From as far back as I can remember, spirituality and spiritual encounters have always been a part of my life, and one of my earliest memories is routinely waking up in the middle of the night and asking my mom to turn off the television in my room. I saw illuminated images as if projected on my wall, and she informed me that was impossible because there was no TV in my room, and she would ask me to describe what I was seeing.

I would explain the images I would see and describe the people interacting with one another in my room. I always found it too bright to keep my eyes closed and ignore, and she would explain that she couldn’t turn the TV off and that I would have to learn to turn those images off in my mind.

I often saw cats that had passed away and even argued with one of my elementary school teachers about the colour of their fur because I had started to see their auras; they had already passed away and often had been struck by cars. I couldn’t tell the difference, and I didn’t realize that cats couldn’t be purple as I had seen so many that colour.

I was so accustomed to seeing the spirit world, which was so matter-of-fact. I never realized, which is a good thing, how unusual my experiences were growing up, but not being fully aware of how unique they might be. I would write in my diary about seeing an angel in my room, and then in the following sentence, I would complain about a friend I was fighting with. The spirit world was so commonplace that it never felt weird to me, which makes it weird considering how often these things happened.

I was fortunate to have a mother who didn’t quash my experiences. I often think about what would have happened if I had been born into a family of atheists and had these experiences. Not that there’s anything wrong with being an atheist, but what kind of psychiatric involvement might have occurred had I been born into another family? I wonder what my life would have looked like, but I believe we chose our families before incarnating into the physical world. We choose many of the experiences we face, but having a parent who nurtured that aspect of my development was extraordinarily helpful in becoming the person I am and being open to spiritual connection.

I remember there was one moment when I was a child sitting in the living room of a cottage, we lived in that my mom was renting at the time. The ocean was literally in my backyard, and we overlooked a cove. I was playing on the floor when I glanced up and saw a woman standing in the kitchen. I couldn’t see her face, but I drew a picture of what this woman looked like and showed it to my mom, and she said, “That looks like my mother; that’s a dress she would wear.” She told me my grandmother hated having her picture taken, so it made sense that I didn’t see her face.

At that time, I had never seen a photo of her wearing anything other than her wedding dress, so I thought the clothing didn’t seem accurate for the 1960’s. I was very young and was under the impression that people during that period wore clothing reminiscent of the 1800s. Still, when my mom said she commonly wore similar dresses, it felt like I met my grandmother at that moment. It didn’t scare me—it felt nice to meet her uniquely— in spirit form. She lost both of her parents at a very young age, and I never got to meet either one of them.

I had a few other spiritually significant experiences while I lived in this cottage, which I always found fascinating because we only lived there for eight months, but it was a nice place to live. I remember watching a pair of bald Eagles take their baby out onto the ice, being given live lobsters, and putting one back into the water in hopes it might make it.

We lived off a narrow dirt road, and next door to us were some cottages owned by the local nunnery where nuns would go and spend time during various parts of the year. I remember being alone in the woods near their property, and I would see earthbound spirits in the woods. And I would go back inside and ask my mom why a woman and child were standing amongst the trees staring at me.

Their clothing didn’t match the period we were living in, but they seemed real enough for me not to realize they weren’t alive. I remember them silently looking at me, and it scared my mom. She told me not to go near those people or talk to them—so I didn’t.

I also remember leaving home one day. We were driving to town, and as we made our way down the narrow road, I noticed a man walking towards us. He was dressed entirely in yellow fisherman gear, including a sou’wester-style hat. My mom was hugging the right side of the road, where he was walking, and I yelled at her to be careful—that she almost hit that guy. She asked me, “What guy?” and I said, “The fisherman who was dressed in yellow walking towards us,” she looked towards her rear-view mirror, and there was no one behind us, and it would have been impossible for her to miss the man that I saw walking towards our car.

I remember later in my childhood, I had a dream about my maternal grandparents and that they came to say goodbye to her siblings and herself. In my dream, my mom, aunt, and uncles were all children, and I watched their parents say their goodbyes. They explained how they had to leave, were so sorry, and wished they could stay but couldn’t.

Everyone was crying, and her parents told them they loved them very much but had to go. I remember waking up in the morning and describing the dream to my mom, surprised by her reaction. I was young when I had this dream, and immediately, my mom started crying and explained how sometimes we have dreams for other people. That there are messages that are meant to be relayed to others. She seemed very angry behind her tears, and I didn’t understand it then.

Looking at that memory years later and having since become more reconnected to my spiritual roots, it saddened me to think about my mom not having that sort of connection to her parents until that point. As a family, we often gravitated towards films about ghosts because that’s all that depicted what happens after we pass away. There weren’t a lot of TV shows either that focused on anything other than hauntings, and a lot of times, I think the media, television, or movies have a way of sensationalizing the spirit world or skewing things in a negative way that inherently impacts our views of the spirit world.

I often see articles online or Internet threads that talk about scary things that take place that people can’t explain. I read through them, and I can tell it’s just a family member trying to get a message to their loved one, but they don’t view it as a positive thing because they’re so used to seeing scary movies about negative themes.

We didn’t want to watch these movies because we loved being scared. It was because, on some level, we wanted to watch something that we could connect to. It was something that related to personal experiences we had in our lives, and these films felt like the only thing we could grasp that felt otherworldly or unexplainable. Still, unfortunately, these kinds of movies, as fun as they are, can sometimes impede our view of eternal life.

I find that it’s less common to find earthbound spirits roaming everywhere than it is to see loved ones in spirit attempting to give a message. Typically, our loved ones send many signs. Still, it’s common for people to have a dream, a synchronistic event, or something unusual take place and misinterpret the movement because they’re looking at it from the perspective that it’s something to fear. I think that’s part of why children are so open because they haven’t yet learned that the spirit world is something to be “feared, and once that fear is instilled, it’s hard to break away from it.

So, we begin to distrust what we experience, block it out, assume the worst, and try to separate ourselves from it until it no longer happens. We become less open and less receptive to receiving those messages because we put up walls or actively ask spirits to stop doing what they’re doing.

One of the incredible things about seeing psychics, mediums, or spirit talkers using their gifts and showcasing their abilities more openly to the world is that up until recently, these kinds of subjects were only referenced in horror films. We all have been impacted by loss, and for the most part, our deceased loved ones seek communication with us in the same ways we long for contact with them. 

It’s only unconditional love on the other side, and the less fear we have surrounding what lies ahead of us or what obstacles we need to overcome, the better we will feel. Suppose we try to infuse as much joy and love into everything we do and permit ourselves to be more excited by being fully engaged. In that case, we will have more peace and appreciation by actively choosing loving energy rather than feeling continually stuck or afraid of the process. The better we will be in all areas of our lives, and as accurate as this is for the spirit world, it’s equally valid for plunging both feet into the proverbial uncharted waters of our lives.

Part of our collective mission is to unlearn many things and question the nature of existence and how we see our reality. I think a lot of the time if we can get back to a place of childlike wonder and excitement and see things through the perspective of, “Why can’t it be done?” or “Why can’t it be me?” or “So what if it hasn’t been done before?” We can be more aligned, live our lives to the fullest, and be more connected to the spirit world.

So, if you have young children, and you know they are open to the spirit world, be open to their experiences, try to view the world through their eyes, and listen to them. When they see things and have unique experiences, you can see a whole other world through their eyes—things we can only begin to imagine. Ultimately, it’s about that reconnection to ourselves and that spiritual light. As we help ourselves heal what needs to be healed, we can do so much good in this world and rekindle our perception of the spirit world from a childlike perspective.