There's More to Life Than This: Healing Messages, Remarkable Stories, and Insight About the Other Side from the Long Island Medium

by Caputo, Theresa

  I ran into this couple the day after the dad’s eightieth birthday party. I told the husband that his father’s soul said he was a good son and that he was very proud of him. Dad said he loved him very much and was in a better place. Though this impressed the wife, the husband looked hesitant and a little afraid. What I think clinched it for him was that the wife’s grandmother’s soul then stepped forward and validated her presence by telling us that as a child, the woman trained for the Olympics. She laughed, looked at me, and said, “I’m sixty pounds overweight! Do I look like an Olympian?”—so it’s not like I could tell she was an athlete—but she did train to be an Olympic diver. As this happened, the woman got a whiff of Chanel #5 and cigarettes, her grandmother’s signature scent. When the cameras were off, I pulled the wife aside and said, “Your father-in-law wants you to know that you saved his son.” This blew her away, because the week he died, the man said to her verbatim, “I love you. You really saved my son.” He was referring to how she helped her husband start his business back up again, after leaving his job a few years prior.

  Before the reading, the husband’s depression was very hard on his wife and family. But a week later, he snapped out of his funk. The kids got their father back, and he no longer drinks and retreats. He booked a fabulous trip to Cabo and told his wife, “I’m not mourning, because Dad is in a better place.” And he meant it! He now believes that your soul lives on, and the family makes decisions knowing that Dad’s with them and protecting them from the Other Side. “His whole way of seeing life changed overnight,” the wife said later. “And it only cost us five dollars and sixteen cents for those nuggets and fries!”

  Amazing stories like these can feel so rewarding, but they can also make it hard for me to do my job. They affect me so much! Usually I’m able to set aside my sentiments when I do a reading, because I take on the feelings and emotions of the soul communicating with me. Plus, who wants to see a mushy medium that’s crying the whole time? But sometimes, I can’t help myself. Not when your loved ones tell me how much the experience means to you and how huge it is in helping you move on.

  One session where I struggled to keep it together was for a woman named Melanie. When I channeled her husband, Leon, I was moved to tears by their connection. The man died after cutting his foot on an anchor that was buried in a man-made lake near the Gulf of Mexico, despite being put on antibiotics for the infection. Prior to seeing me, Melanie regularly got signs that her husband’s soul was near. For example, she kept seeing the number sixty-seven, which was the number on his football jersey when he played for Northwestern, and she saw his apparition lying next to her in bed one night but didn’t tell anyone about it. During the reading, Spirit gave her the gift of healing by confirming that every sign she experienced was real and it was Leon reaching out. Spirit then let me trade places with Leon’s soul. I’d never soul traveled before, so let me just say, it was wild.

  As I channeled Leon, my soul floated above our session and looked down at my body interacting with Melanie. At the same time, Leon’s soul was in my body, so when I was talking to her, I was mostly speaking as her husband. I kept getting confused about who was who, but Leon’s soul made a lot of clear points. He said that certain sounds that his body made as he died were actually his soul trying to come back to earth, which is something his wife wondered about. I also validated that at his wake, she whispered an inside joke to him about his hair color. His soul talked about a memorial tree that his mother planted by a swing set, and he bragged that his favorite color was purple (“Real men wear purple,” he told me). His soul also alluded to a teddy bear made out of his clothes, which was a double validation. Not only did Melanie take her oldest son to Build-A-Bear to make a football bear in Dad’s honor, but her mom’s friend said that she was secretly making three bears for Melanie’s kids from scraps of Leon’s clothes! As Leon, one of the last things I told Melanie was, “I want you to know that you will love again, and I’m going to handpick somebody to love you and be there for our children.” Melanie later confided to me that at the end of long, hard days, she talked to Leon aloud about how terrified she felt spending the rest of her life as a single mother. Then she’d feel guilty for thinking this. But after the session, she knew Leon was addressing her concerns, because he knew this was his big chance to tell her what she needed to hear.

