Actor, Spouse, Instigator, Twin...

I lay on my bed, trying to be comfortable but, in truth I was about as far from it as I could get. It was my first session with a professional psychic and I had no idea what was about to happen! What if it didn't work? What if she thought I was crazy? What if she thought I was making it all up? But, I had just paid this woman to help me get some answers so... breathing deeply, in and out, I began my first session with Vanessa. We had already discussed my intentions for our time together and that I wanted to learn more about the connections I had with several men in my life. I seemed to be more connected to these men, and I needed to know why. John was an Actor in New York City, and the last person I dated before I met my husband. I loved him deeply but, we both knew we were not meant to be together in the end. I was living in Maine, and he came to do a show at the theater where I worked. We connected instantly. Ours was a passionate relationship, with total honesty and the freedom of the young, but in the end, he was going back to New York and I did not want to go with him. I loved him, but he did not want the life I wanted, nor I the one he had chosen. To stay together would have made us unhappy in the end. We both knew it and made the difficult choice to end in love rather than in strife.

We had a connection that was deeper than anything I'd ever felt and, through the twenty years that followed, he remained one of my closest friends and confidants. I would reach out when I needed advice, reassurance, guidance, or just to talk. And I always seemed to know when something was up with him. Invariably, I would call just after some drama or milestone had unfolded in his life. He was a place I felt safe, and we both knew we could share whatever was happening and receive only love and support from the other end of the line.

I wanted to know why I'd felt so connected to him through all these years, and why I always seemed to know when he needed me. Vanessa felt that we'd lived many lifetimes together, that we'd been siblings as well as spouses and compatriots, and that our souls were most likely from the same family. She shared that we incarnate, lifetime after lifetime, with many of the same players, and that it was common for souls who were closer, to be able to recognize each other in some way and gravitate to each other as humans. There was a resonance to her words, like I could feel the truth of them in my bones. Learning more about past life regression clearly needed to be the next topic in my studies.

What about my Spouse? We had met at The Williamstown Theatre Festival in Western Massachusetts and, I remember immediately feeling safe and calm with him. It was unusual for me to feel that way but, there was an odd sense of familiarity there. A guy I'd dated in college turned out to be a bit of a psycho. For several years after his graduation, including my time in Maine, there were various forms of intimidation and aggravation, including prank phone calls, hundreds of hang ups, stare downs from across the street and various other attempts at disrupting my life. But now, there was this sense of calm. I'd felt safe with John but, this was different.

Vanessa explained that he was a Protector, that we were soul-mates and that his soul was here to protect me. We had shared many lifetimes and, as Rob and I would later learn together, we had been brothers, spouses of both sexes and, in varying lifetimes, had murdered each other at least once! But, he was still the Protector. He was here, as my cousin Judy (z'l) used to say, to be the pole around which I orbited, and I think there is a lot of truth in that. He was home base, the grounding station, where I could be safe as I embarked on what was about to be an extremely tumultuous journey, thanks in no small part, to Michael... the Instigator.

Michael and I met in Mommy & Me and quickly became "mom-friend" BFFs. He and his husband had just adopted their son and none of us really knew what we were doing. We were non-judgmental supporters on the roller coaster ride of new parents and we laughed, a lot! Michael and I would meet regularly to take the boys to parks and play spaces around LA, where we would talk through that week's challenges and the weirdness of parenthood.

When your husband tours with rock bands, it means you spend a lot of time apart, and there was often this sense of pity from the other moms when I would show up alone, again, to "family" events. But it was never like that with Michael. He and a few other friends, understood I had not been abandoned, but my husband had a job he enjoyed, that happened to include a lot of travel. There was no judgement with Michael and I loved him for that. We remained close, even after our move to Orlando, and we always tried to meet up when I was back in LA. But, as the years went on, it was often harder to connect. They had moved out of the city... jobs changed... kids had activities... It happens...

