Gail, Robin, Debra, and Kayla

I have no idea what to expect when I step in front of an audience.

When I stepped in front of the audience in Barre, VT, I’d just done this two days before, in Keene and Wilmot, NH, respectively. For anyone not familiar with my “Gifts from Spirit” events, not only do I offer live spirit galleries in front of an audience, like many other mediums, but I also bring gifts to give to those I connect with.

Not just a single gift, but a group of gifts, at least three items that are strange and unusual. This began for me a few years ago when I would receive messages to bring a single item to a show, like a dozen yellow roses in Colebrook, NH, or a purple toy horse in Plattsburgh, NY. It’s gone from a single gift to at least seven batches of multiple gifts.

Spirit has turned me into Santa, and everyone who receives gifts at an event is a helper: teachers, mothers, nurses, counselors. That part is consistent across the board: anyone who gets gifts is a genuinely good, heartfelt person who wants to help others.

Whether you believe it or not, not everyone is like that, not by a long shot.

But the people who receive gifts at my events are, every single time. That’s how I know I have an angel working with me, guiding me. That’s also a difficult part for many people to hear, but it doesn’t change the fact.

After my introduction, before I began giving away the gifts, I had what I call the opener. At my events, an opener is a spirit who comes in before the main readings begin, is not connected to the gift table, and helps set the tone for the night. This time, the opener was a woman who felt local, full of love, and very connected to food. She gave me the feeling of a lunch lady, or someone who spent her life feeding people, serving people, and taking care of everyone around her.

She showed me problems with her feet, possibly connected to diabetes, and she also brought my attention to her teeth. Then came the image that made the whole thing start to come together: huge chocolate chip cookies. I mean huge. In my mind, they were almost the size of paper plates, although I also wondered out loud if they could have been chocolate chip pancakes. Either way, this woman was showing me chocolate chips, food, family, and a whole lot of love.

That connection landed with Gail, who was sitting in the front row. Gail was able to connect the diabetes and foot issues to her great-grandmother, and the food-service feeling to her grandmother, who worked in a cafeteria-style setting serving sandwiches. She also confirmed that there was a chocolate chip cookie recipe in the family, and that those cookies had been part of her childhood. As we talked, it became clear that this opener was not only identifying herself. She was also praising Gail and her family.

The message was simple and beautiful: thank you for taking care of everybody. Thank you for keeping everyone together. Gail explained that she and her husband had gone through financial difficulties, and her mother had opened her home to them. Gail, her husband, her children, her younger brother, and her mother were all living together, and her mother had also spent many years as a home care provider for two men with autism and special needs. That mattered because these nights always seem to circle back to the helpers and caretakers.

There were other pieces, too. I picked up on Gail’s TMJ and head pain. I told her she needed more horse energy, and she shared that she had seen beautiful horses on the way over the mountain and that horses were also connected to something on her bucket list. I also felt that old family pictures had recently been brought out and looked through, which she confirmed. Then the message shifted into something more personal as I connected with her daughter, Robin: not letting ADHD become a crutch. The feeling was not shame or criticism. It was more like, stop using this as proof that you cannot do things. Flip the script. See it as a superpower. See yourself as creative, alive, and capable.

The funny part came when I realized I was supposed to give Gail and her daughter my books, but they had already bought them. So I gave them another set anyway, telling them to gift the books to whoever they felt they were for, whether that was someone in their life or even someone in the room. That felt important, because the guidance was about trusting their own intuition enough to know where those books needed to go.

Before I moved on, the opener gave Robin one more strong push: do not give up on yourself. I told her she was like ten pounds of dynamite in a five-pound package, full of potential, even if she had a habit of being her own worst enemy. It was funny, but it was also sincere. That woman in spirit came in praising a family that feeds, holds, houses, loves, and keeps going.

Then we moved into the gifts.

One of the first gift recipients was Debra, and her reading began with the feeling of a firecracker. I was looking for someone connected to a camo shirt, and it seemed she either had someone else’s camo shirt and had been wearing it. I needed to give her one of her very own, so she didn’t wear that one out. The message around the camo shirt was tender: this one was hers, and maybe now the old one could be put away with love.

Along with the camo shirt, I had a neon lightning bolt sign and a big thumbs-up. The lightning bolt made sense because Debra loved watching lightning storms, especially when the sky lit up. The thumbs-up felt like congratulations. It was the feeling of, “You did it.” There was something about her life that needed to be acknowledged. At first, Debra was quiet about it, but her niece helped fill in the story. Debra’s husband used to give her a big thumbs up all the time, but the lightning bolt made more sense when her niece told us a story about her husband’s defibrillator, one that electrocuted him so much he fell out of his bed.

Her niece explained that Debra had helped raise many people in the family and had cared for people with mental health needs. I also saw milk crates full of food, and that connected to food being brought from the food shelf to grandchildren and others. That image stayed with me because it said so much about her. Debra was not flashy. She was steady, and she helped. She fed people, and she showed up.

There was also a strong connection to her husband’s ashes. She had not spread them yet because she was waiting for her own ashes to be spread with his, and I told her she was going to be waiting a long time. That was said with humor, but also with real encouragement. I felt a lot of vitality around her.

As the reading continued, practical details came through. There were references to her being sensitive to cheap jewelry, calf cramps, potassium, calcium, bone health, being cold after moving from Florida, neuropathy or numb/cold spots, and even old family recipes made with lard. I told her those recipes needed to come out again, and that she needed to show people how to make them the old way before she went anywhere. There were also house details, including ice coming down dangerously from the roof and crumbling cement or brickwork that needed attention.

