Allison DuBois: Don't Kiss Them Good-bye

Allison’s treasury of stories covers some of the mediumship readings she has done for dear friends as well as clients, but they are more than mere stories about Allison’s gift. They speak of the special energy relationships that are formed during Allison’s readings with her sitters. Mediums offer a heartfelt affirmation of the continuation of love as a bridge from here to there and back again. When this occurs, a profound healing has the opportunity to take place. Allison’s gift offers healing to the sitters by providing them with reassurance that their loved ones are still with them. She offers the possibility of healing to the spirits by allowing their messages to be heard. Allison sets herself apart in the world of mediums by the manner with which she delivers her message. Allison is one of a select few mediums who seems instinctively aware that the messages she shares can be emotionally overwhelming and that her gift comes with the responsibility of compassion. I know that this is why Allison is motivated to donate her readings for causes, like the support group Parents of Murdered Children, reading forty people in two and half hours and offering peace to parents. At her book signing in Tucson, Arizona, as countless people approached Allison, pictures of lost loved ones in hand, it became abundantly clear why she must be true to her gift and extend such intense energy through her readings. Allison believes that as she heals others, she heals herself.

Allison dedicated Don’t Kiss Them Good-Bye to dads. I had no idea that when my father passed in 1990 that he would join forces with me in pursuing the research questions I deal with today. Could science prove that there is an individual consciousness that survives death and that this consciousness continues to live and love and evolve consciously? Was Dad still with us, as well as there? I was a skeptic but not a devout one. I had experiences after my dad’s death I couldn’t explain. My whole family did. I was the psychologist. I tried on different diagnoses to give myself, but none seemed to fit. My attention was riveted to the unrelenting mantra of “What if?” I was determined to get the scientific answer to this question and others; let’s hope we all get to enjoy at least some of these answers in our lifetime.

As cofounder and codirector of the Human Energy Systems Laboratory (1996–2001) and currently as president and director of the Heart Science Foundation Laboratory, we are proud that Allison and others like her are continuing to join us to explore the cutting edge where biofield science, energy healing, mediumship, psychology, spirituality, modern physics, and cardiology meet. Allison, in her role as a gifted research medium, has already contributed four years of her life to being studied in laboratory experiments hoping to shed some light on the art and science of mediumship and what life after death research has the opportunity to teach us about who we really are and where our own capabilities as consciousness beings may be headed. Hopefully her contribution will one day help the younger generations of mediums to be better understood and embraced.

Allison and I share the need to understand life after death more fully and to provide some meaningful data to consider for those still undecided. With many experiments now under our belts, and tighter and tighter experiments being designed and significant results obtained, it has been an amazing journey that is evolving our understanding of what really is possible and what can be achieved when beliefs are suspended and we explore the unknown together without ego and without fear. Allison Dubois, and the other well-known mediums who we have studied, have shown us their courage and grit and chose to take the road less traveled for themselves and then with us. We are all blessed by their pursuit of truth, excellence and generosity.

Linda G. Russek is a clinical psychologist in private practice specializing in heart-centered psychotherapy and energy medicine in Tucson, Arizona. She was cofounder and codirector of the Human Energy Systems Laboratory and cofacilitator of energy medicine in Dr. Andrew Weil’s program in integrative medicine at the University of Arizona. She is currently president and director of the Heart Science Foundation and its Center for Family Love and Health. She is also clinical assistant professor of medicine in the department of medicine at the University of Arizona. She received her M.A. from Columbia University and her Ph.D. from United States International University in 1978. For twenty years she was director of the Harvard Mastery of Stress Follow-up Study. Her frontier transpersonal research on the question of whether there is survival of consciousness after death and universal living memories has led to two television documentaries, Life After Life and Life Beyond Death, and two groundbreaking books. She is the coauthor of The Living Energy Universe and her collaborative mediumship research is featured in the Afterlife Experiments .

For those of you familiar with the hit television series Medium you probably already know that it’s based on my real experiences. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, I encourage you to tune in and explore life after death. Don’t Kiss Them Good-bye elaborates on my life minus the great television writers. It is my way of sharing with you how I’m affected by being a medium. Perhaps you are intrigued by my being able to see and feel events that not all people can. Perhaps learning about mediums will raise questions for you about your own life. Maybe you’re one of many who knows your loved ones are still around and you want to strengthen your connections with them. I invite you to join me on this adventure through my life so that you can better understand how the events in my life have shaped who I am. I will give you a glimpse of what life can be after death. I also will talk to you about how to stay connected to those who matter to you most. May this book inspire you as so many have inspired me.

In this book, I share my own childhood experiences in order to connect and relate to young mediums who have questions and doubts about their gifts. I hope that my experiences can help show how a child with the gift might feel or view things. I also hope it illustrates how we, as people who love the gifted young, can help them to understand and embrace their abilities. Figuring out our gifts in life is part of our journey to becoming enlightened human beings. I want the people reading my book to have real insight into the life of a person with special abilities. I want you to better understand where psychics and mediums come from and what kinds of potential we have. Being able to relate to or think about the unknown is half the battle of expanding your spiritual beliefs. Having the opportunity to experience it personally is the other half.

I am a medium and profiler. This means I can predict future events, I can get into a person’s mind, I can detect health problems in people, and I can communicate with the dead. Yes, I see dead people.

I have often wished that someone would come up with a better word than “psychic” to describe people like me. Between all the con artists out there and the gypsy and witch stereotypes, the word has been forever tainted. Call it what you want; I have what I refer to as the gift.

I was brought into this world in the usual way on January 24, 1972, in Phoenix, Arizona. I’m old enough to have learned my craft and young enough to challenge it. I have one older brother, Michael, who teased me often. My parents divorced when I was a baby, but I grew up knowing they both loved me.

Even when I was little I knew that I wasn’t a typical kid. Besides my encounter with my great-grandpa after his funeral (which I discuss in the chapter “A Little Girl Meets the Other Side”), there were many other significant signs of things to come.