Charmaine Wilson: The Australian Medium

Charmaine Wilson’s experience with grief was no easy one, but her loss helped her discover her skill as a medium. In a number of a years, Charmaine lost her brother, her four-year-old daughter, her father and her grandfather and it was enough to send her off the rails. She became addicted to alcohol and drugs, but through that process her first experience with a spirit (named Peter) arose.
“I think that I was really in a bad way and my first thoughts were that they always came to me to stop me from destroying myself,” Charmaine says.
“It was like talking to a counsellor – it was a strange sensation. At the time when I was still intoxicated I thought he was still alive somewhere, that’s how crazy I was. He kept saying to me, ‘Why do you do this to yourself? What is it you can do to change your life?’”
Once Charmaine picked herself up, then 2002, she came to realise that she was in fact a medium and a whole new path was set for the rest of her life.
“Once I was a medium I was a medium. I think the gift was always there but I think I had to go through life and experience it before the doors would open – so to speak,” she says.
“What [the spirits] actually told me a long long time ago is that you don’t have a choice, you are a medium. My guide (Peter) said to me, ‘We are partners in life and we always will be and we’ll work towards the greater good’.”
Charmaine has since dedicated her life to developing her listening skills – so to speak, delivering the message that is delivered to her and touring Australia helping those who are at various stages of grief.
It’s something Charmaine had to come to grips with herself, and if she could turn back the clock, help from a spirit medium as she was undergoing her grief would have helped her experience immensely.
Naturally, over the years Charmaine has developed a series of phrases when dealing with grief that she lives by and that she shares with her audience.
“I have this little saying and a lot of people don’t like it, but ‘It is what it is, and you can do it sad or you can do it happy. Either way you’re going to have to do it’,” she says.
“I think what’s important in this life, is what are you going to leave for your family to remember you by? Will they be inspired by you? What type of memory are you going to leave? I think that’s my big message.”
While it’s only been since 2002 that Charmaine has been living as a spirit medium, the skill was hidden within her (and as it seems her mother) for all her life.
In the loss of her brother and daughter, there was something in the universe telling both her mother and herself that it was their time to leave this world.
“A week before my brother died my mum came to me and said, ‘Someone in our family is going to die’. I was only 17 at the time, so I said to mum, ‘Get out of here, bugger off!’ A week to the day my brother died and so she was right in that sense,” she says.
“Two nights before my daughter died I had a dream she was missing and it absolutely filled me with fear; I was petrified. Strangely enough our puppy had gone missing the next day so I reconciled myself that it was the puppy. And then she died. Knowing that her time was written did actually help me.”
Whether you believe it or not, it’s something to be seen to believe. If Charmaine asks anything of her audience it’s to come with an open mind and an open heart. Chances are you’ll leave feeling enlightened whether you’re read or not.
Written by Amanda Sherring
When & Where: GV Hotel, Shepparton – September 4, Moama RSL, Moama – September 6, Bendigo District RSL, Bendigo – September 8, Buckley’s, Geelong – September 17 & Lighthouse Theatre, Warrnambool – September 19