  Perhaps most incredible of all was what happened the morning of Leon’s funeral. Melanie woke up feeling nauseous and wondered if she could be pregnant. She took four tests and all of them confirmed that she was. Melanie was five months along and showing when I met her, but I knew that she was four weeks pregnant when she found out. I also knew she’d be giving birth to a boy. Leon’s soul told me that she’d see his traits in their child and to look for a birthmark to show that he held the baby’s soul prior to coming here. He then said that if she doesn’t sense or see Leon anymore, this means that his soul was reborn in her child. “Either way, the minute you hold him, you will feel that something is different about this baby,” I said. She told me that she plans to give the child the middle name of Leon. “I don’t doubt that God gave me this baby for comfort,” she said to me. “It is just one more reason to put my feet on the ground every day.”

  The day after I channeled Leon, I received an email from Melanie that makes me grateful for my gift and its ability to alleviate grief and usher in healing. It reminds me why I am so amazed by Spirit every day. Here are some lines from her note:

  There are not enough words to thank you for making yesterday a reality for me. From the second Leon died, my entire world stopped moving. I lost all hope, faith, and comfort. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t pray that somehow, some way, I would be awarded the chance to [connect with him again] . . . Through my experience and reading, I now know without a doubt that Leon is with me, more now than ever before . . . Leon was my life. I had felt as if I would never feel happiness again, never have any peace with where my life is at. I am different today, because of Theresa and her team awarding me this opportunity. I haven’t slept since the night Leon died, but I slept like a baby last night. I woke up today, and my heart wasn’t as heavy. I woke up today knowing that Leon is right here with me and our boys. I woke up today finally believing that I’m going to be OK . . . You have no idea what this has done for me, my family, and my children. I will forever be the person and mother I was meant to be because of you. Because now I can allow it. You’ve changed my life, and . . . I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  Believe me, I will never forget Melanie or her husband’s generous soul. Oh no, here I go again . . . Somebody pass the tissues!

  10

  Spirit Gets the Final Say

  I’m not exactly bashful when it comes to saying what’s on my mind. I like to talk, and if you ask me about food, family, or any of the Kardashians, you’ll learn that I have opinions to spare. I sometimes wonder if the fact that I like to yammer on is the reason that God gave me this gift; maybe He knew I’d never run out of breath when delivering Spirit’s messages! And while I think I have a lot to say, your deceased loved ones have me beat. When Spirit channels through me, they can be an impressively talkative bunch.

  As you’ve learned, Spirit is big on offering words that bring comfort, peace, direction, and validation that they’re with you. And I think they do this because you’re constantly telling them, in your thoughts and prayers, how much you miss them and wish they were around. So by reassuring you through a reading or showing you signs in your own life, I feel that’s their way of answering your needs and requests. But I’ve also noticed that tucked within their main messages of healing and validation are much subtler, secondary meanings that I might not recognize in the moment.

  It makes sense to me that Spirit’s thoughts would be significant from a few angles, because so many things in life are. When have you read a book, had a conversation, heard a story, or watched a movie . . . and gotten only one message from it? Our e
xperiences in the physical world are too nuanced for that. Also, not everyone comes to see me when they’re sad, so Spirit’s communication can’t only be about coping with grief. Some people come for readings because they want to catch up with their loved ones or receive validation that they’re on the right track. But no matter what Spirit wants you to mainly know, there are usually more layers to what they’re saying than we realize.

  So in closing, I want to leave you with ten incredible lessons I’ve learned from channeling Spirit all these years. Some of these were the driving points of the messages I delivered, but many were the poignant undertones that rang true to me. I hope they resonate with you on many levels too, no matter where you are in your life.

  #1: The little things that matter to you still matter to your loved ones.

  When Spirit validates their presence with specific references that I couldn’t possibly know, this doesn’t just tell you that their existence is “real.” It also shows you that no matter how busy your loved ones are in Heaven, they’re never too preoccupied to forget the moments and memories that made their lives in the physical world with you so special. For example, when I did a show in Orlando, I read a woman whose husband drowned in a lake. He was athletic and knew how to swim, which made his death hard to understand, but his soul had predetermined that it was his time to pass on. As I channeled, the man’s soul came through to confirm that he’s still around by recognizing that the wife is making a quilt in his memory from green army fatigues, and that on the car ride over, her daughter was talking to her about becoming a specials-needs teacher.

