Continuation, Not Closure: What a Medium Who Lost Her Son Taught Me About Feeling Your Child's Presence

I met Nicole Newman in a gallery reading at the Helping Parents Heal Conference. She's from Maui by way of Vancouver, she's a medium, and like me, she is the mother of a son who is no longer in a body. Her son's name is Avery. Mine is Weston. We sat down with a microphone between us, and within a few minutes I had goosebumps that stayed for most of the hour.

Here is what she taught me.

It starts with communing, not communicating

After Avery died, Nicole would go to her bedroom, lie down, and ask for help. Not for words. Not for a sign. Just: help me. And she would feel a vibration settle over her, then a peace, then nourishment — as if her son's spirit was feeding her something she needed to get up and function.

She couldn't have proven any of it. There was no name, no date, no evidential detail a skeptic would accept. But she knew. And she went back to that bedroom multiple times a day for two years, because her nervous system needed the reset.

Nicole calls that communing. It is the felt presence of your person, before any message. And she is adamant that every grieving parent can do it. Mediumship, she says, is a learned neural pathway. The communing is where you start.

Why your child keeps coming to mind

This one stopped me. When spirit connects with us, Nicole explained, they blend into our energy — and in that blending, they have access to our memories, our knowledge, our whole mind. So when you're suddenly flooded with a memory of your child, it is often because they are there, moving through the memory with you.

Early on, you receive spirit without recognizing it. It arrives as a feeling, a mood shift, a temperature change, even anxiety, because a grieving nervous system is already raw. The way through is stillness. Get your mind quiet, pull back from the noise of the outer world, and let yourself be just you. Be still and know.

Doubt is the kickback

Both of us have wrestled with the same question: how do I know I'm not making this up? Nicole put it plainly. The moment you doubt, you're out. Doubt pulls you back into the conscious mind, and the conscious mind is the doubting mind. It ends the connection instantly.

Weston gave me the reframe that changed everything, and I shared it with Nicole. Trust, he told me, is the foundation of every action you ever take. So if you're sitting in doubt, you're trusting doubt. You're trusting limitation more than you're trusting possibility. Since then, whenever the doubt rises, I say it out loud: I trust possibility. I trust you.

Two mothers, one bubble

I told Nicole how Weston explained oneness to me. He showed me a container of bubble solution — that's Source. A wand dips in and lifts out a little of it. Breath brings it to life, and bubbles form. Each one is individual now, and each one is still the same substance.

Nicole went quiet. Avery, she said, had been showing her images of herself blowing bubbles for years. She had never understood what he meant.

Two sons. Two mothers. One picture. That is the oneness, demonstrating itself in real time.

Continuation, not closure

People kept telling Nicole she needed closure. Her answer was that closure was never the goal. What she needed was continuation — an ongoing relationship with her son that is real, felt, and hers. And she is clear that it is the felt essence of the child, more than any words a medium delivers, that heals. When your soul and theirs blend, she said, the child can energetically carry some of your pain back with them.

When she said that, I saw Weston with sacks of grief slung over his shoulder, taking them home to transmute. And I understood something about my own healing that talk alone never gave me.

Where to begin

If you have lost someone and you feel them — or you want to — start where Nicole started. Lie down. Get quiet. Ask. Notice what arrives, and refuse to argue with it. The relationship is still here. It only asks to be continued.

Listen to the full conversation on the Grieving Awake podcast, and find Nicole's mediumship school, Love of Avery Kind:

• Grieving Awake Podcast ↗
• Love of Avery Kind ↗
• Love of Avery Kind (Canada) ↗