FEATURE: Psychics want to help

RACHEL PINDER
Gaeil, Debra and Deidre are life-long friends. On the surface, they're your average, everyday group of middle-aged women.
They're all married and have five children and four grandchildren between them.
But while they might meet up for chats about what their little ones are doing, their discussions can get much deeper.
That's because the trio are all clairvoyants, mediums, spiritual healers, psychics and spiritual channelers, and have a life-time of experience of the spiritual and psychic worlds between them.
Gaeil Bloor, aged 48, has lived in Hawke's Bay since she was three.
"Our prime motivation is to help others through life's challenges and lead them to the peace that lies within. To encourage others in developing their own subtle senses and abilities to enhance, create, add colour and fullness to their own lives, bringing them a sense of fulfilment, satisfaction and peace," she said.
Gaeil explained that she used to attend a healing religion class at Sunday school every week until her late teens.
"It was one of the only things apart from school that we participated in. I always asked God questions. He was the only one that had time for my incessant questions, or at least didn't seem to get impatient with them.
"I learnt at an early age to talk to someone out there and it became my safe world. However it made me very accident-prone, as I was not focusing on what I was doing at that time.
"I always saw faces and shapes in everything. I had an internal antenna that sensed how things were going to turn out.
"When I was a child, children were still seen and not heard, so I kept things to myself and later switched off .
"I chose not to feel, because it hurt," she said. Gaeil was just 15 when she met her husband, and they were together for 22 years. They have a son and a daughter, as well as two granddaughters, aged eight and five.
"My path took a sudden turn in 1995.
"My husband and I both felt a chapter close on our life at the same time, it was as if we had done what we were meant to do, which was scary.
"A couple of months later circumstances happened which changed our lives forever in one day. We went our separate ways.
"From that time on, I was literally led by the hand by some higher force. For the first time in my life I could not see ahead.
"I didn't know what was going to happen next, which was really scary for me. My old life had come to an end.
"At the time I had been working in the banking industry which was becoming very business-orientated and less customer-service focused.
"It was very stressful and we were constantly pressured to market to targets. Real people and their needs were put aside for sales. We were measured with red dots and gold stars on a weekly chart. I felt like I was back at school. "It ran so contrary to my values that after seven years I decided to quit.
"At the time I was also very very fit and had learnt to swim at 38 so I could enter a women's triathlon. I continued being active in sport then took up long-distance cycling with the ramblers club. A group of us would go on a 600km bike ride over a couple of days every year just for fun. When my life changed so did that.
"This chapter of my life started then. I had to feel again, and I was guided very slowly it seemed.
"I had to trust. I had to learn patience, so I started teaching what I knew and what I had experienced along the way, taking meditation and development groups, coaching people through difficult times and encouraging others to use their own abilities.
"My abilities grew along the way. It was a whole new world, a more fulfilling one which was very challenging, rewarding, and personally fulfilling.
"Even if I can only help someone a little, I feel I'm doing what I am here for. As a child all I wanted to do was help others, and in my own small way, that is now what I do," Gaeil added.
Debra Jack, aged 44, has lived in Hawke's Bay all her life. She has been married to her husband Paul for the past 24 years. The couple have two daughters and two granddaughters. She explained that as with a lot of people, her interests in spirituality and the afterlife came about with after the death of her father seven years ago.
"I had always felt it wasn't the end, and decided to investigate.
"I started reading books and talking to people. I was invited to a meditation and development group which was being run by Gaeil and from there continued to grow spiritually and psychically, developing abilities I didn't know I had.
"The spiritual journey fascinates me and I enjoy hearing other people's experiences. My main focus for the past few years has been to enable others to develop their own intuitional abilities in whatever form they take as well as healing and feeling energy.
"Having a safe place where you can discuss what is happening on both a spiritual and personal level is important. I will listen, ask questions and suggest other perspectives for whatever is going on in their lives.
"And although I will not tell them what to do, I will provide tools to help them answer the questions themselves," she said.
Deidre Cooper, aged 56, was born in Auckland, and has lived in Napier with her husband for 20 years. The couple have one son.
She has worked in many different jobs over the years, mostly as a hospital clerk and receptionist as well as in retail, where she said she met many lovely people. But now she works with her husband in their family business. Deidre said her fascination with all things spiritual started at a very young age.
"My family first noticed that I knew things I shouldn't, and I saw things that weren't there when I was about three years old.
"These abilities continued throughout my childhood, along with dreams which foretold future events, but I did not begin to develop my gift seriously until I was in my early twenties.
"I began attending a wonderful meditation and study group in Wellington run by Margaret Davies, a well known clairvoyant, medium and spiritual teacher.
"After moving to Napier I attended the Spiritualist Church for many years, and benefited from the wisdom and the rigorous training I found there.
"Today I work with a network of like-minded friends who have come to spiritual work by many different paths. What we hold in common, I think, is dedication to what I call the Light (others may call it God, Creator, Great Spirit, the One), and the heartfelt wish that all people might experience spiritual peace," she said.
* Keep an eye out for Hawke's Bay Today's new psychic column, featuring Gaeil and friends, starting on Monday, May 8.