Channeling session with my dad

October 2023 session transcript

“I’m feeling a mosey from dad stepping into this space, like he had a southern, old-time experience and would say something like, ‘Yep, I’m here, what d’ya need?’ He’s very relaxed and ready to have a conversation. I’m seeing a round table that feels like a kitchen table and we’re ready to sit down and have some conversation. He’s really coming in to say, ‘What do you need? How can I help? What questions do you have?’ Demi said.

“That’s my dad!” I was excited to hear from him. “He’s from Atlanta, Georgia, so that southern piece is in him. I’m really curious to know who met him when he crossed over because in the days preceding his passing he saw a lot of people in his backyard. However, one of his neighbors went over to check on him and didn’t see anyone in the backyard.”

The spiritual aspect surrounding his death really fascinates me. I had to know more.

“There were a lot of angels there because I needed help to be pulled out of my body. It wasn’t a clear release for me. The angels were there to tell me it was my time and to help me let go. There was a lot of gripping and hanging on because I had a sense of unfinished business on Earth and I wasn’t ready to go yet. It’s not so much that I was kicking and screaming in protest, but it was with a lot of reluctance because I didn’t want to leave behind the things that I felt were unfinished. This has a lot to do with family, of course, but also there were a lot of things I wanted to do.

“But, by the time it got to the point where I wasn’t working as much after I retired and I was so engrossed with the family drama, my body simply wasn’t able to do the things I wanted to do. I had some hope my body would get better and allow me to do the things I wanted to do. So, I felt like I wasn’t done yet, but my body had just broken down so much that it couldn’t carry me and hold me into the things I still wanted to do,” my dad’s spirit explained.

“Dad, we intended to visit you again, but you passed away before we could get there. We just couldn’t get the trip aligned with everyone’s conflicting schedules. You ended up passing before we could visit you. I wish we could’ve made the trip,” I said, guilt weighing heavily in my voice. That would have been the last time I ever saw him alive.

“I didn’t want you to see me like that.”

We visited him about eight weeks before he passed, and even now, I can still see how terrible he looked. It was hard seeing him so weak. His face was sunken, his body frail. His mind was sharp, though. He was still him.

Four months had passed since my mother died and he was finally living on his own again in more ways than one. There was a quiet lightness to him, a kind of weary freedom. But his body didn’t match because it was falling apart and seeing him that way was heartbreaking.

“I understand, Dad. It was hard seeing you look the way you did during our final visit with you,” I said softly.

“What was it like for you after Mom passed? You had six months of living free from her verbal and physical abuse, her constant shaming and criticism. Yet, I know your body wouldn’t let you do much of anything to enable you to enjoy your new freedom. How did you feel during that time?”

I’d frequently wondered about what his emotional world felt like after my mom died. He’d shared a little with me during our final in-person visit, just a couple of months before he passed, but he’d been guarded like a parent who doesn’t want to burden their child with too much truth. That guardedness feels familiar because I hold the same stance with my adult children.

“The new freedom is what fueled the passion of me not wanting to leave the body, not wanting to go yet. I was getting a taste of what the playground of life gets to be like,” he said.

“One of the things that can be reflected on from the other side is that in our etheric aspect, our spirit aspect— it’s not the same playful journey that we get to experience in our human lifetimes. While many of us come here for a mission, there is also a sense of play that is meant to be had in our earthly experience,” Demi explained.

“I saw glimpses of those play experiences, mostly through my kids and my grandkids. It gave me a twinkle in my eye when I’d just sit back and watch you with your kids or watch your kids play or watch you as a child. It sparked in me that which I didn’t get to experience a lot of,” my dad said. Later in this session, he explains why. It’s something I didn’t know.

He was only 22 years old when he married my mother just two weeks after her high school graduation. She was 18 and already fully in control. For the next 59 toxic years, every single thing he did had to meet her approval. If it didn’t, there would be hell to pay.

Any form of fun had to be filtered through her preferences. She turned down every thing he showed interest in, just like she did to me. He was forced to participate in the things she enjoyed, whether he liked them or not. He was never allowed to explore fun on his own terms.

