Mandy Jooste: Mother, Daughter, Medium, Inspirer

When speaking to Mandy Jooste you cannot help but notice how much she loves people, not just her beloved sons and her family, but also anyone who comes to her for help. She has a genuine and deep commitment to the human race that hasn’t been dented by a lifetime of challenging and demanding experiences.

Mandy doesn’t describe herself as having been born a Medium; it wasn’t until after a traumatic but fantastic experience when she was 5 years old that she feels something changed. By the age of 7 she was used to feeling Spirit people around her and having a mind-to-mind communication link with them, and to this day she says her abilities lie in Clairsentience (clear feeling) where she works with feelings and pictures in her mind, and Clairvoyance (clear seeing).
 
She blocked the ability out until 2006, and then decided to undertake some training before starting to work as a professional Medium in 2008. Her career took off like a skyrocket and she is stunned and humbled to have received the 2009 and 2010 bronze awards handed out by “Soul and Spirit Magazine”; and absolutely thrilled to be placed third behind Sally Morgan.

Her background is free of airs and graces, coming as she does from a large, loving family. There are 10 children in the family, Mandy has 7 sisters and had 2 brothers, sadly one passed to the Spirit World as an extremely young “but very good looking” man.

Her father is also in the Spirit World but her mother is still on this side of life and very much the matriarch of the family. She clearly has an enormous amount of respect for her mother, quoting her regularly when talking about life and how to manage it. One of her favourite quotes - “If you can’t do a good turn don’t do a bad one” - makes it easy to see why Mandy holds her mother in such high regard. Her mother is very much the inspiration for her work.

Mandy feels that her work comes directly from her life experience, and that people like herself who work in the field have taken their negative and positive experiences and used them to benefit others. As such she strongly believes in maintaining a positive attitude to life and facing challenges head on, as she says “when the s**t hits the fan, turn the fan off and stop it spreading.” A piece of advice that might make you giggle but you can’t miss the pure commonsense behind it.

She also believes that “negativity swallows you up if you allow it to”, and had you had the privilege of learning a little about her life you would know that she walks her talk and the jaws of that particular shark have been clamped closed with an iron will. As she paraphrases “where there’s a will there’s a...Mandy!”

Mandy loves her work and says that “Everyone has a calling: priests, artists, explorers. Well this is mine, this is what I do. My work is my life and even if I worked in a supermarket I know that Spirit communications would still come through and I would be receiving messages in the cereal aisle.”

When she demonstrates Mediumship she enjoys bringing a light-hearted touch to the work and presenting it in a lively way. As she says “Clients get emotional for all the right reasons, but we are also there to heal and a little laughter is always healing.”

She seeks strong evidence from the Spirit World that will place the information with the recipient in a very real way so that she “knows that they know”.

Her advice to developing Mediums is to use their gifts to the best of their ability, and to remember that the true message is a lot bigger than the individual messages that come through. The messages should bring healing for everyone in the room, hopefully change the way they think, bring more hope into their lives and help them to rewind past the initial grief of death back to the good times and happy memories.

Again, she bases her working style on life advice given to her by her mother “Before you say anything say nothing.” To her this means “Think about what you say and how you say it before you say it, in order to provide the clients with a healing and positive message rather than a sad and sorrowful one. Honesty is one thing, choosing your words badly is quite another.”

“As Mediums and Psychics we have a fantastic weight on our shoulders; what we say and how we say it counts for a lot. Although, like any other field we have our rogue traders, those of us who are genuine can work in fearless faith knowing that what we do has real value to the people who come to us for help.”

“Reputation is cheap – it comes from what you do, not what you earn.”

If beginners to Psychic work come to her for advice she always tells them that along with the gift you have to have broad shoulders and be prepared to work hard. Mediumship and Psychic work is a professional undertaking that requires you to seek constant improvement, not expect to cruise along whilst the Spirit World do all the work.

You also have to believe in yourself and your work and understand that the more popular you are the greater potential there is for cynics to throw stones at you. “It isn’t easy work and it requires dedication, trust, and just a smidgen of fearlessness. Yet if we touch one person and help them to feel and think in a more positive way it is all worthwhile.”

She believes in good training and has learned with many of the top names in the Spiritual field today, some of which are well known and others although less well known outside the field still inspired her to follow her own path.

She feels that 2011 is “all about abroad” for her and she is looking forward to exploring the Spiritual field in other countries. She has feelers out in America and Europe at the moment, and has made some wonderful new friends who are helping to pave the way.

She says that all her skills have been learned in the school of life, and the bad times have taught her about trust and who you can and cannot rely on. As a consequence her work is based partly on helping people to “let go of the backpack” of past traumas and difficulties. So saying she has written and produced 2 CDs, on called “A Walk With the Angels” which helps the listener to meet Angelic beings and also takes them on a journey to their Akashic Records, and “Let Go of the Backpack of Negativity.”

She loves poetry, as anyone who has visited her website will know, and has promised herself that she will write a book of poetry next year as well as making a start on her autobiography: hopefully she will finish both books and we can begin enjoying and being inspired by them.

Her poems are often used at weddings and funerals and, much to her surprise, read by our troops when they are serving and risking their lives in foreign climes.

She says that she appreciates “the honesty in life and everyday that comes to me”, and has no time for negativity and negative emotions such as jealousy. “Jealousy is the devil’s tool case and represents a failure on your part to help yourself.”

One of her favourite quotes is by Walt Disney “keep moving forward looking towards now”. She loves the quotation because she feels that it encourages us to create the kind of positive now that can only lead to a beautiful future.

She also believes in ‘paying it forward’ and is an active supporter of Cancer Research and organisations supporting people with Autism, because both conditions have had a sad impact on her life. She says that anyone is welcome to invite her to work on behalf of either charity.

Mandy is a gentle and open person with a great laugh and fantastic sense of humour. She is upbeat and positive and you feel when speaking to her that walking her talk is important to her. When she does get upset she ‘rewinds her life’ via meditation and looks for the lessons in the situation so that she can improve her future reactions.

She used to find it difficult to be with dismissive people who refused to open their minds, but concludes that “the world would be a boring place if everyone was the same.”

As part of the commitment for which she would like to be remembered – “For bringing light and closure into the darkness of a person’s life” – she put the following verse on her website, and we can’t think of a better way to sum up the wonderful character that is Mandy Jooste:

“I bless all those that love me,
All that hate me,
And all that ridicule me.
For I am a child of God
And God is love.”

© Deb Hawken - First published in Eternal Spirit Magazine Winter Solstice 2010