When I was eight, Edith used to come to me in the middle hours of darkness, sit on the edge of my bed and appear in front of me.  My mum used to hear me talk to her and I was never scared, but always inquisitive.  I decided to tell my parents in the morning.  The look of surprise on their faces with worry about why I may be ‘concocting’ these dreams and illusions was a real picture I won’t forget!  The old lady used to appear regularly to me and more than ever every time my dad went away to visit family in Holland.  She was always by my side and although I used to speak to her often, she never spoke back until one night when I began to see her more clearly.  What she said didn’t make any sense but it felt comforting and made me fall asleep as normal.  

Today I wonder if she was speaking another language for a few foreign families had resided in the area of Deal in Kent many years ago.  After a while, I would begin to hear her walk across the hallway. At the time I had no door handle, only a round hole where it should be.  The light from the other side would vanish and I would know she was here to visit once more.  The creaky floorboards were often mistaken to be one of the three cats or two dogs we had and I never thought it would be anything else.  Slowly the door would open and Edith would suddenly be next to me again.  She was a comfort to me when my dad was absent and my mum was serving customers downstairs in the family run restaurant.  I often wonder who the old lady was and when a local baker visited (very much in tune with the spirit world and unaware of Edith) he went white when entering the building and proclaimed it was ‘full of evil’. 

I believe today she may possibly have been a nanny in the past and someone whose life was devoted to caring for the family she lived with.  In a building that was once a public house in a smugglers town, there could have been an endless amount of danger for a child my age over 350 years ago.  For many years I believed and felt Edith was an imaginary nanny to me whom only my eyes could see.  My parents told me there was no one there and eventually as I grew older, I began to believe what they said was true.

It was during a regular afternoon where my mum and dad had just walked the dogs along the seafront and I would soon be home from my day at school.  Out of the blue the family who used to live there came to visit.  They were Italians who ran an ice-cream factory for over twenty years before we made it into a restaurant.  Interested to see the property a year on and revisit the home they once had, they entered the ‘evil house’.  The upstairs promptly became the hot topic of conversation.  They began questioning my parents about a ghost they encountered whom they called Edith and if she had shown herself to us.  In disbelief and shock they all realised that I had been getting regular visits.  From what I had described the old lady as looking like, ‘with a long black cloak and no teeth’, the exact same words came from the Italian family’s mouths.  It all began to really fall into place for my parents when they started renovating the upstairs attic bathroom a couple of years on and found to their surprise an old oil painting of Jesus with a crown of thorns embedded in the wall.  The family had said the Priest had been in to exorcise the spirit of Edith away and the oil painting was where he had performed the ritual.  From the time they left and from that day on, none of the Italians story was ever mentioned to me. Edith became a memory and later on in my life I felt as though I had simply dreamt it all.  I was always a very superstitious child and as I remember for no apparent reason always walking around ladders!  My family were very much free spirits themselves and never acted as though they were worried about ‘the old lady’ to protect me.  They shielded me from the experience in case I simply didn’t understand or it scared me as they had no explanation for why she visited.

Twenty years on in my life I found out the truth about what happened when the Italians had told my parents about Edith.  Only now can I begin to wonder what it would be like to go back and really take in the experiences I had with her.  For many years I dreamt about working as a medium and picking up on negative spirits.  Maybe Edith was there to protect me from the negativity that was somewhere in the house.  The Baker certainly picked up on it.  But now I know the connection to the spirit world was there and why I have felt drawn to using divination tools such as the Tarot to guide me in my future path.

In 1991 and at the age of eleven we packed up house, sold everything and went on a journey to Spain.  On the spur of the moment my parents, me and my brother were driving off into the moonlight to find pastures new.  They met in the sixties, my mum from London and my dad from Holland.  Now they were returning to where they had met and taking me and my brother with them.  Very much the adventurer myself I found the whole experience so exciting travelling through France to Spain over the Pyrenees driving literally on the edge of shocking, winding and sharp drops that made me cover my eyes most the way!  When we found somewhere, we opened another business and began a new life in the south of Spain.  Beginning a new school was the next step for me and seemed exciting and although I was nervous, I was longing to make new friends.  I remember walking down ‘La Carihuela’, a promenade on the seafront full of fish restaurants and Spanish ladies sweeping the front porches during the sunrise. 

