There are those gifts you love to receive. There are the ones you didn’t really need. Occasionally, there might even be one that made you wonder what the giver was thinking. 

And then there’s the gift you absolutely don’t want. The one that frightens the hell out of you, that you can’t return or exchange — and that turns your entire life upside down and inside out for many years to come.

The one that makes you question your sanity, and anyone you dare tell questions it right along with you. 

It’s the one that makes people call you ugly names, like “flake”, “delusional”, or “nuts.”

Even worse, “liar”, “phony”, or “fraud.” 

All because they don’t, can’t, or simply refuse to even try to believe you might be telling the truth. 

Such is the life of a psychic and/or medium. Or at least, that was my journey, made worse because these “gifts” made themselves known back in the Dark Ages, long before those labels were commonplace. 

So imagine being a kid. You have a deeply disturbing dream about two girls you grew up with. They were sisters and you dream that they’re dead. You wake up with a heavy, buzzing, anxious, horrible feeling you can’t shake. When you see your parents at breakfast, they tell you the terrible news. 

Both girls are dead. A train + a car + a blizzard = a family torn to shreds in a split second. 

The shock of their deaths was bad enough. The terror of having known about it was more than I could handle. 

But the can of worms had been opened — not by my choice — and I would have no say in it spilling out and invading my life, causing self-doubt, abject terror, and a lot of other misery for decades. 

Before I continue, let me clarify that all mediums are psychic, but not all psychics are mediums. Therefore, the all-too-commonly-used term “psychic medium” is redundant. 

Being psychic means having an ability to tune in to the energy of people, items, places, events, situations, past, present, future, etc. and receive information about them. 

Being a medium means having the above abilities, and also being able to communicate with the spirit realm. Spirits are pure energy and vibrate at an incredibly high speed. In order for us to connect with them, they must slow their vibrations while our own must be increased considerably. 

Psychic readings are about the events and situations in your life. Mediumship is about connecting with the spirit realm. 

I’m often asked what it’s like to have these abilities. First, I must say it’s easier now than in those terrifying early years when I had no idea what was happening, and nowhere to go for help.

I can also tell you it’s been one of the most profoundly life-altering aspects of my journey on this planet.

Please note: for ease of writing and explanation, I use the term “death” loosely, referring only to the physical body because the spirit lives on.

In terms of what it’s like to receive information as a psychic and a medium, I’m strong in six of the eight “clairs” (I rarely get information via smells or tastes — clairsalience and clairgustance). Mainly, I see images. I hear words deep inside myself. There’s no voice; the words are just “there.” I’m given powerful emotions, too. It’s not the way an empath senses them. It feels like the person has inhabited my body — or I’ve inhabited theirs — and I’m living their experience.

It’s the same with physical issues. For example, if I’m tuning in to a living person psychically, or if it’s spirits who want me to pass along information about their health or the manner of death, I’m given their suffering as if it’s happening to me.

I feel the crushing pain of a heart attack as if an elephant is on my chest. I feel the suffocation of heart or lung issues that make it hard to breathe. I feel excruciating pain in joints or muscles, or the suffering of cancer.

And in deaths due to traumatic situations, I feel all of that, too.

I don’t have to be with people in person to get information. It happens while on the phone, reading an email, or on video chats. It even happens when I’m not even in a conversation with them. Whether in the same city or thousands of miles away, they can be off doing their own thing and wham! Suddenly, I’m given information. 

Sometimes, it’s the “uh-oh” kind, like I’m being told something’s wrong so I can offer support in some way. And sometimes, it’s past that point and the message is that they’ve returned to spirit. 

Other times, I might be chatting with someone, whether a friend or someone I barely know, and I sense a loved one in spirit who wants me to pass on a message. 

The Reality of Living With These Gifts

As mentioned above, it was utterly terrifying for the first 20-ish years until this sort of thing was more widely known and discussed. First, I had to accept and get comfortable with this aspect of myself. And then, I had to reach a point of accepting that having these abilities is a gift, although truth be told, at times it feels more like a curse. 

For example, along with experiencing the physical suffering and other distress I’ve already described:

• Being awakened in the middle of the night, heart pounding, in a cold sweat, body trembling, overwhelmingly anxious, obnoxious static in your head that won’t stop. Knowing something horrible has happened to someone you love. Sometimes you know they’re dead. And sometimes, you have no idea who it is or what’s wrong, or how bad it is, and all you can do is wait until that dreaded call comes.

• Feeling completely drained and struggling with your own significant depression, and an unknown spirit from the 1700s shows up in your bedroom at 3 AM, desperate for your help. He’s terribly scruffy, wearing a long, dark, filthy coat. He’s been looking for someone to help him but you have to send him away; you simply canNOT help him. You tell him to please come back the next day but he doesn’t, and 20+ years later, you still feel guilty about having turned away such a desperate soul. 

