EPISODE: 096 The Gift of Mediumship

In this insightful podcast episode featuring medium Brian Bowles, listeners are guided through a transformative journey towards self-discovery and empowerment.

This Week’s Episode

“When we think of mediumship in a systemic way, first of all I think it opens a door to new kinds of evidence and secondly, it gives us a different way to understand our parents and understand the people in our family.” – Brian E Bowles 

Episode 96 Resources

Here are some resources referred to in Episode 95 which you may find helpful.

BOOKS:

The Lessons of the Empty Chair by Brian E Bowles 

Letter To A Young Medium by Brian E Bowles 

Halfway Through The Woods by Brian E Bowles

Brian Bowles – Facebook 

Brian Bowles TikTok 

The Mediumship Hour 

The Arthur Findlay College

People’s Choice Podcast Awards

 

About Psychic Matters Podcasts

Ann Théato, CSNUt, Psychic, Medium and Spiritual Tutor, investigates psychic development, mediumship techniques, and paranormal science, so that you can come to understand your own innate psychic ability and expand your knowledge, whilst learning to develop a curious mind.

**PROUD TO BE NUMBER ONE!**

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 PM 096

In this insightful podcast episode featuring medium Brian Bowles, listeners are guided through a transformative journey towards self-discovery and empowerment.

Brian shares invaluable wisdom on a range of topics, starting with effective strategies to conquer impostor syndrome and unlock ones true potential. He delves into the profound art of expressing the soul and emphasises the immense power that comes from speaking one’s authentic truth.

This episode explores the enriching impact of forging connections with others, illuminating how such interactions become a conduit for engaging with life’s deepest essence.

 

You’ll Learn

• How to cope with imposter syndrome
• How to express your soul
• The power of telling your truth
• How individuals engage with life by connecting with us
• How to begin writing
• Why we should honour grief
• We we need to let people love us
• To question whether your beliefs still serve you
• Why words are so powerful
• Why we must trust the spirit world
• Tips for demonstrating mediumship on Zoom
• Why mediumship is about vulnerability

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, my name is Ann Théato and welcome to episode 96 of the Psychic Matters podcast. Don’t forget to like and subscribe to the show and leave a written review because they really do help move the podcast up those important podcast charts.

What is new this week? Well, I can finally announce that I have passed my CSNUt exam with the Spiritualists’ National Union, which means I have been awarded a certificate as a Teacher in Demonstrating Mediumship and now have the letters CSNUt after my name and I could not be prouder. For me, this is the result of eight years of study behind the scenes, and it means I am another step closer to my goal – which is not a secret if you’ve listened to this podcast before – in that I’m hoping one day, to be a tutor at the world-renowned Arthur Findlay College: the world’s foremost college for the study of spiritualism and psychic sciences. So, what happens next is, I wait. Because you have to be invited to be assessed as a Tutor of Tomorrow at the AFC, Arthur Findlay College, and I have not been invited as yet. And, my study isn’t over either. In order to become a Tutor there, I now have to sit a Diploma – which involves another two years study and another 3 exams in different subjects. So, it’s pretty intense still but if something is worthy doing, it’s worth doing well. And, you know, it’s deepening my knowledge, making me research topics I perhaps otherwise wouldn’t have, making me question my own practice and how my own mediumship works, so it’s all good. Exhausting of course. Totally exhausting. But good so I’ll let you know how it all goes.

Meanwhile, other good news: the nominations for the People’s Choice Podcast Awards were announced today and I am delighted to say we are in the final ten again! I’m absolutely so thrilled, which means we are are once again in with a chance of winning that elusive best podcast prize in the category of Religion and Spirituality. So now we sit back and wait for the judges to listen to some episodes and see if they love them as much as we do!

Huge thanks to all of you who took the time to vote for me and for believing in Psychic Matters and the work that we are all doing out there in the world. It meant so much to me, that you took the time to do that, to go and vote – again, hugely appreciated by me. THANK YOU so much.

 Meanwhile, this week I’ve been in the studio with a very special guest indeed. He is someone who is a good friend, a wonderful medium, and he possesses remarkable writing talent, crafting profoundly touching literature.

Turn up the volume, make sure your ear plugs are in place, and get ready for some beautiful conversations around the gift of mediumship.

Ann: So, I am here in the Psychic Matters studio with the one and only Brian Bowlers. Brian, welcome to Psychic Matters.

Brian: Thank you, Ann. Love you, my friend.

Ann: I love you too. I truly, truly love you. And it’s so interesting. We’ve never met in person, have we? But we just fell in love, friendship, kindness, generosity. It’s just, it’s all there, it’s lovely.

Brian: It’s who you are.

Ann: And you, my friend and you! And we just thought we’d organize a Zoom call together and sort of see where the conversation goes and just have a, a lovely spiritual chat about all things and see what comes into the mix.

Brian: Thanks again for having me. I appreciate it so much. It’s good to see you again.

Ann: Oh, it’s such a pleasure. For those of you that are listening, Brian was on a former episode of the Psychic Matters podcast. He was on episode 27 Honoring Grief, Befriending Death, and we had a fantastic chat on that one as well. So, if you, haven’t listened to it yet, tune in and listen to it after this one. So, Brian, tell me something, I know for a fact that you have actually just written yet another book, and tell us about the process of it. Where does it come from? Like lots of people listening may sort of be thinking, oh, I’ll write a book one day. Me, I’m one of those people. I haven’t written it yet. And how do you find the time? How do you find the inspiration? How do you put pen to paper and what’s your process for it? Where did it begin?

Brian: Well, it’s, that’s a really great question. so, the second book is called Lessons of the Empty Chair. And I had planned on writing another book about mediumship actually, more directly about mediumship. ‘Cause a lot of people read my first book wanted me to get more specifics on how to do mediumship. So that was kind of my intent. And then I realized I can’t write that book, but that’s another story. but the way, kind of unfolded for me was I’ll just get these inspirations at times when, um, we were, my husband and I, at the end of the pandemic, or no, sorry, the beginning of the pandemic, we were supposed to be going to have a lovely holiday with friends in Florida and hanging out at a fun gay resort and all that kind of fun stuff. And John and I were contending with being in a clothing optional resort, and our butts had never …

 Ann: oh, brilliant.

 Brian: And. Maybe that shouldn’t happen. So, I was very happy. I was like, good, we can’t go. I mean, I was, there was a part of me, I was like, this is a really, this is a win for me so I don’t have to go to that horrible place.

