I can’t begin to tell you how many times I am confronted by people I have known at some point in my life, who didn’t know that I am a Medium.  It usually happens at a local store or I will get an email that an acquaintance spoke to another acquaintance and I was the subject of the conversation.    I have to say I am often surprised by the different reactions I get.  Oddly enough, the most common are anger and hurt.  

They often mention how hurt they are, because I knew they were struggling with the loss of a loved one and I didn’t tell them or offer them a reading.  There are those who were offended as they felt they were a close enough friend that I should have shared my secret with them. They say they feel betrayed that I didn’t share that part of myself.

It has never been my intention to hurt anyone’s feelings.

I am a very private person and to even have a website and write a blog is often difficult and even terrifying for me.  I have huge walls and a small inner circle of friends who I feel safe with.  There are only a few who give me the freedom and safety net to be myself and they respect me and respect my gift. I am very guarded which can come across as cold and sometimes rude lol.  I admit I am a very strange person with an odd sense of humor and I give huge credit to my husband of 30 years because it is not easy to live with a wife who has conversations with the deceased.  Especially when my two best friends and my Dad who were always teasing me, still continue to do so from the other side, which creates a whole lot of laughter and a little crazy in our house.

For those who question why I kept my psychic ability a secret, I ask you to ask yourself this question; are you a person I felt I could trust?  I know a lot of people, but I trust very few.

Are you someone who would have accepted me and my ability or are you someone who would have used it against me, or twisted it into something different than it is?  Are you someone who would have talked behind my back, rolled your eyes and vocally questioned it as truth?  Are you someone who felt the need to continually test my ability, or try to trick me hoping you could make me look bad. Do you even believe in the ability to communicate with the spirit world, or are you a vocal skeptic?  Are you someone who’s religious beliefs would have made you walk away, even after knowing me most of your life?  You see each of these things has happened, each one causing me to question who I share information with.   Lifelong friends who always knew I was different, who knew that I sensed things others didn’t, but they walked away when they discovered why.   It’s funny how I have become more likely to share with a stranger than with some of my own friends and relatives.

There were times I tried to talk about it.  I remember a conversation I had with a friend/co worker nearly 30 years ago.  We were talking about death and what happens when you die, discussing what we believed.  I had talked about the night my Grandmother passed and the things I saw and felt and she told me about the night her young nephew was accidentally killed by a gunshot.  We were alone in the building and I wanted so badly to tell her the things I saw and what I knew.  I almost did but for some reason I stopped myself.  She was someone I adored and I never felt that she would have judged me over it.  But not long after that conversation we drifted apart and I was relieved that I had not told her.

There were members of my own family who didn’t know until I chose to share it with them just over a decade ago.  For years I didn’t understand what I was seeing and feeling and until I was able to control it instead of it controlling me, I didn’t talk much about it.  Each person I hid it from I justified in my mind why.  Whether it was their religious beliefs, their attitude toward me or the difficult history between us, I knew it was best to not say anything.  

As I have learned the strengths and weaknesses of my secret life, I have learned that I don’t need anyone to believe me or accept me in order to validate me. I don’t need you to believe in it.  I don’t need to convince you to believe in me.

For those who don’t have this ability, it is hard to understand how it works.  Hell, I don’t even understand it half the time.  We all have moments of déjà vu or things we chalk up to coincidence.  For most of my adult life I just thought I was really good at predicting things.  However, when you go thru your entire life with images and thoughts that you know are not your own, it can make you feel like you are losing your mind.   Most people see blackness or sprays of color when they close their eyes.  I see faces.  The faces of people I don’t know and have never met.  Understanding that they are trying to contact another person thru me, and trying to connect the dots to figure out whom, is exhausting.

A fellow Medium once told me that it would be easier for me to understand the messages I get if I were to create my own language system with the souls by using symbols to give them a chance to communicate more clearly.  I tried that lol.  But I would forget what my own symbols meant unless it was obvious, such as an empty wallet or a ladder lol.

So I believe that the souls realized that I wasn’t the brightest of light workers because they don’t give me the information that way.  A friend once called me the “Diva Medium” because the souls go out of their way to play video clips in my head, to give me clarity because I am too stupid to remember symbols.  They show me people, situations, places.  Past events, future events, “what if’s”. That is how my gift works.  That is how I am able to describe the soul I am communicating with because I can see them, and they show me memories of their lives on earth that will be validating to the person I am giving the messages to.