The only reprieve I remember him having was when my husband and I watched college football with him. Even though my mother was in the room, I kept her distracted by talking to her, engaging her, and making sure she stayed occupied just so my dad could laugh and relax for a little while with my husband.

But even those small moments of joy came at a cost because keeping her entertained wasn’t just a helpful gesture, it was a continuation of my lifelong hypervigilance.

An extension of always being on alert, always scanning the room, always protecting. I had to stay one step ahead of her moods so the people I loved could have a sliver of peace.

That burden never left me.

My husband had a beautiful, gentle, and lasting impact on my dad’s life. For nearly three decades he modeled joy, play, and kindness in ways that were new for my dad. He gave him a taste of what unconditional warmth and love felt like. He gave him glimpses of the man he could’ve been, had he been free.

“There was actually a little more play than your mom knew about inside my work hours. There was play that I allowed myself to engage in and there were aspects of that, even though it wasn’t to the extent that I wanted it to be, but I did allow myself to do that and I still allowed myself to live a life separate from her.

“There was an aspect of having my hands off of what was happening at home that I had to do in order to protect the family unit. There was a point in our marriage and while you were growing up around ages 10-15 that I had to really take a step back and let myself live a separate life than what was happening inside the home because things got so intense and got so volatile that I was afraid to be at home more.

“I felt like it was better for me to be away because when I was at home it meant that there would be more fighting and more for you to see and sort out. I just stayed outside the home during those times so there was a little bit less rockiness for everyone to have to deal with,” my dad’s spirit said.

I had no idea he was afraid to be at home! Obviously, it makes sense. But, hearing him say it out loud was shocking.

The level of abuse he endured behind closed doors was worse than I realized.

“I remember you traveled about 3 weeks out of every month. Now that I’m older, I’ve found myself hoping you were able to use that time to have some peace and quiet and fun. It brings me joy knowing you were able to have some joyful experiences without mom around.

“But, when you were gone I was Mom’s full-on target. Still, if you would’ve been at home, I know the intensity and volatility would’ve been so much worse. There was just no good scenario involving her at all,” I said, feeling flat and defeated.

“It was about choosing the lesser of two evils. It was never about me intending you to take the brunt of it. It was almost like there was a greater level of abuse when I was around because she had me there in front of her to stir the juices and create a different atmosphere. It seemed more manageable for you by the time you were 10-15 years old and you knew how to manage her outbursts in a way that helped you to numb her out,” my dad’s spirit explained.

“Yes, self preservation. I learned it early on. Dad, I know you traveled a lot [for work]…”

“Dad is interjecting here” Demi said, interrupting me.

“Yes, I traveled so much and I want you to do the same. It’s great seeing the world through clear eyes. Travel as much as you can. Don’t worry so much about the material possessions as you do about the experiences you get to create in this life,” advised my dad’s spirit.

“I love hearing that! We’re going on a two-week transatlantic cruise next month. In fact, we’ll be approaching the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on your earthly birthday.”

My husband and I did take that two-week transatlantic cruise and it just so happened to include my dad’s birthday. That night at dinner, the sommelier responded to a wine-related question from my husband with a playful quip: “Is the pope Catholic?”

I dropped my fork—that was one of my dad’s favorite sayings!

I’d never heard anyone else say it before. But here it was, said during wine service on his birthday in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

My dad, once a wine enthusiast in his younger years, was absolutely with us that evening.

“Dad, do you remember our early morning coffee conversations? They were my favorite way to spend time with you when we were live-in caregivers for you and Mom. And do you remember when I visited you after she died? I cherished that time alone with you and I loved our conversations.”

“I remember sitting with you, but I don’t remember all of our deep conversations.”

“When we’re on the spirit side, it’s like we can look back at the movie and there are pieces of conversation that stick out; however, remembering isn’t the same as you remembering from the cognitive sense,” Demi explained.

“I remember a conversation we had after Mom died. You said you wanted to renew your passport so you could travel. I love that the travel aspect is so important to you. I’ve always loved to travel, but mom would always criticize me for the trips I took.”

He told me during one of our final weekly phone calls that he wanted to renew his passport.

