We all just want to be remembered.

What a shipwreck taught me about joy and spirit.

Shipwrecks and joy.

My mediumship abilities were first shown to me (for lack of a better term) by people who have died on Lake Superior.

I'm not sure if it's because my husband Jim died on Lake Superior, or if it's a water connection, or something else. Still, I have a sneaking suspicion that other Lake Superior widows have had these same experiences. I have seen, felt, heard, etc, etc, in very concrete ways, people in shipwreck areas.

For almost a decade, I thought I was losing my mind or making things up in my head until, one day in the summer of 2020, I tried to explain to a friend what I was seeing.

That day, I was in a particularly great mood because I was on my favorite body of water, Lake Superior. We were fishing on the tip of Madeline Island, and I kept saying I was seeing guys in sailor suits covered in ice smiling and waving at me - and that they were somehow tied to masts.

It wasn't frightening at all. These people were *really* happy to see me and seemed very happy that I could see them.

When I kept talking about these men, the look on my friend's face just got increasingly strange, and he kept saying "uh sure" - until we were about a mile away fishing another spot.

He said to me, "You really don't know?"

No, of course, I didn't know. I just thought I had an idea for a story about Lake Superior or a really vivid imagination.

He told me to look up the Lucerne. So I sat down in the boat and went to Google.

In November of 1886, the Lucerne went down in an ice storm between Madeline Island and Long Island - right where we were fishing. The wreck was discovered a few days later, with three men covered in ice, tied to the rigging.

That's the moment I realized that I wasn't making things up in my head and that people want to be seen, acknowledged & remembered. I also discovered that my joy in seeing them made my sight stronger. These men became increasingly solid in their appearance as my joy increased. It's taken a while to build on this, but this was the start.

Sometimes spirit has no message. It just wants to be seen and remembered.

As I started to hone my intuition and mediumship over the next few years, I also thought that I needed to *do* something with the information that people and spirits gave me. That caused me a lot of anxiety because I couldn't always figure out what to do with what they were showing me. In readings, as soon as I am stressed about what I need to do with the information I’m receiving, my intuition and abilities disappear into the ether. I have learned to let that feeling of needing to interpret information go. As soon as I let go, my intuition and abilities return.

Our loved ones do not feel fear or pain. They are earthly concerns.

Sam and I visited the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum about a month ago. There were some comments from others about how sad the spirits may be there and that it might be too overwhelming for me to go there, so I should be careful.

For me, the Shipwreck Museum and the area were full of spirits who were happy to be seen and acknowledged. Since I don’t have an emotional connection there, it isn’t a place I grieve, but for someone who may have an emotional connection, it could be a difficult place to be.

There's a common misconception that places where people have died have to be energetically sad or frightening. I can't entirely agree with that sentiment; because honestly, I experience the opposite 99.9999% of the time.

It's essential to recognize that once our loved ones die, they no longer carry pain or fear. They have moved beyond those concerns and wouldn't want us to carry them either. That means the sadness we feel in these places is not from spirit. It's from our own minds. The emotions we associate with these locations are often our projections of how we think we would feel if we were in the same situation as those who passed away.

Fear gets in our way. Joy, on the other hand, is the key to connection.

Our feeling of fear about how a person or animal has passed often gets in the way of receiving or feeling information from those who have died. When trying to get signs from our loved ones (or others who have passed), excitement and joy invite those signs in, but fear repels them.

If we approach what we see in our mind with curiosity, love, and joy, the information we receive will get more robust and more accurate, and signs will appear more often. In short, the more excited and joyful we are to connect with spirit, the more in tune we are with the spirits around us. Our loved ones and spirits want to be remembered with love.

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I write this all with the privilege of a decade of processing my loss and learning about the science behind grief. None of the above “joy” would be healthy without that. I don’t want anyone to read this and force themselves to feel joy if they’re just not feeling it. Like with anything I write, take care of yourself and your mind in the way that you need to. Our loved ones will be here when you have healed. ❤️