When I was a teenager, I loved to visit my friend’s house because her mother was so unique. She talked to us and often helped us through difficult times.  There was something about her, some way that she had of connecting to us and understanding like no one else seemed to.  My friends and I would often play games with the supernatural like the Ouija Board, Seances, a “flashlight” game that revealed what you looked like at the point of death in your previous life, reading Tarot Cards that one of our friends bought in Salem, Massachusetts, and we even tried our hand at levitation.  These games fascinated me.  I was drawn to the idea that just maybe there were ways of reaching beyond our physical world to another.  But as I grew up, I, like many, put away these fanciful thoughts and limited my card games to rummy and the like.

This changed as my daughter reached an age where she and her friends began to show an interest in the supernatural. I bought some Tarot cards and read for some of them and what I found was that it opened them up to me.  I thought again about the mother of my old friend and how much I desired to be that person for the friends of my own children.  Someone they could come to if they just needed to work something out.  Someone they could trust when they felt they couldn’t talk to any other adult.  That is where it started.

Over the years I have added to my Tarot card deck with other “spirit” cards.  While I am not in control of what cards are laid on the table, I always seem to know what the child needs to hear. Life is not really that complicated.  We want to be loved and accepted by others, and yet, we often have difficulty loving and accepting ourselves. My children and their friends are no longer children, they are young adults on their way to making their paths in this world.  But once in a while, they come back to me.  They shuffle the decks and lay out their cards and I look into their souls and tell them what they need to know.  Sure, they already know what I am telling them, but somehow, hearing it from me makes them think more deeply. Maybe it even helps them to sort through the noise of everyday life so that they can hear what their souls have to say for themselves.

Do I have a gift?  Yes, I do, but whether if it is a supernatural gift or not is up to the interpreter. The gift that I know I have is one that these young people give to me.  By connecting to me and allowing me to be their sounding board, they have given me the gift of being like that friend’s mother I knew when I was growing up.  I couldn’t ask for more.

http://www.theresadodaro.com   Author of The Tin Box Trilogy