And yeah, it was just, just trying to be funny, but it’s a little bit the truth. So, we turn around, I’ll never forget, John turns around, he’s like, oh, we can’t do the Florida trip, ’cause everything fell apart. It was just like over a couple days, you know? And so, we, John just got this great idea to have us do some historical stops, on the kind of see the civil right, you know, places where, that are historical for American civil rights. Well, not to bore you with the whole story. We went to this, place in Oklahoma City. It’s a bombing memorial and it’s a heart-breaking place to visit because a lot of, um, a lot of people were murdered there and somebody actually made a, a bomb out of fertilizer. It’s all very dramatic. Um, but anyway, in that experience of being there, I got to hear the docent who talked about her daughter who had died, and she spoke about the survivor tree. And this is this oak tree that’s still there to this day. And they actually Um, they actually use the leaves and they fall. and they make impressions with gold and they sell ’em to the general Public as a way to fundraise for this memorial. And this woman gave me this leaf and I was holding up my hand and I just felt this real connection to there’s a consequence. And we don’t learn to love each other when we imagine that people are against us or for us. And we imagine these worlds where you are on my team or you’re against my team, there’s major consequences for that, aren’t there?

Ann: Yeah, of course.

Brian: So, it kind of inspired me to write that day and I was writing the whole and and went from the moment we left there for the next two hours before we got to our hotel, I was writing, writing, writing. And John said, well, maybe this is a different book. Maybe just let it be what it’s gonna be. And so, I just recognized that as a writer and I’m, you know, I believe. I never, I kind of had this voice inside me that said, I’m not good enough. so even if I’m writing, no one’s gonna wanna read, you’re, you know, it’s like that insecurity that I many of us carry. And my husband said something to me, that really helped. He said, what if you just wrote it without the expectation that everyone’s going to love it? but because you had to write it, because it deserved to be expressed. And that gave me a lot of freedom. That gave me the recognition that I don’t have to accomplish a lot in writing, except just to tell my truth, tell the story that’s in front of me. I don’t have to have some wisdom beyond myself ’cause I’m just as messy and self-centred and goofy as everybody else. And so, when I let go of that expectation, the words just would flow and I would just start to write about small moments in life, when I knew that spirit was guiding me.

 Ann: I just love that. It’s so, such a brilliant way to look at something. Say those words again. Write it because it deserves to be expressed.

 Brian: Yeah.

 Ann: So powerful. It’s brilliant. What a wonderful husband. I adore him too, even though I’ve never met him either.

 Brian: He’s, well, he really is a very good man. And it’s interesting to be in partnership with somebody in for, it’s gonna be on, it’s 27 years, our wedding anniversary past July, but we’ve known each other for about 30 years and he’s just a really good, really good soul. But the big I, the, the gift he gave me that day was, you know, I could let go of, ’cause Letter to Young Medium had already been published and it was really, I’d gotten some pretty, some really lovely responses. But I’d gotten, of course, like any writer, you get some negative ones too.

 Ann: And that was your first book letter to a Young Medium?

 Brian: Yeah, letter to Young. And you know, even in that process it was helpful ’cause John helped me with that too. He said, don’t pretend to be God. we already have a God and she doesn’t need your help.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: It was that clarity that all I can do is tell my stories, you know? And there’s a real freedom in that. I don’t even have to tell people what to think of those stories. ‘Cause I used to have this thing at the end, after I tell the story, this is what you’re supposed to get from it. And that’s what I meant. And John said, remove that carp. Just tell the story and let people own it.

Let them have their own experience.

 Ann: Yes.

 Brian: Ann, frankly you are a storyteller.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: Can I ask you about you with your writing? ‘Cause you know, I like it when we have conversations that are more interactive. ‘Cause it’s really, you know, that’s, it takes so much courage to be who you are and putting your voice out there the way you do.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: So, when you, as a writer, what’s the story that you need to tell? Not you want to tell, but what’s the story that you need to tell about you?

 Ann: Yeah, it’s a great question. Well, there’s so many. You see, I’ve had such an adventurous life, Brian. Uh, but I think what I really feel I need to express now is I want to write and have been creating research notes for this, uh, a one woman play very much like Shirley Valentine, which I’m going to write and perform at the Edinburgh Festival. And it’s only gonna be a sort of 90-minute show, something like that, maybe two halves of 45 minutes. And I played Shirley Valentine once I probably told you, and I, played 18 different characters on stage. And this play is something similar along those lines where I play many different characters because I did a lot of voice work and cartoon voices and things like that.

So, I’m quite good at mimicry and, um, but it’s about, I think it’s, I. I can’t quite decide what it’s about, but it’s definitely about the death of my brother because that was a very tragic event for sure. But also, always alongside great tragedy comes great humour and great comedy and great laughter and wonderful moments of upliftment and joy. So, it can’t be a miserable, it will never be a miserable play. It has to be something very uplifting, but very, very touching. And it’s also going to involve the experiences I’m currently having with my mom who we were chatting before we started this podcast. She’s got some severe memory issues for people that are listening. And um, again, with that incident, It’s a lot of, um, it’s not sad. It’s, uh, human challenges, you know, for all of our family and for my mother, and also great hilarity within it. She finds it funny as well. So, this is just this kind of human soup experience that we’re all having, and I wanna capture things like that. Um, and maybe I’d like to flash back Brian to uh, things in my life that have happened that have been extraordinarily funny or very moving, or I’ve got so many stories about my claims to fame when I met various different famous people and things like that, and the funny things that happened. And I want to put some of that in so it can be like a little sprinkle of all kinds of different things, really.

 Brian: Yeah.

 Ann: Yeah. I, I just need to start. That’s, that’s the only thing I need to do really. Like you did you put pen to paper and you just started writing? And I love the advice that your husband, what’s your husband’s name?

 Brian: John. John Bronas.

 Ann: John, I, I love the advice he gave you there to just begin and, and write what needs to be expressed and don’t be what, trying to write what you think people wanna watch or see. Because then you’re trying to write to a framework, aren’t you, instead of writing from the feelings and the experiences. Yeah. So…

 Brian: it’s all there. I mean, even as you talked about it, notice how you started to, to visit small moments.

 Ann: Yeah. Yes.

 Brian: Yeah. And so, we don’t have to know what the book is until the book’s done. That’s part of the beauty is the title of the book changed, you know, so many times. It was the, the day I, I, um, sent it to be published and got all that stuff finished. That’s when I landed on that title.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: And it had been so many different titles, you know?

 Ann: Right.

 Brian: And so, it’s kind of fun to let the book tell you what it’s meant to be called.

 Ann: Well, I love that. So, you wrote little vignettes of different things from your life as well in a similar sort of way then.

 Brian: Yeah. And I think the beauty of it is, it’s like there’s one of the chapters, you know, I, I recognize my story may make some people uncomfortable. I mean, I’m a gay man and I had some crazy experiences because I’m human.

 Ann: Yes.

Brian: Um, and one I talked about was making out with a Leather Daddy at an act up in Washington, DC and it was like this, uh, kind of during the AIDS crisis and just how this Leather Daddy, I went to kiss him at this Kiss In and he pushed me back and he said, you are the single worst kisser of my lifetime. You, I’ve never kissed a man that knows less how to, how to make out than you. So, he proceeded to spend two hours teaching me how to kiss.

 Ann: Oh, I like Leather Daddy.

 Brian: You know, it turned out that his husband, his partner died um, three weeks prior to that. And that’s why I was asked to sit and actually be his partner at that event.

 Ann: Right.

