'I saw a psychic medium to connect with lost loved ones. What happened 2 days later shook me.'

I would say I'm a pretty solid split of science and spirituality. Okay, okay, maybe I lean a liiiiiittle bit more to the spiritual side.

I don't wear crystals in my bra, but I don't shame anyone who does. I love proof and evidence, but I'm also open to the possibility that there's way more going on in the universe than we can explain. I see and clock 'signs'; I'm aware of the synchronicities. And I also can see that it could all be taken as coincidence. (Though, if I'm honest, I probably skew more to the nothing is a coincidence camp.)

Yes, I'm quite happy sitting here on my fence.

But I have always been drawn to the idea of mediumship readings, particularly after having lost quite a few people who were very important to me in a fairly short space of time. So when I got the opportunity to have a one-on-one reading with psychic medium, Jessica Lynne, you bet I was all in.

Okay, so what happened in the reading?

I connected with Jess via Zoom, and the blazing pink neon sign that read "I talk to dead people" hanging on the wall behind her in her reading space set the vibe — this wasn't going to be an incense-and-chanting moment.

"All the information will get today from your loved ones on the other side," Jess told me, after I explained that I'm the kind of person who questions everything, but wants to believe.

"My process is usually I'll just take a couple of minutes to connect to you and your energy, and we'll see who steps forward for you today. I kind of love to just go with the flow and see what comes through naturally first."

And with that, Jess closed her eyes, put her head back and did her thing. I closed my eyes too, because heck, it couldn't hurt right? I mentally called out for one person in particular I was hoping to connect with: my dad.

(What I hadn't told Jess was that the date she'd booked me in happened to be my dad's birthday — spooky sign? Or wild coincidence?)

"There's a man that steps forward for you," Jess began. "And the first thing that he's referencing to me is that he hates to be a burden on people, so I don't think that he would have expressed the extent of what he was feeling towards the end of his life, if he was experiencing symptoms — or he's just really not someone that talks about that kind of stuff, because he likes to be the strong, independent man. He's very much a provider.

"No one didn't like this man; I think that he was very well liked. And even all the nurses, all the people that were taking care of him, he would have been one of their special people that they like to talk to.

"He wants to smile, to lighten the mood."

To be honest, none of this was immediately ringing bells. But for some reason (intuition?!), I wondered out of nowhere if it could be my grandad on my mum's side that she'd connected with.

"I keep just writing 'mum' all over my page," said Jess. (And yep, she said this after I thought it and before I mentioned it to her.) But, full disclosure: my mum's dad died before I was born, so I had no real point of reference for this man — or logical reason to think it was him.

You know who did though? My mum. (Who, BTW, is definitely on the non-believer side of the fence.)

"Dad was always smiling, he loved to smile, so that's probably accurate," Mum told me after I shared with her what Jess had said. "She's absolutely right that he was very well liked — he liked people and loved to talk to them."

Jess also mentioned that the man who'd come through loved to read and had a specific routine around keeping up with the news.

"Dad was into reading, and reading the news was very important to him. He read the newspaper every day," Mum told me when I relayed this part of the reading. "His love of reading and his desire for knowledge is true, too. He was an avid reader from when he was a child."

After a good 15 minutes talking all things grandad, Jess felt it was time to switch gears and see who else was around, and what other messages could be coming though.

"Okay, so this man that steps forward, he feels like he passed before his time. I feel like he could have had more time here if circumstance allowed him to.

"He doesn't want anyone to feel any burdens or guilt around his passing — like, maybe we could have done more, or we could have known more, or if things had unfolded differently, we could have changed things... he makes me feel like there are lots of like questions around his passing."

Ooft. It's at this point I started to get teary. Because while, yeah, this could apply to many people's experiences, there have been questions — questions I haven't voiced but have always had tucked away in the back of my mind — and a sense of guilt around whether things could have panned out differently.

It's not something I dwell on often because honestly, it hurts too much.

"He keeps referencing another woman," she added. "There's a connection there between the three of you." I was an only child, so me, Mum and Dad were always a tight little trio.

"He keeps referencing, like... a little girl. I keep seeing this little girl run around everywhere. Do you have a little girl in your family? Or did he have a daughter?"

Cue: heart in throat.

Finally, I tell Jess that the person I'm thinking of is my dad, and that he was someone I'd been hoping to connect with.

I will admit, there were a few things that came through next that didn't resonate — but if there's one thing I know about psychic readings, it's that things often don't make sense in the moment, but you can get a sudden "ah-ha" moment later down the track.

Like, say, this little tidbit:

"He keeps showing me this car and a musical reference like around it," Jess said at one point, which instantly grabbed my attention, because I had decided (pre-reading) that if there was any reference to the Marc Cohn song 'Silver Thunderbird' (which Dad and I used to sing together in the car when I was a kid), I was 100 percent on board.

"What colour is the car?" I demanded (and... then apologised for being so pushy lol).

"I keep seeing red," she said after a pause. I was hoping so much she would say silver, and I have to confess, my heart dropped a bit. I brushed it aside with ah, "Ah well."

Two days later, sitting at a cafe, I happened to notice a car parked across the street with his initials on the license plate. The car was red.

Make of that what you will.

But whether it was a sign from the other side or pure chance, it doesn't really matter, because it gave me a sense of comfort that maybe — just maybe — the people I've loved and lost have still got my back, on some plane of existence or another.

And what's wrong with feeling a bit of hope?

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Feature image: Supplied.