With moments of heartbreak, revelation and unexpected love from beyond, this article by Hayden Crosweller — medium, energy healer and yoga teacher, invites you to step into a narrative where self-acceptance, spirituality and the bonds that transcend this life all intertwine. Prepare to be moved, challenged and inspired to find your own sense of authentic belonging — here and beyond.
Coming out of the closet and stepping into the spirit world
WHEN I WAS 17 YEARS OLD, MY DEAD, CATHOLIC HOMOPHOBIC GRANDFATHER APPEARED IN FRONT OF ME. HE TOLD ME THAT HE WAS SAFE, THAT HE WAS OKAY AND THAT HE LOVED ME FOR WHO I WAS.
Up until this moment, I had been quietly at war with myself. I was trying to reconcile my faith with the growing, undeniable truth that I was attracted to men. I had been taught what God thought about gay people, yet here was my grandfather in the spirit world offering something I hadn’t felt before — unconditional love for who I was.
His messages from the other side didn’t answer every question, but they shifted something within me. The shame I’d been carrying and the lump in my throat no longer felt quite as solid. The idea that being gay and being connected to
My name is Hayden (he/him), and I’ve spent the last 14 years bringing through messages from loved ones that have passed away into the spirit world. However, to understand how I got here, I’d like to share with you the world I grew up in and the beliefs that shaped how I saw myself.
"Feeling deeply connected to moments, people, and places reminds me that life’s true meaning goes far beyond what’s visible.” Hayden Crosweller
Growing up, Catholicism and Christianity shaped how I saw the world and myself. Sunday Mass was a staple for my family, and the world would have ended if we missed any other special day in the Catholic calendar. On top of this, from the ages of 7 to 17, I attended a Christian camp most school holidays. So, religious dialogue became a core part of my social connection and framework of thinking. It wasn’t all prayers, singing ‘Kumbaya’ and Bible study. When at the holiday camps, I loved spending time immersed in nature, hanging out with friends and playing soccer in the gym.
However, when I was 17, two parts of me collided and shook everything I thought I knew about myself, and about God. I was struggling to deny my attraction to a guy I was working with. Around the same time, I was in a Bible discussion group at holiday camp when the topic of “gay people” came up. Someone asked the youth leader what he thought. He said,
“I have a friend who is gay, and I’m ok with that, but I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t want to know that part of his life”.
This wasn’t the love I’d been taught that God had for people. It wasn’t Christ’s open arms. It wasn’t even acceptance.
It was tolerance — I like you, but only under these conditions. This moment scared me. It made me fear what I was feeling, and it fed the war already building inside me.
It wasn’t long after this experience that my grandfather passed away and appeared in front of me with his messages of love.
The war ravaged within me for several more months, but I knew something had to change. I had to decide what to do. I knew that if I came out, I would be rejected by my family and my religion, losing two integral parts of my life. But if I hid the truth of myself, the black hole in my heart would keep eating its way through me until I was an empty shell.
Emboldened by my grandfather’s love and acceptance, I came out of the closet — and, as expected, I was met with closed hearts by the religious people in my family and the Catholic and Christian communities I was a part of. Thankfully, not everyone met me this way.
"We can heal relationships even when one person is on the other side of the Rainbow" Hayden Crosweller (Jenny Wu Photography - headshot)
There were many people in my family who took it incredibly well, and their love and support anchored me in a time when it felt like everything was falling apart. So, in one awful night, which ended with me being kicked out of home, I lost a version of Hayden I would never get back, and I lost a religion that I thought would always be there for me.
“I lost a version of Hayden I would never get back, and I lost a religion that I thought would always be there for me.”
There were many people in my family who took it incredibly well, and their love and support anchored me in a time when it felt like everything was falling apart. So, in one awful night, which ended with me being kicked out of home, I lost a version of Hayden I would never get back, and I lost a religion that I thought would always be there for me.
That night left two seismic holes in me. One was learning to understand, love and accept my sexuality; but having lived in a religious bubble, I didn’t even know what that could look like.
The other was trying to figure out who I was spiritually, because religion had taught me that psychics and mediums were charlatans. With no clear spiritual home to call my own, I spent a lot of time combating the voice within me that said, “play by the rules” and “don’t stand out any more than you currently are”, “don’t be more different”.
Overnight, the shame I felt about being gay had quietly transferred onto the spiritual part of me too. But life had other plans than letting me sink into those holes of shame.
I moved from Sydney to Canberra and found a fun, loving and kind group of friends that loved me as my gay self, without batting an eyelid.
On top of this, I regularly started being visited by people that had passed, and the only thing that stopped them from talking so loudly was relaying their messages.
So, I started reading for friends, family members and the occasional stranger when their loved ones asked me to communicate something important. Within a few years, I had found a home in no religion, but within a community of rainbow humans and the spiritual practices and rituals that made my heart sing.
However, something about my spirituality still felt incomplete. Unresolved. It felt like the rejection I had experienced from the Catholic and Christian faith was a festering wound, and ignoring it only made it worse. On top of that, from all the loving conversations I was having with people in the spirit world, it just didn’t seem right.
"Overnight, the shame I felt about being gay had quietly transferred onto the spiritual part of me too.” Hayden Crosweller
My grandmother’s sister is a Catholic nun and to be frank, I had never engaged in a conversation about faith as an adult after coming out. However, with the wound festering one day, I brought up the topic of sexuality in front of several of my religious family members, her included.
Without missing a beat, she said with love and conviction in her tone, “Jesus loves everybody. As long as you are happy, that is what matters”.