 Brian: And every moment, to me is filled with humour and grief.

 Ann: Yes.

 Brian: And it, and it takes a certain amount of willingness to let the feelings of grief be there with the humour.

 Ann: Yes.

 Brian: I realize for myself with my writing, ’cause there’s a way in which, I used to write in a way that was kind of demeaning to grief because I wasn’t comfortable with my own grief. I would go to humour as a way to protect myself.

 Ann: Right.

 Brian: And now I still do that if I’m being honest. But but I like that there’s a, a mixture of the vulnerability with the humour.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: just by telling the truth.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: If that makes sense. You know?

 Ann: Yeah, yeah. That does make sense. That makes really good sense. I was thinking the other day, ’cause I was thinking, well how can I bring it all together, my stories, how can I bring it all together? And I was thinking, gosh, there was a time when I was teaching all my students in a class on a Zoom call and you know, when you do a Zoom call, there’s so many little squares on the screen. And every few minutes I’d set them a little exercise and then I’d just pause and then I’d run off to my brother who was really ill doing something crazy downstairs. ‘Cause he had a brain tumour. He didn’t really know what he was doing and trying to cope with that. And then going, coming back in and going, hello everyone, yes, and here we are back again. And all was really calm. And then the next, you know, about another 20 minutes go by and then I just put it on pause and put my camera off and then run off and do something else. It was just crazy. And I’m thinking that it might be quite a good way to set the play up with a backdrop of all these different squares where I’m… it’s almost like a farce. You’re being here in front of this Zoom, but then you have to run off and deal with life’s issues. And you can’t, people see you as this calm and you know, your life looks marvellous. What could possibly be wrong with Ann? And really behind the scenes, there’s so much going on and it’s the same for you Brian, I’m sure.

 Brian: I think that’s a beautiful way you described it. I mean, I wanna see this play. I mean,

 Ann: I do as well.

 Brian: No, I mean, I think, ’cause I think the beauty of it is, is that, you know, when we call ourselves fancy mediums and we’re doing this really beautiful work, which is really miraculous and I, it’s still pretty inexplicable for me to explain the miracle of the work of mediumship.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: Um, also, you know, even though I really believe and know today that, you know, we’re spirits in the body and, you know, we can be fancy with our beliefs and what have you, when a loved one dies, it still hurts.

 Ann: Oh yeah.

 Brian: The lesson of being human, not even a little bit. And I think that’s part of the beauty of writing is I’ve come to recognize we’re all in the river together.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: And when I imagine that I’m on the side of that river, I’m not very helpful to anybody. I, because I’m imagining that I’m somehow separate from the experience of being human. And, if you’ve suffered and gone through times where you’ve been in profound grief, I feel like we have so much to offer others when we honour that.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: And let those feelings guide us instead of, um, imagining them just being part of the past. because I feel like my grief speaks to me today and has so much to offer me today, as it did when, you know, I first experienced loss, you know, So, how about for you, when you think about, I mean, that’s a powerful moment actually. You know, you have these memories of caring for your brother, and then you wanna be the teacher.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: And you know, I mean, that’s really profound, isn’t it? I like that you’re holding both and yet you’re did both really well I’m sure, that’s part of the beauty of it, you know?

 Ann: Yeah. It was fun. They were a new bunch of students at the time, a new class of students, and they, I don’t speak about my personal life or what’s going on, especially something so sensitive that was going on at that time, uh, to a bunch of strangers. So, so there was no way that they would’ve known what was going on. But yeah, it was, it was, um, it was easy enough to hold both spaces actually, and, um, turn up for both things that were going on. Uh, and I think we do that, don’t we, as human beings, we, we don’t tell everyone everything. We are quite private I think as human beings, very, very private. Don’t let people know a lot of things that go on behind the scenes. And, uh, yeah, interesting. What I’ve found though is I found, I don’t know if you found this, Brian, but I found people are actually really lovely. People are kind, people are thoughtful, generous, funny. Um, it’s only when we’re under the greatest stress and duress when our worst selves come out. ‘Cause my worst self appears several times a week. Let me tell you. Um, uh, On the whole, people are so nice. So, when you are suffering something terrible in your life, people rally round you and they pick you up and they support you and they’re so kind. Don’t you find?

 Brian: I think that has been a great gift of the last two years for me with having, going down this journey with health issues. although I, I’ll be honest, it’s been hard for me to receive. It’s, uncomfortable to let people love me back. And so, I think there’s, uh, an aspect of mediumship where you have a lot, you’re given a lot of authority with that work in the sense of you’re the communicator even though the information’s not coming from you, there’s a sense of authority or expectation we can create for ourselves. And I think there’s a, a great gift I’ve been given with this health journey that it just reminds me that part of the dance of the life is that We have to let people love us back. and you said it beautifully, whenever we’re under our greatest duress, we fail people because we do. And, if anybody’s telling the worst story about your worst moment, you could seem like the worst person on the planet.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: Though, if anyone’s telling the most lovely story about you of, you know, your most lovely moment, you can sound like the most lovely person. And I’ve just accepted that I’m neither, I’m really, you know, I’m really both, I’m complicated, like all of us. And, so creating that expectation of perfection is really it, it only wounds us to have that expectation because then we have to pretend a lot with the world, um, that we’re it. And I think with the beauty of writing is that you can reveal to yourself too, that you’re just deeply human and that you make as many mistakes as everybody else. And that there’s no villain. It’s hard to have a villain in the story when you’re writing. It’s really beautiful. You start to see that you’re the villain in some of the stories.

 Ann: Yes.

 Brian: Not as, it’s not as simple as I thought it would be, you know? And so, my stories, even with my family, have become so much more complicated. where it’s no longer my mom was, was not a great mom, or, you know, those kinds of stories I used to tell myself, now she’s a complicated woman in a world that didn’t allow her to be a complicated woman. And so, it’s just fascinating, you know, as you all these stories, you, you see who you are in those stories too. It’s really, it reveals a lot. It’s beautiful that way.

 Ann: Why do you think, Brian, you find it hard to let people love you. Where do you think that comes from?

 Brian: I think, we all have our different ways of coping with our experience of being human. But I think being a, a gay man and coming out during the AIDS crisis, there was this feeling that, um, hmm, that who I was, was unacceptable and who I was was inherently in opposition to what a good person would be, if you will. And so, I think there, there’s still an unconscious part of me that I have to grapple with, um, that belief that I’m worthy of the love I try to offer. Um, and I, I think, I think many of us struggle with that, but I, I also think our friendships can suffer if we don’t let people care for us when we’re vulnerable. You know, there’s great balance that we offer each other, if that makes sense. I’m learning a lot, I think of harmed friendships frankly, by not letting people in and not letting close friends see me or be there for me. And so, I think the mediumship is fascinating because, you know, in mediumship you’re honouring the truth and lived experience of a spirit. And at some point, that grace that is going through you, also touches you. And at some point, you look in the mirror and you think, okay, I’m no longer okay with with hating this person. I see every day, I’ve gotta find a different relationship with this person.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: And so, there’s gotta be a softer way to tell my own story to myself, if that makes sense.

