Leslie Sheridan

First Inklings

In the Beginning…

As an adolescent, whenever something was bothering me or causing me anxiety, and as a teenager what didn’t, I would turn on the radio and keep it on all night, falling asleep to the music that the late night and overnight dee-jays played. It’s a coping mechanism I use to this day, although now I have a playlist on my iPhone. One particular late night or rather early morning I had suddenly woken up, restless. I did not know the source of my restlessness that spring night. Maybe it was school. As I laid in my bed, tilting my head a little toward the window, looking up at the starry sky, a frightening thought cracked open the darkness and illuminated the reason for my restlessness. I wondered: what happens to us when we die?

I tossed and turned all night, grateful for the radio as company. WNEW-FM in New York City was then a progressive rock radio station, adopting that format in the late 1960’s (The format changed again in the late 1990’s.) They were playing album sides of their featured record of the week, Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell, which was destined to become a classic; it was an album that had spawned a few great songs already in regular rotation on the iconic radio station. I had come to love radio because of my dad. He almost always had the radio tuned to the New York City radio station. I loved rock and roll music and listening to the deejays. They were intelligent, articulate and knew so much about the music they played. Listening to the radio became the inspiration for me to want to pursue a broadcasting career and a lifelong interest in rock and roll history. But I digress…

I kept looking out of the window from my bed into darkness that seemed to go on forever. Night time does that when I cannot get back to sleep. The night becomes elongated adding to the worrisome thoughts moving around in my head. The reassuring voice of the overnight deejay and the music playing on the radio redirected my thoughts on death and dying which should have been the least of my worries at such a young age. What is curious is that it should wake me up from a brief slumber and haunt me for much of that night. How did that happen?

What if the soul of every human being was crammed up into the atmosphere. Where else would they go? The bodies went to heaven or hell depending on if they were good Christian people or not. Or so my grandmother Evangeline said. My sister Angela and I learned from a very young age that if we didn’t accept Jesus we would go to hell, although we did not understand what hell was. All of that was too abstract for small children, not to mention frightening. We both now believe that this is not what happens. It would never have occurred to me to ask anyone else what happens when someone dies. I didn’t think my mom and dad would have had better answers to my questions about death. But I never asked them.

My teenage logic told me that souls somehow left the body and went up into the sky. So there must be infinite sky to accommodate the same number of souls. All the humans who have ever lived – for thousands or hundreds of thousands of years – would have a soul up in the sky or heaven beyond the sky: cave people, Druids, Egyptians and people throughout the centuries to that night in the late 1970’s.

With the music still playing on the radio, I thought more about deep space. This first inkling about the universe generated so many questions. What else is out there besides souls floating around in the congested sky? How far up is heaven and can it be seen with the naked eye? Why do we die and not live forever? It would be about a decade before I would learn that each soul lives on after its incarnation on earth and can have more than one life here. Other life experiences as a teenager and as a young adult would take place before I would come to believe that. Eventually, my restlessness and endless thoughts surrendered to relaxation and I fell asleep, the stars lighting up the still night sky.

And so began my spiritual awakening.

“When the Student is Ready, the Teacher Will Appear”

I have been writing about my experiences of my spiritual journey for a few years here and on social media. I’ve also written two books: one was a short story based on my spiritual journey and another about dreams and dream recall. Writing about my experiences has not always been easy for me (I’ll share that in a future blog) but whether I want to or not, spirit sends messages and guidance to encourage me to share my story. And so, I have been inspired to tell you about one of my first and more influential spiritual teachers.

It began in 1990, the searching for…something…something else or something more. Not knowing what that something was or where to find it I looked on the self-help shelves of a local bookstore. From past experience I knew that religion wasn’t the answer. Neither was drinking alcohol with the wrong people. I recall looking at the bookshelves hoping something would pop out or fall off one of the shelves and into my hands. Since I didn’t know specifically what it was I needed to fill the void within me I was hoping one of the books there in the bookstore would. One book did look familiar to me from recent television commercials: Dianetics . After some contemplation I decided to give it a try. I tried it for about two chapters and decided that it didn’t resonate with me. Trusting my gut was crucial. This wasn’t the book I was looking for.

Very shortly after that, I had the book in hand when I met H.B. someone who was introduced to me by my sister Angela. When he asked about the book I was holding in my hands I explained how I had been looking for something to fill a void or give my life meaning. Honestly, I didn’t really know what to call it or how to articulate what seemed to be missing or what I needed to find to fill that…something. H.B.asked me to follow him and when I did he handed me a book. Apparently, what I needed was in a book. This book was another familiar book. ‘Out On a Limb’ by Shirley Maclaine. My initial reaction was “Oh.”

