Jackson - The Light Between Us: Lessons from Heaven That Teach Us to Live Better in the Here and Now

I WAS ON JERICHO TURNPIKE, heading west, when the messages started coming in.

I squeezed the wheel of my Honda Pilot and swerved right, pulling into a Staples parking lot. I hit the brakes and came to a stop halfway into a spot.

I wasnt ready for them. Just a bit earlier Id been taking deep breaths, trying to stay calm, because I was so nervous. Scared to death, really. Soon I would be in a room filled with suffering people. My role that evening was to try to ease their pain. My fear was that I would make it worse.

I was wearing a plain black shirt and black pants. I didnt want anyone to be distracted by patterns on my shirt or flowers on my dress. Id skipped dinner, because I was too anxious to eat. My husband, Garrett, wasnt home from work yet, so Id asked my mother to watch our two young children until he got back. I was running late and I tried to make up some time on the busy road, but traffic was slow.

Then, suddenly, they started to come to me.

The children.

All at once, as a group, they were there. It was astonishing. It was like being alone in a room when suddenly the door opens and ten or fifteen people come in. You might not even see them or hear them, but still you know theyre thereyou can feel them. You know youre not alone anymore. That is what it felt like in my Honda PilotI knew I wasnt alone.

Then came the words and names and stories and pleas and descriptions and images and all the things they wanted to share, so many I had to slow them down.

Wait a second, wait a second, I said aloud as I fumbled in my purse for my little red notepad and pen. I started writing as fast as I could, but I couldnt keep up with all the messages I was getting. It was all just pouring out.

Tell them I am still here, one said.

Tell them I am still part of their lives, said another.

Tell them, I love you and I see everything that goes on.

Please dont cry for me. Im okay.

I am not dead. I am still your child.

Dont think of me as gone. I am not gone.

Please tell them Im not gone!

I sat in my crookedly parked car outside Staples and kept scribblinga woman surrounded by children no one else could see.

Finally, after a few minutes, I tucked the notes in my purse, got back on the road, and drove as fast as I could to the Huntington Hilton on Broad Hollow Road. I raced through the hotel lobby and found the conference room where the event was being held. A sign outside gave only a hint of what would happen that night. It read, How to Listen When Your Children Speak.

The conference room was ordinarybrown curtains, overhead lights, plush carpet, swivel chairs. In the middle of the room there was a large rectangular table with nineteen people seated stiffly around it. When I walked in they all turned toward me and fell completely silent. Their faces were sad and haunted. It felt like a full minute before anyone so much as breathed.

These were the parents.

The evenings hosts, Phran and Bob Ginsbergthe directors of the Forever Family Foundationcame over and broke the tension. They hugged me hello and offered me a chair. I said no thanksthere was no way I could sit, I was way too nervous. Bob stood in front of the room and cleared his throat.

This is Laura Lynne Jackson, he said in a soft voice. Shes a Certified Medium with the Forever Family Foundation, and shes here tonight to help us learn how to talk to our children.

Bob stepped aside and gave the floor to me. I took a deep breath and looked down at the scribbled notes in my hand. The parents stared at me, waiting. I didnt know what to say or how to start. Another long moment passed, the thick, heavy silence returning.

No one knew what was coming next, least of all me.

Finally I just looked up and spoke.

Your children are here, I blurted out. And there is something they want you to know.

My name is Laura Lynne Jackson, and I am a wife, a mother, and a high school English teacher.

I am also a psychic medium.

Im probably not what most people think of when they think of psychic mediums. I dont read tea leaves or tarot cards, and I dont work out of a storefront. Im not a fortune-teller and I dont own a crystal ball (well, okay, I do have a tiny decorative one, but only because I couldnt resist buying it when I saw it in a store). I am simply someone who possesses a gift that is more focused in me than in others.

I am clairvoyant, which means I have the ability to gather information about people and events through means other than my five senses. Im also clairaudientI can perceive sounds through means other than my earsand clairsentient, which allows me to feel things through nonhuman means.

I can, for instance, sit at a table in a restaurant and feel the distinct energy of the people who were there before me, as if theyd left dozens of bristling energy fingerprints. And if that energy strikes me in a negative way, Ill politely tell the hostess Id rather sit somewhere else or, if its the last open table, that I have to leave. Which doesnt always thrill my husband and kids. Or the hostess, for that matter.

Beyond my abilities as a psychic, I am also a medium, which means I am capable of communicating with people who have passed from this earth.

If your first question is how I got to be this way, my first answer is, I dont know. Ive spent a lifetime trying to figure it out.

In my quest to find answers, Ive undergone rigorous testsfirst with the Forever Family Foundation, a nonprofit, science-based group that helps people in grief, and then with the Windbridge Institute for Applied Research in Human Potential in Arizona. At Windbridge, I passed an eight-step, quintuple-blind screening administered by scientists to become one of only a small group of Certified Research Mediums.

And yet, even as I was searching for answerssearching for my true purposeI was also carefully hiding my abilities from the rest of the world. I didnt know where or how my abilities would fit into my life yet. I didnt know what I was supposed to do with them. For much of my life, I tried to carve a path for myself that did not involve being a psychic medium.

In my senior year of college I studied abroad at Oxford, and studied Shakespeare, determined to immerse myself in scholarship. After graduating I considered becoming a lawyer and was accepted into two top law schools, but I decided to follow my passion to teach. For the longest time I thought of myself as a teacher, first and foremost. Aura readings and spirit communications didnt have a place in my academic life.