“I need to see it to believe it,” make a couple of adjustments to that phrase and you’ll be right on track: “I need to believe it to see it.”
One day, when I was trying to navigate through some difficulties in my life and desperately longed for my mom, I asked her to show me a sign that she was with me. Believing that she would, and paying close attention to my surroundings, I was expecting to see the usual white butterfly. But instead, I received something much more definitive.
The next day I found myself driving behind a car with a license plate that read “YVONNE” — my mom’s name. Not only is that a relatively uncommon name, but there are millions of registered vehicles in the vast state of California and only one with that plate. How did I end up in that exact place on the road at that precise moment behind that car the day after I had asked for a sign? Coincidence? No way. I think my chances of winning the lottery might have been better. Signs from the spirit world are literally everywhere. Fortunately, I was in a frame of mind that enabled me to recognize one.
In a world fraught with uncertainty, people are often searching for guidance in an earthly form but struggling to find it, so they are turning more and more to the “other side” for help. I witness it daily from those who reach out to me for readings or advice, many of them desperate to connect with a loved one who has passed. But the good news is that you don’t need me to make that connection. Yes, with a gifted medium as a conduit, communication between you and the spirit world will be much clearer. But neither I nor any other medium can be that conduit for everyone all the time. That is why if you believe in the intuition you were born with and are open to the possibilities, the spirits will take care of the rest directly with you.
I want to be clear that this is not a traditional mediumship book in the sense that it does not delve fully into the spiritualism aspects, technical terms, or history of mediumship. Every medium works differently and has their own belief system. This book reflects all the information I’ve learned over the years through sharing my gift with others. In short, this is my truth.
You will find the first few chapters to be a brief synopsis of my first book, Expect the Unexpected: Bringing Peace, Healing, and Hope from the Other Side. I highly recommend that before you dig into this book, you read Expect the Unexpected to get the vivid details of my background and the strongest confirmation of this gift I have been given. If you can’t, the early chapters here should provide you with enough information to help you understand the ones that follow. In those following chapters will be specifics of how you can open yourself to receiving signs and how to recognize them, along with stories from people just like you who have experienced the beauty of their intuitive connection to those in heaven.
Think about those linked to your life who have died. Many of them have likely been sending you signs quite frequently and for a long time, signs that would reassure you they are okay, that might let you know they are watching over you and your family, or that could provide you with a solution to a problem. But you won’t recognize them as signs without believing in them. Once you believe, your perspective toward everything that happens around you will change dramatically. Difficult times will become more peaceful, agonizing moments will be filled with more love, and mundane experiences will become glorious reminders that spirits are always with you to help you live a better life here on earth.
Trust me — if my dad can open his mind and heart to this possibility, you can, too.
No child says, “When I grow up, I want to be a psychic medium!” Even if they were to express that desire, it simply does not happen that way.
You won’t find a psychic medium alongside a banker, lawyer, and veterinarian presenting to students at a school on career day. There is no high school aptitude test for your counselor to administer to help you decide if you would be best suited to the occupation of psychic medium. And it’s certainly not a family business that you can inherit from your parents or grandparents.
You are selected to receive this gift, a gift the souls in heaven plant in your mind that evolves over time. Once the spirits know that you realize who they are and that you are willing and able to communicate their messages to their loved ones on earth, word spreads among them. Before you know it, your mind has become their sanctuary, and you have become their channel. They trust you, and they rely on you to convey their messages. Thus, a psychic medium is born.
The experience is very similar to what is depicted in the 1990 Oscar-winning movie Ghost. Whoopi Goldberg’s character, Oda Mae, is a psychic, or at least she pretends to be one to try to make a living. Patrick Swayze plays Sam, who is shot and killed on the street in what appears to be a robbery attempt gone wrong, though it is actually a premeditated murder. After his death, Sam visits Oda Mae in her psychic shop; she can’t see him, but she can hear him. He implores her to tell his girlfriend, Molly (played by Demi Moore), that he was murdered and that her life could also be in danger. It takes a lot of pestering by Sam for Oda Mae to accept that she really can hear a dead person, but after she does, and conveys his message to Molly, other spirits begin to appear to her on a regular basis to try to get her to relay messages to their own loved ones. They have found their channel in Oda Mae.
When it first happened to me, I denied it. I didn’t believe it, and I didn’t want to believe it. But once I knew it was real, I didn’t want to let it go. I realized I’d been given a gift that could bring peace, happiness, and closure to people in ways that they otherwise couldn’t experience. As burdensome as it was at times, it was a responsibility I felt I had to assume.
Before I go any further into how I do what I do, let me briefly share with you my bizarre upbringing and how this extraordinary life started for me. You will find many more details in my book Expect the Unexpected, but here is a summary to familiarize you with my background.
My parents both suffered with drug addiction before I was born, and the birth of their first child didn’t change their habits. I was raised in Southern California in a toxic environment, a witness to abuse in many forms. The fact that I made it out of my childhood alive was a miracle.
Mom and Dad separated in 1991 when I was six years old. They got back together after a few months, but my mom secretly had a boyfriend. She devised a plan to kidnap me from my dad, and she followed through with it one day after he left for work. We fled to a friend’s house, where we stayed until late in the evening as Dad drove up and down the neighborhood streets searching and screaming for us. Afraid he would find us, Mom dragged me to an abandoned school bus in a ditch, lit with gas lanterns. We hid there with her junkie friends, who were high on crack, jabbing themselves with needles, and performing sex acts on each other. I buried myself in the backseat of the bus with my ears covered and eyes squeezed tightly shut while Mom joined them.
The next day my mom, her boyfriend, and I boarded a Greyhound bus. We spent several days traveling cross-country to Brooklyn, New York, where her boyfriend had family. We lived there in various houses and apartments, and I often had to visit the closest church to get food since I didn’t have any at “home.” I didn’t realize we were homeless, because I never slept on a street — but we were. I rarely had a bed. I often slept on floors in rooms with multiple people I didn’t know. Once I was settled under my blanket for the night, Mom would give me a kiss, tell me she loved me, and then usually hit the streets for her drug fix. Sometimes she was home by morning; other times she wasn’t.
I was shuttled back and forth between a couple