I was familiar with Shirley Maclaine. Her name was synonymous with UFO’s in the early 1980’s when her book first came out. I recall feeling a little freaked out by her story then. But as I held the book H.B. had given me I didn’t feel freaked out at all. About a month or two later while I was on vacation I started to read it and couldn’t put it down. Believe it or don’t – and I knew people who wouldn’t believe it – this book resonated with me. I didn’t really get everything she spoke about but I was intrigued by the references to the Bible’s alterations and the channel, whose name was Kevin, if I recall (In the movie version of this book, the actual channel is in the movie).

The next book H.B. gave me was Edgar Cayce’s “There is a River”, the life story of the sleeping prophet. His book “Reincarnation” absolutely fascinated me and set me off on a life long passion of past lives. Apart from books, we attended seminars together and visited two psychics and talked a lot about spirituality.

If I had not selected the book that didn’t resonate with me, I would never have met H.B. and started off on the next leg of my spiritual journey and eventually find another spiritual teacher. And then another and another. Whenever I am ready to grow spiritually another teacher always appears.

Who is Coming Through?

I had been having dreams of an old friend for a while. The dreams were pleas for help and they were sad. They were of a man I knew, Mike was his name. I call him my intellectual friend. Our conversations were so interesting, his wealth of knowledge and history were fascinating to me. He was a dozen years older than me (I was in my early twenties) which was one of the reasons I did not want to pursue anything other than a friendship with him.

But now the dreams were increasing in intensity. There was yelling in at least one dream and in another he was making noises to get anyone’s attention. I knew something must have been happening. I had tried to locate him, not knowing where he lived then, but could not find him. It led me to the conclusion that he must have passed on, although these were not visitation dreams. This is actually the story of someone else I knew and how she came to me.

I first heard of automatic writing from a book I had read by Ruth Montgomery (I don’t recall the book title now). It was a spiritual practice that I had been using on occasion. This was one of those occasions. So, one afternoon I turned on a new age music channel, lit a candle and sat down with a pen and notebook. As I closed my eyes I asked my question and waited for spirit to come through. I had wanted to know about Mike. I wanted to find out if he would come through. He did not. The message was that he was still in the physical world. I found out later that the noises and cries for attention were just that. I believe he may have been going through a difficult time. I tried to reach out to him through the internet unsuccessfully. But while I was getting the information that he was still here, I felt a presence near the left side of my body. I was aware of someone there.

With my eyes still closed I asked who it was. It felt like a female and it was. I had not seen her or spoken to her in more than 20 years. Her name was Peggy and she was a good friend from school. We were classmates from elementary school through the end of our sophomore year in high school in Upstate New York when her family moved away. I recalled the parties at her house; not cool kid parties but nerd parties. We also shared an interest in rock music. Peggy had albums that we played while we hung out: Elton John, Peter Frampton (Frampton Comes Alive!) and Jefferson Airplane. She brought Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody Album jacket and liner notes to school to show me the lyrics on the album sleeve. She loved the brilliance and absurdity of the words in the lyrics of the title song. When the movie Bohemian Rhapsody came out in 2018, I thought of her during the scene where the band members were recording the title song. And she could read a 600 page book in one day! (She did well on school book reports.)

Through a choppy few sentences she told me she was in a car accident; there was ice; and the year 1992.

The shock and surprise of receiving this message from her after all these years really threw me. I had not seen her since she moved away. We wrote letters to each other occasionally, and then, well life went on. I went to the internet to search her name and research whatever else I could find out about the details she gave me. I found newspaper articles that said she had passed due to being in a car accident in 1992. There was ice on the road, which had caused the accident; she was the passenger. I really wanted to know why she contacted me after many years. But it doesn’t really matter. She was just checking in, as some crossed over loved ones do, only wanting us to know that they are around us.

Jumping Ahead to the End

Ann was a friend of mine who liked to read the last chapter of nearly every book she ever read first. The exception was the occasional biography or non-fiction book of pre-twentieth century British Monarchy. She already knew how their lives ended, but she enjoyed the details and history of their lives. Other than wanting to know how the story ended, I never really understood why Ann did this. She would only say that she wanted to see how the story ended first. Now, I wonder if she was looking for a happy ending in her own life’s story.