  These validations were sweet, but they were nothing compared to what happened next. His soul then showed me a body of water and a dinghy, which I thought referenced how he died, by drowning in a lake. But his wife’s friend corrected me. “Dinghy was my husband’s nickname for me. He also died,” she explained. “Our husbands were best friends.” The man who drowned then brought his best friend’s soul forward; they were together on the Other Side. The fact that Dinghy’s husband remembered her pet name, and then reminded his friend’s soul of it so that he could connect with her, made me smile. It’s these special, inside references—from private jokes, to personal conversations, to instances you remember when you’re alone—that will never stop mattering to your loved ones even after they’ve passed, because they’re still important to you.

  Another story that demonstrates Spirit’s enduring attention to detail happened during a fund-raiser for Victoria’s gymnastics team. I felt a soul tap me on the shoulder and say, “Can you please tell my wife how beautiful she is? She’s wearing a blue shirt.” I turned around to find a woman standing behind me in a blue shirt, so I asked her, “Did you lose your husband?” She did. “He wants you to know how beautiful you are,” I said. Of course, everyone in the room was like, Aww, that’s so sweet. But after the event, the woman told me her husband’s message had a second layer to it. “I was married to him for over twenty-five years before he died,” she said. “I just started dating again, and on the way here, I said to my daughter, ‘I hope Daddy isn’t upset that I’m dating, because what I really love about my new companion is that every day, he tells me how beautiful I am. In twenty-five years, your father never did that.’” But at that fund-raiser, his soul finally did. And by telling the wife that she is beautiful, the man’s soul gave her what she needed to hear to calm her worries and change the way she potentially saw her new relationship. She wasn’t just replacing her husband with a new man but living her life as a woman who was loved and will be loved again. And to my original point, Spirit’s message addressed a very private, specific, and persistent sentiment that was an undercurrent throughout the couple’s marriage. I always say, I don’t have to identify with the message, and I don’t care if anybody else gets it, so long as the person that Spirit is speaking to appreciates it.

  #2: Don’t doubt when your loved ones are trying to connect.

  Everyone connects to their loved ones differently, and you don’t have to be a medium to know that some signs like flickering lights or apparitions in your bedroom are easier to recognize than others. But as you know, seeing a soul in a dream can be a means of connecting that you’re not so sure about the next day. Is it your dead sister’s soul if she was dressed as Cleopatra? Did your son’s spirit visit you in a dream, even if he was babbling about the Red Sox and not giving you a heartfelt message? The whole debate reminds me of that old saying: If a soul appears in a dream, and there’s no medium around to validate it, did it really happen? But I did the best reading where Spirit told me that random dream appearances can be a way of connecting, and the soul is with you at that moment. Here, I channeled a young man who died from using drugs that worsened an existing heart condition. The small room was full of close family and friends. I gleaned from his messages that some of the guests were connecting with him very easily, and others weren’t. He then told me about a girl there who dreamed of him kneeling down in front of her and asking her to marry him. The two were best friends and not romantic—so for all intents and purposes, this just seemed like a nonsensical dream to her. But his soul intently stepped forward to say that he was connecting with her that night in her silly dream, though he clearly wasn’t proposing marriage in the afterlife. Then his soul actually kneeled down in front of me, the way that he did for her, to validate it. What a romantic!

  #3: The dead never need to RSVP.

  Spirit looks forward to a big event as much as you do. Reunions, vacations, weddings, graduations—your loved ones are with you, at all of them, in spirit. When I channeled the soul of a man who committed suicide, though he had a few lessons to learn on the Other Side, he said he still made time to fuss with the microphone at his sister’s wedding. I also read an entire family whose loved one stepped forward to say that the soul planned to attend a kindergarten graduation and validated it by showing that the little girl would be wearing her hair in braids. And if Spirit attends your child’s birth, who knows? They may bring your pets along! At a bingo hall in Long Island, I read a woman whose mom died almost twenty years ago. When she was alive, the daughter was told she couldn’t have kids, so she got a black Lab named Sammy. After Mom died, she proved her doctors wrong, had a baby, and always wondered if her mom knew about it. Her dog had also recently passed. During the reading, the mother’s soul stepped forward to say that she knew all about her beautiful granddaughter and that Sammy, the Lab, was with her in Heaven.