His travel list was long—Sedona, wine country in California, Silver Springs to ride the glass-bottomed boats like he did as a boy, Washington D.C. to tour the White House, Yellowstone, St. Augustine in Florida, Rome, Northumberland where his family originated (the northernmost county in England), and Scotland.

I told him my husband and I would go with him, but deep down I knew his body was too far gone.

He could barely walk into his own bathroom, so how could he board a plane or navigate cobblestone streets in Europe? I honestly didn’t believe he’d improve enough to travel.

Still, I supported his dream with my whole heart. I told him we’d be right there beside him.

I wanted him to believe it was still possible, even if I knew it wasn’t.

He was so eager and so broken. And I knew, just like he did, that it would take a miracle.

I switched gears and asked one of the hardest questions on my list.

“Dad, one morning over coffee you opened up and told me an upsetting story about the time you forgot to bring the diaper pail downstairs one morning in 1967 when I was a baby. You said mom got so mad about it that she chased you around the kitchen trying to stab you with a knife.

“I’d like to know if there were other really threatening episodes like that when you felt concerned for your safety or scared for your life. There were a lot of times during my upbringing when I felt frightened for my own safety, but I didn’t want to believe that Mom was capable of doing major physical harm to me,” I said.

I had a hard time getting the question out because I was afraid of the answer. But, I needed to know.

“Definitely! Those situations became normal and normalized. It was just as normal as having a vocal argument. Deeper threats came through on a very normal basis. I experienced a level of fear, but by the time you began to witness the worst of it when you came to stay with us as a caregiver, I became so numb to it that what you were seeing was a drop in the bucket. It had just developed so much throughout the years that I was desensitized to it.”

I was hit by a devastating realization! Did my dad go to work that morning in 1967, leaving his helpless infant daughter in the care of the same woman who had just tried to stab him with a kitchen knife!!!

How many times was I alone with her while she was raging with that level of fury?!?

This was the first time I truly understood that the deeper, more violent threats had always been there. That terrified me!

My mind immediately went to the darker places, wondering what else she might’ve done to me and what I may have blocked out.

Because if she was capable of chasing my dad with a knife, what kinds of violence had she thought about or acted on when it came to me?

My chest tightened. My breath grew shallow.

The idea that I’d buried some of her worst behaviors deep in my subconscious felt suddenly possible and very likely.

I tried to explain the toll it had taken on me. “The stuff I witnessed while living with both of you as a caregiver had a very frightening and powerful impact on me to the point where I began struggling with my own emotional and mental well being. She did some awful stuff to you then—worse than I remember witnessing when I was younger—and I’m trying hard to forget what I saw.”

“Dad, for about four weeks after mom died I could not call you to talk to you. Back then, I believed you enabled her abuse of me and that assumption hit me so very, very hard. It broke my heart because I always thought you and I had a great, supportive relationship. But, for me to make the discovery that you were willingly enabling her when we lived with you was very hard for me to comprehend.

“I know differently now, but I was so heartbroken by my then-knowledge that you were the enabler father who gave mom intel about me, what I was doing, where I was going and when, etc. Anyway, I just want you to know that I couldn’t talk to you for that short timeframe after mom’s death because I was really struggling with so much!

“I want you to know that I’m sorry for not calling you sooner. I received a lot of aggressive criticism and shaming from a couple of family members for not calling you immediately after mom died. I just couldn’t talk to you then—I wasn’t ready to talk to you. I’m so sorry,” I said.

The hot tears came fast.

The truth is, I was drowning in unbearable and confusing emotions after my mom’s death.

I wasn’t just grieving her, I was grieving every version of myself that had ever existed under her rule. I was trying to process it all while still living in the same time zone as the trauma.

And, I was furious with my dad then.

Even though I loved him, even though I’d always felt safe with him, I couldn’t shake the ache of what felt like betrayal.

I saw him as her enabler. My husband and I even started calling him the Good Soldier because that’s exactly how he acted. Quiet. Dutiful. Always reporting back to her.

He’d give her intel about me during those months we lived there as caregivers. Where I was going. When I’d be back. What I was doing.

I felt exposed, watched, surveilled. Used.

So no—I couldn’t call him right away after she died. I couldn’t even pretend to.

