Reluctant medium. That's kinda short but loaded with meaning. Why all the reluctance one might ask?
The story behind the reluctance, quite surprisingly to me, is longer then I originally thought it would be. The initial goal was to jot down a little blurb to publish in the section "About me" but expanded into a 13 handwritten pages of text that came to me just when I wanted to go to sleep. Inspiration is a weird thing. Leaves me with nothing to do for 4 years and now my waking hours are not enough and I have to be a zombie to write down an uncontrolable number of words that just kept pouring and pouring down!
I could edit that long version, but most of those stories I haven't told a lot of people. Telling them now is part of the recovery process as I was scared to be labeled as a crazy person for so long. They also, I hope, give you a better understanding of where I come from so this blog can be put into perspective.
Before the medium became medium
I am born in Montréal to actor parents who never really fit into society in a conventional way. I lived part of my childhood in France in a hotel , a trailer and a community apartment where neighbors always came in, living "la vie de Bohême", the Bohemian way. Always pretty poor but always ready to give my toys away to neighbors who had even less then me.
Back in Montreal the house we lived in didn’t even have a couch but enourmous, gigantic homemade cushions. Kids from the neighborhood wanted to come by and play in the fun house where kids were kings. Even though I am now grateful for this very out of the ordinary childhood, it did leave an insatiable need to fit in more conventional circles and push who I am aside to do so.
Around 13, I was an avid reader and started reading an abundance of books about paranormal phenomenons. I made an entry in my journal sometime that year that if it was worth it I would devote my whole life to the 6th sense. Well, in all honesty, that year I also wrote that I wanted to be an author, an archaelogist, an orchestra conductor and a judge (when there was no such thing as women conductor or judge then). So my resolve was everything but steady!
I later got to study litterature, languages and got a music degree in musical writting techniques.
First signs of mediumity
I was not looking for anything special when the first signs of mediumnity appeared around age 20. I started channeling dead artists in ways that were not explicit enough to notice at first.
I wrote poems in the style of Émile Nelligan, a Québec poet from the early 1900. I remember being haunted by him. Living without electricity in my bedroom. Writing under the light of a candle with a fountain pen and ink. Many of the lines I wrote were mine and I worked hard at them to make them sound just right, but some just came in a whisper. I called that voice "my muse". Every time I listened to it instead of working hard it came beautifully, perfectly in every way with ease.
To give an idea of the work I did I’ll copy down a poem I wrote on January , 22 1991. I am deeply sorry for English only speaking readers. My English is nowhere near good enough to translate this kind of work. But it would feel wrong not to include it in case some of you can understand bits of it.
Ah! J’ai le mal d’exister et pourtant je veux vivre
Pourquoi me laisser choir, existence cruelle
Dans un monde insensible où plus rien ne m’enivre?
Pour te fuir je suivrai les séraphins appels
D’une muse aguichante aux allures de sirène
Et dan l’Art enlacées nous seront tes rebelles.
Dans les soleils couchants j’irai enfouir mes peines
Et sous l’aile câline d’un oiseau d’or céleste
J’accorderai ma lyre aux harmonies lointaines
C’est un pays d’Opal qui s’étale vers l’Est
Où s’endorme les songes que les jours éternisent
Dans un jardin mystique aux parfum suaves et lestes
C’est dans un tel pays que bercée par la brise
Je cueillerai les Mandores que les nymphes divines
Ont semé sur mon cœur pour qu’enfin je me grise.
That connection to Nelligan almost brought me to the brinks of craziness (a fate the poet shared, being institutionalized for the rest of his life at age 19). I became increasingly alone, secluded and depressed. I was scared, couldn’t talked about it to anyone but opened up to my father who sit me on a chair put his hands around my head and cleared everything that was there. Every negative thoughts, all the depression. All of it was gone in 5 minutes. That connection to Nelligan was gone with it but I preserved my sanity!
A few years later dead musicians started talking to me more directly so I couldn’t mistake what was happening. I got petrified in front of Berlioz’s portrait at Musée d’Orsay in Paris, incapable of moving for over 5 minutes. Having him talk to me the whole time, until he told me I didn’t have to come to Paris to do this. Like I had started it! I barely new the guy. Liked his Requiem, read his Memoires and that was about it. I was so shocked I don’t remember even everything else he told me.
