I spent 30 years of my life thinking I was pretty much crazy, until the day I chanced upon a store called Gifts and Other Things. As I started looking at the different trinkets and books, I realized that the objects in this store were things I had never seen before. It was full of strange-looking gems and stones and books on witchcraft, Spirits, Angels, and other topics I had never even thought of. They had a wall full of card decks that I had no context for; I only knew them to resemble what psychics used at the county fairs. It was really quite fascinating.

After wandering around for some time, I decided to buy a couple of candles—just about the only thing in this store that I knew how to use! But as I stood at the counter, waiting for the cashier to wrap them up in tissue for me, a book sitting next to the register immediately caught my eye. On the cover were the two words that had been ruling my life: Panic and Anxiety. I picked it up to look at it, and as I did, the cashier took notice.

“Do you have panic and anxiety?”

She asked, to which I just nodded in agreement. She continued her casual chatter as she rang up the purchase.

“I believe that all people who have panic and anxiety are psychics,”

I stared back at her rather blankly. Psychic? Me? If that were true, you’d think that maybe I would have known enough to skip the first three husbands! I laughed to myself, thinking of what an absurd thought it was. Me. A psychic. Now that would really be “crazy.”

She suggested that I get a reading and handed over two business cards: one for an Irish intuitive healer and one for a medium.

I was intrigued, so I put them in my purse and walked out of the store with my candles, still questioning the woman’s strange assumption that I might be some kind of psychic.

Read more about my journey of acceptance in my book, The Truth Of Spirits

Seeking Clarity about My Own Path

Curiosity kept stirring me up inside and by the time I got home, I had decided to take her advice. I dug out the business cards from my purse and called the first one I looked at, which was for the Irish healer. Terrified as to what she was going to do, what crazy things she might tell me, I brought a friend with me and made her get a reading first. While I waited for my friend’s session to finish, I picked up a book up off the coffee table and began reading the first chapter.

“We are each responsible for all of our experiences,” the first line said. I kept reading. “Each one of us decides to incarnate upon this planet at a particular point in time and space. We have chosen to come here to learn a particular lesson that will advance us upon our Spiritual, evolutionary pathway.”

I was more and more intrigued. Maybe I’m not crazy! I became so overwhelmed with emotion as I continued to read this book. Tears were streaming down my face by the time the healer came to get me. It was my lightbulb moment—the moment I first realized that, if I had chosen this life, then I was not crazy. I was just learning.

I was quite surprised that she knew about a few specific health concerns that I struggled with; my symptoms were not visible and they weren’t anything she could have researched. Her knowledge convinced me that it was possible for a person to just “know” things. In fact she mentioned that I had been dropped out of my carriage as a baby, something I didn’t even know about myself. But my mother confirmed it later when I asked her.

What I most remember from that day, however, was the book that I’d started to read in the waiting room. The minute my session was over, I ran out and bought that book with the big heart on the cover, You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. I slept with it under my pillow and read it every night before going to bed. I still use this book today and follow its guiding principles.

With the help and guidance of this book and others, I began to let go of my past and forgive the people who had hurt me. Once I began to forgive, I also accepted my past and began to doubt the belief that I had carried with me for so long that I was “crazy.”

But the idea of “choosing” our own lives, our own lessons, and our own paths piqued my curiosity. I wondered about Spirits and souls, and one question kept looming over me: Could I really be psychic? What if the woman in the store was right? If this was true, maybe I could use my own inner knowledge to get rid of the panic and anxiety that continued to plague me. So I dug out the second business card and called the medium to set up an appointment with her.

The medium began our session by handing me a deck of cards and asking me to shuffle them. When I gave them back to her, she pulled a card. She looked down at it, then looked up at me, and said without hesitation, “I see you are a medium.”
I was quick to set her straight. “Uhhh, no . . . I’m not.”

She looked obviously confused, but I felt certain. Being psychic was something that maybe I could accept. Knowing things about other people sounded useful. But to be a medium who speaks with dead people? No way!

“Yes, you are,” she said. Her tone was authoritative. It wasn’t the one that people use when they’re trying to prove someone else is wrong; it reminded me of the tone that my father used to use when he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was right.

The medium and I talked about my anxiety, panic attacks, and the voices. Each time I told her something new, rather than looking at me as if I were nuts, she looked at me as if she already knew.

“What you are feeling around you are Spirits. Until you learn to connect with them, you will always feel this anxiety,” she said.

