"Why can't I feel my mum around me? Why won't my dad give me a sign?" People ask me this all the time — usually quietly, like a confession. So let me answer it with a confession of my own.

I felt nothing when my own mother died

I was sitting there holding her hand when she took her last breath. And I felt nothing. No presence, no warmth, no lifting. She was gone, and the room was just a room.

I was so disappointed. Here I am — a medium for more than thirty years, someone who connects other people with their loved ones for a living — and I couldn't feel my own mother. If that has been your experience too, I want you to know it isn't a verdict on you, on your love, or on them. It happened to me.

Why wanting it so much gets in the way

Grief is the loudest thing a heart can hold. The quiet impressions a loved one sends are exactly that — quiet — and when you're in pain, when you're longing, when you need the sign tonight, there's no silence left for it to land in.

Maybe I wanted it too much. Maybe my mind couldn't be objective about the person I was grieving — even mediums can't truly read for their own hearts. And maybe it's simpler still: maybe our egos want signs more than we actually need them.

Does the silence mean they're not there?

No. This is the one thing I'll say without hedging, after a lifetime of this work:

Even when we don't feel them, they are always, always there.

I've also come to believe that spirit sees us more clearly than we see ourselves — and gives us what we actually need to cope and keep living, which is sometimes less than what our hearts ask for. I don't need my mum to prove she's around me; somewhere underneath the missing, I already know. What wanted more was my ego. It took me a while to tell those two apart.

How they actually come

Because she did come through, in the end. Not on my schedule and not in the way I expected — but unmistakably in her own way, with her own funny, sharp words. Once, in the car after she died, a few words arrived that were so completely her that I will carry them with me all my life. And once at her memorial place, with my son beside me, there was a moment of pure love that needed no explaining.

That's the pattern I've seen over thousands of sittings, too: they come sideways, when you're not gripping for them. A phrase only they would use. Their music at the strangest moment. A feeling of them in an ordinary place. The connection doesn't perform on demand — it surprises you, the way they used to.

What you can do while you wait

Be gentle with yourself, first. The silence isn't failure — it's usually fresh grief doing what grief does. Talk to them anyway, out loud, in the car, at the stove; the conversation is real whether or not you feel a reply. If you want somewhere to put the love, try writing them a letter — or better, letting them write one to you; there's a gentle exercise for it in A Letter from Heaven.

And if the day comes when you'd like help making the connection, that's what a sitting is for — here's how to choose the right kind. But there is no deadline on any of this. They're not going anywhere.

The love didn't end. It's just learning a new language — and so are you.