 Ann: Yeah, it really does make sense. I’ve been thinking a lot in the last week or two, especially about beliefs I’ve carried since I was a child and how they’ve never served me, but yet they’ve defined me because I’ve believed in them. And we were speaking, there’s two I can think of. Let me think. We were speaking before this program began, we were just having a general chat weren’t we, it was lovely. And I was saying that one of the things my mother used to say to me as a child was, uh, that you are. She’s Irish. My mother, by the way, you are plain. You’re not, you know, what did she say? You are no great beauty. You’re plain but pleasing. And my whole life I thought, oh, okay, so I’m not beautiful, but I’m quite plain, but I’m pleasing. So that’s a good thing. And that defined me for a long time. And another thing I was thinking about when I was out with the dog last week was there’s this rhyme, which is Monday’s child is fair of face. Tuesday’s child is full of grace. Wednesday’s child is this and that Thursday’s child I was born on a Thursday, has far to go. And I was like, why? Why have I got the duff line in that poem like Thursday, child has far to go. Maybe that’s my lot in life. I’ve got a really slog hard and I’m never gonna really get there and everyone’s gonna get there before me. And in fact, that is actually what’s happened in my life. But isn’t it funny how these things, we carry them through, but they’re not true. None of them are true. And so, I think we have to be really careful what we say to people in this world. Be careful with our words. They are very powerful.

 Brian: Beautiful. But but I also feel the language we use with ourselves can, make the kind of cruelty the world offers normal, you know, we, in other words, the cruelty, I like the, it’s kind of the idea that no one will, will harm me more than myself. And so, I, now it’s like, I almost feel as if the more kind I’ve been to myself, um, the more relationships change in my, my life. You know, some people don’t, they just can’t fit the new energy. And I hate to get so goofy about the energy piece ’cause we can almost make that sound not human, but, but really, it’s like that energy of self-love. It doesn’t align with the relationship we’ve created with someone else. And they no longer belong in our life. And it doesn’t even, it’s often not dramatic, like a dramatic upheaval and a dramatic goodbye. It’s more our lives find a way to pull away from one another because that person no longer aligns with the energy, I’m creating for myself.

 Ann: Yes.

 Brian: Um, have you found that to be true for you?

 Ann: Yeah, very much so. There’s been people that have suddenly spiralled away out of existence and where you think they’re gonna be around for quite some time and then suddenly they’re just not there. They’ve, they’ve been removed by events and sometimes it’s a really hard separation. A soul feels so full of grief, like, what is that about? I thought this was a thing. And then you realize when you look back, no, no, no. You were going off in a completely the wrong direction. You have been recalibrated to the correct road like a sat nav, and it had to be that way ’cause you were just gonna go off in the completely the wrong direction. So yeah, it has happened.

 Brian: But I honour that with your mom, do you feel that that’s what your mom thought of herself and that was her only way that she could story you or see you? That’s just what I’m wonder. I hope that’s okay to ask.

 Ann: Of course, it’s okay. So, you can ask me anything. I don’t mind. Uh, yes. Well, it’s interesting because as I’ve sat with her and we’ve had, I’ve had the benefit of visiting her much more often than I normally would’ve done.

And through that, sitting with her of a night-time, just having a glass of wine and talking about the day, and she talks about the olden days a lot, and she’s talked a lot about her parents. And I knew lots and lots of the stories, but the more she speaks about it, the more I think, my goodness, my mother was a damaged lady by her parents who probably damaged in their turn, you know? Um, and. She’s copied some of the phrasing that she learned from her mother. And I believe that phrase, you are plain but pleasing is something that comes from her mom and she’s learned to say it to me. Um, I remember picking up a letter that had been written by my grandmother, so that’s my mother’s mom.

And she was talking about one of her daughters. So that would be my auntie, my mother’s sister. And in this lovely letter, my grandmother has this beautiful writing. It’s so stylish, her writing, but she’s saying very mean things about her daughter saying something. She would be Irish as well. So, I’m gonna do the accent just for the benefit of it. Um, or do you look at Joan there? Joan was her daughter Joan going along the road there in that little hat with her pinched little face. What does she look like? Doesn’t she look a sight in that hat? Joan was one of the most beautiful, stunning, actually stunning women. And I bet she looked beautiful in her little hat and I bet she felt lovely in her little hat. And there’s her mother writing down words to send to somebody else being so mean and nasty about it. I mean, it’s light, small, little mean and nasty stuff, but needless and um, I just found that really sad. And, um, I think my mother must have listened to those kind of phrases all her life and that sort of behaviour all her life. And then you can’t help but copy because we’re human beings and we imitate so that we fit in. That’s part of human nature is they’re not psychology and all that. And um, so when you start to have a look at why we behave the way we do, then we understand the human experience so much more. It’s nothing to do with my mother’s soul. My mother would give you the coat off her back. She still at the age of 90, makes me a hot water bottle and puts it in my bed with my pyjamas wrapped around it. I’m 57, you know, 58. Yeah. That’s, so there’s a lot of love there, but not that love is not easily expressed. It’s not spoken, it’s not shown physically, but it’s demonstrated in other ways. And I think because it, we have to, I dunno, I think she, my mom always used to say to me, or you’ll never know my true value until you’ll see my empty chair and uh, it’s probably true and I think about it. ‘Cause she’s got a chair in the kitchen where she sits every single day, all day long, reading the paper, eating her lunch, doing this, looking at the clock, looking to see who’s at the front door, going back to the chair. And I think God and I sit there sometimes. And actually, I sent a friend, uh, sent a message to my friend Fraser when I was sitting in the kitchen. My mother had gone up to bed when I was last in Ireland. And I sent him a message and I said, gosh, you know, my mother’s voice has been so loud all my life. She’s had loud opinions, loud expressions, loud vocally telling me what she thought always. And I said, and very soon it’s gonna be so, so silent in this kitchen. And that was a really big moment for me. I thought, my goodness, it’s, it’s coming to an end and. There’s such a sadness within all of it, isn’t there? The human experience, but I’m so happy to also to be experiencing this softer side of her at the end of her days. Yeah.

Brian: That’s so beautiful. You know, I mean, if we just take that in, I mean, that’s, you’re a writer. I mean, that’s even like the image of the empty chair in the kitchen. And you know, I, how many of us can relate to watching our mothers change and be at a mom, go through that journey of, um, you know, more prolonged decline.