I wondered what it would be like and began quickly learning the Spanish language so I could communicate with everyone.  When I arrived, although the school was beautiful, most of the pupils were anti me being foreign and I found going to school ending up in bullying and mental abuse.  These racial attacks never got any better and day in and out I would begin to hate it there.  The Spanish children would shout and push me to the point where I felt so alone and unable to even tell anyone about it.  I understood the difficulty my parents were in at the time adjusting to a new country with children and so simply did not mention this terrible period to them.  During this turbulent time however, I found Karma with a friend of mine who came to visit.  Together we dabbled with Ouija boards not really knowing how or what we were dealing with.  Many a time we were spooked by what happened but more importantly it reminded me of when I used to read Tarot.  Although sadly I no longer had my Tarot cards, I felt so drawn to them and wanted to return somehow to their guidance.  I can see that now, and can relate so much to my time in Spain without them. 

On return to England in 1994 and moving a few doors down from where Edith resided I immediately went to buy a Tarot Deck.  Many evenings were spent giving readings to friends and writing such spreads down as the Calendar spread to be really cryptic of myself in the future.  I was my own worst enemy in terms of finding the truth in life and so critical of myself!  It was during the daytime of Christmas Eve, which was also my sixteenth birthday, I remember it began to snow and I decided to produce a spread on love for myself.  When will I encounter marriage and who with?  The cards revealed to me that I would become engaged by the end of next summer.  I was uninterested because of the ‘long time frame’ it seems at that age, so I folded it up and forgot about it.  Six years on I found this piece of paper when renovating the house, which we ran for eleven years as a pub.  The reading was so accurate and to the day!  I could not believe it!  I had become engaged on holiday exactly as it predicted.  A card of experience and youth showed me also how adolescence and naivety in love saw the demise of this relationship.  Feeling quite taken aback I thought it was time to really begin using the cards again in my life.  Living in another 350 year old property really did give me a strong connection and feeling of not being alone when performing my readings.  Many a time I would wake up in the night and find a candle was lit and burning brighter than any candle I had ever seen before.  Obviously I was quite shocked and scared at this happening more and more often because never did I light a candle in my room for fear of fire.  Confused and unable to explain it all, again, the cards were put away and locked in my mum’s wardrobe for another few years.  Even she began to fear them and became spooked by their accuracy.  When I look back now I realise it was simply a message and way of communicating.  I was not yet ready to connect and did not have the strength to take on this experience.  Life took over from here on and time simply ticked by as usual again until my next experience.

By the time I was at University and having recovered from a year off with glandular fever, I really began to feel the pressure of my studies.  I spent eight years after school continuing to study because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life still.  This really began to get me down but life carried on and thus so did I.  Life in the pub trade with just me and my parents working also became more difficult because of a severe illness that nearly overtook my mum.  With just me and my dad working busy weekends it really did get frantic at times.  During this time my Nan also died and things were really on top of me and my family. I began to wonder if I could finish university and what on earth was I supposed to do with my life after it all.  This all changed during my exams when I had another spiritual encounter and now I know for everyone, everything happens for a reason.  It is frustrating that you cannot explain why but later everything truly falls into place.  It’s magical.

