A psychic medium used her “gift” together with visualisation techniques and help from her spirit guides to “manifest” her son as an adult and meet him before she was even pregnant – then taught her wife to do the same.
Spiritual fertility coach Anna Willson, 39, first realised she had a “gift” in childhood when she summoned the ghost of a Victorian child.
But when Anna and her wife Aimee Willson, 38, who works for the police, were struggling to conceive using fertility treatment, she reached into the future instead of the past and visualised a meeting with their son Olly as an adult even though he was yet to be conceived.
Now living in Basildon, Essex, with Aimee and their children Olly, three, and Brooke, seven months, Anna is using her unconventional approach – which she says combines “science and the spiritual where the real magic happens” – to help others struggling with fertility issues, saying: “I took everything I’d learned on my journey and put it into a programme.”
Anna and Aimee started discussing having children soon after they met in August 2014.
Anna said: “We found each other later in life. But when you know, you know. We’d always wanted to be parents and time was ticking.”
Back then, she was working as a commissioner in care of the elderly for the NHS, while Aimee was in her current role and they decided they each wanted to have a turn carrying and birthing a child.
When blood tests at a Kent-based fertility clinic showed Anna’s egg reserves were lower than Aimee’s, it was decided she would go through fertility treatment first.
She said: “We picked a clinic, went along for a chat and they made it sound really breezy. Pick a donor, come in, get down to it and away we go.
“It sounded so easy, but it wasn’t at all. A lot of women spend half their lives trying not to get pregnant. Then, when you do struggle to get pregnant, it’s hard.”
Unable to get funding on the NHS, they had to finance their journey themselves.
Anna said: “As two women, we couldn’t physically fall pregnant without fertility treatment, so we begged, borrowed and saved.
“A lot of people go on Facebook to find donors, but that wasn’t for us. We wanted to do it the right way.
“Aimee had a property and so did I. We sold up, took money out on the mortgage, sold our campervan. We did everything to raise the thousands and thousands we needed for treatment.”
Sadly, Anna had two failed rounds of intrauterine insemination (IUI) treatment, where the sperm is inserted directly into the womb and says she reached her lowest point.
She said: “I was exhausted by the whole process and the journey to get to that point. All the money, time, effort and energy it had taken.
“I remember sitting on my bed crying. I was worried my body wasn’t playing ball, I was getting older and running out of time.
“We thought it’d be so easy and simple, but it was a bit of a nightmare. I hit rock bottom.”
Desperate to try again but lacking the emotional resources, Anna decided to refocus on herself before trying IVF – where an embryo is fertilised outside the body and implanted.
It was then that Anna drew on the psychic gift she had discovered in childhood.
She said: “I’d had the spiritual gift since I was a little girl. I had what I thought was an imaginary friend. Funnily enough, her name was Amy.
“I can still picture her clearly. She had dark, long ringlets and a blue dress. I was about five when she appeared and she’d sit, talk to me and play with me.
“It was only later on that I started seeing other people like my great nan who’d passed.
“I’d get up and walk towards the phone before it rang. Little things like that.
“I remember at school I’d see fuzzy lights around my teachers sometimes. I didn’t know it then but I was looking at their auras.”
She added: “Looking back now, I know it was all this psychic mediumship gift I’ve got.”
Even as an adult, Anna would often be out in the supermarket or having a massage and would receive messages from the other side for someone nearby.
She explained: “It could be that I smell smoke when there’s no one smoking nearby if the departed was a smoker. Or I’ll hear the music played at their funeral.
“I’ve been known to go up to random people and just ask if they know someone by this or that name. Usually the messages only come through when the person is willing to receive them, so I’ve had people really excited to talk to me.”
But, while Anna was accustomed to using her gift to help others, she had not employed it to help herself before.
She said: “I’d never really taken it that seriously. I was used to sharing things with others, but needed to turn that onto myself now.
“I was letting the fear and worry about becoming a mother consume me. I was incredibly anxious and so full of desperation.