But the real message for Debra was praise. Her life of helping had not gone unnoticed. I told her that her efforts as a helper and caretaker were deeply appreciated, even though it had often been a thankless job. She had been steadfast in her dedication to her family and her people, and the people in spirit saw that. The angels saw that. So I asked the room to give her a round of applause. Sometimes the real gift is a room full of people finally clapping for a woman who should have been thanked a long time ago.

Then came Robin.

Robin’s gift set began with a stuffed spider. I asked the room if anyone had a pet spider, liked spiders, or had a spider tattoo. Eventually Robin spoke up. She had a spider tattoo, specifically a Black Widow. That was enough to open the door. I showed her the stuffed spider, then a yellow star that said, “Your did it,” almost like a silly internet meme. The star felt like celebration, but I needed to know what we were celebrating.

Then Robin said the word sober.

Ah.

The third gift was a tattoo gift certificate to Bury the Needle, a tattoo shop in Barre, and it all came together. Spider tattoo. Celebration. Tattoo certificate. Intentional sobriety. Recovery. Survival. The gift was a sign that she had made it through something hellacious, and that was worth celebrating.

The reading became very emotional and very direct. We talked about self-doubt, pain, and the kinds of thoughts that can lead a person to believe the world would be better without them. I told Robin that she was stronger than that. I told her she needed to get out of the house, use that tattoo certificate, and take a 15- to 20-minute walk every morning, a life walk, a fresh-air-and-sunshine walk. A walk where she would start naming all the reasons she was awesome instead of letting her mind list all the reasons she was not.

I also encouraged her to read my books and take a sea salt bath to help clear heavy energy, especially old energy from people who had done damage. There was also a message about paying attention to eyesight, either hers or in the family, but the heart of the reading was much bigger than that. Robin had dreams, and she wanted to do big things. She wanted to go to nursing school, but she had been dealing with chronic health problems, including fibromyalgia and adenomyosis. She shared that a delayed hysterectomy and ongoing pain had left her depressed.

So I asked her to imagine another woman in the room going through the same thing. What would she tell that woman?

Robin said she would tell her to give herself grace.

That was the whole point. She already knew how to be kind. She already knew how to encourage someone else. She just had to stop excluding herself from her own compassion. Her health issues, her circumstances, her pain, and her past could not be allowed to become the thing that decided the rest of her life. They were real, but they were not allowed to be the whole story. I told her she had to believe in herself, because the best revenge really is a life well lived.

Then came Kayla, and Kayla’s reading began in the most ridiculous and perfect way: Mario Kart.

I was looking for someone connected to Mario, someone who drove like a maniac, someone with pink as a favorite color, and someone who could understand why I had a Mario gift. Kayla spoke up and explained that she had a Nintendo 64 sitting right in front of her TV with Mario Kart in it. She had found it for free on the side of the road, but had not played it yet because she only had one controller. She also confirmed that she drove fast and that pink was her favorite color.

So I brought her up to the front of the room.

The gifts were Mario, a pink steering wheel cover, and a John 3:16 bell meant to hang under the rearview mirror when she gets her truck. Then the reading took a deeper turn. Kayla showed us a tattoo on her arm from her son that says, “Just know I’ll always believe in you, Mom.” Her son was fifteen, and he had been adopted almost ten years earlier. That had caused her a great deal of pain. Kayla had a history of self-harm, and she had given both her sons up for adoption.

Then she shared something that made the Mario connection even stronger. When she was getting that tattoo, she had looked up at the ceiling in the tattoo shop and seen Mario imagery everywhere: clouds, mushrooms, all of it. So there we were with Mario, a pink steering wheel cover, and a tattoo from her son telling her he believed in her.

Then came John 3:16. I was not raised in church, so I had someone in the audience say the verse out loud: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.“ The part that stood out was the line about God giving his only son. That was the piece that connected to Kayla. It was not about preaching religion. It was about the ache of a mother and child, the pain of separation, and the love that still remains. She so loved her sons and their world, she “gave them up.”

I told Kayla that when she gets her truck, she should hang that bell from the rearview mirror. I told her she was on an uphill swing. Not trying, but doing. I also told her that a lot of what Robin had shared applied to her, too. She needed to believe in herself. She needed to understand that her life was moving, even if it had been painful and the road had been anything but easy.

Then, something happened, and I almost lost it in front of this audience. I’m pretty stable emotionally, but I almost started bawling when Gail and Robin thought Kayla would be the perfect recipient for the books they received at the beginning. Robin and Kayla hugged each other tightly, and I busied myself with putting the bell in its little velvet bag so I wouldn’t start crying. I’m not sure I would have stopped.

That night, four women stood out in very different ways. Gail was reminded that her family’s love and caretaking had been seen. Debra was praised for a lifetime of helping, feeding, and holding people together. Robin was celebrated for recovery and challenged to stop letting pain and circumstance define her future. Kayla was reminded, through Mario, pink, her son’s tattoo, and John 3:16, that she was already rising.

And that is what I love about these events. The gifts may look strange on the table. A stuffed spider. A camo shirt. A lightning bolt. A Mario toy. A bell. A yellow star. A tattoo gift certificate. But by the end of the night, they are no longer strange at all. They become proof that these helpers are seen, that they’re loved and encouraged, and that their lives are worth celebrating.

Maybe that’s the greatest gift of all.