Beyond the Veil | Author Conversation
Living the Presence of the Invisible and the Continuity of Love
Press Release
Some books emerge from reflection. Others emerge from what life asks us to carry.
Beyond the Veil was born through grief, remembrance, love, and the quiet realization that physical absence does not necessarily end our relationship with those we have loved. Written during a period of serious illness, isolation, profound personal loss, and spiritual reflection, the book offers a contemplative space for those living with grief and for anyone who has wondered what remains when someone we love is no longer physically here.
Through personal reflection and presence-centered writing, Marie-Dominique Rail explores continuing bonds, memory, signs and synchronicities, spiritual questions, and the many ways love may continue to inhabit our lives after loss. The book does not attempt to prove what lies beyond death or ask readers to adopt a particular belief. Instead, it makes room for the mystery. For what we remember. For what we continue to feel. And for the possibility that love may speak a different language after absence.
Why did you write Beyond the Veil?
Beyond the Veil was born during a period when illness and grief became deeply intertwined in my life.
In 2023, while I was undergoing cancer treatment and living through a long period of medical isolation, I lost two people who were profoundly important to me. My godmother, Constance, died in June. Two months later, my brother Jean-François died at forty-six. Because of my medical circumstances, I could not be physically present in the ways I would have wanted. I was trying to survive while simultaneously learning how to live with absence. And grief began asking questions for which I had no simple answers:
What remains when someone we love is no longer physically here?
What happens to the relationship?
Can love continue when physical presence cannot?
How do we carry absence without allowing it to become the entirety of our relationship with someone?
The book grew slowly from those questions. Not as an explanation of death. Not as proof of what may exist beyond it. But as a place where grief, love, memory, spiritual experience, and mystery could sit beside one another without needing to be resolved. Looking back, I understand that Beyond the Veil was written through grief, but it was ultimately written about love.
What does the title Beyond the Veil mean to you?
The veil represents a threshold. Between the visible and the invisible. Between what we know and what we cannot know with certainty. Between physical presence and the ways, a relationship may continue within us after someone has died. I chose the word veil because it leaves room for mystery. It does not tell us exactly what is on the other side. It simply acknowledges that human experience sometimes brings us to the edge of what we can explain. For me, Beyond the Veil is an invitation to remain present at that threshold with openness, humility, and wonder.
Is Beyond the Veil a book about grief?
Yes, but not only about grief. It is also about relationship. About remembrance. About absence and presence. About the ways people we have loved to continue to shape us. And ultimately, it is about love.
Grief is one of the doorways into the book because grief reveals how deeply we have been connected to another person. But I did not want the reader to remain only within the language of loss. I wanted to explore another question as well:
What happens to love when the person we love is no longer physically here? That question became central to the book.
What surprised you most about grief?
I think what surprised me was discovering that absence and connection could coexist. There were the unmistakable realities of physical absence. The phone no longer rang. There would be no new conversation. No new ordinary moment together. Those absences were real, and they hurt. And yet my relationship with the people I had lost did not simply disappear. They remained in memory, in what they had taught me, in the person I had become through loving them, and sometimes in experiences that were more difficult for me to explain — dreams, synchronicities, or moments of unexpected closeness. I became less interested in asking myself whether I should continue feeling connected and more willing simply to notice that I did. That changed something in my understanding of grief. Perhaps grieving is not always about severing a bond. Sometimes it is about discovering how love continues when the form of the relationship has changed.
What do you mean by “the continuity of love”?
I mean that death can end physical presence without necessarily erasing relationship. The people we love become woven into us. Their words remain. What they taught us remains. Certain gestures, values, memories, traditions, expressions, and ways of seeing the world may continue through us. Sometimes their influence becomes visible years later in choices we make or in the way we love someone else. There can also be experiences that some people understand spiritually — dreams, signs, synchronicities, or a sense of presence. I leave room for those experiences without insisting upon a single interpretation. For me, the continuity of love is spacious enough to hold both what we can understand and what remains mysterious.
