You Are Here for a Reason

Chapter 1

THE EARLY YEARS

I guess when you write a book, the best place to start is the beginning.

I was born in 1964 to hard-working migrant parents in a working-class suburb of Melbourne. My brother was born in 1969, and from very young, we were what is sometimes referred to as latchkey kids. So my intuition was constantly called upon to keep us safe. It was normal back then for all kids of working parents. If you did this in Australia in 2018, you would probably be charged with neglect. However, this was normal back in the sixties when both parents were out working.

What became very evident to me fairly early on in my childhood was that I didn’t quite fit in with my age group. Kids my age were immature, and it was always going against the grain to do and act as they were. What was evident very early on was that I had a sense of knowing. I’m not sure how to explain it, but it was always there. I really did have a mind of my own and a very strong sense of knowing. I just knew things, but I couldn’t explain how I knew them. Confused? I was too.

This might explain why I didn’t get caught up in grief like other kids my age would. I always knew how things were going to end up, and I avoided getting into anything known as trouble. I always had the good little voice in my head saying, ‘Not a good idea.’ Luckily for me, I suppose that, more often than not, I listened. This was useful during the teenage years especially, even though it made me restless in other ways. I was headstrong and not afraid to stand alone. To be totally honest, I wasn’t totally perfect, but I didn’t get up to nearly as much as my friends did.

I also knew on sight which people I liked or disliked, and I was always right. Now when you are fifteen, it is more important to be one of the popular kids; however, every time one of my friends would come to me for advice, I realised that things would pan out exactly as I had predicted. If they didn’t heed my warning or advice, it was always to their detriment. I was more like everyone’s ‘Dear Abby’, always being drained and pinned down for advice. Seriously, I should have started charging for my time. More often than not, I felt more like a shrink than a kid.

Part of this knowing was that I always felt I was going to write a book. Now let’s be straight here. I was not thinking bestseller or literary award of any sort. See, now here is the ingrained doubt and lack of confidence. We haven’t even met yet, and I am telling you how my book is not really going to go anywhere. Does this sound familiar?

This is a book about my experiences, and it will hopefully be an inspiration to anyone out there who may be struggling with a chronic illness, losing hope, and is ready to throw in the towel. This is a story about my journey, as crazy and unbelievable as it may sound. Who knows? It may help someone else out there who may have shared similar experiences or have questions, as I did.

Also, it will remain as a record of my journey for my kids and grandkids, in case my spiritual gift or autoimmune issues happen to be handed down to them somewhere down the line. My younger daughter has also had visions and the older one, prophetic dreams; it looks like my girls also have a gift just begging to be developed.

After an MRI several years ago, I was diagnosed with white matter disease on my brain. It was already affecting my memory, and I was often losing my words and train of thought; this also, in a way, added to the urgency of putting my experience and story on paper while I still could. This might also explain why this project has taken nearly four years to get to print. Maybe by writing it and by the time I get to the end of this story, my life purpose will be made evident to me.

My knowing that I was going to write a book always had me sitting in front of big windows, gazing over hills and trees while typing away furiously. Funnily enough, I look up and realise I’m sitting in front of large windows, doing just that. This has always been on my radar, even when I have spent a lifetime dismissing the idea and denying it. It was always in the ‘maybe one day’ basket. However, as I said before, I didn’t think I had a story, let alone one worth sharing.

Now I have finally decided to give in and start honouring myself and acknowledging me for a change and start being true to myself, not who everyone else thinks I should be.

I believe that because I haven’t done that in a very long time, my grief or lack of nurturing of my soul and the real me has manifested in the form of illness—even multiple illnesses at times. More about that later.

GHOSTS

I can’t say that, as a child, I had ever seen a ghost, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have been aware of the difference. The only ghost-related story I have come to understand now from my childhood is that I remember telling my mother that I remembered the man in a photo we were looking at playing with me when I was a baby.

I remember telling my mother that he was a really nice man and that he always made me laugh. I also remembered playing with him on the bed in the photo. My mother told me that was impossible because he died when I was still an infant. He was struck by a car as he was crossing the road outside his home; he was killed by a drunk driver and died instantly at the scene.

Shortly after his death, my parents moved into his home to help my auntie through her grief and help her with her young daughter. I was often put on the bed, and various people in the house would play with me. Funnily enough, I don’t remember or have any memories of any of the others playing with me, just the man in the photo, whom I really should have been far too young to remember anyway.

We are always told that children up to the age of six or ten (depending on whom you speak to) see spirits, and I have often observed my granddaughter cooing, giggling, and chatting like she has company while alone in her room. At the same time, on the baby monitor, I would see orbs flying around her room while this chatting was going on. Then I would proceed to talk into the monitor and ask the spirits to please let her sleep, as she was overdue for a nap. Mysteriously, the orbs would vanish.

Chapter 2

NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES

Near-death experiences are something about which the average person may have one freaky story to tell in their lifetime. Well, near-death experiences have plagued me my whole life—to the point where there have been so many that I have a tendency to forget some or actually play them down. Some are dramatic, and some are not overly dramatic but serious nevertheless.

Most of my friends don’t even know this about me because I never really thought it was worth discussing until now. Much of it was also news to my husband when he was reading this book. It is just stuff that happened. However, more recently, I’ve been thinking that, collectively, all this needs to be connected for some other purpose, hence the necessity to share this story. I feel that over the years, I have somehow lost not only my identity but my life purpose also. Don’t get me wrong; it happens. It’s called life. At some stage, other things take priority, and others get put on the back burner.

Along the way, in that great life journey that we are talking about, I found that I was getting sick. I was developing really strange unexplainable illnesses that had doctors scratching their heads. Blood test results would come back saying this or that was off, but doctors didn’t know what to do about it. It was a very frustrating time. I had young children and a busy life; I didn’t have time to be sick or just off, as the symptoms were not obvious on the outside. Early on in our marriage—in fact, shortly after our wedding—my ESR reading for about twelve months was around three hundred to four hundred, and my doctors had no explanation for it.

The years were passing, and my health just kept deteriorating. Then over the years, strange things started happening, like random people who didn’t know me stopping me in the street and feeling compelled to pass on a message to me from the other side. Well, at some point, you have to stop and listen. This has happened to me quite a few times.

On two occasions (these incidents happened years apart), the messages came from two totally different psychics, both total strangers to me. How I wish now that I had stopped them and asked for a phone number for a reading. I was dumbfounded and in a state of shock both times. Besides, I’d never given psychics much thought and knew very little about them at that point.

The first time it happened, I was walking down the street, and it was so unexpected and surreal that I was asking myself if that really happened. The lady started to tell me that all week she had been getting messages from her guides telling her of my multiple near-death experiences and how hard my guides had been working to keep me here and that I still had work here to do. She had had no idea whom the message was for until that very moment when she saw me in the street.

Up until that moment, I hadn’t even thought of my experiences as near-death experiences. In fact, I nearly started arguing with her that the message must be for someone else. To me, a near-death experience would have been me flatlining on an operating table and watching, while floating around the ceiling, the doctors working on saving my life. At that time, that was my interpretation of an NDE.

The second time, I was approached in the ladies’ room after a movie, and a lady told me she had a message from her guides to pass on to