was ten years old, and about to be assessed by a psychiatrist. I didn’t know what a psychiatrist was; as far as I understood, I was going to see a doctor. I was there in his office with my parents, at the request of my teachers – I had been in trouble at school.
He asked one question after another, and I answered without worrying too much about what I was saying. I don’t remember any of the questions now. After a while, he turned to my parents and concluded: ‘She’s strongly borderline.’ I had no idea what ‘borderline’ meant. He was simply addressing my parents and dismissing me.
It was then I saw a small boy standing next to the psychiatrist, right by his desk. He was maybe five or six years old. Through my mind he told me that his name was Peter. Peter said, ‘That’s my dad!’ He asked me to tell his dad that he was there.
Allowing Peter to speak through me, I said, ‘I’m Peter, and I’ve come to talk to you.’ The doctor stared down at me. ‘Your little boy Peter’s here, and he wants to talk to you.’
‘No, he’s not,’ he retorted.
‘Yes, I am,’ said the little boy. Then Peter told me how he died – from leukaemia – and that his father had placed a special toy in his coffin. His mother hadn’t known about it. This is exactly what I told his father.
The doctor then started to ask Peter questions through me. We began to have a three-way conversation. This seemed entirely natural at the time, although in retrospect it must have been a very emotional experience for both father and his son.
Afterwards, the doctor spoke to my parents again. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your daughter,’ he concluded. ‘She’s got ESP, and a vivid imagination.’ That’s the first time that I had heard that term and I kept asking my dad, ‘What’s ESP? Is it catching?’ My dad told me that it just meant I was a bit different. Looking back, I can see that the psychiatrist I saw was remarkably enlightened, especially considering the medical profession’s scepticism of ESP in the 1950s. I also feel that because this psychiatrist had lost his son, his trauma allowed him to be sensitive towards me. Nowadays I work with many bereaved parents, and I know that they always want their children to be safe in the spirit world. I remember seeing the psychiatrist’s face when I was channelling his son Peter, and I had a strong feeling that this big man was close to tears. In the event, he didn’t dissolve, but I had a sense that his emotions were very close to the surface.
I now know that Spirit were giving me validation – information so specific to the psychiatrist that he could be in no doubt that the messages were genuine. If Peter hadn’t come into the meeting, I don’t know what would have happened to me. But because I escaped stigma, my world of spirits stayed intact.
My earliest spiritual memories are of my spirit friends, or, as I later realised, my spirit guides. To me, they were ordinary men and women whom I talked with incessantly, just as I would with anyone else in my family. They were with me always, chatting to me at home and in school. These conversations felt so instinctive to me that I accepted their presence completely. I knew that these beings were different from the living people around me, but I assumed that everyone else was able to see and hear their own friends in spirit walking alongside them, just as I did.
In my early years, my best spirit friend – who I called ‘God’ – was my constant companion. I played truant from school with him, nipping off to the park to play on the swings. We’d go to the roundabout, and he would lift me onto it and spin it around with me holding on tightly until I was dizzy with excitement. God’s invisibility didn’t really register until one day we walked past the sweet shop together. He was holding my hand, as he always did, and I wanted to look in the shop window. We turned, and I saw myself, but God wasn’t there. I could feel his hand in mine. I could hear him. I could feel him. I could see him standing next to me if I turned – but he had no reflection! I can still recall the feelings of shock and wonder as I gazed at the glass of the window, not understanding why I couldn’t see God.
At school – a Catholic girls’ school – I was constantly in trouble for talking back to the nuns. If a teacher explained a point of theology to the class, I would invariably contradict her – I couldn’t help but say something. This was principally because I talked to my spirit guides and they taught me about all sorts of things, although I was never given any information to help with my homework or in exams. I wasn’t academically competitive, but I stuck out as being a know-all, which meant that I sometimes felt excluded from the other children – the other girls all thought that I was very opinionated. But, just as my conversations with my spirit friends exposed my difference, so in time they helped me to become accepted by the other girls.
One day, some of my classmates were playing skipping in the playground. I loved skipping and wanted to join in with them, but I knew they didn’t want me to. I hung around, waiting for an opportunity to creep in and take my turn. I saw a chance, ran under the rope and started skipping. The other girls began to taunt me, and then one of them hit me. The game stopped and the others joined in, shouting and thumping me. I fought back as hard as I could and then suddenly I heard my spirit friend God talking to me.
‘It’s not the answer,’ he chided.
‘God, what do you want me to do?’ I asked. All the other girls looked at me and I realised I had been talking out loud. I don’t know if they heard what I had said, but maybe they sensed that something important was happening. God said, ‘Tell them that you would like to play with them their way.’
So I turned to the girls and asked, ‘Can I play with you? Can I play skipping your way?’
Incredibly, the girl leading the game looked at me and reluctantly replied: ‘Yes, all right. You can join us.’
From that moment, they accepted me. They probably thought I was a bit strange, but maybe they also knew that I could be good fun, too. With God by my side, I always felt that I could be brave in moments of adversity, and that I would have the confidence to stand up to people.
My teachers, however, were less accepting of my behaviour. I had gained a reputation for daydreaming, insubordination, telling lies and playing truant: overall, my teachers suspected that I had a problem with reality. It was because of this that the school had requested that my parents take me to a psychiatrist, which led to my extrasensory abilities being recognised.
My mother had always been my confidant and I talked to her about God and my other spirit friends. She was psychic too, and often read tea leaves. After I had been ‘diagnosed’ with ESP (and not a mental illness, to my mother’s relief) my sensitivity had a name, but my mother asked me not to talk about it to others. She did not want me labelled or ostracised. Her protectiveness was understandable given the experiences of her sister, my aunt Lottie. Lottie had similar abilities to me and talked to her guides openly. This was in the 1950s and in those days people who talked to ‘themselves’ were seen as exhibiting signs of mental illness. Because of this, for a short period, Lottie had been placed in a mental institution. I had seen Lottie’s guides myself, and when I had told her this she was horrified and asked me to keep quiet for my own sake. Perhaps because of the pressure to conform, I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t want Spirit around me much at that point in my life, either. So I kept my sensitivity secret for a time. But it has always been there – it’s who I am, and how I see the world.
I’ve been called a psychic and medium, but a ‘sensitive’ more accurately describes my nature and what I do. For me, sensitivity is about ‘Spirit’ talking to me through my senses. I use my senseitivity to tune in to energy. I think of this as conversing with Spirit, or my spirit guides, whom I hear, see, smell and feel every day. As I talk with my clients, I listen to Spirit. Spirit teaches me, and through Spirit, I communicate with those who have passed
