For my own experince
I actually had quite a crisis of faith one night when I realized that I could not have been an old woman in the 19-teens AND a young civl war widow who grew to be a bitter old woman. I sat down and wrote down every lifetime memory I had from the mid 1700's on, and details of it like "no electric light" or "NY with three-story buildings" or "going west on a Wagon train". I then looked up things like when the railroad was finished and the dates of the civil war on the internet.
I sat down and ran the dates, and they all were one right after the other, (except in the last life where I died in the early 1950's/late 1960's but stuck around as a spirit with my son until he died in Vietnam). EXCEPT for one life. Reincarnation is such a staple of my beliefs it really shook me to the core that I never put this together before, YET they all fit one right after the other EXCEPT for this one:
I had one memory of watching my husband leave to fight for the north, with a toddler at my leg, (I later see a daughter too so perhaps I was pregnant when he left?) Although he was fighting for the north, we lived in an area closer to the south, we were there preaching about abolishing slavery in some form, I believe, like maybe we were Quakers or something. But then I remember being a bitter old woman hating everyone in that life, watching my son walk up the walk, he was a doctor and treated people of all color, but I was very bitter and I suppose racist because I had no white friends because of my beliefs, but no blacks really trusted me as a friend because of my color.
Now I also remember being an old woman very active in the woman's sufferage movement. We lived in the north, and I was a widow who had little contact with my children, and no memories of my younger years. My partner was a spinster, and everyone thought it was nice we had each other for company. In fact she had been a life-long lesbian, and I was very much in love.
When I sat down and looked at the dates and the details, I realized that these two lifetimes matched up more than I thought they did. I remembered mainly my son in the south, and mainly my daughter in the north, (I'm not sure where in the north but it was cold there) but I know in each I had one child of each gender, so I think I must have met my lover while visiting my daughter in the north, and stayed there. She (who was my husband in the life after that, and my life now) changed my life so much and made me so happy, I just couldn't have imagined that that bitter old woman on the southern porch was the same active suffagette lesbian in the north. I had such a lust for life when I was with her. But it also makes sense that in order to agree to move to the south to preach against slavery, that spark must have been there when I was younger too, I just lost it for 40 years or so until I found love again.
I no longer even believe that we necessarily follow a recognizable timeline for our incarnations. My "next" incarnation could be 3500 BC!
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