Bad Things and New Directions

So many good things have happened that started out bad. A custody dispute that led to my second child. A husband who took a powder after only a few weeks of marriage but left a kind stepson who sticks with me to this day. A headmaster who fired me for doing pro bono psychic work for police in my free time, and that misjustice led me to be fully self-employed. An elementary teacher who had us write about a famous person, and since I could only think of men, I was driven to write a book about famous men’s mothers when I grew up. The high school English teacher who didn’t encourage those of us who started out as unskilled writers, so that every day for ten years as I wrote and researched my book, I said, I’ll show YOU.

As a senior in college, tired of a lifetime devotion to music, I felt lost until I met a stewardess who spun tales of her world travels. That led to my adventurous job with United Airlines. At forty, my lifetime murder nightmares led to my work with police. A bankrupt music store thrust me into my own business location. The heart-wrenching pushes I gave my children to leave the nest now mean sweet, distinctive visits to their New York City homes.

We all have them, the rough times that lead to good times. Holiday missteps that we vow never to repeat, and walks that we cherish. Disagreements that in retrospect are only splinters easily removed. New directions outshine the troubles, as mysteries and puzzles come to completion in marvelous ways.

Can't See the Back of My Head

Remember the first time you heard your own voice in a recording? How we’re perceived is different from how we see ourselves. It’s important to believe in yourself and try to lessen any negativity.

I test on the edge of the autism scale. I’m clumsy and have to remind myself to have eye contact. An introvert, I do stimming with my arms and hands. I’ve worked hard, like others use a mirror to see the back of their head, to circumvent any issues that I can. On the plus side, my brain is quick and concise and I have a few wild skills. One problem I have is that people argue and say I’m an extrovert. I learned in junior high that I got more of what I want if I spoke up. 

I’m in the last third of my life, when I think people revert to who they were originally, and the masks they have worn to get by fall away. I was a sensitive child, and I still feel awful when those who are damaged express jealousy or envy. I haven’t outgrown my worry about everyone’s near misses and full stops, or about their misguided anger, but now I’m better able to feel pity instead of frustration. I say, ever onward for those who live with their own demons that no one else can understand. Let’s all have hope, forgiveness, and thanksgiving.

Ghosts Are Not Harmful

Movies and books portray the spirit world, or ghosts as I’ll call them, in a negative way. I know that conflict sells, but it leads to misunderstanding. My favorite cartoon as a kid was Casper the Friendly Ghost, maybe because I’ve always seen ghosts. The friendly ones hang around places where they were most happy, and might be seen or sensed in an old building. If you want to connect with the spirit of a loved one who is gone, be open to it with all your senses. Believe and ye shall find.

Some spirits are full of mischief. Those are the ones who slam doors or knock things over. That can seem scary, but it’s just the unknown, so laugh or be fascinated or ignore it. Disgruntled ghosts make their presence known. It can be a flash seen out of the corner of an eye, or maybe a wavy presence. Some ghosts hang in packs of two or three, and they are the ones you might hear going WHOO. But is it really a sound you hear, or do you smell something odd, or do you feel a change in temperature? Don’t fear. Ghosts feed on fear.

This is just my belief system, so choose to ignore or adopt it. The winds of autumn bring questions about the spirit world. So much of it remains a mystery to me too.

Talking with the Dead

Thirty-five years ago, a psychic told me two shocking things. That I would have a big blond son (I did) and that dead people talked to me. That was too bizarre to contemplate, but then a few years later I started my work on murder cases and it happened. Here is a little Jan tutorial on talking and listening to dead people.

It’s not like a streaming service. You can’t summon people you love who have passed. It’s best to wait, and be aware. That means keep an open heart and mind all day, listen, and watch. You might hear your departed loved one talking and think it’s a memory, but if it hadn’t been said in the past, then it’s a voice from the present. Take notes of what was said. My mom talked to me in my closet during Covid isolation, and I didn’t do this, and then I forgot the message. If you smell them, recognize that they are in your presence. If you see them fleetingly, accept it as real.

Vocal contact with the dead is more like a letter than a conversation, because one person talks at a time. There can be a long wait in between, since it’s not a cause and effect. While I wait, I say to myself, the powers that be are helping someone else or somehow busy.

It’s tricky. I’m not sure seeing a cardinal means your mom is there, but it’s possible. Synchronicity and signs abound. 

Connect with the Sweetness of Others

I love local fairs, with funky smells, flashing lights, and odd performers. As I waited on shaky metal seats for an equine show last month, I yearned for a low-paying job I once had as a reporter. This time, I didn’t use my words, but I used my psychic ability to delve into the life of this little family who traveled with props, horses, and wow outfits. 

I actually become each person in the show, like when I worked on murder cases and had to almost become the murderer and the victim. This fair experience didn’t make me feel sick though. The equine family made me happy.
 
