!! I was not scared. I knew he was taking care of me and he knew the way back, so I just let him go for it. From that time on, I could not wait to go riding again. That is exactly the way it was for years. As I grew up, all the way into my twenties, I rode horses. During this time, the stables did not have the safety rules and regulations as they do now. We could ride, without guides, go where we wanted, yet not going out of specific areas or miles away. It was heaven! I rode with my sister and friends. We would take off for hours. One time, we were all standing in a group—there were six of us—and one horse decided he did not like standing close to the one he was near. He kicked him, which started my horse to rear up and buck. The fight was on! It lasted maybe a minute or two. It was so much fun! I was not scared. I went with the flow and enjoyed it. The horses were all fine after that and we rode on for the rest of the day. In the late sixties, my parents, my twin sister, and I would go to Aspen, Colorado, for a few weeks’ vacation. This was when Aspen was still a small mining town and not what it is today. Joan and I rode every day while there, going to the stables in the high mountain country. Riding through the Aspen tree groves, wildflower fields, country roads, and along the river was some of the best experiences of my life. Each day and every year we got the same horse to ride. We developed a deep bond to those magnificent souls.

There are more wonderful memories of being with the animals growing up: learning their lessons and falling into a deep connection of love with the animals that I did not realize I had until many years later. I am in gratitude to them. There is one very special place, a piece of heaven on earth, that I call paradise, where I lived with, learned from, and loved the animals there. It was my Nana's home in a small town in beautiful rural Oklahoma, in the farm country. Ever since I was a baby, our family went to visit her and spend a couple weeks or more during the summers. These vacations got longer as I got older. Nana lived in a Victorian-style house with white clapboard siding, a porch with a hanging swing bench, screen door, and so much wild life around. She had a huge vegetable garden, trees surrounding the yard, honeysuckle vines, a large English flower garden in the backyard, birdbaths, lilies, daffodils, irises, and many more bushes and plants. This was the perfect yard for the animals! My mom grew up here. She and my Nana both loved animals. In the back there was an old chicken coop that was not used anymore. She had a pond with goldfish in it that was close to the coop. I loved going out to sit by the pond to watch the fish. I know my sister and I named them, but I do not remember their names now. My brother, sister, and I would sit out on the dirt road in front of her house and play with the ants who had ant piles all over in the dirt. We spent hours making trails for the ants to march along, from one hill to the next. One of my best memories is the box turtles who lived in the yard. They were amazing. We each had a particular one that we named. Every year we went to visit Nana, we would find our turtles and knew exactly who each one was. We had races with them or just held them and talked. In the evenings, all of us sat out on the front porch. The fireflies came out and we watched them for hours. The summer nights were cool and it was relaxing to be outside listening to the insects. There were June bugs, small brown beetles, crickets, tiny frogs croaking, and night birds singing. Every once in a while, I remember the hoot of an owl. During the days, we also played with horny toad lizards that we found wandering through the yard. Each morning, my sister and I filled up the birdbath with fresh water. There were many different kinds of birds who would come to drink or take baths each day. Summertime brought the wasps and bees into the yard. We learned some hard lessons about staying away and keeping our distance from them. We learned to respect their territory, their hive, and live together, learning what an awesome job they each have with pollinating the flowers and vegetables. With each kind of animal who lived in this wonderful magical place, I call paradise, I learned so much about life, relationships, peace, joy, death, that life goes on, and mostly