  #4: They can hear you talking to yourself.

  Souls communicate through thought, so when you want to talk to your deceased loved ones, you don’t have to put on a show to get their attention. You don’t even need to speak out loud. You can silently communicate to Spirit and God with your thoughts and the feelings you project, and they’ll hear you. At a fund-raiser for the Boys and Girls Club in Hicksville, I did a reading for three siblings, two girls and a boy. Their ages ranged from early teens to early twenties, yet they’d lost both their parents already. When I channeled the parents’ souls, they did some cute validations. Dad kept telling me, “John-John”—which was the father’s name and the name of the son. The young man was also wearing his dad’s bracelet with the name John on it, and the family lived on John Street. Mom, who died almost a decade earlier, also verified her presence by reminding her youngest daughter how they used to rub their fingers on a yellow blanket with satin trim. But what really spoke to me was when the mother’s soul said to the girl, “I know how hard you try to remember my voice or feel me holding you. Know that I’m with you when you think about this.” Mom wasn’t just telling her that her soul is around when she needs it, but that she could feel the energy of her daughter’s thoughts. That was enough to get her attention.

  Similarly, I know a woman who lost her husband when he was thirty-three years old, and two years after he passed, she was in a real funk around the holidays. She hadn’t prayed for a sign in a while, but her husband’s soul still knew that she needed a pick-me-
up. One day on her way to work, she got stuck in traffic and noticed that the car in front of her had two bumper stickers. One was for the New York Jets, her husband’s favorite team, and the other said “Live, Laugh, Love,” which is what he’d had engraved on the inside of her wedding band. When she saw the pairing, she laughed for the first time in months. “He must have known what a mood I was in, because he really hit me over the head with these signs,” she told me. “There is no question that he was saying that he loved me, was with me, and was doing all he could to help me, and I didn’t even have to ask.”

  #5: Spirit doesn’t want you to know everything.

  When you find yourself in a confusing or challenging situation, it’s good to turn to God, souls of faith, or loved ones for answers. But if you don’t get one, it can be really confusing. When this happens to me, I’ve admittedly thought, What’s the point of having connections up there, if nobody’s listening? But then I remember that Spirit tells clients that just because their prayers aren’t always answered, it doesn’t mean they’re not heard. The hard truth is, the outcome of a situation may not be changeable or a frustration may be meant to teach a lesson to you or someone in your life. But you don’t know this at the time, so you react by feeling alone, abandoned, or really frigging mad.

  There are also topics that Spirit simply doesn’t discuss. Some mediums welcome questions either throughout or at the end of a session, but if at any time a client says he or she wants to ask me something, I first ask Spirit to give me a “yes” or “no” before the person even finishes his or her sentence—and only if it’s a “yes” will I entertain it. If I get a “no” from Spirit, that’s my sign that they aren’t concerned with the answer or that the response is one that we’re not ready to hear or that your loved one isn’t ready to communicate. For instance, Spirit has never been too keen on talking about the impending death of a person who’s alive. They also don’t love to get specific about the year or time that an event might happen, since it has the potential to alter how you’ll live your life until then. Spirit might volunteer a month, but that could mean this year or five years from now, and that’s a timeline they manage to keep vague. I know a woman who saw two well-known mediums, both of whom told her she’d buy a new home in June, and both felt it would happen that year. The woman and her family were so excited and counted down until then, but June came and went without a new place. I don’t know if these mediums were wrong or if Spirit meant June of a different year. What may have happened is that they were given the feeling of it happening “soon,” but that’s a subjective sensation. If Spirit makes me feel that an event happened “recently,” that means within two years. A two-year difference to a soul means nothing because in the grand scope of eternity, it isn’t a long time. But to a family hoping to move or grieving a loss, two years can feel like forever! So I’ve made peace with the fact that time doesn’t have meaning on the Other Side. We use clocks and calendars to make schedules and give our lives order, but Spirit doesn’t have deadlines or eighty-three errands to run by five p.m.