You write about signs and synchronicities. How do you approach them?
Very gently. After loss, people sometimes describe experiences that feel deeply meaningful to them. A dream. A song arriving at an unexpected moment. A familiar symbol. An unusual coincidence. A sudden sense of presence. I don't believe it is my role to tell another person what such an experience must mean. Nor do I think we need to dismiss every experience simply because we cannot explain it. There is another possibility: we can receive the experience, notice what it awakens within us, and allow some things to remain unanswered. That is the spirit in which signs and synchronicities appear in Beyond the Veil. Not as proof. As part of the mystery.
Do readers need to share your spiritual beliefs to enter this book?
No. That was very important to me. Beyond the Veil is not an argument for a particular doctrine or explanation of what happens after death. Readers may approach these questions through faith, spirituality, philosophy, psychology, continuing bonds, personal experience, or simply curiosity. Some may understand certain experiences spiritually. Others may understand them through memory, attachment, love, or the enduring influence of relationship. I wanted there to be room for both. The mystery does not become smaller because we approach it differently.
How can continuing a bond with someone who has died coexist with moving forward?
I don't think continuing to love someone and continuing to live are opposites. A relationship can change without disappearing from our inner life. We can remember someone and still create new memories. We can carry grief and experience joy. We can speak their name and still make plans for tomorrow. We can honor what was while remaining open to what is still becoming. Perhaps moving forward does not always mean leaving someone behind. Sometimes it means discovering how to carry love differently while continuing to inhabit our own life.
How does Beyond the Veil connect with Semper Fidelis and Beyond Recovery?
I did not originally plan the three books as a trilogy. Their relationship became visible to me afterward. Semper Fidelis began with the return inward — remaining faithful to what is essential when life becomes uncertain. Beyond the Veil entered the territory of grief, absence, and the continuity of love. Beyond Recovery moved into what happens after survival — when the immediate crisis may have passed, but the deeper work of integration and reconstruction continues. I sometimes think of their movement very simply: Presence. Love. Reconstruction. They are different books, but they emerged from interconnected passages of one life. Together, they reflect something I have come to understand more deeply: we do not move through healing, grief, love, and transformation in separate compartments. They often live beside one another.
What do you hope someone who is grieving experiences while reading Beyond the Veil?
More than anything, I hope they feel accompanied. Grief can be profoundly intimate. Even when we are surrounded by people who love us, there are parts of it that no one else can completely enter. I would never want the book to tell someone how they should grieve, when they should feel better, what they should believe, or what meaning they should make from their loss. I would rather it offer somewhere to rest. Somewhere to remember. Somewhere to question. Somewhere to encounter the possibility that continuing to love is not a failure to let go. If a reader closes the book feeling a little less alone with what they are carrying, that would mean a great deal to me.
Has your understanding of Beyond the Veil changed since you wrote it?
Yes. At first, I think I understood the veil primarily as something between this world and whatever may lie beyond it. Over time, its meaning has become wider. There are many veils in a human life. Between what can be spoken and what can only be felt. Between memory and presence. Between certainty and mystery. Between the person we were before a loss and the person we gradually become afterward. I have also come to understand that continuing bonds are not necessarily about remaining oriented toward death. They can become part of how we return to life. Love can remain while life continues to grow around the absence. That has become increasingly important to me.
If readers carry one message from Beyond the Veil, what would you hope remains?
Perhaps simply this: You do not have to stop loving in order to continue living. The form of a relationship may change profoundly after death. There may be grief. Silence. Questions. Memories. Moments that feel close and others when the absence feels enormous. There is no single way to understand all of this. But love can continue to have a place within a life that is still unfolding. We can carry what was given to us. We can remain open to mystery. And we can continue living. Perhaps that is what lies beyond the veil for me — not certainty about what cannot be proven, but a deeper trust in the enduring capacity of love.