It’s, it’s a painful thing to recognize the mother we will see in two weeks or a month will be, will be different. You know, one of the, one of the things I really believe, kind of believe about mediumship is that, you know, we focus on the evidence, which is beautiful and important to me. Um, but I often wonder if we can think of our work more systemically, because we’re not really, you know, when we’re connecting with someone’s mother, we’re not really, we can connect with her as a soul, right, as an individual. But there’s sometimes power in allowing her loved ones to come and speak even about her and about your relationship, you know, in an evidential fashion, right? I mean, where, um, her mother or her sister, um, would come through and, you know, identify who they are, show you what they, you know, and, but it’s an interesting thing when I come to allow mediumship kind of work the same way I did as a family therapist in a more systemic way where it’s not just all about the individual because we’re so impacted by the families that we come from. We can’t really separate who we are from our origin story or from the people in that story and their pain and their joy and there, um, the things that they were asked to overcome. You know, like for example, I didn’t know that we were Jewish on my mom’s side of the family until right before my mom died. And it was actually her brother who told me at a restaurant and popped this whole booklet in front of me about all of our Jewish relatives. And, and then I had a genetic test. And indeed, we are Ashkenazi Jews on my, on my mother’s side and or part of my mother’s side. And it was, um, it was so fascinating to recognize the lengths to which her family went to hide that. And so that just reveals so much about who she was and her, her identity, um, how she was told from the time she was a child that part of who she was was unacceptable. And so, when me telling her that I was gay, why she would be protective and have a very difficult time with that. Because it’s not so different from her experience, uh, feeling like her identity, part of her identity would never be accepted in this world.

And so, it, it’s just fascinating. I just think, not to get too dramatic about it, but I, I think when we think of mediumship in a systemic way, first of all, I think it opens a door to new kinds of evidence. Um, but secondly, I think it gives us a different way to understand our parents and understand the people in our family.

 Ann: Yeah, that’s really beautiful. Say more about mediumship in a systemic way. ‘Cause I don’t think I’m quite understanding what that means.

 Brian: Well, for example, when I work with people now, if I’m connecting with someone’s mother, for example, I’ll see the grandparents typically on both sides of the family. And I’ll just acknowledge ’em. Sometimes they’ll actually directly speak and I’ll, I’ll acknowledge to the client what they look like. Is typically what I do, and I try to be as specific as possible so that they can ground that evidence and know it’s sincere. And sometimes a grandfather will actually stand in, will sit in a chair with a father, let’s say if the father was known, um, maybe the father abandoned the family or what have you, what have you. And, and so this person felt that their father’s, sorry, their mother’s father became more of a father to them. And so, there’ll be ways in the visual that, so when I’m working with the client, I could say, okay, I’m connected with your mother. And just to acknowledge her mother, you know, your mother looked this way, but her mother looked this way and her father looked this way and, and she was closer with her father. And, and they had, you know, so some of the challenges that your mom experienced, she transferred on to you and she just wants to acknowledge that. Does that make sense? It’s more, it’s more specific.

 Ann: Yeah. So, you’re understanding who you are. So, your recipient is understanding more who they are because of their lineage and because of the behaviour of those that were before them. Is that what you are saying?

 Brian: Absolutely.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: You know, and you, at the lineage of women, I mean, as women have gained more rights in a legal way, you know, it doesn’t mean that women have gained access to the male dominated world in a real way. And you know, the legal, we can have a law in the books, but the real lived experience of equality doesn’t just happen because we make up a law about it. So, you think of the generations of women in our history and in your ancestry. It’s fascinating to think about, you know, the ways in which women like my mother were impacted by sexism. You know, you’re not allowed to be a mother with mental health issues. You just have to be happy about being a mother and working full-time, you know, so there she wasn’t given, there was no room for her to have her real experience in the room. She was just told she had to be happy about it. To be joyful and grateful that she was a mother and a full-time, you know, worker. Um, and that’s, you think about the unreasonableness of that, that’s ridiculous. But her lived experience was, you know, her real emotional, true experience was, was seldom allowed to be in the room. I mean, that destroys people.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: So, we start to understand that our ancestry is more complicated. Just as we’re, you know, we always hope that people will see our complexity and give us compassion when we’re imperfect. ‘Cause we all are. it’s fascinating when we give that to our relatives. ‘Cause then they have a completely different story in our minds.

They hold a very different space. so that’s kind of enough to, that’s kind of, you know, talk to me in five years. I’ll have a completely different belief maybe at that point.

 Ann: Yeah. Yeah.

 Brian: But I think it’s really an interesting thing to recognize that we’re all part of a family and we’re all part of an ancestral lineage. And I just think it’s powerful to let our mediumship speak back to that. But in a real way, we don’t want those experiences to be out of the world of evidence and we don’t want those experiences to be manufactured or generalized, it’s more that we really can depend on the evidence to take us further. Does that make sense?

 Ann: Yeah, yeah. It really, really does make sense. Are you, are you doing a lot of one-on-one readings at the moment? Do you demonstrate? How is your mediumship working for you?

 Brian: Yeah, I’d love to do demonstrations. In fact, I was just gonna say, if you ever wanted to, um, I’d be honoured, you know, for, I could do an actual session with you and, and just, just kind of acknowledge what that looks like so it doesn’t sound so, theoretical. it’s really fun to put the meat on the bones of that. But anyway, so it, because of my health, the way it’s been the last couple years, I was diagnosed with pernicious anaemia, which is, it sounds goofy, but it’s a lovely diagnosis to get in the sense that once you start doing shots, you start to pretty much get like all the things back that you were losing. It’s pretty, it’s pretty magical. I mean, I looked like I had Parkinson’s two and a half months ago, and I was walking with a cane. I had tremors. I was just, you know, very pulling away from the world. And, and now having been on these shots for a while, I’m just coming back to life. It’s really magical. So, I’m starting to work, starting to do one-on-one readings again, and I look forward to doing demonstrations again. Um, but you know, I’m, I’m a big believer that the belief system of the medium guides the evidence. Whatever you value is, is what you’re looking, is what you’ll allowed to come through, if you will.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: So, mediumship is like an instrument, and so our instruments to offer more than what we imagined and, allow more to be in the room than we would ever have imagined. And I think that’s kind of powerful.

 Ann: I think that’s really, really powerful. I would absolutely love to do a demonstration of mediumship with you, Brian, so we’ll definitely organize that. That’d be fabulous.

 Brian: Yeah.

 Ann: And I was very interested in my own mediumship last night, um, without blowing my own trumpet, but I it,

 Brian: no, no, no. We have to, let’s pause for a moment on that. I think. So, it took you many years to get to this point in your mediumship and a lot of hard work.

 Ann: Yes.

 Brian: And the fact that you’re good at it and the fact that you’re effective is, it’s just a mirror, isn’t it, of your commitment to this work and also all the pain and challenges and gratitude and growth that you’ve gone through in your life.

 Ann: Yeah. So, thank you.

 Brian: Sorry to interrupt you on that love, but anyways.

 Ann: Oh, that’s nice. Yeah, no, thank you. You are honour, you are honoring my journey there, which is You are absolutely right. It’s really, really important to honour that. And I, I should honour that in myself a lot more actually, because what I do on a Tuesday night is something called The Mediumship Hour.

