Unexpected Mediumship Awakenings After the Loss of a Loved One

“It’s Chaos and Peace”: Unexpected Mediumship Awakenings After the Loss of a Loved One, and Implications for Mental Health Practice

Lenore E. Matthew
Hawaii, United States of America

Ample research has explored the phenomenon of mediumship with most literature centering on “born” mediums, or those who have been aware of their abilities from early on in life.

Sudden awakenings of mediumship in adulthood have been less explored, and when they are, tend to be in the context of near-death experiences or, to a lesser extent, the end of one’s own life.

In a related vein, studies on the afterlife have explored receiving signs from deceased loved ones and sensing their presence after death. There has been less consideration, however, of awakenings of a bereaved person’s mediumship—a deeper, more interactive experience than receiving signs or sensing a deceased person.

The aim of this study, therefore, is to understand the phenomenon of unexpected mediumship awakenings after the loss of a loved one. This study was inspired by the lived experience of the author, a researcher/practitioner and professional working medium, whose ability suddenly awoke when her late husband passed away.

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Dr. Lenore Matthew holds a Ph.D. in Social Work with expertise in program evaluation as well as trauma and grief. She is also a trained evidential psychic medium. Her ability of mediumship suddenly opened up in 2020, when her late husband took his own life. Previously, Dr. Matthew worked as a research and evaluation specialist with international humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations. Today, Dr. Matthew has a private practice where she melds her mediumship, research, and personal experience to help others heal through trauma, traumatic loss, and grief. She does so through educational trainings, demonstrations of mediumship, and research on the effects of mediumship on trauma and grief survivors’ health and well-being.

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Program chaired by Jacob W. Glazier. Download the Abstracts at https://parapsych.org/uploaded_files/...

5:13
the researcher is of the community of the people that are participating so rather than taking a researched on

I think this is very important. The researcher is psychic and has the same experiences as the people she is studying. She understands the subject. She understands the people she is studying and their experiences.

Most parapsychology has a remoteness to it, like anthropology - the study of a different culture, and the results are filtered through the preconceptions of someone doesn't understand anything about what they are studying.

Having an experiencer doing the research also helps to gain the trust of subjects in the study which could encourage them to say things they might not otherwise say.

I will say as well quickly um
7:40
about the um the recruitment we're a very vulnerable
7:46
community in terms of the tragic loss and tragic grief Community we're vulnerable in terms of we don't know
7:52
where to go often times for support of after we've lost someone but then layer on top of this we're having this
7:58
experience that for all of us we'd never had before we're extremely vulnerable extremely sensitive and so to have
8:06
someone at the outset of the research who says not only I believe you I believe you because I experienced this
8:12
as well it opened the door to extremely thick and Rich data and then throughout

Lenore's account sounds meaningful and real to me, though this part seems to say something more general about the human condition, how we find ourselves living in this world:

29:29

"him showing me the trauma that he went through and me actually experiencing that through him so it was it was I me just anguishing obviously as his widow and wife to see that however by experiencing that with him and through this way he could have never experience that or let me experience that with him in the physical world I understand him in a different way"

It rings true to me though it is rather sad that we may not always understand one another in this life.

On the topic of contact with a loved one after their passing, I can relate to that too, though with me it required entering a very relaxed state where I was actually attempting a past-life regression but instead enabled two-way communication with the deceased. That relaxed state also for me is also quite similar to approaching an OOBE state.

I might add that I was somewhat half-hearted about the past-life regression itself, in that it wasn't something I greatly needed. For me past-life isn't something separate in any case, it is simply me now in the present. But it was fortunate that the mental state which I entered was able to be re-purposed, much to my surprise.