Two technical questions.

[Westleigh]

I agree with many of the previous posts - time on the spirit side is really whatever we wish it to be and I do not think anyone would reincarnate before they had greeted all the loved ones they left on Earth. There is no rush. We literally have all the time in the world, and while there are always exceptions, we usually want a good long rest before we feel up to tackling Earth again. It's tough down here! In response to your related question, it's quite common for our guides to have shared past lifetimes with us, and also for people who have passed over who love us to come and hover around as helper spirits (though they are not exactly spirit guides as such in the way our official guides are).

It would be unusual for a spirit to appear in a form other than the one in which we knew them, but two possible answers occur to me - one is that, since you mentioned it was a lucid dream, you may not have been completely lucid and the spirit may have been communicating with you through a dream character you had created rather than just walking in as herself. The other is that she may have wanted to appear to you as her true self (the way she prefers to appear in spirit) or as a previous self you knew from a shared past life together. The first time I met one of my guides in a lucid dream she appeared in a form I didn't recognise, but later explained to me that this was the form she had in the lifetime when we first met. It's sometimes hard for us incarnates to get our heads around, but our spirit selves remember being many people, not just one!