For instance, I am a full time caregiver so I seldom have time to meditate and do the usual “medium” things for clarity.  So when I am standing in my house and I feel a soul enter the room, I don’t always know right away who it is.  I just know that I am not alone. So they will put a video or picture in my mind that tells me who it is.  Sometimes it’s their face, or a place that I have been with them or where they lived, so I immediately know who it is.   I get frequent visits from a family friend and she lets me know it’s her standing in my kitchen, by showing me a vision of her house on the lake.  So I smile and quietly acknowledge her by whispering her name.   I tell my Mom that her friend “V” is here and she will often say “I was JUST thinking about her a few minutes ago. I miss her so much.”  Which tells me her visit is a validation to my Mom that she knows she was thinking about her.

Most of the time, I hear them before I see them.   It’s usually when I have just done something stupid and I hear a roar of laughter and I am able to decipher each of the laughs to know who is here, checking up on me and still poking fun at me.  I hear my Dad, Grandmother, or favorite uncles, and cousins and my best friends.  As I hear them, they slowly come into view and I see the smile on their faces.  I am happy to know that I offer such entertainment to the other side. Lol

Many years ago after seeing the movie “Ghost”, my sister (and my best friend) gave me the nick name “Oda Mae”.  She has been calling me that for years and one of my closest friends, who is now in spirit, still calls me that.  I hated it at first, but now it’s become a term of endearment lol.

It isn’t easy living a secret life.  It isn’t easy being able to read a person’s energy and know their intentions toward you.  Before I quit my job after 20 years, my ability had gotten so strong that I literally had to close my office door in order to keep out the negative energies of those around me.  Each day I went to work and the closer I got to the door, the stronger the negative energy was.  It even had a smell.  It was a foul, sour, wasting smell.  I could pick it up from the parking lot and it got stronger as I approached the building.  It hadn’t always been that way and although others felt the negativity, I am sure I was the only one who noticed it psychically.  I loved the old building and most of the people there were wonderful human beings.  But there were a few, who were miserable manipulative people and their aura’s showed me all I needed to know. 

Some of those wonderful human beings have since passed and I have been blessed with a gift that allows me to see them now and then.  I don’t know if it’s wrong of me to not tell their family or friends when I have a visitation, but I am not comfortable picking up the phone or sending an email telling them.  If they were to reach out to me, that would be different.  I have always protected the privacy of those I read and I do the same with the souls who visit me.  But I do feel comfortable in allowing those who read my blog and know of my gift, who knew some of these individuals, to at least know that they have come through.  They will know them by their initials.   JT, JI, EM, GG and KG.   There is one who I would love to hear from but I have only seen him for a brief second and he gave me a wink as he passed through, BC.

My life has become more joyful and full of light since I chose to not let people affect me with their negativity.  My gift has given me a different perspective of life and of those who come into it for one reason or another.  They say each person is a gift as they teach us an individual lesson that our soul needs to learn while we are here. 

Lord knows, I have spent so much of my life, just trying to fit in.   Having this gift doesn’t make me any better or worse of a person than anyone else.  I just wanted to be accepted for who I am. One of these days, I will finish and publish this book that is taking me forever to write.  I will get there.

Lastly, I would like to acknowledge those of you who faithfully follow my page, who will on occasion reach out to me with words of encouragement or genuine questions about my ability.  I love hearing from you.  Being a full time caregiver means that the time I spend helping others with my gift is not only limited, but it isn’t on my own schedule, but rather that of the loved one I care for.  Some months are wonderful and I am able to sneak in a few of you for a reading, and then some months are horrible and I have no time for anything or anyone else.  So I thank you for your patience and for those of you who are happy to receive the little messages I am able to offer you, even if it’s not a full reading.  I genuinely appreciate your understanding and your loyalty.  

And to all of you, if there is one thing I wish I could give to you, it would be to feel the love coming to each of us from the other side.  I wish I could bottle it up and pass it out to everyone.  Along with the fact that we are never alone.  There is always someone by your side, whether it is a loved one, who has passed, a dear pet, or an angel or being of light, who guides you and loves you more than you could ever imagine.  I have tried so hard to describe it, but the intensity and purity and perfection of it can’t be described in any words that are known to man.  It is enormous.  It is selfless.  It is so much more than any description I can give. Every time I help to heal someone through the words of their loved ones on the other side, I end up healing myself at the same time.

I'm thankful for that.  God bless.