Maybe I reading too much into it. For me, jumping ahead to the end first would ruin the (hopefully) happy conclusion. I like the drama of the heroine or hero who are victorious over the antagonist. The wonder and romance of boy-gets-girl or girl-gets-girl or boy-gets-boy. And, if while I’m reading a book with drama, adventure, romance or magic, I’ll ponder if it is leading up to a sequel. Oh, the anticipation.

There is one story’s ending I would like to know the outcome of. The Pandemic. Now here I would agree with Ann. When will it end? What will the new normal look like and when will it happen? And, what will my life look like post-pandemic?

The ennui of quarantine, the nail-biting moments, the sad stories, the violence and other drama of this past year, feels like a story without an end now. However, there are other moments we can enjoy like how the glass of wine tastes, the colors in nature, things my children said, shows we binge watched, and all those other nuances that fill out a story. I am doing my best to stay in the moment – it hasn’t always been easy these last twelve months. I’m trying to stay present so that I’ll have a fuller, richer story to tell one day.

It ‘s been said that the end goal – the dream job, dream partner, dream house or whatever the dream is – is not the destination. It’s all part of the journey.

Remembrance

On Sunday, September 27, 1981 I called my close high school friend , “Janie” (not her real name) to check in with her. I had not spoken with her in a couple of weeks. I had graduated high school three months earlier and while I was happy to be out of high school, I did miss seeing the friends I had left behind. They were seniors now, their last year before exiting school and entering the next phase of their lives. So, it was her uncle who, after I asked to speak with her, wanted to know who I was and what I wanted. I told him who I was and explained I was a friend of hers from school. What he said next really stunned me, paralyzed me actually. He told me she died the night before, a car accident, and the date the funeral would be held.

For the first year following her death I could not get over it. Whenever a song or group that we liked came on the radio I felt the pain physically in my gut. I always remembered her birthday and the date of her death two days later as the years went by. Eventually, she faded to the background as I started a career, entered and exited relationships, got married and started a family. It was while I was driving to work one morning in the early 2000’s, after both of my children were on the school bus, that I received a message from her. The reason she chose that moment was mysterious but effective.

Shortly after that I would begin writing what I could recall from our brief school years together. At first it was just a few memories, the obvious ones like the favorite band that brought us together. Then the little things like passing notes in school, boys, what she wore, her hair. The more I started to write down the details the more I recalled. Then the tears came and the heartbreak all over again. I could not believe some of the little and big things, nuances, her sense of humor and other memories that I had forgotten or suppressed over the years.

I turned it into a short story in 2014. ‘Sweet Dreams’ was inspired by our friendship and my own spiritual journey up to that point.

I still feel her around me sometimes. I have wondered how she would have reacted to the grunge movement in the early 1990’s that ushered in Alternative rock. She may have said it’s all rock and roll. I wondered if she would be a drummer in a band as she always dreamed of and what she would think about other women rockers. In 1981 there was Debbie Harry, Joan Jett and the Go-Go’s. Would she have been among them one day?

What I know for sure is that there is a reason for everything. The answers are not always offered up. Maybe it’s just meant to be a mystery. Whatever the reason, she is still in my heart and always will be.

Joan of Arc

Her mission was to restore the French Monarchy. She cut her hair short and dressed in men’s clothes as an act of rebellion. As a young woman she could not pull off this mission unless she presented herself as a man. St. Catherine and Archangel Michael presented themselves to her at 17. They told her she would rescue the Dauphin, Charles VII, the king of France who was in English custody after England invaded France. She was a warrior in the French army triumphantly leading the charge at the battle of Orléans. January 6 is the anniversaire of Jeanne D’Arc, Saint Joan of Arc.

January 6 is also the Twelfth Day of Christmas and the Feast of the Epiphany, when the three kings or wise men arrived to see the baby Jesus. So during Joan of Arc’s journey, she was aware that she was born on the Epiphany – an epiphany she did not take lightly. She believed that there was great significance in this shared date and a definite connection with Jesus. They were both leaders and both were captured and eventually put to death for a mission that they believed was divinely guided. However, Jesus died to save mankind’s sins. Joan died because of her perceived sins. Hearing voices of the Archangel Michael and St. Catherine, believing in what she was born to do, dressing as a man to rescue and restore France’s king to his place on the throne and refusing to give in to the Catholic church’s demands.

In 1431 Joan was handed over to the English, branded a heretic, cruelly abused in a medieval prison and finally burned alive at the stake – which was prophesied by the voices that had led her the two years since beginning her divine mission. Only her pure heart remained unburned.

Jeanne d’Arc was declared Sainte Jeanne d’Arc in 1920.

SHYLA

From my journal entry on November 8, 2017:

‘For no apparent reason last night (11/7/17) I thought of Shyla and prayed for her.

