Finding the First Family Member on My Mau Side of the Family

    

 (Post dated-Date of writing 12/13/2023). 

    Some people may read this and if they don't already know me, will think I'm nuts, but the truth of the matter is is that truth is in the eye of the beholder (yes I know the quote originally refers to beauty, but it seemed to match in my head).  I don't tell perfect strangers about my gift.  Some may say it's a gift, some may say I sound like a nutcase, and some may say it sounds like a curse or it sounds scary.  I have yet to meet someone I have told about my gift and have them look at me weird, but I also tell the person based off of how I read their energy. 

     What's my gift you ask? Well, I have it plainly on my Instagram account, but I honestly think that most people these days don't even read the profile bio's.  I am an intuitive psychic medium.  Now you ask, "So what's the difference between a psychic and a medium?" Well, plainly not all psychics have mediumship gifts, but all mediums have psychic gifts.  If I were to describe a medium, I'd say that they are like the messenger between two worlds-the world of the living and of the dead.  I consider myself at this point in my life, a baby medium.  I still will cry when I am spiritually and energetically overwhelmed.  I can't call on a person at will-honestly, they come if they want to, and sometimes they're either busy on the other side (that's a whole other blog topic) or they may just not want to talk that day.  

    Most of my encounters are me relaying a message to someone that maybe needed extra support from their deceased loved one and sometimes they want to make peace with some unresolved matters that occured prior to their death. I am simply the messenger.  In my line of work, I deal with matters of death every single day.  I am a genealogist as my profession and I am also a digital archivist for Kawaiaha'o Church in Honolulu, HI.  I have been doing genealogy research for over 15 years now, 2 of those years professionally.  Give me a name and five minutes, and I can find information on any person, start your family fan chart showing your ancestry, and find the missing uncle that a family never knew existed.  I consider that a highly intuitive skill as well as a gift, aside from being able to go to a cemetery and given the energy there, call out to a person I am searching for and find their grave faster than you can spell spaghetti.  I of course do it all the "correct" way first. I will research the person and will have the cemetery records pulled (IF it's located at a private cemetery with a working office), so as to add all of the grave information to the person's file.  I believe that all sources, including a person said to be buried somewhere, should be fully researched and that I do my due diligence on all ends of a source before I attach that source to a person on a tree.  There have been so many instances where someone will post something on websites, like Findagrave.com, and the physical location of the deceased is NOT where it was listed to be online.  

      Although I can communicate with the dead, I receive their messages in a couple of different ways-in pictures (like a flash of a photograph) or through feelings.  With each feeling or picture, I am able to piece their message together. Sometimes I just hear them-if they are loud enough to drown out others around them, I can hear them.  And of course, if it's quiet, I can hear them loud and clear.  I have never come across anything scary or frightening, as I learned in the beginning of my mediumship that in order to do what I do, I have to deal with my own shadows/skeletons in the closet.  I can't be afraid-there's no room for that.  I am blessed enough to have a fiance who knows me so well, that what I do doesn't frighten him and it never has.  I think it annoys him sometimes though, because his grandparents come through very often and will tell me when he's not making such great choices.  There's so much I could tell you about all the times I've gone to find someone at a cemetery, and instead someone else comes through-I can't control that so sometimes I just have to go with it, and almost 100% of the time, it was for a reason. There's always a reason and I have learned (took me half my life) that there are NO coincidences.  None.  God and the universe always have a reason.  It may take months and sometimes years to understand and come to peace with why a certain event had to happen the way it did, and for some that peace and understanding never come. I am not exempt from that human experience of learning.  I'm here in this life to learn like everyone else, except I just happen to be here to help facilitate that process for some and bring closure to others. 

     For the last couple of days, I have felt the need to blog my thoughts since I haven't been on here in a while, and for good reason. We are currently fostering kittens and just their care and daily life have made life a little more hectic.  In a previous blog, I shared about the beginnings of my passion and why I do what I do, and yesterday was a step closer to finding information about my own family instead of someone else's.  It was a pivotal moment for me since my mom mentioned to me that my own father felt as though he was an orphan (my grandfather and grandmother divorced, and my father grew up without his dad). I decided to try to find the physical graves of any of my 2x great grandfather's children that are buried here in Hawaiʻi and be able to pay my respects to them.  I do not know anyone on my father's father's side.  I don't know any cousins or aunties, nothing and it saddens me knowing that there were originally 25 Maus that came to Hawaiʻi, my 2x great grandfather being one of the first, and because of my father's upbringing, we never met any of his extended family. My father died when I was 7 and so I knew literally nothing about his parent's families except for a few names and some memories I had of a couple of visits to his aunt's house when I was maybe 4 or 5 years old.  Fast forward to yesterday, and I decided to go to Nuʻuanu Memorial Cemetery and find one of my great grandfather's younger sisters.  Well, when I found her, I broke down immediately. It was quiet there and so I could hear her loud and clear.  She told me how happy she was that I had come to see her and that it had been years since anyone came to visit her.  I cried and cried.  Her feelings were a mix of happiness and sadness-to say it was overwhelming is an understatement.

     After Nu'anu, I headed to the Pauoa Chinese cemeteries.  There are four all next to one another. I wasn't sure which one I needed to go to, so I referred to some photos that an aquaintence of mine uploaded, on Findagrave.com, of my great-grand uncle.  This man is my great grandpa's younger brother, William Mau.   The cemetery is run down to say the least. It is overgrown and there are so many headstones that are broken and missing parts, that it breaks my heart to see what probably used to be such a beautiful place.  About 3/4 of the way up the hill I found my uncle.  His stone was painted white, with cracks in the paint, reflecting the age of the stone and also that it had probably been many years since anyone had cleaned or came to visit him.  I of course cried and proceeded to take note of the surroundings and what I would need to return and visit him again soon but with the intention of then cleaning up his grave.  After visiting with him I walked about two rows up from him to find my great-grand aunt, William's sister, so my great grandfather's little sister.  My great grandfather was the oldest of 10 children.  I was so happy to see that her stone was in better shape than William's.  I wondered if the same family that had her buried there, also knew that William was her brother. I mean, they must've right? He was just two rows down, so how could they miss him.  With all of the spirits surrounding me that day, it was extremely overwhelming to the point of me crying very heavily.  My fiance put his arms around me and told me that we should go before it got to be too much.  I could hear how sad so many of those people buried there were.  They felt happy that someone was there, but also so sad that they felt they were forgotten.  I could feel all of their emotions.  The energy there was strong-kind of reminded me of the first time I had gone up to Manoa Chinese Cemetery to visit my mother's side of the family, the Lums.  I'll write about that cemetery another time.  There was so much spiritual energy there and the cemetery itself is massive.  The mix of emotions I felt at both are probably moments on my genealogy journey that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.  

     For now, I will leave you with this-in all my years of research, I think this day has been the most profound.  I spent most of my life wondering if there were any other Maus related to me out there. And although the only three I now know are dead, when I visit them, they are now anything but that.  I hope to be able to one day meet living relatives on my Mau side. I have made plans to come back one day, while the kids are in school, so that I can properly take the time to clean up the graves, as the grass is overgrown and there are so many monkey pods and tree branches everywhere on their plots.  I pray that they are happy and at peace and they know that although it took me many years to find them, that I did.  I still do wish I could find where my own great grandfather is buried and when I do, that will probably be one of the best days as far as my cemetery work goes.