My skills as empath

(Image of black smoke taken from the internet....)

Tonight, my mother asked me if I had known that she was ill with cancer before she diagnosed. She said, it is something that she has wondered many times, but has never gotten up the nerve to ask me. Until tonight.

I told her, yes, I knew.

My father said, "did you know it was cancer, or just that she was sick?" (He's a bit of a skeptic). I said, "Well, I knew she was ill, I knew it was her lungs, and yes, I knew it was cancer."

Skeptic Phil replied, "I'm sure her cough had nothing to do with it...."

So I replied, "Dad, I knew in December that she was ill." (She was not diagnosed until July.)

Mom was quiet for a moment and then said, "You know, I wondered. Before I was diagnosed, you kept asking me if I was ok. Over and over again...."

And I said once more, "Yes, Mom, I knew."

So, given that conversation of today, I thought I would share a bit more of my "Back story" here. This segment deals with my abilities to detect lung cancer. It's really a very bittersweet gift.


It was not until I was in my late 30s that I would begin to grasp the gift that I had been given, and actively seek to develop my psychic abilities. As I began to open up to the sensations and insights, instead of suppressing or resisting them, I discovered that my psychic revelations were intense, accurate, and could not be ignored.

I discovered that I had a gift of psychic sight, as well as the gift of being an empath.

This mixed blessing has allowed me to feel others’ pain as if it were my own, sometimes blending the lines between the two. It has also allowed me to see what causes the pain. In fact, my abilities allowed me to “see” lung cancer in two separate cases in the same year.

The first instance was that of a young man I had met and gotten to know online. Howard and I had chatted frequently and gotten quite close in a matter of weeks, although we never actually met in person. We had exchanged photos, so I knew what he looked like. We had also spoken on the phone several times, so I could feel his energy.

One night, as we chatted online, I suddenly had a very strong image of Howard’s lungs.

They were black and spotted in my vision.

In particular, I saw the lower lobe of his left lung, facing his back. Howard had not said anything to me about not feeling well or about having any abnormal symptoms. I said to him, “I think you should see a doctor. I think there’s something wrong.” (I did not mention cancer).

Howard laughed, at first, and then said “How did you know I haven’t been feeling well?” He made an appointment to visit his doctor, who immediately sent him for additional tests.

It turned out that Howard was suffering from lung cancer – very rare for a man of his age and health category (he was not a smoker and had no other risk factors).

The day that he went for the biopsy on his lung (again, I did not know the date or time of the event until after the fact), I felt a sharp, stabbing pain in the lower rear quadrant of my left lung. What I felt was the biopsy needle entering Howard’s lung. Howard’s treatment and recovery were difficult and painful, but I am happy to say that his prognosis was (and remains) positive.

If he had not sought attention when he did, who knows what might have happened. It seems that the power of being an empath, as painful and difficult as it can be, is a tremendous gift that must be shared and should never be ignored.

The second instance of empathic sight was more direct, more personal, and far more difficult.

Only a few months after helping Howard through his diagnosis of lung cancer, I saw my mother’s illness. A lifelong smoker, my mother had suffered from a serious smoker’s hack for years, but her doctors had always told her that she was “fine.”

Living some distance from my parents, I was not with them often, but I had heard her cough progressively get worse over a period of months.

Over Christmas, right before my experiences with Howard, I had a sensation that all was not right with my mother. There was nothing concrete about my feeling, just a sense that she should go to the doctor. I told her. She brushed me off and said “it’s just a cold.”

When her “cold” did not get better, even as she went into the spring months, my mother began to take her condition a little more seriously.

Then, on a routine visit to her doctor for a physical, he heard something in her lungs that he didn’t like, and sent her for additional tests. She did not tell me about this series of events as they were happening.

I began to feel more and more discomfort in the lungs, especially in the lower lobe of my right lung. And I began to get strong visions of my mother nestled among black smoke.

I had seen my mother’s lung cancer, much as I had detected Howard’s condition. When my mother finally told me the news, I already knew, and I already knew the prognosis.

Thankfully, the surgeon got her cancer early enough, and my mother has had a full recovery, with no recurrence of the cancerous cells to date. I found that this knowledge, this ability to “see” cancer, is a double-edged sword. It helped in making quick diagnoses in both cases, but it also was highly stressful for me.

After all, just how do you tell someone “oh, by the way, you have lung cancer and should get that checked out?” The mixed blessing aspect of my abilities was becoming increasingly clear to me through these events.

And yet, I did not suppress the experiences. Instead, I welcomed them and began to investigate them to better understand the extent and limits of my abilities.

I believe that I have been given this gift of sight for a reason, and thus I feel obligated to attend to it. Difficult though such knowledge might be, as I mentioned here, the effects on my body and mind are slight compared to that felt by those I can help though my abilities.