And then came the backlash. The added wound of being aggressively shamed and criticized by my sibling and her husband for not calling him fast enough. Their words weren’t just cruel. They were calculated, bullying, and vicious. As if I had committed some kind of unforgivable sin.

They didn’t ask what I’d been through.

They didn’t care what I was carrying.

They saw my silence and pounced, treating me like the villain in a story they’d never lived and never even bothered to understand.

As if I hadn’t spent a lifetime trying to survive her!

As if I hadn’t watched my spirit buckle under the weight of generational violence!

I was barely standing and they kicked me while I was down. What else is new.

“There is a deep forgiveness for that,” Demi soothingly told me.

I wiped the tears from my eyes and nodded with gratitude as waves of pure relief fell from my shoulders.

“Carole, I didn’t have much to say then, either. There was a lot to sort out during that time.”

“Same for me, as well.”

“I want to make it really clear that it was never about rejecting you or wanting you to be the scapegoat. Rather, it was about understanding I wasn’t equipped to remedy the situation or to remedy the family. Especially during the time back then in society—to have a divorce or to leave the family—there’s no way I would’ve been able to take you and your sibling with me.

“So, to leave was not an option. To stay was not an option. So, I took a very detached approach because of the inferiority I felt inside the situation. There was no remedy. There was no fixing. There was only managing the hell storm,” my dad’s spirit explained.

“Yes, it was survival. It was…survival,” I said matter-of-factly, unable to come up with a different word to describe it. “It’s what you did, Dad. It’s what I did. We had no other options but to manage the hell storm and survive.”

I understood what he meant. I really did.

But I hadn’t known how deeply he felt that helplessness.

Hell, I didn’t even know he felt helpless.

I also hadn’t known he considered leaving or that he believed he wasn’t equipped to fix what was happening inside our family.

It made me wonder: did he stay in the marriage to protect me and my sibling?

Did he love someone else? Someone who was kind and warm and generous with their affection, someone he visited while traveling for work if only to learn what tenderness felt like?

Was there a version of love he got to experience in secret—just enough to keep going, just enough to survive?

“Dad, now that you’re on the other side and are able to see things from a different perspective, is there anything else you want me to know about managing a situation like yours?” I asked.

“A lot had to do with society’s viewpoint back then of what was expected of a man. In that expectation, when a man cannot live up to his duty, there is a level of shame that is felt at the human layer.

“Many times, men holding that level of shame do one of two things: they completely disconnect and remove themselves emotionally from the situation or they play on their dominance and try to go beyond that narcissistic abuse to take [the abuse] a level higher so they can become just as abusive or more abusive when they are looking to dominate the energy being held by the narcissistic partner.

“So, this is where typically one of two roles is being played: the very disconnected role or amplified abuse to assert and to dominate in order to bring forward a deeper-level-of-power role. It felt the more loving route was to disconnect,” his spirit said.

Wow! His explanation clicked into place like a missing puzzle piece!

As a child, I felt his emotional absence constantly. He wasn’t volatile. He wasn’t cruel. But he wasn’t fully there, either.

I remember so many moments where he seemed present in body but was unreachable.

Now I understand why.

He wasn’t ignoring me. He was choosing the only form of protection he believed he had left: detachment.

He thought pulling away was the more loving option. That not adding to the chaos by resisting the urge to dominate her or push back was its own form of care.

And, maybe it was.

Maybe that emotional distance was the only shield he had left, even if it meant I sometimes felt abandoned in the process.

“Your father is a man of deep heart and there was a lot of compassion he held even amid the abuse. We’ve talked before about the way he understood your mom in a different way than she generally presented,” Demi said.

“I knew her before all that transpired. I’ve always held a lighter vision of her. Always. She’s still my sweetie. Even with all that, she’s still my sweetie,” his spirit said.

It’s incredulous to me that my dad considered my mom his sweetie amid the abuse because that woman was evil to him!

But, is it really any different than the way I used to hold out hope for my mom? The way I kept trying to love her even when she was actively harming me?

During one of our recorded morning coffee conversations just days after I first discovered my mom’s narcissism, he told me his gut instinct had always been to defend her. I was shocked! This was a woman who screamed at him, belittled him, and treated him with ruthless contempt. Why would he ever defend that?

