We found the following writings among Iona's things that she had written some time ago. What better way to learn about her life than with her own words:

 

"I have talked with my guides since infancy, though it was only a decade ago that I realized that "guides" was what they were commonly called. I called them my "buddies." The first memory I have of it was standing in my crib, holding the rail and asking that they take me HOME because I didn't like it here. The reply I got was "Stay. It will get better." I decided to stay and whether it is "better" or just more interesting, I cannot say.

 

Until I was in my mid-30's, I didn't think I would be able to do the work I came in to do. For the most part, I had found few others who would even give credence to my knowing anything which had not been "figured out” intellectually or read in a book.

 

At 37, I finally met my loving friend and mentor, the English healer and teacher Ronald P. Beesley, whom "my buddies" had shown me at age 12 when I had inquired if there wasn't somebody here that I really knew. At last someone who spoke my internal language - who knew what I knew and more - though he said when we met that I already knew all he had to teach. I was at last and for the first time in this incarnation able to open to the spiritual seeing, hearing, and feeling things I knew, but had never before had anyone with whom I could share it.

 

Hope blossomed in me that I might still be able to accomplish the Spiritual projects I had set for myself before incarnating this time. My life changed. My 20 year marriage washed apart. Even as I was at last finding my way, my children wondered if I had lost it. I began to conduct Spiritual Healing classes to teach what I knew. Venues had begun to appear where I was welcome to share my spiritual knowledge.

 

The more I shared, the more I recalled and the clearer my direct line to the knowing. Still, I kept my "day job", even after I began to access the visual and energetic imagery from the souls of others which work to remind one, at their core, of what they rally came to accomplish on their personal spiritual path.

 

The paintings, the healing, the teaching, are really all just facets of the thing I came to do. In the 1980's a Native American pipe follower gave me the name "Spirit Speaker" because of the way I am able to reach across into higher realms for information in order to share it here.

 

This, I believe, is the work I came to do and to share."