It is one hour, I demonstrate every single Tuesday of the year, apart from, I think I take two weeks off at Christmas. Occasionally there have been Tuesdays where I can’t do it, and my friend Lesley Malone will pitch in and do it for me. Uh, but I’m now starting to, uh, it’s been going for three years now, Brian, and I’m now starting to invite other mediums onto it. It’s a free event. Anybody can come from all over the world. It’s 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM UK time zone, and it’s just a way of serving the spirit world and giving something out to people who may really need a message or may just be curious about mediumship. And, um, and also it is got the added bonus of being a beautiful playing field for my mediumship, whereby I am not in a spiritualist church. I don’t have to, uh, do things in a certain way because it’s mine. I can do what I like. But basically, what I do is I do mediumship for half an hour and then someone else does. Uh, but coming full circle on it. Last night, so I, I was working with my mediumship and it was such a profound evening and there’ve been many, many evenings with this mediumship hour where I’ve hidden away, I’m not telling anyone it’s on. They can come, if they find out, they can just turn up. That’s okay. Let me just see how it goes. And I’ve sort of felt my way forward with it. And now I’m starting to advertise it and made my lovely little graphics and things. And I’ve put them all out there a couple of weeks ago.

And what I’ve noticed, what I noticed yesterday was, as I have learned to attune to the spirit world, they have learned to attune to me also. And I hadn’t really considered that before. I’d always thought it was something I had to do, but of course, it’s a two-way thing. We’re trying to get that beautiful attunement in place and the trust and the, you know, the energetic connection there. And last night it was just, it just worked so beautifully. We, I was able to give some really lovely messages to people, safe in the knowledge that I knew. I knew what the spirit world were giving me. And I was insistent, no, no, no, it’s this way, it’s this way. This is what’s happening, da da. And then it’s, um, I might as well tell you the story, mightn’t I? Let me just tell you this story, it’s easier. Everyone would be like, what is she on about? Um, so in a nutshell, there was. Two. Uh, there, let me just say, there was a gentleman in the spirit world who passed away from uh, something like a leukaemia or something like that in his forties. And it was, I said, oh, you are his sister. He tells me You’re his sister. Yes, I am. Said the recipient. And I said, he shows me this, uh, piece of string with blobs on it. Little circular blobs. ‘Cause that’s how it comes in, doesn’t it? It doesn’t immediately come in as a necklace or a set of beads. It comes in like a, what is this thing I’m looking at or I’m being shown. And then I knew it’s to do with prayers. Oh, it’s, it’s something to do with prayer beads. He gives this to you. And she said, no, he’s never given me anything like that. I said, well, he’s showing me this thing. Maybe it must be a Mala beads or rosary beads or, or a necklace. Did he ever give you a pearl necklace? No. I said, okay. He keeps showing it to me. She said, I dunno what it is. And I said, um, I appreciate, you dunno what it is, but I can’t let it go. He keeps showing it to me again and again and again. It’s. A piece of string with blobs on it. I believe it’s a prayer beads. It’s definitely for prayer. And it connects the two of you together. So, what is this? Why is he showing it to me? And she said, well, maybe it’s the rosary beads. I put in his hands in his coffin and I said, oh, so you gave it to him. He didn’t give it to you. But that’s, that’s what connects you these prayer beads. And it was a beautiful piece of mediumship because the spirit person was, you know, definite about what they were showing. I was definite about what I was receiving and what I was giving. And the recipient was trying to work it out in her own mind. And finally, we made the connection and after that, the information just started to flow. But I thought how beautiful mediumship is when it works so wonderfully to give beautiful, beautiful, beautiful evidence. There was another one last night where, I said to this lady, your friend in the spirit world is showing me a wishing well. And I said, she showed me tarot cards. Yes. We used to read tarot cards together. I said, and I know I’ve read tarot cards for many years and the wishing well does not exist on any tarot card in the Rider Waite tarot pack. But she shows me this wishing well, and I know you drop coins together into this wishing well in a prayerful way. And she said, before she died, that’s what we did. We dropped coins into a wishing well. Isn’t that amazing? And I just thought, wow, what beautiful evidence from spirit that I’m honoured to be able to bring forward and trust and deliver. Um, and I just. I, I’m just so excited about mediumship and how the spirit world are working with me. ‘Cause as you know; Brian Mediumship goes up and down and round the houses and back. You go back 25 steps and forward four and back 35 and forward seven.

 Brian: It’s messy as we are…

 Ann: it’s, uh, yeah, it’s a journey. Mediumship is, but I, I guess my whole thing is I realized how hard the spirit world are working with me yesterday, and I found that so beautiful.

 Brian: But also, you know what you did. That’s, I think the hardest thing for me in mediumship is that you trusted the information.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: Even as somebody was saying, no, no, no. There’s a thing about the work that is so transformational when you stand by the spirit and you’re, it’s no longer the attachment to approval. Or to accomplishment.

 Ann: Yes.

 Brian: You know, almost like that to speak that little voice that says, I need to prove to people that I’m a

medium. I need to prove to people I’m good. Or all that nonsense. It’s like that all of a sudden quiets. And then there’s this other space for the work where it’s like, and some people don’t like the fact that I use the word surrender. ‘Cause I mean that, you know, it can be kind of a goofy term and I totally honour that.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: But it feels that way to me. That where I’m letting go of my, I’m recognizing this isn’t about me in that moment, and I’m letting go enough of me to stand by the spirit. And those are magical moments in the work. And there’s these days where I’m not as good at that as I am on other days.

 Ann: Yes, same here.

 Brian: Because of whatever I’m going through. But look what you did. I mean, you allowed a spirit to come through you and offer a memory and a connection that that person will never forget.

 eah.

 Brian: Isn’t that magical? I mean, it’s hard to explain how powerful it’s to be used in that way to allow a message, to be played through, to have, allow a moment to be acknowledged through us.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: It’s really profound. So how can I ask you, did you feel the validation from the spirit before the client?

 Ann: How do you mean?

 Brian: Did you feel before the client said yes, that this is the wishing well, you know, memory of dropping those coins and before my friend died?

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: Didn’t you know that that was accurate before your, the client ever said a word?

 Ann: Oh yeah.

 Brian: Isn’t it the craziest thing?

Ann: It’s the craziest thing

 Brian: always there with spirit. You, I mean, you can always feel, to me, I feel like I’m in the river or I’m moving outta the river.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: And when you’re in that river, it’s kind of in that flow and you can kind of feel like I’m honouring the message, I’m staying true to what this, what spirit bring me. So, you knew. Before the year ever came to.

