Paige’s story — in my own words.
I didn’t set out to become a spiritual guide. I set out to find my son.
Late August, 2008. I woke from a dream of my grandmother — her long silver hair, her white gown, her quiet voice. She whispered to me: It’s okay, darling. You will be with us soon.
I thought she meant me. I began quietly putting things in order. Updated our wills. Made a list of passwords for my husband, Dwaine. Made sure loved ones knew where to find things.
I thought I was going to die.
Little did I know, I wasn’t the one who was going to die.
He was finishing his final semester at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. He had spent the summer in Pakistan filming a movie he wrote himself. He came home that August a changed young man — calmer, with a quiet assurance about him. I was so excited for his future.
We talked that night about his new apartment. At one point, I told him I hadn’t been feeling well and asked if I could call him back tomorrow. But we just kept talking. He mentioned he might go out for a quick beer. I told him to stay home — it was late. He said he’d only be out for a couple. He’d found someone to go with him.
We said goodnight, followed by I love you.
At 5:00 in the morning, the phone rang.
Bryan had been murdered. Stabbed in a neighborhood just off campus, not far from his new apartment. He was 23 years old.
What happened next was incredibly difficult to put into words — and you probably have a sense of what that kind of loss can do to someone. It can feel like it’s tearing you apart from the inside out, shaking up everything you believed about your life, your future, and who you are.
I lost myself in the grief. And then, slowly — so slowly — something began to find me.
Not inside my head. Out loud. With my ears.
One word: Mom.
It sounded a little like his younger boy voice. I sat up in bed and listened for more. There wasn’t any. But I had all I needed. At that moment—when all the barriers between us vanished—I heard my son.
And in that instant, I made him a promise. I would find him. I would not stop looking.
I went to the bookstore and bought everything I could find about life after death. I found a medium. I attended a psychic development class and discovered I had my own intuitive gifts. I sat in a development circle with a small group of women who gathered weekly for eighteen months — practising connection, learning to receive, learning to trust what arrived.
I discovered Reiki — and found that it went far deeper than I expected. I am now certified as a Holy Fire® III Reiki Master. I became trained to teach the Grief Recovery Method®, completed Mary Morrissey’s Dreambuilder® program, trained in crystal energy healing, grief movement, and intuitive grief coaching. Not because I needed the credentials — but because each one opened something new in my understanding of what it means to heal, and how to walk someone else through it.
I found Bryan. Not the way I had him before. But in a way that is real — ongoing, tangible, and alive. We walk together now. He from his side. Me from mine. We work together to help others understand that the relationships we have with the people we love do not end at death.
Only the body dies. Love never dies, it just changes form.
Choose to Believe: A Story of Miracles, Healing, and the Afterlife — the book I promised Bryan I would write. The full story of that journey: the dream, the death, the voice I heard in the dark, the tools that helped me, and the arrival at a life I could not have imagined in those first dark years.
I wrote it so people would know they aren’t crazy. So they would know they aren’t alone. So they would know that their person — wherever they are — is not as far as it feels.
People who once believed they would never feel joy again — did.
Not because the pain disappeared. Because they discovered they were larger than it was.
That is what this work is for.
I live in Boise, Idaho, with my husband Dwaine. I walk most mornings. I meditate. I teach. I have two remaining children and five grandchildren who light up my world. Bryan is with us still — at the table, on the river, in the meditation sessions, in the ladybug that lands exactly when it should.
I’ve grown so much since sitting in the wreckage of September 2008. What might seem like a loss actually represents everything I’ve become today.
I believe we are capable of releasing the pain attached to death.
I believe that when we choose life, there are no limits to what we can do.
I believe we can live again — fully, with love, peace, and purpose.
I believe the more we live our dreams, the more we ignite the world to do the same.