His then explanation: “I was deeply in love with that woman for many years until it just got so fuckin’ bad. She doesn’t love anybody because she doesn’t know how. I just assumed that she was a mean person and that she can elect to be not mean, but a narcissist can’t.”

“When I see your dad, I see him as a 50 to early 60 year old male. That’s about the age that he shows himself to me. I feel like it was up to this point that he was able to maintain, but once the age of 65 hit and his health began to decline is when he really, really disconnected,” Demi tearfully said.

I’d seen hints of that disconnection around that time, but I didn’t realize what I was witnessing.

I didn’t yet grasp the full toll of his marriage.

I didn’t understand how deeply he was unraveling beneath the surface.

“After I retired and had to be in the home with your mom’s energy more consistently, there was this level of deterioration that began to meet me emotionally, mentally, and physically: I can’t withstand this anymore and I don’t want to,” he confessed.

This broke my already bleeding heart even more.

In the later years of his career, he no longer traveled.

Technology allowed him to work from the second-floor office of their home, so what used to be frequent business trips—his only reprieve—were gone entirely.

He was abruptly thrust into being at home full-time and trapped in the house with her energy.

Every godforsaken day. Every hour. Then came retirement.

Then, my mom stopped working and suddenly they were together 24/7/365.

There was no break. No escape.

I honestly cannot imagine how unbearable that must have been for him. I understand now why he said he didn’t want to withstand it anymore.

To know there was no exit and there was no freedom left. Only her.

“Do you have a relationship with Mom on the other side?” I asked?

“When he shows with her, he shows holding her hand and being there with her from a state of reflection. I feel like they’re both in a very reflective and accepting space of, ‘This is what that lifetime looked like and this is what that situation looked like.’” Demi explained.

“They understand the deeper connection to the whole and the deeper connection to love, which is the I AM presence. Yet, there are still things they are working out at the karmic level that are playing out. Their second layer of being in that karmic experience—this is the part of them we talk to.

“From this crossed-over layer of them that has released the human body there is a level of acceptance, yet I feel there is a somber layer to that because, of course, looking back and seeing and knowing who they truly are at the center being love, intentionally harming another is never the deepest intention from spirit. They are still working through that somber aspect at that spirit/soul level, but in their deepest core they see the love. I know this is a lot to churn through, but this is how they’re telling me to explain it,” Demi said.

“Things are amicable between them, though, right?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Did he have any energies left lingering in his consciousness when he died?”

“They’re showing me that he took a full 72 hours to leave his body. A lot of people think leaving the body is immediate, but they’re showing me he took a full 72 hours to create the completion of leaving the body. This happens when the soul is trying to resuscitate the body because, ‘we weren’t done yet.’ One of the things he said earlier when we were talking about travel is that he didn’t realize once he lets go of the body he gets to be everywhere,” Demi said.

“I was able to be everywhere once I was able to fully release my grip on the human form,” my dad confirmed.

“Dad, can you tell me about your upbringing with your parents?”

“I don’t really want to talk about that right now. Mom was crazy as a loon and Dad was never around,” he joked.

My dad’s mom was 26 years younger than his dad. His dad, a successful entrepreneur, was 61 when my dad—their eldest child—was born. Sadly, his father died just eight years later, leaving his mom with the full weight of raising three young children and managing their rental properties alone. Forced into single motherhood, responsible for three children under the age of eight, it made sense why his mom may have seemed emotionally detached.

“When he’s talking about his mom being crazy as a loon, it’s really from a laughing perspective and he’s looking back in a level of fondness,” said Demi.

“I can understand why your dad was never around because he was probably very busy with his businesses and rental properties. I know he died when you were only 8 years old. I didn’t know much about your mom, though, especially that she was crazy as a loon.”

“That’s a lot of the reason why everything with your mom felt pretty normal,” he said. “My mom wasn’t abusive, but she was very detached. She was detached and very much, ‘go play outside.’ There were moments of close connection with her, though. There were moments where we all would gather by the fire in the parlor and have story time or have moments by the radio. Family moments that I really cherished.