 Ann: Yeah, it’s funny, isn’t it? ‘Cause I saw the tarot cards and I saw the wishing well on the tarot cards and I knew it was nothing to do with the tarot. So, I was like, there’s this wishing well, it’s really important, it’s jumping out at me, so this is information I need to now deliver to you. So, she’s showing me this wishing well. And I believe you dropped coins in it. In in, yeah. It was really extraordinary. And um, the week before that, I’d, I’d recently attended a course by the fantastic Paul Jacobs at the Arthur Findlay College. And it was a, I must write to Paul Jacobs actually and tell him how brilliant that course was and how it’s really benefited me and all the spirit people that work through me, uh, and the clients and everything. But, um, I attended this course and one of the things he said to me that Gordon Higginson used to say was, if you can see a picture frame in your mind’s eye, then you can see what’s in it because it’s in, it’s in the picture. If you can see the picture frame, you can see what’s in the picture. So, I thought that’s fascinating that is, so I tried it out two weeks ago. The spirit people gave me, um, uh, I was working with this lady, this living lady, and I said, your sisters here. There’s three sisters actually that stand together. And I said, and there’s a photograph that exists of the three of them sitting together. And she said, yes, I’ve just been looking at it before I came on, it’s at the back of the room. And I said, and I know in that picture that they must be sitting against a white wooden slatted, slatted wood, or tongue and groove or something like this. It’s like wooden panels. And she said, yes, that’s exactly what’s behind them. So, I was like, excellent. I put that into practice and it worked really well because that’s what Paul Jacobs was saying. That’s where the evidence is, look deeper for the evidence.

 Brian: I love that.

 Ann: It’s great, isn’t it, Brian? Doesn’t it excite you about mediumship? you’re like, I could try all these lovely things.

 Brian: Yeah. And we’re never done. It’s kind. And actually, next time, just for fun, when you’re working with, with a client, when you’re working with one of their parents in spirit, just imagine, imagine that the father that’s there, that his parents are with him.

 Ann: That’s great. I love this, this way that you’re working.

 Brian: And just see what happens. And we’re in, just imagine all the animals that were important to, uh, the father or to the person that you’re working with. Just the client. I don’t feel like spirit ever tries to trick us.

 Ann: No.

 Brian: I just know for myself when I’m doubting myself or what, whatever it is, that, that doubt is real to me.

And I’ve made that real and it bringing into the work because, you know, I’m human. It’s a powerful thing to have doubt, but still trust.

 Ann: It really, really is.

 Brian: It’s not true for me. I can be, I can doubt myself. I can doubt even mediumship, and yet I can still trust the experience of the work even in my doubt. And I, I just think if we can tell each other that, then there’s not the magical shore that we land on where we have no doubt. ‘Cause that’s just not true. I don’t, I don’t think that’s real.

 Ann: That’s It’s not, and you are. Right. And when I think about my journey through The Mediumship hour, I just started with myself and Lesley Malone and Tyrone Cusack. We were all good mediums at the time, uh, but we didn’t tell that many people about it. We were just sort of experimenting. And also, we were used to demonstrating in Spiritualist churches and events and venues. And so doing it on Zoom is very, very different. We had to learn a, kind of, adapt our mediumship a little bit to the Zoom, but, um, but

 Brian: what did, you know, just to ask real quick, what did you adapt, if you don’t mind, what, like what are some things that you did to adapt to that environment?

 Ann: Yeah,

 Brian: Some people would appreciate that because that’s, I think that’s true. It’s kind of powerful.

 Ann: I’ll come onto that in a second, but I’ll just finish what I was gonna say initially, which was that crippling doubt at the beginning. And I used to pitch up every Tuesday, and I’d have to run to the loo a thousand times before I began. Um, and I used to feel sick thinking, what am I doing? What am I doing? Oh my gosh. And then the minute you step into the power of your own soul and the power of the spirit world, you are off and you’re okay. Some were not so great. Some of those evenings were difficult. Recipients can be tricky sometimes; spirit connections can be hard to cement sometimes. And I, I stumbled and staggered through a lot of those evenings, but I kept going back the next Tuesday. I kept going back, I kept going back and I’m so glad I didn’t stop doing it because what I’m trying to say to the people listening is, that lovely uh, experience I had yesterday with the rosary beads or the wishing well I didn’t start that way. I started with tiny little pieces of evidence, little bits that were just as valid and important, but my confidence in my own ability was not really there, but it is coming now. It’s coming just through turning up and doing it, turning up and doing it, and just sort of being, I don’t swear on this podcast, but I, what, can I think of a different phrase for what I’m trying to say? Um, uh, very focused minded, uh, yeah, that’s what I was trying to do. So, to adapt to zoom, which is what your question was. Um, I had to understand a little bit more about people’s behaviour because people sit in front of a computer, they think they’re just in front of the television, so they pitch up, they wanna eat their dinner, they wanna put the dog on the lap, they wanna eat their soup. They, some people were in bed in their night dresses. Um, some people are always wandering about in the garden with their phone, and the backgrounds are wafting up and down. Some people are driving just wondering.

 Brian: Yes, yes, yes.

 Ann: And then some people would unmute because you got a message for them and they, their husband would be sitting next to them watching the telly and you are trying to give them the message over the husband or the wife or the other person listening to music or watching their telly, it is crazy. So initially I found all that really rude, but what I’ve come to understand, coming back to what we are saying is it’s the human experience. This is what we are, that we’re messy human beings. This is… we’re not very… Ti …don’t tidy us up and dust us down. We, life would be very boring. But how I did adapt it though was I did set some rules and regulations in The Mediumship Hour. I say to everybody, it’s one hour of mediumship. I want you, you must, you have to to be in here for this hour, keep your camera on. And the reason I want the camera on is so that people are engaged, so we can see people’s faces. We know that they’re listening and energetically it helps us connect. And sometimes you’d find, you’d give a message to someone and they’d have all the black screens with just their name at the bottom and nobody was saying yes or no. And you couldn’t see if they were behind the screen or whether they’d wandered off to go and get some Weetabix from the kitchen. I dunno. So, and the other thing I said was don’t put your pets on your lap because we love pets. You know, we we’re all pet lovers, adore, uh, cat dogs, horses. House pigs, whatever, you’ve got hamsters, rabbits, they’re all welcome. But if you put your cat, dog, or cat on your lap, it’s very distracting ’cause there’s a lot of movement going on in the screen. And same I say to people, don’t wander around, just keep in one place. Um, so things like that, we put some basic rules in place and for us as mediums also, we put rules in place. We finish at eight o’clock because we found it. ‘Cause you know what it’s like when you’ve got a good link and you don’t wanna stop it and you’re carrying on, it’s five past eight. Oh, just say a little bit more about this. It’s 10 past eight and people are starting to leave the room and it’s not fair on them ’cause they only signed up to come in for the hour. So, we tried to finish on time. Um, understand people’s behaviour, put some rules and regulations in place. And how else did I adapt? Um, I still, if you know, if you demonstrate in a venue, you give out your initial information and you feel drawn, I’m in, drawn in this way, or I feel I’m with this, I’m in this direction. And it must be somebody here along this line on the right. But on Zoom you can’t really do that, especially if there’s two or three, if you’re lucky, and you’ve got to flick through some pages. ‘Cause there’s more than 12 people there. So sometimes it works. I can just look at those screens and I say, right, Mrs. Smith, can you unmute? I really need to come to you. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. Um, sometimes you can find, you say, one square and it’s the person just underneath in the square beneath. So, there’s that. Um, how else did I adapt? Uh, all kinds of different ways really. Does that help at all, Brian?