One would think that having one dead musician talk to me would have just made me receptive to having a second one manifesting himself. But the fact is that I was still barely understanding why suddenly I could move and the painting had stopped talking. Having a second dead musician whispering to me 20-30 minutes later was just too much!
My relationship with Chopin goes way back when I was 14 and made an entry in my diary saying that I fell in love with a dead person. That it was stupid but couldn’t help it and it was Chopin. There is no other mention of that ever again. I think I thought I was crazy and eventually made myself stop thinking about it.
A year before the trip to Paris that connection had sprung back to life as strong as when I was 14. I read books about him and I felt I knew him. I loved him without understanding why.
Now what happened in Paris with Chopin I haven’t told many people. It was such a weird experience for me that I didn’t even record it in my diary so I hope my memory is reliable.
While walking in the souvenir shop of the same museum, I heard him whisper to me. Always the same words. “Je t’aime”. I love you, over and over.
The more we were walking (it really felt I was not alone!) the more I realized I was going towards the house where he died. The plaque was on the wall. We then went to a cathedral a little further away. I kneeled down and remember feeling filled with an amazing love like if I had known that person forever. He kept telling me he loved me and asked me to marry him. I said yes .
I didn’t know if it was wishful thinking or real but that presence stayed with me for 2 more months or so. I wrote many conversation on paper with him when I went back home, until one day he told me it was the last time, that he couldn’t come anymore and I never heard from him ever again.
The “gift” he left me is that even though I have no personal intricate knowledge of how to play Chopin’s music I know how it is supposed to be played if you want to do it like him. The one he approved of and told me he understood his soul and played his music like he would was Agustin Anievas. For you to judge, I am no expert myself at this:
20 years later this experience feels very far. I don’t feel connected or in love with Chopin anymore. I don’t feel I know him anymore. But if I listen to the music it's still all there. So what was that moment? I don’t know. But this experience with Chopin was the most powerful one to date for me back then and it scared me very much. I was so scared of being crazy again that after this I put the experience in a drawer, put it under key and silenced it for a long time.
Well until it happened… again!
I stumbled on the diary of a complete obscure French writer from the 1960’s, Jean-René Huguenin, who died tragically in a car accident at age 26 , my exact age at the time! I bought the book in a library’s book sale for $1. Poor guys. 30 years later, his life was worth that much.
I read the whole diary in one go and I knew the guy. He wrote in his diary exactly like I wrote in mine. Same phraseology, same concerns. I started obsessing about him starting a huge research (a full 3 inches binder worth of work) compiling articles from the 1960’s. I was enamoured with that soul until one day the connection broke and I looked at the research and wondered : “why did I spent that much time in a dark room, working on old machines, looking for old articles?” I didn’t remember why I had been that drawn in the first place. The research stayed in my bookshelves for years until I threw it away not knowing what to do with it. No one wanted anything to do with that unknown writer. He came to me and left. Maybe he had unresolved business I found in the research? I really don’t know.
The stressful years away from mediumnity
For almost 6 years after that, I didn't get anything remotely paranormal in my life. Life actually became increasingly stressful and not fun at all. I was far from my own needs, my own aspirations. I was trying desperately to fit in. I was convinced that to do so I had to become someone else. Organized and efficient. So I became good at it.
They were still useless jobs, so I kept jumping from one to another, becoming an expert at jobs that had a contract and where I knew I wouldn’t feel stuck there forever. I finally landed big jobs in the movie and tv industry. Worked 14-16 hours a day until back to back, I had two burn outs, became a mass that could barely function anymore. I had to refuse a 30k promotion to become associate producer and felt humiliated and weak not to be able to deal with the pressure.
While not working, dominoes were still falling in a perfect sequence unbeknownst to me though. I had learned to better my English during the movie production, I made enough money to buy a computer. My favorite show at the time, ”Cupid” had been cancelled and I wrote a script for it and posted it online on a site with like-minded people. I made an ultimatum to God asking for my soulmate to come in my life or I would give up and not do anything anymore. Right away I met a writer who wrote Cupid novels, became friends for 2 years and married him a year after that as he was my soulmate.
I tried my hand again at conventional work landing an assistant job in a massage school. I got a third burn out from that place. Feeling even more miserable and incapable of working conventionaly again.
