Profile of medium Clare Leeding

Clare did a lot of her development at our church. She has served the church with love and light on many occasions. We asked her about her spiritual journey. This is Clare’s story:-

My journey started when I was quite young. I was quite intuitive with members of the family. I used to dream about my Dad’s Mum who died when he was 14. I never knew her. She used to come to me in a dream. I remember it clearly. I used to tell my Dad this. I used to have a lot of feelings as a child. I used to go into houses and get feelings about things and would pick different things up. I spent a lot of time in the countryside as I lived in a small village where I spent a lot of time with my grandad and his mother who was quite Victorian in her attitudes. She used to read the tea leaves, so I was quite fascinated by her. So I suppose it’s always been in the family.

Then in my teenage years, I used to see a lot of spirits at night and couldn’t explain it and had no one who could explain it to me either. I used to get quite a lot of different thoughts and feelings and be quite intuitive about people.

When I was 18, I went to America to work as an Au Pair and I found myself reading a lot about spiritual matters over there. I had lots of dreams about home and would know when someone had passed away in the village. Whilst in America, I went to lots of meditation groups and different seminars and met a lot of like-minded people. It was interesting for me to realise that spirituality in America was even more advanced metaphysically than I had thought it was.

Then I came back home and given what I had learned in America, I became interested to read more books and I joined a meditation group and started going to different seminars. Then I had my first daughter at 21 and although spirituality was still a major part of my life and I could still sense and see things and have intuition about people, I had to concentrate more on my family at that time.

I moved to Broughton 21 years ago. I met my friend Chris and started going to services at Chester Church and started getting lots of visions around the time of the death of my father. My friend Chris moved to live near to me was into spiritualism and introduced me to Holywell Church about 19 years ago. As soon as I went to Holywell, I felt at home there and felt welcomed. Every week I seemed to get a message of the medium saying ‘why aren’t you on the platform?’. Even though I’d been intuitive all my life, I was apprehensive about taking the next step. So I started going to different groups and joined a circle with Helen and Joan and Grace and I then built up the confidence to start working on the platform.

I’ve been very busy looking after my family and working as a Carer for the elderly so I was conscious of the need to balance my spiritual work with my personal life but in the last few years, I’ve done quite a bit of platform work in Holywell Church and in churches throughout North Wales. I’m really passionate about teaching others, especially the younger ones coming into spiritualism. I never had anybody to mentor me when I was young and so I think it’s important to pass on your learning to others. This is why I really enjoy hosting the awareness group every Monday evening in the Church. The interest has grown a lot and it’s lovely to see people developing.

Peter