Freda Gladle Memorial Tribute

Friend, Teacher, Psychic, Healer

March 15, 2016 ~ By Mary G. Holland

This post is a tribute to an extraordinary woman.  My dear friend, Freda Menard Gladle of Ogdensburg, New York, born October 10, 1934, crossed through the veil on January 24, 2016.

Freda was my teacher, a wise mother figure, even my therapist at times.  She was, and still is, my best friend.

We each appreciated in each other the direct, tough love of honest friendship.  As time passed, our mutual trust grew, and I felt humbled and honored when she felt she could dump her trash buckets on me too when things got under her skin.

She gave generously as a teacher.  I saw her in action as a healer of others, and experienced what that felt like when she healed me from deep sickness.  Through Freda, my eyes opened to the infinite universe of possibilities – limited only by imagination, but more importantly, belief.

I met Freda in early 1994 at the second or third local metaphysical group meeting, shortly after moving away from my prior spiritual instructor.  Amazing how that worked, isn’t it?  There were a number of us of similar age who were drawn to her at the time, meeting at her Pine Street house in Ogdensburg, New York.  She called us her Other Kids…we were about the same age as her own children, but we were also her first metaphysical students.

And explore, we did.  Groups of us went to Ottawa to the annual psychic fairs.  We held message circles at peoples’ homes.  A meditation group began in Massena, and several of us chose to pursue Reiki.  A few of us attained Master level, and taught others to heal.

We sought the spiritual sensation of sweat lodges, practiced dousing, felt gemstone energy, studied psychometry, crop circles, Egyptology, earth change predictions.  We tried to spot UFOs at night, experienced power vortices, and witnessed psychic surgery.

We held a very successful holistic healing fair in Canton, attended and hosted trance channeling sessions by Rik Thurston of Brockport, Ontario.  We watched John Edward on TV, and ghost busted local haunted houses with Freda.  We published and mailed a monthly metaphysical newsletter, before the web and email took hold.  We studied different modalities and shared what we learned with each other.

All the while, as our belief and abilities expanded, Freda was the anchor in the background, allowing, supporting, as our grounding touchstone.

She taught us that we all have abilities beyond the physical, encouraging us to discover our own natural strengths, and develop them.

She taught us to appreciate the diversity of our perceptions…that just like in the physical world, we perceive the metaphysical in a very personal and unique way, and to honor others’ visions.  There are no right answers.  It’s like a bunch of ants peering up at an elephant.  Only when we blend all of our views do we begin to get a broader, though still incomplete, sense of what might be there.

Freda was able to sidestep a student’s learning blocks by approaching the lesson differently.  I was initially concerned about the authenticity of my emerging impressions.  Freda taught me how to discern when a mental image was an ego or fear projection, or an intuitive impression, by observing if there were emotions associated with it, or if the thought arose from a train of thought already in progress.  A psychic impression emerged as an unemotional thought, unrelated, out of the blue.  Confidence grew as I practiced noticing my thoughts and feelings, tested my impressions with her, finding they grew more accurate.   She sealed it when she started sometimes asking for my advice, closing the loop, each giving and receiving.

I wondered how someone so gifted, who has obviously lived so many past lives, ended up with such a hard life this time.  I realize her extraordinarily difficult childhood, and her tough job at the Psych Center, gave her a unique perspective on the tremendous range of human behavior – from the ugliest, premeditated cruelty; to knee-jerk, reactionary violence; to deeply twisted confusion; to simple, gentle kindnesses from the most unlikely sources; to angelic, unconditional, undying pure love.  It’s this perspective that provided the worldly wisdom she needed when she started giving readings and doing healings.

But of course, that came much later.  Most of us born last century don’t integrate our past lives’ experiences, so life begins fresh and naively as a series of disjoint experiences.  We make many repeated mistakes along the way.  Our collective experiences usually don’t start to congeal as a wise frame of reference until we’re in our 50s, and for some, it never does.  Freda was no different.  Like many, she felt great sadness, but learned, from her mistakes.  She developed a wise, tough skin to cruelty and injustice, yet remained gently sensitive and kind to others’ feelings and weaknesses.  She made everyone feel special, valued, and precious.

Her innate, empathetic gift of sight allowed her to see beyond human behavior, to the colorful patterns in someone’s aura.  She saw what a person’s behavior did to others’ auras and psyches – in the past, present, and future…how behavior could become stuck from a past or future experience, because it damaged the aura, leaving an energetic wound that the physical and mental body kept sensing and reflecting.

When Freda focused her attention on an aura’s wound, or a bit of delightful beauty in it somewhere, its source would play out like a misty movie overlaid on what her physical eyes saw.  She could see how, if the emotional trauma were healed, the aura’s wound was also healed.  But if left unhealed, the energetic wound eventually led to physical illness or a replay of the injury to self or others.

Freda felt very strongly that we are here to serve others, in many forms:

• Not only directly giving service to others: like a teacher, healer, mechanic, parent, volunteer, but also as
• An Earth worker, who protects the earth, senses and transforms Gaia’s life-supporting energy into what others can use, like a gardener, a farmer, a forester, an animal caretaker, a tree-hugging nature lover and protector;
• An energy transformer, who absorbs and exchanges energy to help others achieve balance, like ballast in a boat, or a battery or capacitor in an electrical system – such as a meditator, or one of those people who just sit in a room, yet their aura calms or energizes others; or
• An energetic synthesizer: creator, an inventor, researcher, or artist, who senses abstract ideas in the universe that are ready to be shared, and transform energy into something we can use or appreciate.

Freda is best known for giving service to others as a phenomenal psychic message-giver, but I believe her finest qualities are as a healer and teacher, helping us each clear personal obstacles, and unveil our infinite capabilities.

 

You have blessed us Freda with your life among us.  We continue to experience your presence, even though your physical body is gone.  We send our heartfelt love to you Freda, and to all who miss you.

 

Here’s a video I made for Freda’s memorial service that conveys a tiny bit of who she was, and how much she meant to many of us. I was sad that we didn’t have more video of her in action but being able to capture and edit video is a skill I lacked at the time.