One door closes: Thousand of windows open!!!
That summer I started hearing a sound in my ear. Like a washing machine you hear through a wall. It drove me crazy. I cried myself to sleep. The doctor didn’t understand what it was and couldn’t do anything about it, so I turned to a teacher from the massage school who had always been nice to me. He taught Polarity and told me it would help me. I would like it.
I had never really did massages before. I had thought of taking classes but never did. I enrolled in his class and boy did everything changed that year.
All the drawers I had shut and silenced, all the fear of craziness were challenged to a degree that had no scale. It went from 0 to a 100 in one day. That first day of class.
Polarity is a powerful yet gentle approach to awaken the energies in the body. Borrowing many techniques coming from Ayurveda it balances the basic elements of earth, water, fire, air and ether in the body.
During that class I wrote extensively. 4 journals, chronicling every detail of everything I was feeling, doing and experiencing.
I discovered that I had an insane amount of magnetism in my hands that made them incredibly hot. That touching people made me feel what they were feeling. I had no protection and could absorb emotions like a sponge. It was overwhelming and it took me many years to try to find a way to deal with it.
The sound in my ear changed quite a lot that year. It never went away but I started hearing choirs and crickets on top of it in the background. I started to realize I could change the notes and make them “sing” the way I wanted to in my head. I could not make them go away but I had some sort of control on what they could do.
Receiving massages was an even deeper overwhelming experience. I felt everything with no barriers. I had mutiple visions of what looked like past lives. Either mine or other people I don’t know. I talked to my dead grandmother, saw people's guide, lights, what looked like angels.
Denying that something was happening at that point was a futile exercise.
I embraced it all. Fear was a strong motor and doubt was right behind it. But I had a strong support group at that point and the help of a chaperone, a confirmed medium in our class who had done that for a very long time. And was at peace with her path.
Healing time
I moved away near the sea after that class. I needed to be near salted water. Even though it was cold , it was amazingly beautiful. I went there because I felt I needed to heal my soul. I needed to reconnect with myself. And the energies there were filled with high vibrations.
I started actively receiving messages. The messages were coming on a almost daily basis for me and friends. That was the height of the medium experience. I had doubts but I was asking countless questions, investigating the minutiae of being a medium. Being harsh with myself and needing to verify everything to make sure it was true and that I was not connected to a phony spirit.
Making a living as a medium?
That one is a toughie when you are not gifted with a sense of sales and business. I am also very ethical and can’t accept to do something subpar. I worked coutless hours trying to devise advertisements flyiers, business cards.
I was basically trying to fit what I was good at in a setting that made me miserable. I kept trying to find way after way to monetize what I could do. Try to find a way to sustain myself the only way that made any sense for me.
Doing so made me hate what I was doing because I could tell that it was not the way it was supposed to be. It made me hate money even more then I already did.
I managed to get a few people interested in my services. One didn’t pay me. One was extra nice and came back and sent me her husband. One didn’t work at all. I couldn’t hear anything for her and had to send her home after I was told I was not the one to give her the message she needed.
It made me question my craft a lot. How can I propose to do this when it’s not something I can guarantee?
The monetery aspect of the whole thing really made the process difficult for me, developed unwanted tensions and increasing resistance; leading to believe there was no place for me in the world and that I couldn’t fit once more, and even worse: couldn’t fit in being who I was.
Immigration finally got resolved and I could move in with my husband. Finally all these years of separations were over. This bliss of being able to be together was mixed with having to adjust to a new country, a new lifestyle, a new culture and a new language I had to use all the time now.
Am I there yet?
Even though I was away from my loved ones and having to battle with my new ennemy: the air conditioning, I was still pretty active early on. Writing messages, still hopeful something would happen to help me make a living either out of massages or messages. But eventually I just gave up. Too many things were starting to go wrong, my health was not good and I felt abandonned. Depression hit hard and I refused to do any more messages. To this day I still can’t do them even though I came out on the other side of depression.
I feel I am finally ready to take the path to heal myself.
I am aware that telling a life in so little time brushes over the real issues. It is quite disconcerting to sum up hardship in a few lines when I felt like dying so many times. But I propose to revisit what is important and what can help me heal truly and get back to being able to connect again.
I look forward to writing more and connect with all of you soon!
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