• Being out for a drink at a pub. Suddenly being given a message that you absolutely must deliver to a complete stranger across the room. Meanwhile, you are timid about approaching people at the best of times. And now you have to go up to a stranger and say, “Hey, some dead guy wants me to tell you this…” (Okay, not quite like that.) You don’t know how they’ll react, and with a controversial and potentially emotionally painful issue, you have no clue what scary “something” might happen. And even though the recipients are always deeply grateful for the messages, it’ll still be terrifying and awkward and dreadfully uncomfortable next time. There’s always a next time.

• Being challenged by people who have supposedly come to connect with loved ones in spirit, but they sit with arms folded defiantly and insist on asking stupid questions of the spirits to try to get “proof” that you’re legit. They don’t come for a message. They don’t come for connection. They come to try to make a fool of you, or to set you up to fail so they can walk away and tell others that it’s a load of nonsense. 

• Telling someone that you have these abilities and immediately, they say, “Oh! Tell me what you see about me!” or “That’s so cool! Do I have ghosts around me right now?” They treat this sacred gift as a parlour trick, plus they show no respect for what it might take out of a psychic or medium to give them the information they want “just for fun.” 

• Having people come for readings to find out when they’ll meet Mr./Ms. Right or get a better job or be happier — and all I want to say is “when you get off your @$$ and do something to make it happen.” 

• Worse are the ones who ask, “What will happen when his wife finds out?” or “Where did I leave my keys?” Or “I’m due to leave for the airport in 10 minutes and I can’t find my passport! Where is it??!?” They think my sacred gifts are supposed to bail them out of their irresponsibility. I’m happy to use my psychic abilities to help them figure out how to get unstuck and move forward and make the most of their lives, but they can find their own dang passports and keys.

• Working on a psychic phone-line and on my very first call, the person says, “Wondering if I should fold my business and go bankrupt?” My boss is listening. I’m not allowed to say, “Hang up and ring a financial advisor” or I’ll lose this soul-destroying job I need so desperately.

• Getting long-winded hysterical emails or social media messages from complete strangers that end with how they need a reading right now so here’s their number, call them right away! Oh, and by the way they have no money and can’t pay me but yeah, call them now!

• Doing one of my frequent BBC “psychic phone-ins”, and a caller pushes me to tell him when his terminally ill father-in-law is going to die because he and his wife are making plans for her inheritance. Oh, and the FIL is down the hall in his bed, listening to the show.

• Having people insult you for taking money for the time and energy you spend, and the guidance and comfort you offer in providing these services because it’s “a gift” and you should just do it because you can. 

• Feeling physically ill and utterly drained, sometimes for hours after emotionally challenging readings — even when you protect yourself. Because you’re human. Because some of the stories are just so awful. So painful. Like children who are in spirit and they come through for their grieving parents. Like newlyweds separated by death on their honeymoon. Like a lonely old man whose wife of 59 years is now gone. Like a young man who was murdered. How can I not be affected by these stories? 

Sure, my background is in social work, hypnosis and homeopathy. I’ve been trained how to be compassionate and have empathy for the person sitting in front of me without letting their troubles adversely affect me after the appointment ends.

But being a medium is a whole other ball of wax. It’s one thing to have compassion or empathy for someone; I know what those feel like. 

It’s something else entirely to feel all the sadness, the grief, loss, regret, the endless aching of someone who is desperate to connect with a loved one in spirit — and I feel the spirit’s feelings, too. Perhaps there’s remorse for unfinished business, or anger, or they were estranged and they’re looking to me to help them fix it after death. 

The feelings they experience are overwhelming and far more powerful than the feelings of the living because when you’re still living, you think you have time to work through issues. But when one person is in spirit, the level of angst, desperation, finality and urgency are beyond description. 

This might be your only shot for resolution. For healing. For peace.

And there I am — in the middle … appropriately called the medium for that reason … feeling all of it from both sides. Trying to interpret the spirit’s words and feelings correctly, and they’re not always terribly forthcoming. They come through the way they were in life. For example, if a spirit was “hard to read” in life, they’re even harder “after life.” I’m trying to put together a jigsaw mess of images I don’t understand, the odd word, a feeling. Like a bowl of soup with most of the bits below the surface and as you give it a stir, you see some of them briefly and oops, they’re gone. 

And you’d better get the message right because this is massively important now, and they’re in deep. It’s an emotional, life-changing opportunity for healing and I’d better not mess up those soup bits of information. I’ve got to interpret exactly what the spirit wants me to convey. The pressure is dreadful. 

And because I do get it right, there is healing. There is acceptance, forgiveness, and peace. There is comfort, understanding, and letting go. 

There is life after death — for both parties. 

The very reasons that make being a psychic and a medium a painful and overwhelming curse are the same reasons it is a sacred gift. And despite the stress and angst and misery it has caused me for 50 years, I am honoured, privileged, and blessed to have been able to help the living with their life challenges in ways that only a psychic can, or to connect them with their loved ones who have returned to spirit. 

It has taught me to value life and relationships in ways you cannot imagine unless you are also a medium. And although much of my experience has has been unpleasant, distressing, or downright distressing, these abilities truly are a precious gift that I wouldn’t trade for the world. 

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