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Bowie resident Janice Ervin said she had a rough first 20 years. Growing up in Claymont, Del., she lost several loved ones at an early age, including her mother.

The losses Ervin endured at an early age are what she said has given her the empathy and understanding to counsel others who have lost loved ones.

Ervin, 48, organizes parapsychic events that bring mediums together with those who have lost loved ones to help them communicate with the dead and answer questions about the afterlife.

She utilizes a host of practices, including Tarot readings, hypnosis, meditation and philosophical discussion to help others answer the questions that she feels religion sometimes fails to answer. She recalled sitting in a Catholic priest's office about 20 years ago, questioning why bad things kept happening to those around her.

"I was asking, ‘Why? Where is God?' All he could say to me was, ‘My child we have no answers. It is just up to God and we have to have faith," she said. "Having faith just isn't enough, it feels hollow."

Having already questioned her Orthodox Catholic upbringing, Ervin said the incident confirmed to her that it was best to study philosophies and religions to find her own truth.

She has since studied Daoism, Kabbalah, theories of dying and reincarnation to devise her own philosophies and form her own answers.

One of the first group events Ervin held six years ago was supposed to be a support group session for three mothers who had each lost a teenage son. Word of the meeting spread, and over the course of six days, Ervin said she had more than 150 people come.

"Light bulbs started going off inside of me, and I knew I was on to something," said Ervin, who also volunteers for Hospice of the Chesapeake.

Those who have worked with Ervin said she has a knack for this type of work.

"She does seem to really have a heart for this, to care about the people that are left and even to bring comfort," said Linda Roebuck of Arnold, who met Ervin through work in the nonprofit organization A Community of Transformation based in Severna Park.

Bowie resident Sharon Martin, 60, went to Ervin for counseling after her mother died three years ago. She said Ervin helped her open up to messages that her mother was communicating with her such as smelling lilies, which were her mother's favorite flowers.

After discussions with Ervin, Martin interpreted the smell as her mother saying hello.

"Janice tells you to open your mind up to the possibilities. Be open to a thought that is not just a random thought," Martin said. "I wouldn't have understood that if Janice hadn't explained that to me… I accept the fact that mother is physically gone but is always with me. I still miss her desperately, but I have moved on now."

Through her business, Open Mind Colloquiums, she hopes to legitimize the field but she understands people may be slow to accept it.

"I don't have anything to prove," she said. "It's their path and their life, and they will seek it out if they want to and are ready to."

E-mail Andrea Noble at anoble@gazette.net.