Intuitive Friends

Another way I began to learn—and trust—my ability to communicate with my mother and other loved ones was through intuitive friends and psychic mediums.

I have to preface by saying, being raised Christian, I was raised to believe that you didn't mess around with the other side. Psychic mediums were considered woo-woo at best and dangerous at worst. They were witches, inviting darkness, evil spirits, and danger. If you messed with the dark side, you could end up possessed or dead.

Okay—I’m being a little dramatic with that last part—but honestly, that was the energy. Fear.

I was terrified of anything ghostly or otherworldly. I could tell you story after story of being scared as a child—of ghosts, demons, the unknown. Add with talk of the devil, and then movies like The Exorcist… it all just reinforced this deep fear of anything beyond what we could see.

So for most of my life, I stayed far away from that type of spiritual connection.

But life had other plans.

I have a good friend and neighbor whose husband has a gift—clairaudience and clairsentience—and he even does paranormal investigations.

It was Halloween, just three weeks after my mom had passed. I was walking my daughter around the neighborhood, and we stopped at their house for candy. I stayed outside talking with my friend Liz in the driveway when her husband came outside.

He looked at me with this calm but wide-open, almost curious expression and said, “I hope this doesn’t freak you out but I just saw your mom with you.”

And then he said something I will never forget.“She’s all around you. She’s so excited. She’s so happy. And all she keeps saying is that she loves you very, very much.” He said he could feel this overwhelming sense of love and joy coming from her and she was hanging around to make sure we were okay.

It completely blew my mind. But more than that—it brought me comfort. The idea that my mom, just three weeks after she died, was still close… still checking in… still making sure we were okay.

He said the only thing she wanted for me was to be happy.

A couple of weeks later, I was in Toledo helping take care of my sister-in-law after surgery. While I was there, I went to visit my best friend—my oldest friend since eighth grade. She had loved my mom like a second mother but wasn’t able to attend the funeral.

We were sitting on her couch, and I was telling her the story of my mom’s death. My back was to the window, and she was facing me. As I talked, I noticed her glancing behind me every so often, smiling, then shyly looking back down. Colleen is not shy, so it caught my attention.

After a few times, I finally said, “What in the hell are you looking at?”I turned around—nothing. Just the window and the drapes.

She kind of laughed and said, “Well… you know I have that thing.”

I said, “Nooo, I actually don’t know what you’re talking about.”

And then she told me—something she had never shared with me before in all our years of friendship—that she sometimes sees and hears people who have passed.

She said, “your mom was just behind you. She was smiling. She looked so happy. She was just sending so much love.”

I asked what she looked like, and she said she mostly saw her face and then her presence kind of lifted upward, almost to the top of the window, with a glow behind her. And then she was gone.

It was pretty incredible to say the least. And again—completely blew my mind.

She saw my mom one more time a few months later when we were all out together during the holidays—me, my brother, and my sister. She said my mom was sitting next to my sister, just watching us, full of love and happiness.

I think it made my sister a little uncomfortable. She's curious, but understandably skeptical. What we don't know—or can't explain—can feel unsettling, especially when we've spent our lives being taught to fear it. Most of my family probably thinks I've gone off the deep end when I talk about signs, dreams, and messages from the other side, so I've learned to dial back the "woo" around them.

But honestly, it's difficult. These experiences have brought me so much comfort that I naturally want to share them with others. They helped me find meaning, connection, and peace in the midst of my grief.

And it didn’t stop there!I I began hearing from friends—completely unprompted—who were having dreams about my mom.

One of my best friends was on vacation a few weeks after my mom passed. She reached out to me and said she had a dream where my mom came to visit her. In the dream, my mom told her that she loved us—her children and grandchildren—so much. That she was happy, okay, and was watching over us.

That alone felt comforting.

But then something even stranger happened.

A girl I went to high school with—someone I hadn’t talked to in years—randomly reached out to me. She told me she had a dream about my mom.

In her dream, my mom was in an environment that looked like a place I had just been—on vacation in Jamaica. I hadn’t posted anything. I hadn’t shared it anywhere.

And yet… there she was.

My mom showing up in someone else’s dream… in a place connected to me… almost like she was just finding another way to say, “I’m with you.”

For me, these moments mattered. They softened something in me. They shifted fear into curiosity, and eventually, into trust. Every experience eased a little more of the pain, anger, and confusion I carried after losing her. They gave me hope and a growing sense that death does not mean we are no longer together - that our loved ones remain connected to us in ways we don’t fully understand, even if we can’t see them.

It was moments like these that made it harder and harder to dismiss.

Something was happening. And whether I fully understood it or not, it felt real. 

Next post: Psychic mediums.