“From a spiritual angle, that doesn’t give you the baby making energy you want.
“I was so needy and it was creating an energy barrier. I had to take some steps back.”
Keen to utilise her gift to help with her fertility struggles, Anna began meditating regularly, eating better, getting out in nature, using tarot cards, having acupuncture and using powerful visualisation techniques.
She explained: “I released the need to become a mum, which was incredibly difficult. It happened over months, not overnight.
“I linked up to my spiritual team, as I call them – my guides – and I asked them for guidance. They told me that I needed to go through this journey to resonate with the ladies I’m working with now.
“I needed to know what it was like not having something to realise how much I wanted it.
“I believe you’ve got to bring your baby to life. You have to make it as if they’re here before they’re actually here. You need to live in the energy you want and use the law of attraction.”
Visualising, or conjuring a mental image of a life with her baby really helped Anna to make progress and to approach getting pregnant feeling more relaxed.
She said: “I visualised it all. I visualised my eggs fertilising, attaching to my womb, the baby in my belly as they grew – everything.
“Then I asked my baby to connect with me. I could see him as clear as day. He was in his mid 20s.
“My spirit guides explained this was the soul of my son. This is what he’d look like.
“Nothing had ever happened to me on that level before. We didn’t say much but we did have a bit of a hug. It was a nice energy and really warm.
“I just knew then that I’d have a son with blond hair and blue eyes. I’d connected with him so many different times before I was even pregnant.”
Going into IVF treatment with a renewed certainty of success, Anna beamed throughout her appointments and, sure enough, she fell pregnant with Olly on her very first try.
She said: “I knew I’d be a mum. Whether it was this round or the next one or the next. I just had to let go of the when.
“I had to release all of that energy and fear and it made a huge difference. I managed my mindset and breezed through the treatment, pregnancy and the birth.”
When Olly was born in June 2019, Anna says he looked just like he had in her visualisation.
And, while on maternity leave, she decided to package the tools she had found useful and now delivers them through her company Your Soul Calling and online on Instagram @annawillson_yoursoulcalling.
She said: “I just took everything I’d learned on my journey and put it into this programme.
“Meditation, visualisation, energy clearing, tarot readings. There’s some NLP in there – or neuro-linguistic programming, used to change someone’s thoughts and behaviours to help achieve desired outcomes for them – which is a scientifically proven technique. All these things helped me and I knew they would help others.”
Anna delivered her programme for the first time in 2021 and says she has now supported several people on their journey to parenthood.
They were invaluable when, around 18 months after Olly’s birth, Aimee began fertility treatment to carry the couple’s second child.
Anna said: “Aimee looked at my pregnancy and birth and thought she could do it like I did. Unfortunately, she had the complete opposite experience.”
My spirit guides explained this was the soul of my son.
She added: “In the end, it had been so easy for me. But it was so difficult for her, bless her.
“She had cysts that needed to be aspirated, got Covid and pneumonia and suffered a miscarriage at seven weeks.
“It was really tough, but we dealt with it. I think my programme really helped her to get rid of the fear.”
Incredibly, Anna says that through teaching Aimee meditation and visualisation, she was also able to “see” their daughter before she was born, describing how she would look and her gender.
Their second child, Brooke, was born last November and looks just as Aimee described.
Anna said: “Looking back now, everything we experienced was worth every second. All the money, the miscarriage, treatments not working. If we needed to do it 10 times over we would.
“Growing up not knowing who I was or what I wanted from life, then realising what I wanted was another woman, part of me thought I’d have to forfeit my right to have a kid.
“But we’re now two women with a little boy and girl and life is amazing. We’re so grateful.”
Aimee said that at one point, she thought she would never be pregnant.
She explained: “Mentally, the miscarriage absolutely did me in. Trying to imagine myself pregnant after that was hard to do.”
She added: “I’d never done much meditation or anything beforehand and I don’t have Anna’s spiritual gift.
“But I saw our little girl and now we have her, so something incredible took place.”
