Helen Keller was blind, deaf, and mute. She had three physical challenges that made it almost impossible for her to communicate with the world around her. Her teacher and her mother saw the saw that she was trying to communicate anyway. They believed in her and they found a way to communicate with her.
I also have three challenges that made it almost impossible for me to communicate with the world around me. I’m not blind, like Helen Keller, who couldn’t see the world the way sighted people do. Quite the opposite. I see things that other people don’t. I’ve been seeing things that other people don’t since I can remember. I’ve also been called crazy because of it since I can remember.
When I was 8 years old I was hiking the Cape Scott Trail with my brownie pack. We were walking along a trail through the woods. I left the trail to follow the older kids who, I was certain, knew the way. I didn’t trust that my mother knew the way. I didn’t trust that the other adults with us knew the way. I left the trail.
I trusted that the other kids, who had already been to the cabin, knew the way. I decided to follow them. I took what I referred to as the low tide trail. The older kids stayed ahead of me. I could see their footprints on the beach. I could just barely make out the back of my brother’s head. He was following a girl, who seemed familiar. They were moving quickly as she led them down the beach. I often had to follow the footprints they left in the sand as I struggled trying to catch up to them. I ran along, as fast as my short, little legs would carry me. I recall as a child that I had to take 3 steps for every step my brother took. I guess I got tired and stopped to rest. Perhaps I was distracted by the water. I didn’t notice as the tide rose. The older kids disappeared around a rock way up ahead of me. When they did their footprints disappeared from the sand. That was when I began to scream for my mother.
Whenever I tried to reminisce about this adventure with my mother, she would tell that the older kids hadn’t gone with us. “Your brother wasn’t there!”, she would insist. The frustration in her voice always caused me to give up and change the subject. I never understood why she wouldn’t talk about it. As I got older, I forgot the adventure. When I did remember it was with judgement against the mother who would let her daughter wander alone on that beach. It never really made sense. I always had the feeling that I was missing something.
A year to the day after my mother passed away, I woke from a dream, and I understood. I had always followed trails other people couldn’t see. Perhaps if we had been in Newfoundland, where people embraced the fairies and the magic. They would have termed what happened to me “fairynapped”. Maybe if my mother had a friend who understood, we would have talked about it that day. But my mother seldom discussed her gifts with me. She would say that children can see the angels. Maybe she didn’t know adults could too. Maybe it scared her.
My mother had always been frightened of what other people would think of us. She would say things like “What would the neighbors think?”. We were very different that way. I never much considered what the neighbors would think. I was more concerned with how the people around me would feel. I didn’t know that I was trying to make people feel better so that I would feel better. I also didn’t know that that’s a self defense mechanism of clairsentients. As empaths we strive to make people feel better so that we don’t feel worse as a result of absorbing their feelings.
I believe now that my mother could hear people’s thoughts perhaps as loud as I could feel their feelings. I remember her telling me to be quiet when I hadn’t said anything. I remember her turning the TV up louder as opposed to muting it so that we could talk. Once my own gifts came back, with a vengeance, I began to have a better understanding of my mother. I was still afraid to share these things with her.
By this time, I had spent much of my life as a person with mental illnesses. I had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, with PTSD, and with BPD. The reality is sometimes I had a huge amount of energy. I would get really excited about a project or a creative activity or a person. My mother called it flighty. My doctor called it mania. Today I recognize it as a high vibrational energy. Other times I would get really, really tired. I would barely be able to function. I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed. I wouldn’t want to go outside. Mostly I would just read or lie in bed daydreaming until I fell asleep. I was told once that my father’s mother, who I had never met, had manic-depression. These illnesses, which I now see as other peoples ill-at-easeness, were diagnosed and medicated after I quit drinking.
I had started drinking at 13. After that I didn’t much care when other people didn’t see the path, I did. I just followed it anyway. I lost some of the curiosity that made me follow the spirits that I saw. I lost some of the desire to tell people about them. A friend died when I was 15. I saw her spirit walk up the street that night. Eventually I saw them less often. There was a spirit on the beach after my prom. I had attempted suicide the week before for the second time. Perhaps I was closer to death than other people. Eventually I saw them less and less. I continued to feel them. When I was 17 my great-grandmother died. I felt her leave the world from across the country. The same happened when my grandfather died.
Something began to change as I grew older. Life maybe. There was no escaping who I was. I continued to try. I drank. I lost myself in fantasy movies, games, and books. The angels, fairies, dragons, and spirits disappeared into books. I did followed them.
When I was 35, I stopped drinking. I started following a spiritual path marked out marked out by some other people who stopped drinking, I started to question my thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors. I tried to be like other people. I believed that depression was a bad thing, a character defect that I couldn’t change. Sinking into books that had me believing in the magic of this world was counterproductive and the voices thar I heard needed to be stopped. I went to a doctor who told me that I had bipolar disorder. He said I should check with a family member to see if they agree. I talked to the sister who used to yell our, “Mom Sue’s being crazy again.” When I would tell her not to sit on my invisible friends. She said the doctor was right.
So, I started taking medication to make me normal. I wasn’t normal. I took the medication and I added drugs to the mix.
But years later when the voices got so loud, I couldn’t function, I was labelled psychotic. That’s when I stopped medicating. I decided that what I was hearing was telepathic communication. I decided to stop avoiding who I was. I chose to embrace it.
I am Susan. I am a psychic, medium, and channel. Since I chose this life, the fairies have returned. They are accompanied by ascended masters, light beings, and even the occasional angel (though I have yet to see one with wings!)