An article about the work I do from The Western People.

For years Ballina based medium and healer Phil Rice suppressed her gifts but now she has putthem to use and frequently does so to benefit
deserving local causes, writes Orla Hearns.

SPIRITUAL healing is not alearned skill, it's a gift, explains Phil Rice. Her gift has been handed down over four generations but Phil is
the first of her family to put the gift to public use. On Saturday, October 30 Phil will do just that to benefit a worthy localcause that is very close to her heart. She will host a special evening of mediumship in Mount Falcon hotel in aid of the North West Society for the prevention of cruelty to animals (NWSPCA).
Phil is passionate about animals and regularly volunteers with the NWSPCA. She is inspired by animals' capacity for unconditional love and she regularly uses her healing abilities on injured pets at the Small Creatures veterinary practice.

"It was like carrying a flash light in the dark and everyone was following me. If I passed someone in the doorway they would be able to feel the energy of the spirits pushing past after me"

Raised in Kilkenny, Phil's psychic abilities were evident in her childhood but talk of such a nature was strongly discouraged in those times. She says of her gift: "My childhood memories of it were that it was like having invisible friends. It was always as though I was in this tunnel of sunshine." Phil moved to Mayo with her family
as a teenager when her dad, Ben Flynn took up employment in Asahi, Killala. Her mum Phil Flynn was a nurse in Ballina hospital. Phil completed her education in Ballina and met and married her husband Seamus Rice in the town. It was not until Phil endured the trauma of losing two close relatives –her mother and father in law, Jim Rice - within the space of ten days that her gift re-surfaced. In her grief stricken state the experiences she had known as a child came flooding back.
She describes the Christmas of that year as "horrendous". She was surrounded by spirits – most of them trapped and needing her help to cross over into the other side:
"It was like carrying a flash light in the dark and everyone was following me," she recalls. "If I passed someone in the doorway they would be able to feel the energy of the spirits pushing past after me." Phil was able to see this energy as colours in the air around her, like vortices with different shades pouring into each other and sometimes the spirits manifested themselves in physical form or as a voice inside her head. She says she suffered terribly with burning and tingling heat sensations in her hands. The symptoms were medically treated as rheumatoid arthritis but once she began to heal people Phil realised that the sensation was coming from her healing
energy. Over the next seven years Phil devoted herself to studying her gift and is now a certified medium. She is highly experienced in her art and knows how to afford proper protection to those she works with. She says she has really fine tuned her abilities now and differs from other mediums in that she can channel the spirit's energy so effectively that it can be felt by the person she is working with. She can also provide validations that will prove the identity of the spirit she is communicating with –usually a piece of information that she could not otherwise have known about the person. "I also have a spiritual advisor who has no problem with anything I do," Phil explains. Phil initially began to use her healing gift to help family members and friends but word of her abilities quickly spread and today she heals individuals practically on a full time basis but also works with nursing homes and other such facilities. Phil says her proudest achievment in recent weeks was healing her grandson in the womb. Doctors continually told her daughter that the baby was not thriving and would not survive but Phil knew otherwise and employed her healing gift.

Baby Eli was safely born at 30 weeks gestation, on September 23, weighing just 1.5lbs and continues to do well. But Phil stresses that she is not a medical doctor and always advises clients to consult their GP where necessary. She also acknowledges that there are occasions where the only assistance she can provide is to give someone
the inner strength they need to tackle a situation.

"My childhood memories of it were that it was like having invisible friends. It was always as though I was in this tunnel of sunshine"

The Visit

A short story about a Mother's love

The moon hangs low in the star speckled sky. Every now and then a shooting star flies across the inky blue blackness leaving just a formless memory of its passage. Standing under the big oak tree I look to my house. As expected, there are no lights on. It is after two am and everyone is in bed.

The door opens easily and I am back in my home once more. The moonlight pours in the windows lighting the black velvet darkness with a blue tinge.

Shelly’s door is open, drawing me inside. I kneel down beside her bed and gaze into her sleeping face, drinking in the picture of her beauty. Soft blond curls brushed across her pillow. Her eyelids flicker in her own dream world.

Little has changed in her room since I left. We had redecorated it together for her last birthday, her sixth. As usual it is tidy and her uniform lies across her chair ready for school in the morning. On her bedside locker is a newly framed photo of us. I trailed my finger down over our faces remembering the moment captured in time of us sitting in the back garden last summer.

I creep to my own bedroom. My husbands Gary’s gentle snores guide me towards our bed and ever so softly I lie down beside him. I looked into his sleeping face. He looked pale and seemed to have lost weight. Cupping his face softly I cry for the grief I am causing him. Yet I know I had no choice.

Unsettled, I go to check on my baby and lean over the cot edge looking at little Angela called after me. She is my final creation, my gift to this world. The pregnancy had been rough and labour had been long and painful. Finally I held her in my arms bonding with this new soul; this part of me. Her beautiful blue eyes looked into mine with untold hidden knowledge.

2.

I was getting a headache and feeling dizzy with it. The noise from the labour ward around me faded into silence as a brilliant white light surrounded me. A tall figure materialised in the brightness. ‘Angela,’ he said, ‘it is time to come home. I have come to help you cross over.’

‘NO!’ I felt myself getting lighter and lighter floating up towards the ceiling. I looked down; a thin silver cord was holding me to my prone body. The young doctor who had delivered my new baby daughter was pushing down on my chest calling me back.

The monitor flat lined and the silver cord began to dissolve. The white light began to pull me into it, sucking me into a long tunnel that went on and on. Finally I began to slow down and stop totally. The light then swirled around me like a mist. Voices in the distance drew me towards a beautiful garden. A dog was running towards me. I knew this dog! My old pet Bobby. He threw himself at me whimpering and baying with excitement. I picked him up and he licked my face with delight.

Again I heard my name being called. I looked up to see Mum walking towards me and found myself embraced in her arms. How many times in the past had I wished for one more hug and here I was getting my wish. I sobbed against her, ‘Mum, my baby, I cannot leave her.’

‘Its ok Angela, I have been taking care of her here before you gave birth.’ My mother held my face in her hands. ’Come the others are waiting for you.’ She held my hand and I felt myself total surrounded by love.

***

So here I am trying to help my family from Heaven. As my angels have showed me, I gently place my forefinger on Gary’s temple as he sleeps and join him in his dream.

3.

He is sitting on a grassy hill overlooking a favourite beach of ours. I can hear the sound of the surf being washed again the shore and a sea gull screeching high up in the sky.

‘Gary, I am here, look at me.’

‘I can’t..look at you..my heart is broken. My love, why did you leave me?’

Sitting down beside him I catch his hand and he holds on tightly. Tears slipped through his clenched eyes washing down over his face. A beautiful sunrise lights the sky. Together we sit we watch the new dawn and a new beginning for us.

‘Gary, time will go so quickly for you until we are together again. You are such a good Dad to our beautiful daughters. Give them loads of cuddles from me and tell them that I am so near. I am always here for you.’

***

The weeks pass very quickly for me and it is my birthday. I walk with my small family to my final resting place. Gary is carrying a bunch of red roses in one hand and holding baby Angela cradled against his chest with the other. Shelly is walking beside him tightly holding another bunch of white roses.

Sitting down on the little wall that surrounds my now flower adorned grave, Gary my soulmate, my beloved tells our children the story of us and how Mummy had to go home early.