Choking on Ash: When Grief Obscures the Twin Flame Connection
I Went Searching for His Ashes and Found a Rose Instead
AI-generated illustration; article text by Sherry Martinelli.
I just returned from a brief hiatus. Little did I know that the short break I took would be the subject of this article. The themes and content of my work are focused on twin flame death. I write with the intent to coach earthly counterparts on the twin flame journey, showing them how to navigate, process, and transmute the pain that accompanies the death of our twins. However, this work has also taught me that forks in the road and a variety of obstacles will often hinder that healing and when the healing process is interrupted, it delays the work that both twins (earthly and in spirit) must continue to do.
I will begin by explaining where I have been recently and how I stumbled on my twin flame path but was later rescued by my twin, Steve.
Since Steve crossed over in spirit, I have maintained a friendship and a soul bond with my twin flame’s brother. Together, we have taught each other so much about how death never severs a connection, but transforms it. He has been a supporter of my work on twin flame death and seeks to understand more about how souls continue their connections despite living in different realms. Steve’s brother often invites me to his home in California where we do many things in honor of Steve. We cook for him. We eat at his favorite restaurants. We memorialize him by reminiscing. We plant flowers and seeds in the garden for him. And the highlight for me has always been being near Steve’s ashes. The urn sits regally on an altar that both his brother and I built. When I am there, I am in the presence of the one thing that is tangibly “Steve”. On the surface it sounds morbid, doesn’t it? That I would long to be near his ashes and to even carry the urn into the spare bedroom where Steve used to stay and where I now sleep when I am there. I make no apologies for this. I am human. Yes, I have a real twin flame relationship with Steve and yes we are one soul, but the pull to his ashes remains strong, a kind of force of nature of which I am incapable of transcending.
On this visit to California, however, Steve had other plans and these did not include seeing his brother at all. There were several blocks that prevented me from making it there. I was bereaved by this. So badly I longed to be near Steve that I momentarily forgot that Steve is in me and therefore I can never be without him.
On my trip to California, whilst visiting my cousins and my aunt, I encountered a lone, solitary, wild rose in full bloom that had randomly emerged from my aunt’s hedge on her front porch. This was an anomaly since she does not grow roses and finding a single rose bursting through that hedge was a message I clearly recognized. The same phenomenon occurred in the front yard of Steve’s brother. A single, lone rose born out of nowhere like a stray dandelion. I knew then that it was a message from Steve. In this recent case, I knew Steve was telling me that I was not going to make it to his brother’s. I knew Steve was teaching me that I cannot cleave to the remains of his earthly body. But I did not want to accept this because I did not understand why I shouldn’t be in communion with his ashes. I came to see in a spiritual sense, that ashes are that which is left after something has perished, but a rose is something living that emerges out of the ash. Nevertheless, I still was pulled with a magnetic force to Steve’s ashes.
Then I learned the hard way as is the case usually for me. In a strange, odd occurrence, I randomly began choking as if my throat had tried to inhale dust on a windy day. There was no dust and there was no wind and I was not outdoors. I began coughing, feeling like I inhaled debris. Drinking water did not help. There was something stuck in my throat and it felt like powder. It felt like ash. In a very metaphorical sense, it was ash. It was Steve and he was teaching me that my obsession and earthly need to cling onto the earthly remnants of him was “choking” us both. For he is free of his body and I too must be free of his body so that the work we are doing will go on unimpeded.
What I needed to remember is that when he left his body, one half of me went “home” too. The body lost him but the soul didn’t. What Steve wanted me to do was ground myself but the way to do that was not by holding onto what physically remained of him. I needed to remember that he is home where the whole plan of our twin flame journey and all of our soul contracts with others are visible and plainly understood by him. He understands not only what his life was for but also what our twin flame path was choreographed to do. He knows what work I still need to do in the time I have left and that I will not do it without his help.
And this is why I know it was Steve who held me back from having access to his ashes on this recent visit. The lessons I learned and the messages he imparted were meant to be conveyed as comfort to the grieving twins in the collective. That is our work. Indeed, it was from the pain and loss of Steve’s death that A Song For Steve: The Lion and the Rose was born. My twin taught me how to use the grief as a way to not only temper and transmute my own grief, but to teach others how to do the same.
If you are grieving your twin flame and find yourself in agony trying to cleave to whatever tangible remains of your twin, whether it be clothing, photos, relics, mementos, or his ashes, remember, only your physical self stands between the two of you. Meanwhile, your life here on earth has its own length, its own lessons. Your twin is not beckoning you to come home; he sees the plan in its entirety. Your time here in the earthly plane matters to him. Sometimes the grief is so loud that you can’t hear the whispers of your twin. However, the grief belongs to your body and your daily life and does not negate, cancel, or minimize the connection or the mission because the connection belongs to the soul. It never lost him so it never misses him.
Grieving is real and giving in to the tears doesn’t weaken the connection, let alone break it. Grief operates independently on its own timeline . You will have good days and you will have days that bear down on you so heavily you feel like you might suffocate. But these vacillating moments and days are part of the same love, stemming from the same soul that you both share. Remember that we earthbound twins carry both souls now. In an uncanny way, the roles switch. You carry on what he started because your contract didn’t end when his earthly life ended; it keeps going with its own lessons while you take on something of his. That is the tangible thing you cling to, not the earthly remains of his ashes, but the essence of him and his life. Through you, he continues the work. In this sense, your life is part of the soul that is still here. Through you, the whole soul, both parts of you, keeps learning, keeps ascending.
You will experience moments when your mind just knows something without ever having learned it. Your heart orchestrates a song you’ve never composed. Your hands write a story or a tome where the words just flow from someplace ethereal and travel through your fingers on the keyboard . You make a choice that he would have made without knowing from whence it came, never having pondered or deliberated it beforehand. That’s confirmation of the connection working actively. You do things that he loves. Equally, you feel the pain and suffering he experienced in his life and in his body . This is the same soul “finishing things here” (Karmic Twin Flames, 2026).
So talk to him. Speak to him out loud for he is not ash. He is you. Stop searching for signs. Stop actively looking for the feathers, the number synchronicities, the songs, etc. There is a prolonged grief in hanging onto the signs; don’t let your soul be held hostage to the anticipatory behaviors of “seeing” him in the temporal and physical. Sometimes he will manifest in these ways but don’t let your very peace depend on these. Don’t hold onto the physical ashes that will run through your fingers. Instead find him, hear him, feel him, experience him within you. He is you. Pay attention to the things you are now able to handle with fortitude and courage. Hear his voice. This is where you will find him. He’s not in the sky. He’s in you.
Finally, talk about your twin and talk about him often. By keeping his memory alive in other people, it brings your soul back to a life that is connected to him. It transmutes the grief by energizing his half of the soul inside you, resulting in a newfound kind of rebirth. A rebirth that gives way to a new purpose, one that is shared by both of you.
Karmic Twin Flames. (2026, October 9). When your twin flame dies | What happens to the connection after death [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dnanKnT_mw