Hearing this put a puzzle piece back in its place. It gave me permission to re-integrate the parts of my faith growing up that I thought I had lost forever.
Even with that piece returning, there was still an ongoing question quietly shaping how I moved through the world: how much of me do I share, and how much of me do I hide?
For the longest time, I wrestled with the reality of being both a gay man and a spiritual man. I’m not pretending to have all the answers for other queer spiritual humans out there (or for those teetering on the edge of exploring their spirituality) — but from my experience of working with the spirit world and the thousands of messages I have passed on from family members, friends and even animals that have crossed over, I can say you are not alone, you can take pride in your queer spirituality, and every part of you is loved by the spirit world.
WE CAN HEAL RELATIONSHIPS EVEN WHEN ONE PERSON IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RAINBOW
Over time, my work with the spirit world started to show me something I hadn’t expected. Every connection I made and every message I received became my new ‘Bible verse’.
The spirit world has taught me that true love is unconditional; that when we move from this world into the next we gain deep clarity about our life, our choices and the effect we have on those around us, good and bad.
Several years ago, I was doing a mediumship demonstration (where I stand in front of an audience and bring through information and messages from those that have passed away) when an audience member’s mother came through.
"There is something within us that already knows how to find its way back to connection.” Hayden Crosweller
The first piece of information she gave to validate herself was that in life she would not have liked me because I was gay. As I mentioned this, the man I was speaking to guffawed and confirmed that his mother would call us “the gays” and in life she held deep fear and judgement of queer people.
Her son was not a gay man, but his best friend growing up was, and during this public reading and in front of 50 people, she apologised for every unkind thing she had said about gay people, and more, and wanted her son to know that she had changed.
Additionally, to make up for her shortcomings in life she was working as one of her son’s guides to help him overcome the challenges and struggles he was facing at the time.
A few years ago, I went through an incredibly emotional separation from my now ex-partner. In the wake of that experience, I spent months recovering my physical, mental and emotional health, and it was clear that I needed space and time away from romantic relationships to heal.
So, I said to the spirit world, “Please let me know when it is a good time to step back into the dating world”.
Well, several months later I was cooking in the kitchen, and I turned around to see my grandfather standing beside me (again) and he says, “Hayden, I’m helping to bring a new partner into your life. He won’t be in your life forever, but he will love you and care for you and teach you to love again”, and within two weeks I met someone I consider a soul mate.
As foretold, we eventually parted ways, but my once homophobic Catholic grandfather became one of my biggest supporters from the world of spirit.
A LOST FRIEND RETURNS
Our loved ones in the spirit world are not just humans; they can also be our animals.
Recently, I made a new friend in a beautiful gay man, Brian, that only 15 months ago lost his best friend — a border collie named Buddy that he had rescued on the side of the road when he was only a puppy.
When we first met, I noticed that Brian was still processing through the grief of losing a soul mate. I love hearing stories of people receiving messages from loved ones (including animals) that are in the spirit world, so I asked him if he had heard from Buddy since he had passed, which he had not.
A few days later Brian and I caught up and he turns to me and says, “Remember how you asked me if I had heard from Buddy?”. He goes on to explain how — out of nowhere, in the days after our conversation — he started finding Buddy’s fur in his apartment, which Buddy had never lived in.
"Our loved ones in the Spirit world are not just humans; they can also be our animals." Hayden Crosweller
He also found fur on his bed, a bed that he had never slept on because it was a brand-new mattress. As well as finding fur in his car, which had been cleaned dozens of times since his passing. I’m a healthy sceptic when it comes to these things, so I prodded.
Not once since our conversation had Brian pulled out any blankets or material that would have had Buddy’s fur on it, and he detailed how the apartment floor gets swept three times a week by a robovac, so in no way could Buddy’s fur have just turned up randomly.
Our conversation had clearly opened a door in Brian’s mind, and a simple question was thrown out into the universe: “Buddy, are you there?”; and within days this question was met with a resounding: “Yes! I’m still here!”.
To be honest, what I do is not important. A psychic or mediumship reading is not the important part of this dialogue. The important part is what comes from it; the realisation that we are not alone in our human experience, that we have a team of people (and animals) in the spirit world looking after us and that true God-consciousness doesn’t judge or reject, it loves, fully and without conditions.
If a reading resonates with you, great. If it doesn’t, that’s equally ok. This isn’t about convincing you of anything, it’s about inviting you into connection. Connection to something bigger than ourselves.
Connection to the moments, people and places that remind you that life is more than just what we can see. And a small heads up, it’s not always going to be a permanent “feeling”. We’re here in this life to know love, and sometimes we need to experience the absence of love to fully appreciate it when we have it.
I might be a medium that connects to those that have passed, and you may never feel called to get a reading from me or from anyone else, and that’s absolutely ok. But, if there’s one thing I’ve come to trust through all of this, it’s that we’re not as disconnected from life as we sometimes feel. There is something within us that already knows how to find its way back to connection, to meaning, and to the people we love, whether they are here physically or not.
For me, I experience this in quiet moments of meditation, through time in nature, by slowing down enough to listen to the voice within. Maybe that process looks different for you, but whatever form it takes, it has a way of meeting you where you are and gently pulling you back towards yourself.
Hayden Crosweller is a Medium, Energy Healer, Yoga Teacher and the facilitator of Men’s Yoga Canberra, which is community focused on connection, embodiment and inclusive nude practices for men.
If you would like to find out more about Hayden, visit his website: haydencroswellermedium.com or on Instagram.