And then he called. He was sick. The cancer was everywhere, and he was gone in six weeks. For a while, I was in shock. Michael passed just as I had been re-opening myself to the metaphysical world and I could still feel him around me. At times, it seemed like it he was still right there, sitting next to me, just as he'd done a hundred times, during one of our trips to the Play Place. It was hard to explain at the time but, I could just feel him around me. Six months later, he suddenly became the biggest busy-body in my life!

I felt like the snowball rolling down a hill, as skill after skill came to me in rapid succession. It felt so out of control as doors and opportunities were opening to me everywhere. I took classes, went to seminars etc., and inevitably, someone would ask me, "can you do this ___?" And, when I would lean in to it, the answer always seemed to be yes. I knew it was Michael. I felt that he was somehow accelerating my awareness, that he was pushing and shoving me down this road. He needed to me to this, and fast. The thing was, he accelerated my learning, but my comprehension wasn't quite keeping up and, it was completely overwhelming!! Neither Michael nor his husband had believed in any of this when he was alive! Now he was gone, so why did he even care?

Vanessa asked many questions and shared many thoughts about Michael, all of them correct. More about this later but, among other things, she specifically asked me about his laugh. Michael had a huge laugh. The kind you could hear across a crowded room, and it was something I could often hear ringing in my ears. It seemed that, in spirit, Michael understood my skills, and also my connection to "Him." He knew the man was my Twin, the other half of my soul, and that that was why we were so connected. He was the Twin Flame.

It's why, when I connected with "Him", my abilities seemed to spring to life. After not seeing or hearing from him in close to thirty years, he suddenly reappeared in my life. Just as I'd decided to go back and explore this part of my self... He said it was because of a dream. We had both been on the same international flight back to LA and spent the entire trip talking and catching up. By the time the plane landed at LAX, in the dream, we were connected, and in his words, he was smitten. He felt compelled to find me and see how my life had turned out. Michael had already passed, and I was convinced he had a hand in planting the dream.

Vanessa told me how I could attempt to make contact with Michael, to try to get more answers. She instructed me to stand with my feet planted firmly on the ground with a picture of Michael in front of me. To close my eyes and just breathe, in and out, allowing him to come to me. I was game, I mean what did I have to lose? So, one morning, I decided to try it before turning on a workout DVD. Rob was still asleep in the bed behind me. I had my picture, I planted my feet and I took a breath, asking Michael to please come to me, to help me understand. A moment passed, then another, and then I felt something swoosh around me. There was a brightness, like the "whoosh" marks you see in cartoons when someone dashes away. It circled the ceiling of the room as if tracing crown molding and then it came behind me, and leaned. I knew it was him. We used to sit at the McDonald's Play Place in LA, and lean. We'd sit back to back, chatting while we watched the boys play. He was leaning on me again, pushing me forward.

I heard myself ask him why he was there. In that same instant, in my mind I saw them, falling from the sky... They looked like transparency film sheets, the kind a teacher would use in an overhead projector. Hundreds of them, floating down everywhere, yet all landing in a tidy pile at my feet. Picking one up, I held it to the light to see the fragment of an image. The next sheet was the same, the one after it as well. Each page containing another piece of my life's new puzzle. Michael had given me the information I needed. Now it was up to me to sift through it, and trust that understanding would come as I continued to investigate page after transparent page.

"You can make it louder if you want..." Robert's sleepy voice came from the bed behind me. "Make what louder?" I asked "The TV, you can make it louder if you want." "Baby, the TV's not on." "Then who are you talking to?" I froze. Turning slowly around to face the bed, I asked, "What did you hear?" "I heard a man's voice but, it was kind of muffled like he was at the bus station or something"

I sat down hard on the floor. Vanessa had told me Michael was still in a kind of welcome center on the other side, that he'd not yet begun the process called Life Review, and the place where he was, was kind of like a bus station... And as I sat there on the floor of my room, I heard Michael's voice in my head as clear as day. He said he'd be gone for a while for his Life Review, that he'd been wrong about all of it. There was plenty to do after you leave your body and return home.