It was my Nan who came to me as clear as day a year after she passed.  It was the end of my Degree and on this day I was in an exam for Native American studies.  I had revised well but I always performed terribly in exams for fear of forgetting.  Having a terrible moment of writers block whilst in the exam I began to close my eyes and all of a sudden I felt her hand on my shoulder.  I knew it was her because I could smell her perfume that immediately reminds me of my Nan still today.  Straight away I knew she was with me and her words of wisdom were whispered in my ear saying that everything would be alright.  I was certain she was beside me and was so taken aback by the experience I could hardly believe no one else saw her.  The room was so quiet that you would hear a pin drop but no one even flinched.  I believe she was there to guide me and that night I dreamt about her and the words she whispered into my ear.  I woke up and burst into tears at the notion of it all and because it was all so vivid and real.  It was such a comfort to know she was with me and by Graduation day I felt proud I had got through it all with her help.  I believe we shouldn’t take for granted these experiences and must always trust our intuition.  It is within us for a reason and we must never shut it off.  If something has happened to you then take notice!  My dad later told me that in fact I was the third generation psychic and Empath on his side of the Dutch family.  It was all beginning to fall into place for I now knew my dad’s grandmother was renowned for seeing and connecting with not only spirits but with people on a strong emotional level (as an Empath) and predicting the future (a psychic).  My intuition began screaming out to me and I had more and more dreams and nightmares about which path I should be on.  Very much in tune with my intuition today, I can look back and see that I had always doubted my intuitive gift.   Something I regret even today and I so wish I had embraced it sooner.  Sometimes we are simply not ready.

My Great Grandmother

After a time where days turned into weeks and months, I began to lose my link to Tarot again.  But, I always felt a pull towards it and it never left my mind once the whole time I was away.  I began to think it may be more powerful than I could imagine and maybe I didn’t have the ability to control it.  After university I got an office job and settled into a monthly wage where everyday was similar to the next, but, it was reassuringly predictable.  This was just what I wanted now and whilst undertaking this I began selling Silver Jewellery online.  But, nothing felt right and I still wondered how I could fit into the world and begin my path as many of my friends already had done.  Some were married with babies by now and others were off working in London.  The hustle and bustle of the city was not for me at this time and stability was all I thrived for.  The only thing that was missing in my life was a partner now.

At a friend’s wedding (I am far right in the green dress)

It was during March 2006 I met someone whom I felt a real connection with.  With him being a non believer in anything spiritual however, I had my doubts that things may not work out.  Being the spontaneous being I am, two months later I moved in and ‘believed’ that finally I had met the right person.  I did not take any Tarot cards with me for I felt I should leave it behind and begin a new phase in my life.  It seemed luck was on my side and I was really starting to make a life for myself. It most certainly did prove a new phase and undoubtedly not for the best, at all.  Violence, depression and so much unhappiness saw me spiral into a deep dark hole.  I lost my job and to top it all I got engaged to try and patch things up.  A year and a half of living in misery my parents came to take me away from it all for I was by this time toying with the thought of simply ending everything.  With my hair falling out, eating like there was no tomorrow yet losing stone after stone I started to believe I had cancer.  My body was crying out for help and I was literally on self destruct.  Having found a safe hold with my parents I began to pick up the cards again.  Through a friend giving me a Tarot reading and showing me the paths that lie ahead I knew there was more for me out there. 

All my life I had been searching for something and it was a year later I realised what I had to do.  From my experiences I have begun my own Tarot Card Reading business online now.  The cards have really helped guide me and make me realise that everyone and anyone can be re-energised and brought ‘back to life’ so to speak.  I am living proof of this.  As a ‘new’ person I believe any person can be pulled out of the dark hole that engulfs your inner spirit so unjustly.  Tarot cards were and always will be my Spirit Guide.  They truly had the answers for me and I cannot stress how lucky I am to be alive.  Of course I couldn’t have done it without my parents, but, with Tarot also back in my life, I can honestly say I am back to Tilly again.  There IS hope for Everyone out there and I say this with the upmost sincerity.  To this day I believe Edith was the first of many messages trying to tell me what to do and to focus.  Although I found I was somewhat of a loner at school and was terribly shy, I was different for a reason.  This strange feeling has been with me for many years and I have always wondered what path was laid out for me in life.  Now I realise I am here to help guide others and already I have an international link to hundreds of wonderful people around the world.  Daily readings for others and of course myself is a new way of life for me and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Everybody has a spiritual connection and pathway in their life and as they say the ‘mould was broken’ but I believe, when ‘every one’ of us was made.  Follow your intuition, be guided by the Tarot and trust everything happens for a reason.  You and your path in life are unique.