I found a post on FB from yesterday (also 11/7/17) that she passed away. I’m so sad, but so happy that I knew her.’

Shyla was a very important spiritual teacher and mentor for me. She was an intuitive and medium and had those abilities since she was a child. She had been giving readings and teaching other spiritual practices for many years. She practiced Wiccan and was a Reiki Master. And Shyla was always generous with her time and her gifts.

I had seen her about six months before her passing for my last reading with her. She was showing me how to interpret a tarot card. I had worked with my own tarot cards, looked at the pictures and read the interpretation in the accompanying booklet. She taught me to look at everything on the card, that there were objects and scenery – symbols – that were specific to the message. The card that she was explaining that day featured a man (King?) on a throne with Ram symbols all over the card indicating that a love interest would be an Aries – also based on the placement of the other tarot cards in the reading. There was an Aries man that I was interested in at the time too.

Over the twenty five years that I knew Shyla, I learned something new every time I saw her about tarot, psychic development, the spirit world, different realms, Reiki (I learned Reiki because of her. I am Reiki 2nd Degree), and extra terrestrials. I had called her one evening a few years ago before my son was to come back from a Boy Scout camping and hiking trip in New Mexico. I explained to Shyla about my sons ‘dreams’ about extra terrestrials. He had a couple of them where he would wake up terrified. He had had an ET ‘dream’ four days before he was scheduled to fly out with the boy scouts for this once in a lifetime trip. ET’s and New Mexico: if the trip was not already paid for I may have tried to cancel it. I was on the phone with Shyla for an hour talking about what this meant and more information than I wanted to know about extra terrestrials. I knew they were not dreams, per se.

I had met Shyla in the early 1990’s when nearly everyone in my office went to see different psychics, first Judy and then Shyla. I would continue to see Shyla once a year or twice since then, wherever she was. She moved a lot trying to find the space she was meant to be in. As a Medium, Shyla told me that although she did see and hear spirits, there was one time in a haunted house with a paranormal group where she did not want to open her eyes to see the spirit of a woman who was in a bedroom. That surprised me about her.

So today when I did automatic writing, asking for guidance from the angels, I also called in my Grandma Shirley for help, Shyla made herself known. I was not thinking of her however she offered some advice and had a message for me. When I was done I looked at my notes and thought it was odd that Shyla came to me without me asking her for help. Perhaps I needed a teacher. This time of the year is also when the veil is thinnest and our loved ones can come to us and we can hear or see them better.

Empty Nest

I felt alternately clingy and self-composed that I was letting him go. On the way home the tears were non-stop. I did not think I would feel this way when we dropped off our second and youngest child at college just over a year ago. I had not felt this way when our eldest went to college three years earlier. He was very ready to fly away and I was ready for it, too. I had helped my son with his college application and we drove the four hours for his freshman orientation. It had to be empty nest syndrome because I could not come up with another answer for my feelings.

My son had been ready since high school graduation. He’d made purchases for his dorm room from bedding and cleaning supplies to a cache of snacks and his PlayStation. He had all the necessary supplies. It may be innate and it may be Boy Scout preparedness but he’s always been organized and ready. He knows what he wants and takes action. As a Bear cub in Cub Scouts he told me that he was going to go all the way and pursue his Eagle Scout, the highest rank in Scouting, and he did.

I have wondered why the empty nest syndrome affected me more with my son than my daughter. Was it simply that there were no more children at home? Or was it something else? I do not play favorites with my children but I have felt more protective of my son for reasons I can’t describe. Looking back, though, I saw the clues that may have been there all along.

When he was younger my son loved playing war battles with his small plastic army men, like a lot of boys. He always won. He was and is still very interested in war history, particularly World War II. His scout troop once had a sleepover on the destroyer USS Slater in Albany, N.Y. where his dad accompanied him. When his dad showed me the pictures of our son on the ship with his fellow scouts wearing a WWII – era helmet, I froze. Something in that photo triggered a flashback to the night when my husband and I were watching “Saving Private Ryan” on DVD. We stayed in a lot then. We had a two year old daughter and I was about five months pregnant with our son. I did not know then the sex of the baby. I like good surprises.

So watching that movie was another clue. By the end of the movie I was in hysterics and I did not understand why. What came to me as I was writing this was, “Was I afraid of losing him again?” This was a past life event unfolding.

After my son obtained his Eagle Scout at 18, he did what all young men in the United States must do: register with the Selective Service. I was anxious and blurted out ‘What if you get selected?’ His reply was: “What’s wrong with wanting to serve your country?” My feelings were completely brushed aside by my pride in this young man that I helped raise.

