Just a few weeks ago, The Hits radio star Stacey Morrison was caught sniffling uncontrollably in front of her computer by her co-host Paul “Flynny” Flynn. “He was looking a bit concerned,” laughs Stacey, “and I had to confess I was watching a video featuring this amazing medium. He was telling a woman that her mother knew she was holding her hand when she passed. She just burst into tears and said, ‘I always wondered if she knew.’”
The clip struck Stacey on many levels. Her own mum Sue had died in 2002, when Stacey was 27, and the beloved broadcaster also had questions about what her mother experienced as she passed away.
As well, there was something so kind, gentle and warm about the psychic, Tyler Henry, a 20-year-old with the cherubic looks of a young Macaulay Culkin. He’s been bringing celebrities from the Kardashians to Boy George to tears over his spookily accurate conversations with their late loved ones on his new E! show Hollywood Medium.
So when, a few weeks later, the 42-year-old mum-of-three discovered she was the only Kiwi media personality chosen for a one-on-one reading with Tyler during his flying visit to New Zealand to promote the series, she could hardly believe her luck.
On Thursday last week, Stacey walked into a private room at an upmarket Auckland hotel with butterflies in her stomach, knowing she was “about to have the kind of conversation you don’t have every day”. Before they met, Tyler – who discovered he was clairvoyant at age 10 when he predicted his grandmother’s passing – knew nothing other than her first name. Stacey, meanwhile, had been briefed to bring with her an item belonging to the person she hoped he’d channel. She chose a beautiful diamond ring that belonged to her mother.
Within moments of their meeting, Tyler was telling Stacey details from her life that took her breath away, saying, “I’ve been seeing white feathers since yesterday.” Stacey explains, “That’s my sister Tash’s thing. She always tells her kids, ‘Whenever you see white feathers, that’s your nana.’”
Then Tyler told her, “I can see a candle and white flowers.” Says Stacey, “Special details like that really tell you it’s real.” Each year, on the anniversary of their mum’s passing, Stacey and her sisters, Natasha, 40, and Jorgia, 21, who was just seven when her mother died, light a candle and put out her favourite Iceberg roses.
As Tyler focused on receiving messages, sometimes scribbling on a piece of paper, he continued to astonish Stacey with details too specific to be lucky guesses. He said he could feel a pain in his chest and two “connected women” who had both died of cancer came through.
Stacey’s mum and her grandmother Joyce died of breast cancer. Stacey’s mother had three children, he went on, asking, “But why am I seeing the numbers two and then one?” Stacey and Natasha were from Sue’s first marriage and Jorgia was from her second. Stacey laughed when Tyler noted Sue stressed she loved her children equally. He said, “She wants you to know there are no favourites and she is really proud of all of you.” Stacey insists that was extremely important to her mum. “She didn’t want anyone to feel they were less loved.”
“After your mum passed, there was a wedding,” Tyler stated. “She was there – and she loved it!” It was confirmation of something Stacey had always felt. She sensed her mum’s presence intensely on the morning of her wedding, four years after Sue had passed away with her heartbroken family by her side.
“She woke me up,” recalls Stacey, tears pricking her eyes as she talks to Woman’s Day. “I felt like I was being lifted off the bed. I just knew it was her. I gasped as I woke and said, ‘Mum!’ It wasn’t sad. It was just lovely. Then I opened the curtains and it was a stunningly beautiful day. It just felt like she was saying, ‘There you go – have an amazing day.’ The whole day was just golden.”
Stacey was trying hard not to dissolve into tears during her reading, but she lost the battle when Tyler added something she had fretted about for 14 years. He told her, “She wants you to know that she wasn’t in any pain when she passed.” Stacey says, “Honestly, that was so important to me. She’d been through so much pain.”
‘I just lost it’
Tyler continued, “She wants you to know that the last thing she thought about before she passed was her children.” “I just lost it,” Stacey confesses. “It was the stupidest thing – how did I possibly come into a reading like this without some tissues? Luckily, Tyler had some.”
But he was by no means finished. Stacey, who is married to Te Karere presenter Scotty and is a proud mum to their son Hawaiki, nine, and daughters Kurawaka, seven, and Maiana, three, suffered a miscarriage in 2010. Tyler knew about that too. “I felt such terrible grief after the miscarriage,” reveals Stacey, “and I didn’t know that I would. The first thing I thought was, ‘I don’t think I’ve been a very good friend to other people who have had miscarriages.’
“My baby was only nine weeks, but my grief felt the same as when Mum died. The one thing that comforted me was the knowledge that the baby would be with her – and Tyler confirmed that it was.”
“Your mum is proud of you and she’s always with you,” Tyler said. “She’s not sad that she died. She’s happy with her life.”
Wiping away tears, Stacey tells, “I wanted to hear that because she was only 45, which wasn’t very long to live. Now that I’m a mother, I know it would have been so hard for her to leave us.”
Her encounter with the young medium has convinced Stacey that while many clairvoyants are con artists, others, like Tyler, are the real deal. Proud of her Maori heritage, the host of TV One’s Whanau Living gave him a piece of pounamu. “I explained it is our greatest treasure and told him that it had been specifically blessed for him,” says Stacey.
He replied, “That’s the sweetest thing. I think I’m going to cry.” Stacey concludes, “When it comes to clairvoyants, I certainly wouldn’t go to just anyone, but I think Tyler’s someone who’s blessed with a gift. He’s not what you expect from Hollywood. He’s low-maintenance, low-key – a really nice man. He made me cry, but he didn’t make me sad. It was actually just really beautiful.”