“When my father died I became a man at 8-years-old. It reinforced the things that I already felt inside of myself: a deep level of commitment to my family from the beginning. A commitment of providing, being a resource, being a rock for people. My childhood was about work, dedication, and doing things that had to be done. I carried this aspect into my marriage and the rest of my life,” he said.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhh!!!” I threw my arms up in the air as my sudden understanding landed in hard.

This was a HUGE lightbulb moment—realizing the training grounds my dad experienced during his first 22 years of life, preparing him for my mom to enter his world as part of their pre-birth plan.

We were coming to the end of this channeling session and I wanted to close on a lighthearted note. “What do you want me to know about myself now that you see me from the other side?” I asked.

“First of all, you’ve always brought me so much joy. I was an observer and I observed you a lot that perhaps you weren’t aware of. It’s almost like I was watching you as an artist painting the picture of life to allow yourself to look at yourself in those moments of the mundane or those moments of being in day-to-day life. Can you now allow yourself to paint the picture of the reality that you want?

“You bring joy wherever you go; don’t be ashamed of that. It’s OK to be the brightest person in the room. And it’s OK to have big, audacious goals, as well. You’re far too hard on yourself. My greatest wish is that you would lighten up and allow yourself to enjoy and travel and be at peace with everything that you get to have moving forward.”

Such beautiful, wise words from my dad’s spirit.

“Thank you, Dad! I love what you said!”

“Dad, can you please share with me what you’ve learned about using personal power now that you’re on the other side? You and I both were unable to use our power when mom was present in our lives because she stripped it from us.”

It was deeply important for me to hear my dad’s spirit speak about personal power because she callously stripped it from both of us.

His perspective wasn’t theoretical or distant; it was lived and I could relate to it.

I needed to hear it from someone who had also lost theirs to her.

“Anything you’re not doing from an aspect of fear, you are giving your power to. So, using your power really has to do with stepping through the fear mind and stepping through the fear aspects and doing it anyway and creating it anyway. That is the most simplistic form.

“Those dreams that I had of traveling—that was my way of wanting to take my power back during my lifetime. I put so much weight on that that it actually caused a little more anguish than it needed to there in the final months of my life. And I know, especially after that final release…”

“He’s showing me his body being there and this one aspect of him gripping on, ‘I’m not ready to go yet. I’m not ready to let this go yet.’ As soon as he let go, it was a big WHOOSH! of understanding that I am everywhere. I am power. I am everywhere,” Demi explained.

“I really want you to understand that you have access to your power in the now. I didn’t really understand that I had access to power inside of the human body without needing travel or without needing to do the things I thought would reclaim my power.

“It’s about understanding the power existed even amid the abuse, even amid someone trying to take it away from me that there is nobody on this earth powerful enough to take your power away from you. They may dim it, they may diminish it, but there is nobody who can take that away from you. Even though you have moments where you have felt disempowered, the true power is always there and it’s always accessible,” he said.

“So, it’s walking through the fear to access my power. I have the power to walk through the fear,” I posed.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Do you send me signs, Dad?”

Dad’s spirit, chuckling, “No, not really. But, I’ll send you some feathers here and there.”

“OK, I’ll take it,” I laughed.

“I feel like your dad is with you a little more. You have a connection with him,” Demi mentioned.

“You know all you need to do is call on me and I’ll be there. It’s not so much about needing to leave you gifts and signs that I’m around. It’s about you allowing yourself to open up and know I’m here when you need me,” said my dad’s spirit.

**********

In the days immediately following this channeling session with my dad, I couldn’t stop thinking about one terrifying possibility—one I’d buried for decades: Did my mom ever want to kill me? Or kill my dad?

I’d certainly feared for my life more times than I could count. The question wasn’t irrational—it was rooted in lived, cellular truth and I needed an answer.

Later that week, I asked Demi via the walkie-talkie app to briefly connect with my mother’s spirit.

Her reply was chilling.

“There were moments of psychosis where there was a passing thought about killing you or your dad. It doesn’t mean I had the intention to act on it. It was from a space of feeling unsafe in myself. This goes to understanding me from the human perspective my traumatic brain injury. It wasn’t from a space of really desiring to kill, but from a space of intrusive thought happening.”