“I think I’m psychic,” I said to my logical, skeptical, mathematical husband, “or a medium, or something.”
“Oh yeah?” he said nonchalantly.
Though he’d never outright say it, it’s a known fact in our household that he is the logical, calm, mathematical thinker, and I’m the… um, “eccentric” one. I like to say: he keeps me grounded; I teach him to fly. He’s used to me pursuing new hobbies/adventures. So, he didn’t even look up from his computer when I announced my new-found skill for predicting the future or communicating with the ‘other side’.
Sure, he knew I had dreams that had come true. I’ve always kept dream journals with sketches and, a handful of times, my dreams had manifested right down to a “147” on a mailbox outside an unfamiliar white house with an oak tree in the front yard. His support was unwavering, but he also chalked up the rare accuracy to coincidence.
It would take something more to turn him into a “believer.”
After the loss of a pregnancy and, later, the birth of my daughter, I became acutely aware of the biological bond between mother and child. I had vivid dreams about my first child, and my new baby and I had a connection like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Right before she cried, my body would respond, ready to nurse. No matter how little sleep I had, I’d wake up just minutes before her. If we were lying next to each other, she’d reach out and grab my hand in her sleep – always knowing where it was without opening her eyes.
So, Mark would probably say that, scientifically, there were chemicals in my brain doing new things to react to the baby and make sure I kept her alive. Yep. Agreed.
But I also felt that I had tapped into the spiritual, psychic realm, as crazy as it sounded.
This new spiritual connection made me feel ready to practice mediumship, buy a crystal ball (ok, maybe not), and take up Tarot card readings. And, because I have a love of new experiences and projects, I did. I pursued it wholeheartedly, and I continue to read everything I can about the subject, journaling about my experiences as a Christian Spiritualist here.
Of course, I didn’t just go from goofy mama to psychic medium overnight. In fact, I’m not sure I’ll ever officially claim that title. I just consider myself an intuitive person. I trust my inner voice, meditate every day (even if only for 5 minutes in the shower), and journal about any “knowings” or dreams I have, to see if they later manifest. And, you can do the same if you wish to strengthen your own intuition!
So, what turned Mark into a believer of my, um, “supernatural abilities”? –Probably a combination of strange validations since starting to do this work more regularly. But the first one always stands out to me the most. I was trying to meditate for the first time. I had a lot of time on my hands, as I was a nervous new mama who never “slept when the baby slept” and, instead, opted to watch her breathe for hours on end. To help with my new-mom anxiety, I began meditating when I couldn’t sleep.
The way I meditate is by closing my eyes and imagining I’m in “my happy place.” Seriously, think Happy Gilmore. For me, it’s a cabin next to a stream with a hammock and an old gray picnic table. For others, it may be a beach or a modern office building. It should just be a place that brings you calmness — and it can change as you need it to.
During one of my first meditations, while I was imagining being in my peaceful cabin, a new scene unfolded – a city street at nighttime, dimly lit, and it was raining. I was curious, so I began imagining I was in this new place. I imagined the sounds of my shoes on the concrete as I walked along, stuffing my hands into my jacket pockets to stay warm. I heard raindrops pattering against old brick buildings. I was curious about where I was, so I stopped walking and turned to face the building I had stopped in front of. In the window, was a missing-persons poster. I studied the image to see if I could make out a face. The image on the poster was animated, and I saw a girl with light hair falling away from me. She was reaching for me as she fell backwards, and there was a daisy in her hand. Later that night, I would dream about her, and wake up saying the words over and over again, “Uden Claire.”
I wrote the experience in my dream journal and stayed in bed a long time thinking about the dream. The words were slurred together and backwards when I first heard them, so a few days later, it occurred to me that it might be a name – Claire Uden. I sat down at my computer, opened Google, and began searching for Claire. I even tried Facebook, no luck. It would be more than two years before I would “meet” Claire in the grocery store.
Now I had a two-year-old and a lot less time to meditate. Claire was far from my mind. I was browsing the entertainment magazines while waiting in the checkout line to buy my lunch, and saw this People magazine cover about Alice and Gerald Uden. The name jumped out at me, and I stepped out of line, grabbed the magazine, and quickly flipped to the story. “Where’s Claire?” I thought, as I searched the article for her name. I knew it would be there. Sure enough, four paragraphs in, the victim’s mother was noted as Claire (Martin, not Uden). Gerald Uden had killed Claire’s daughter, Virginia, and her two sons. Claire had always known that Gerald was responsible for their disappearances but there was no way to prove it. Claire had been reaching out to psychics for help, but she had passed away in April of the previous year.
And there were more validations that followed. I re-lived the murder of a woman named Laurie Partridge. Based on my visions of her and her name, I thought her death was somehow tied to the actress Susan Dey who played Laurie Partridge on the Partridge Family, until I later researched the name tied to missing persons and found that the details of my visions matched the disappearance of a young girl named Laurie Lynn Partridge. I had this vision on December 4th, the exact day Laurie went missing in 1974.
And more visions of other missing women would come, almost all validated, some haven’t yet been. They would show me how they died then, after I acknowledged that and, sometimes cried with them, they would show me other things like, their favorite flower, a song they loved to dance to, or a favorite dress they wore.
First, I talked to my therapist about it. She assured me I wasn’t crazy… that, all my meditations/visions/ideas about this were well-grounded. I was taking a scientific or, at least, a journalistic approach to exploring this mediumship thing.
Then, I sought out another expert – local medium Michele Nappi. If I was going to pursue this or figure out what ‘this’ was, I needed some perspective but, more than that, I needed to know why – my purpose, what I was supposed to do with this information. After a meditation and truly life-changing medium reading with Michele, she told me that all of ‘this’ was a learning experience, that it was more about me than these other women.
And, if this medium ‘thing’ was real, these women weren’t after me to solve their murders, like on TV dramas. They just wanted to be heard, to be understood, to chat about their favorite outfits. They wanted to brag to a fellow mom about how beautiful their two children were.
So, I took a step back. Before turning my life into an episode of Medium, I started researching everything from TV mediums to Hawaiian shamanic rituals that open your subconscious mind. I listened to skeptics’ rants and watched other mediums’ work. I read book after book about paganism, Victorian spiritualism, spirit boxes, Christian witches, and seances. Each gave a little glimpse of the big picture of spirituality, which proves subjective at best.
I began focusing on my own experiences only. I started doing more listening than talking or ‘fixing.’ I acknowledged these ‘crossed over’ women the way I would want to be acknowledged. I’ve built a business where I give intuitive readings but, more importantly, I encourage women to listen, to empower themselves in their lives, and to use their own intuition if they wish.
I still journal daily and track my validations. My favorite recent one was a vision of crème puff pastries that kept popping up every time I tried to connect to a client’s mother. When I finally got the courage to tell her about this silly image, she immediately sent me a picture of a box of crème puff pastries that she had bought a few hours ago, as a little tribute to her mom. It felt so real, so honest, so simple. And all I had to do was listen, and relay a message.
And Mark is starting to accept, almost 4 years later, that this is just part of everyday life with an eccentric wife. Next week, I might take up tight-rope walking but, for now, this whole psychic/spiritual scene is my thing, and I feel like a better person for it.
