I don’t remember when I first realized I was intuitive. I believe I used to be referred to as highly sensitive. I also don’t remember when I realized I was a healer, but I do remember always being put into situations sometimes by choice and sometimes by force, to “be the rock”. I remember being in my mid-teens and going to the hospital to walk my Nanny (maternal side) out to the car after she’d sat with my Grandfather for a few hours after he’d passed. The week before, I knew it would be the last time he’d be alive when I said goodbye after a visit. The anniversary of that is this Friday.
Around 20, I slept on my paternal grandfather’s side of the bed beside my grandmother, when we got the call around 5am from the hospital, saying that he’d passed in his sleep. It was Easter Weekend, and I was one of the last people he spoke to coherently in his drug induced state that was keeping him comfortable.
So, in the last couple of weeks, I’m picking up on folks who have passed over. Their energy, their behaviours, their actions. This is new for me. I don’t mind it, but it’s made me a bit uncomfortable because its new, and I’ve doubted it. Until I share it, in a gentle hesitant way, all the while my insides are screaming you shouldn’t be dabbling here. I shouldn’t be discussing “dead people”. The reality is, I’ve been surrounded by death from a very young age. Physical, emotional and spiritual. So, it actually fits.
Fits so much, that even my authentic truth, was dead.
These days, I have received so much confirmation from people I have served and their feedback has blown me away. My love even said to me one day after a visit with my parents, that he doesn’t think they have any idea how gifted I am. He gets to live with this, so if there’s anything reliable there, it’s that he sees me in action every day. Lucky guy? Poor guy? I suppose it depends on the moon phase that day. (yes, humour is part of this gig)
Up until about 5 years ago (maybe more maybe less..), I had little to no support for my Intuition and my Healing gifts. I had a few teachers and supervisors say I was a “natural” at what I did when counselling people, running groups, or discussing mental health and addiction concerns. But the intuition and natural ability to heal for decades, I was told, it was all in my head. So I tried to stay clinical. I tried to be the textbook counsellor, but every now and again, the Intuitive Counsellor showed up. Eyes wide, hearts open, and feedback received, that became my way. Allowing myself to tap into the medicine organically, without the standard scales and measures of testing or asking questions.
As my Intuition and Healing abilities were in a death march up until not so long ago, it resulted in life long migraines, a terrible stomach and very depressive and anxious states. I still swing from one mood to the next, because I spent more years ignoring it, hiding it and being shamed by it, than I have embracing it. So I’m still working through the kinks. As a kid, I remember thinking I had a robot living in my bedroom closet. Hindsight is that I’m fairly certain this was my first encounter with a Spirit. But I was too afraid to say anything to him, or hear him, so I just laid in my bed and hid.
Some days it felt like a blessing and some days it felt like a curse.
In the last month, I have lost count of how many readings and intuitive messages I have done and noticed a common theme. Often when I’m doing them, the words don’t sound like mine, the phrases aren’t lined up the way I’d phrase them and it feels so peculiar. In the past my readings and messages were spaced apart and I didn’t see what was happening. So does that mean I’m now channelling?
Am I psychic? Am I a medium? Am I an Intuitive? I have felt such negative connotation towards the words psychic and medium. I’ve never used them to describe myself because I thought that people would go back to doubting and shaming me, after all the hard work I’ve put in to embrace being an “Intuitive”. Or people would be thinking wow, she can’t make up her mind on what to call herself.
The truth is, I’ve struggled with labels and what to call myself for years. What do you put on the business card? Do I put anything? I’ve had Coach, Mentor, Healer, Intuitive, Life Coach, Intuitive Healing Coach, the list goes on. In school you are given phrases and grades for your “you-ness”. The word Gifted often came up. Maybe I should throw that in for good measure? Perhaps “Closet Psychic Medium” is the next one I should run with?
I suppose whatever the label or title is, I just need to surrender to it and allow the gifts to come through as they need to.
I can no longer hide from, or run from my truth. Especially when I invite people to always live theirs.
P.S. If you google dead people, don’t. If you google Spirits, you’ll get mostly pictures of alcohol. So to cleanse my retinas, I went with a pretty butterfly, because once again I am going through a metamorphosis. 