Now that was truly a revelation. I walked out enlightened, but also a little defiant. I didn’t want to be a medium. I didn’t want anything to do with dead people. Maybe she made that up, I thought. Maybe she meant to say “psychic.” But I had to know for sure.

I went back to that shop with the strange-looking objects. This time, I selected a book by Sonia Choquette, a world-renowned psychic and author from Chicago, called Diary of a Psychic: Shattering the Myths. I devoured it, soaking up everything she said. This was the first time I’d ever read anything like this, yet at the same time so much of the information seemed so familiar.

While I resonated so much with Sonia’s story, there still seemed to be a whole lot I needed to learn, so I went back for more. I bought more books by various psychics, more books by Louise Hay, anything I could get about auras, Angels, and Spirits.

The all-or-nothing girl in me came out, and I became instantly addicted to finding out more and more about this whole new world I never knew existed. With this new thirst for knowledge, I began pouring in lots of time and money to learning more. Soon I was also buying crystals and candles. Then I even built an altar in my home so I could display these new treasures.

I bought a set of oracle cards, similar to the ones I saw the medium use when she did my reading. I found out that oracle cards are used for all sorts of things, not just for fortune telling, and while they are similar to Tarot cards, they’re not quite the same. Oracle cards can be used for astrology or any sort of spiritual guidance. 

Opening up the box of my first set of cards, I remember feeling really excited but also a little nervous. I wondered if using oracle cards was anything like the Ouija board I’d heard so many scary things about. I had no idea what to do with them, but they seemed to fit so naturally in my hands as I shuffled them from one hand to another.

I had the urge to try them out on someone else, so not long after I purchased them, I gave them a try with my best friend. As I flipped over one card at a time onto the kitchen table, thoughts began to come into my head. I had no idea what I was doing, but when I looked at the pictures on the cards, I would begin to interpret what that picture might mean.

It was almost like I was using my imagination, but somehow, my imagination was right. I started speaking without even thinking, telling her the things I was feeling and that I somehow “knew,” and the words just kept flowing out of my mouth.

I know what you’re probably thinking, because I was too: She’s your best friend. Of course you know everything about her! However, I knew more in-depth things than I’d ever known before. It was as if I could “feel” her feelings. I got a better sense of her emotions and knew a lot more about situations in her life than I had known.

It was not the same as when I heard voices, which were clearly coming from someone else. The thoughts in my head were still my own thoughts, but somehow, I knew more. It was like the knowledge was coming from within me. My sixth sense was tingling.

Could I Do It Again?

As powerful as this first experience was, it still wasn’t enough to convince me. My friend’s nephew sat next to her, and I asked if I could try this out on him. I didn’t know much about this young man and thought it would be a better test of the cards to try them in less familiar territory.

He was game, so I asked him to shuffle the cards the way the little guidebook instructed. When I took the deck back from him and started flipping cards over on the table, once again words started coming out of my mouth. But this time they were things I couldn’t have possibly known, or guessed for that matter.

As I looked at this young man, I suddenly felt a veil of sadness come over me. It was as if I could feel his emotions. He was sad and just wanted to go home, back to the province he was from.  My friend’s nephew didn’t say a word as I spoke. He hadn’t told anyone how homesick he was, and I could see his face frozen in shock as I let his secret out into the open. Tears welled up in his eyes as he stared at me.

That’s when I came to a realization. The impressions I was getting here at the kitchen table were coming into my head in the same way that the voices and impressions came to me when I was in high school. Then it dawned on me that these were the style of voices I’d heard when I spoke to the People in my body.

They were the same voices I heard in high school, the same voices before every panic or anxiety attack. Now, for the first time ever, I was hearing these voices and I didn’t feel like my heart was going to beat right out of my chest. Here, in my kitchen, during this reading, I didn’t feel like I was going to die. On the contrary, I almost felt calm. The more I spoke, the calmer I became.

Suddenly, so much of my life made sense. I realized that as a child, I had been the most authentic me that I had ever been. Back then I spoke blissfully to the Spirits, and naturally discovered a way to incorporate them into my life to help me. But as I’d matured, I had drowned out that smart young girl and her natural gifts with layers of shame and lies.

Now, sitting at this table, the truth was coming back to the surface. I was learning who I was, moving cautiously but surely into my own authentic truth. And all this was happening because I was listening to Spirit instead of denying it.

Read more about my journey to acceptance of my life purpose as a medium in my book, The Truth of Spirits.