 Brian: It does. No, I I think it’s beautiful. I mean, it, it’s, um, you know, as a medium, I’m, I’m just still a believer that mediumship’s about vulnerability. And so, we have to have the setting, be set up in a way that allows us to be vulnerable or, I can’t really trust myself in the work fully. I won’t take the risk to be, vulnerable, you know, because the, the very things we’re matching. It’s so funny to hear you talk about those examples ’cause Yes, yes.

but I also, um, I’m also amazed that some of the judgment I had about something like Zoom being a barrier or not working as well, or you know, some of those belief systems I had, have all been proven to just not be the case. So I love that the spirit is always bigger than my, than my barrier. So, my mind creates or makes up.

 Ann: Yeah

 Brian: there’s a lovely person that leads this group for, mothers who have had children die. Right. And it’s a quite a large group and when you’re doing work in that group, they have about six mediums normally in they divide them in three different rooms and what have you. And, and I was freaked out the first time I went, well, second time I went, third time I went, but it was, it took time for me. So, kind of trusting the, the time trusting that something that’s uncomfortable now won’t be .

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: There’s a moment where it won’t be.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: And just allowing your, just allowing yourself to be uncomfortable, but knowing that that’s temporary.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: I just thought your examples were, I mean, I thought your guidance was great, you know? Anyway, I didn’t know you were doing that on Tuesday nights, so you were actually very subtle about that. So, I’m gonna, that’s something I’m going to make sure I attend.

Ann: Oh yeah. Come along. You’re so welcome. You can attend. And those listening can attend. Man don’t kill me if it doesn’t go quite so well. It’s just how it is.

Brian: I think you’re just acknowledging the beauty of it that, you know, if, but again, it’s that same thing if we’re only, our people, only tell the story about our best reading.

 Ann: Yeah, of course.

 Brian: Or I always feel like that’s not really who I am as a medium. I’m somewhere like, like everyone else. I’m on my path.

 Ann: Right. We pitch up to serve, don’t we Brian? We, we, we pitch up with the greatest love and, and with the greatest will and in the world to, to do the best that we can. And that’s all we can do in the moment. So…

 Brian: I love that. Love that.

 Ann: So, Brian, your book, where can people buy it? Lessons of the Empty Chairs. There’s not, there’s more than one chair.

 Brian: Yes. So, I think I’m embarrassed to say, I think I called it the lessons of the empty chair when it really should have been empty chair or the lesson of the empty chairs. But that’s, that’s a, see I debated, I’m still debating the title of the book.

 Ann: It’s great. It’s a great title,

 Brian: thanks so much. But it’s, on Amazon and that’s the main place to get it. And the really thing I’ll just end with is, this really lovely person, Jeffrey Jon, who’s also a medium. He is really a beautiful medium and just a beautiful person, frankly. Um, he agreed to be the, the voice and narration for the book. I just think he did such a beautiful job. And so, his way of interpreting the book has meant a lot to me. ‘Cause he’s frankly brought more nuance out of it than I intended as a writer, if you know what I mean.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: So, I think he made it more interesting and better if you, if you will.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: But I’m appreciate that folks can just listen to, a chapter in that form. And the chapters aren’t connected. So, if let’s say you’re in chapter one and you think it’s dreadful ’cause it’s when I’m on a am me park ride at the age of 13 and it winds up being one of my first experiences with Spirit. So, let’s say that’s not your story ’cause it’s a little bit wild of a story. You can click, you can be like, I’m over this story, and you can go right to the next one and there you don’t need to hear what’s in number one to get to number two if you will.

 Ann: Yeah. Oh, that’s great. That’s really good. This sort of browsing book, you can browse through your various stories. Jeffrey John has been on this podcast literally two weeks ago, Unleash The Power of Mediumship, I think it was called. And he was brilliant. He was such a wonderful guest and I hadn’t realized that he’d voiced your book for you ’cause you have some beautiful clips on your Facebook page of him narrating your book and he does do it such justice and he’s got such a beautiful voice. So how fabulous is that?

 Brian: He just did such a lovely job.

You know, I can’t, you know, that’s, that’s kind of the beauty of all things in life. We don’t really accomplish anything on our own, do we? It’s always a group that accomplishes. Yes. You know, it’s kind of fun thing, but, um, but Anne, it’s been so lovely connecting with you and, and I’d love a chance to just interview you sometime.

So, I’m gonna create a podcast. I can interview you and you think I’m kidding. I’m actually not.

 Ann: Okay, cool.

 Brian: if you’re are open to that sometime?

 Ann: I would love to. Yeah, absolutely. That would be really great. Yeah. You can get all my deep dark secrets out of me. No problem. I’m an open book too.

 Brian: Yeah. Isn’t that great? Nothing. A blessing, isn’t it? As we get to a point in life where there’s nothing to hide from anymore. It’s kind of miraculous, isn’t it?

 Ann: Yeah, it’s miraculous. It is really good. It’s great not to, be too caught up in. In being the human being. And I think this is nice way to finish perhaps where we’ve been talking about the soul expression. Your husband John was saying, write what needs to be expressed through your book. And I think in life, just do what needs to be expressed. Walk in the way that you need to express yourself in this world. And don’t be looking over your shoulder about what they’re doing over there, but go your walk, your path, your path is beautiful. It’s all there for you. And it’s powerful and it’s fun.

 Brian: Yes. And you know, you think about the play you’re writing, that you’re gonna write your one, one woman show that you’re writing, you know, no one can, if you think about that’s, we have billion, you know, billions of people on the planet, but no one can write that play but you.

 Ann: Yeah.

 Brian: Isn’t that amazing? And I think that’s what makes mediumship so powerful and amazing. There’s never going to be one spirit that will be exactly like the next one you communicate with. I just think that’s magical. anyway, it’s lovely seeing you again, Ann.

 Ann: Totally magical. Brian, I’ve so enjoyed our chat. Thank you so much for coming on again. It’s just always great spending time in your company and um, hopefully we’ll get a chance to do it again another time, but we will demonstrate first.

 Brian: I can’t wait.

 Ann: Wonderful. Yeah. Thank you so much Brian.

Ann: I hope you have enjoyed this episode with my fabulous guest and very good friend, Brian E Bowles, isn’t he just marvellous? I love listening to him. He holds you in a space with such care and compassion, he’s a remarkable individual. So easy to talk to and so understanding of other people’s journeys. Brian’s latest book, The Lessons of the Empty Chair is available now on Amazon as are his other books – Letter to a Young Medium and Halfway Through The Woods. I highly, highly recommend that you purchase all three because Brian has this remarkable writing talent and his writing is profoundly touching – I know you are going to love them all.

As in every episode of the psychic matters podcast there are show notes available on my website www.anntheato.,com, look for the podcast tab. You can go there and you can pick up all the URLs and links regarding Brian’s episode on there which will take you directly to him across the internet and it’s the place to find out where to purchase his books, etc.

 I’ll be back in two weeks’ time with another exciting episode. Until then, my name is Ann Théato and thank you for listening to Psychic Matters.