I recently read something by a spiritual teacher who reminded me that our children come through us not of us. My children chose me to be their mom for a reason. Human mothers carry their children for nine months and rear for about 18 years unlike baby birds who hatch out of egg shells and are nurtured for a short time until they are nudged out of the nest when it is time for them to leave. Unless that bird knows when it is his time to fly.

Writing

My first byline read ‘Lindsay Sheridan’. My immediate thought was who is Lindsay? My second thought was that would be a good pen name – but no one I know would know it was me. The publisher had made a mistake going to press. I decided it was okay since that first article was not really helpful anyway. By the time it went to press in the college newspaper, the event I wrote about, ever so concisely, had already happened. But it was a start.

My next piece – with a corrected byline – was an investigative report on plagiarism. The publisher said he wanted me to do it and gave me the name of a professor on campus to interview for the story. I found three more leads on my own to interview. During this creative process I realized I was having so much fun researching, interviewing and writing the story and discovered that it was not so difficult. Nine hundred words later my investigative report was the lead story in another issue of the newspaper.

In middle school, as I recall, I really did not like writing stories, papers, reports or anything. I had to write a creative paper in class and I remember using a simile – something about the top of my boots falling over like a wilted rose. My teacher liked that and told me to keep going. I could not. My creative drive was, well, wilted like that rose. I had no desire or motivation or inspiration. Anytime anywhere that a paper needed to be written, I used a minimal amount of words or if possible, avoided it altogether.

Later on in my working life I was asked to write a mission statement for a committee I was involved in. I froze. I had no idea where to start. Instead, I enlisted someone else at work to help me write it.

Fast forward a few years and I found myself out of work due to the downturn in the economy in the late 2000’s. Interestingly enough I worked for a local newspaper where I was not a journalist but a clerk in the accounting office. After numerous attempts at finding work in my field I decided to go back to school at a community college and try something new. While I was studying there I joined a club: The college newspaper. I don’t know why, I just walked in. I didn’t like writing as I have stated a few times in this story. Actually, I did know why I joined.

A few years earlier I had been to see a channeler who said that I should try writing books; that I had a lot to say. Start with a children’s book, the channeler or rather the entity coming through the channel had said. I did not agree and wondered if the message may have been meant for someone else. So, perhaps by walking in that day to the college newspaper I was humoring the universe or just curious to find out if writing was what I was supposed to be doing. That day I decided I would keep an open mind.

Here’s how I have learned to tell my stories. For me, writing is just like gathering facts and information and adding adjectives, a simile here and there and writing as if I was talking to someone about what happened. Another way I learned to write was listening to the radio or television news to hear how a story was structured and presented. Also, reading a lot of books on any topic. The newspaper journalist and book author Pete Hamill has also said that reading a variety of books growing up is what helped him to be a good writer.

But how writing came to be something I love to do now is a mystery to me. Maybe it was there all along and maybe it was destiny. Maybe it was a bit of both. I know what stories I’m meant to tell. I believe I just needed to have had the experiences to share and hopefully inspire people. Perhaps this story is one of them.

A Visitation

‘Janie called me on the phone. “Rockin’ Rosie Mahoney!” “Janie! Where are you?” I cried. ‘

Our loved ones appear to us in our dreams. Loved ones calling us on the phone or talking to us through a radio in our dreams. These are visitation dreams. Our loved ones just want us to know that they around us and that they are okay. Sometimes they just want to check in and say ‘Hey’ and sometimes they have a message to give us.

Very often our crossed over loved ones choose to reach out to us while we are sleeping. And that is because they do not want to frighten us. They do see us during our waking hours and many young people can see still see spirits of loved ones even if they transformed to the spirit world before they were born. I can feel their presence and I know they are around me. But how can they communicate with us? Birds, feathers, coins, suddenly hearing a word or phrase or a song on the radio in answer to a question: “Show me a sign that you’re around me. “

Six months after my high school best friend died suddenly, I received a message from her in a dream. She called me on the telephone to tell me that she was safe and alright. As a teenager, I did not know what happened to us when we died. Do we die and that’s the end? Or do our souls/spirits continue on to another life? What I learned from that dream was that she had crossed over and was communicating to me through a medium that I would understand. After school, we would talk for hours on the phone about everything and nothing. (A 1980’s landline telephone; cell phones were not created yet.)

I believe that all dreams are messages and a visitation from a crossed over friend, relative or co-worker is a special message that they are safe and watching over us.