Getting It Wrong, Getting It Right, and Following Signs from Spirit
Getting it wrong
When I first started practicing mediumship, I was so nervous. For my first practice, I asked if I could do the reading remotely and send the sitter what came through. They agreed.
I sent them this:
“I felt the upper left of my face between my eye and my nose frozen or paralyzed. . . I also felt that I was in the bottom of a boat or ship. . . It was damp and felt unsafe. It felt like it might have been night time, it was dark and there were chains being pulled from somewhere, maybe an anchor or other mooring.”
My sitter responded that she couldn't place any of the details. I can't lie; I was disappointed. But less than a year later, everything came full circle, and I realized that this message had set me on a path to deliver a message from Spirit to someone I didn’t yet know.
There were a few Spirit signs or stepping stones along my journey.
Sign One: The Book
Our birthday tradition in our house is to go to a bookstore and buy any books we want (it's seriously the best!) Three months later, in a small bookstore in Whistler, I pulled a book called The Finnish Way off the shelf. I'd always been curious about my grandmother's lineage and felt compelled to read this book.
“There’s a Finnish saying: Onni ei tule etsien, vaan elaen— Happiness is not found by searching but by living.”
Sign Two: The Necklace
Shortly after that, while going through a shamanic course, we were encouraged to have a necklace or shawl to wear when we were in ceremony. I wanted something that connected me to my Finnish heritage and found handmade reindeer bone necklaces on Etsy. I purchased the last one available, which had a Sámi (Finnish shamanic people) drawing of a ship on it—my great-great-grandfather was a famous Finnish sea captain.
Sign Three: Distant Relatives
Months later, my mom gifted me access to Ancestry.com for Christmas. Through my DNA results, I found someone I was related to but didn't know in California. Curious about it, I reached out. The woman replied, "I'd like to put you in touch with my aunt in Hawaii; she'd be very interested in talking to you."
That's how I met L. L is 78 and has been searching for her Finnish grandfather - her father's father, who he never met - for over fifty years.
We suspected that my great-great-grandfather—Captain Victor Jacobson—was L's grandfather, and we endeavoured to prove it through timelines (when he and L's grandmother would have crossed paths,) geography, and lineages (L's dad held two of the Jacobson family names.) Then, one night, L was going through her father's things and found a photo she'd never seen before; it was of Captain Jacobson.
L's father had looked for his dad while he was still alive. It turns out he had known more than he let on to his family and had tracked Victor Jacobson to records of his passing in a hospital in San Francisco. Sadly, the records were for a different sailor with the same name. Captain Victor Jacobson lived until 1956 and was still alive when his son was looking for him.
Getting Right
My great-great-grandfather has had many articles written about him, including one that chronicles his adventures in a 1932 edition of Canadian Geographic. In it, he describes the night his ship, The Minnie, sank:
"As luck would have it I'd got a splinter of steel from a harpoon in my eye, and was suffering all kinds of torture. This particular night I was dead from lack of sleep. I went to my cabin to try and rest, leaving my mate on deck with a couple of men for lookout, as the storm was increasing.
I don't know how long I slept. I was wakened by a crash. The boat had struck.
I ran on deck to be met with torrents of water from the waves breaking over us. We were on a reef. It was pitch black, and the wind blowing a hurricane. Useless to scream orders; no one could hear." He describes the wreck and how all but one man survived. Once on land, they were battered for four days by the storm before being able to hail a passing ship.
"Just as we left the Pass, I saw the last of the 'Minnie.' She dropped in two before my eyes, and I cried like a baby."
“As luck would have it I’d got a splinter of steel from a harpoon in my eye, and was suffering all kinds of torture. This particular night I was dead from lack of sleep. I went to my cabin to try and rest. . . I was wakened by a crash. The boat had struck.”
I couldn't believe my eyes. The messages I'd been given months before that my sitter couldn't validate were from my great-great-grandfather. Suddenly, I could place the pain in the eye, laying below deck on a ship, feeling unsafe, hearing chains above (lifeboats being let over the side.) Captain Jacobson had been guiding me for months to complete what he never could—bring the answers to his other family that he couldn't in his lifetime.
This week I found out L has cancer and has been given only a few months to live. I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to help her solve this decades-long mystery for her family and to unite her with mine.