The dad played ringleader. Short, with a prominent belly and pants that needed a wash, he had a warm and corny manner that roped me in. My favorite was his sweet ten-year-old blond daughter who rode in on a beautiful pinto and held an American flag. As we stood at attention to a tinny version of the Star-Spangled Banner, my heart soared with love for the good old USA. Later, the girl’s dad mentioned how pretty she was, and I saw her sweet, shy smile. She clearly loved her part to play.
 
Mom was lithe, thin and strong, the real ringleader in the family, the nurturer, the glue. Junior, a perfect miniature of dad, was about eight. An infectious imp, he seemed to be a true man as he hung upside down on the side of a cantering Percheron. A little man, unlike the big man, with no money worries and little fear.
 
The hot night had a cool breeze. Old guys in t-shirts sang country songs in the bandshell behind us. Big eyed children stared. The audience acted as one as we oohed and admired. It felt like a big circle of love.
 
Little things become big memories. We don’t have to talk to connect with the sweetness of others. We only need to experience.

Fools Rush In

During my 20s adventures, I pretty much lived by the words of the song, Fools Rush In. I threw caution to the wind in Rome, Florence, London, and cities all over the US. I took risks in cars and bars. I sang and danced, dated strangers, and floated from one enriching or entertaining job to another. My luck held. Maybe even then, I used my intuition.

Intuition can be confusing though. A little voice tells us something is going to happen, and we ignore it. One person acts cold and we think they don’t like us, but then it turns out they were just lost in thought, attending to the problems of their day.

Most of the time, we know so much, like who can be trusted and who can’t, but we sometimes act like a fool and rush in. But wait, let’s examine the fool card in the tarot deck. In the 1950s, most of the kids in my neighborhood couldn’t afford a deck of cards. My siblings and I had multiple decks, since our parents played cards with friends and hated bent edges. As kids, if we had a noticeably bent card, we’d take a joker and write on it, Jack of Diamonds, and use it for a replacement

Adaptable, that’s the fool, like in Fool on the Hill, a song by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The Fool tarot card means trust and let go. Johnny Mercer, my favorite lyricist, who I adore even more than Ira Gershwin and Lennon-McCartney, wrote the lyrics to Fools Rush In. The last line is…open up your heart and let this fool rush in.

Live Your Best Life

My pal says “live your best life” whenever I teeter on the edge of two choices. With one choice, I’ll please myself and might disappoint friends. With the other choice, I’ll be in the midst of a personal sacrifice. This makes it hard to be intuitive. When I know other people are hurt, I hurt inside myself.

On Saturday, I went to a church yard sale to look at trucks for my grandson. The people with tables seemed sad when they didn’t make a sale. It hurt, but the old trees and bucolic scene made me happy to live in the boonies.

I understand sadness, but I don’t understand older people’s fearfulness. From a young age, I set out to banish my fears. I think the problem arises with my peers’ desire to be careful of their bodies and its limitations. It’s harder to let their brains fly and accept that change is the one thing to count on. Everything will change.

After three years of concern as I reshaped my business with a physical space, I’ve found success. That means opportunities to travel. What a wonderful feeling, to choose a spot, then let opportunities pull me in new directions. 

We don’t pick our age, but we can pick to live our best life. As time slips by, embrace and enjoy all of it.

Regrets & Mistakes They're Memories Made

When my mother expressed her litany of regrets, she used to end with something good. One of my big regrets is not having a PhD, but I get more satisfaction and joy from my two kids and my book. I sometimes regret all the fooling around I did in my 20s, but I learned so much from my adventures and I rid myself of a lot of wanderlust, instead of carrying it with me to old age.

It’s best, when we ruminate and feel remorse, that we forgive our young selves. As my body turns into an old car with parts to repair, my brain turns too often to the past. I remind myself that the past is now larger than my future, but it really bugs me to have all these shoulda coulda wouldas.

Regrets and mistakes, they’re memories made is from Adele’s song, Someone Like You. I use other songs to restore my faith in the future. Put on a Happy Face! I Feel Good! Girls Just Want to Have Fun! Summertime! (and the living is easy), and even my least liked song, (the sun’ll come out) Tomorrow!

One of my favorite old timey sayings is, If You Can’t Take a Joke. I used it for my week in the covid isolation hotel in Ireland in March. It helped. So get your mantras ready and use them. Party Like It’s 1999.

The Good, Bad, & the Ugly

I watch a lot of detective shows that sometimes remind me about my experiences in that field. From age 40-55, from 1991 until 2007, I worked almost daily, pro bono as a psychic on murder cases. A few times, I helped find a killer. The work often made me sick and upset, as I expect it does for other police officers. My joy came from leading a detective down a path of thinking that he hadn’t pursued.

Except for one female detective, they were all males. The camaraderie between them was more profound than is shown in movies. Like many jobs, they had an almost secret language of looks and words. The best part was that I was treated like an equal part of a team. No job prior to that felt the same. As a teacher, I never found that other teachers banded together as a whole. Instead, it sometimes felt like little middle school cliques.

The worst part was when detectives would insist that I look at murder victim pictures. I tried to avoid it, but some guys were tricky and thrust them in front of me. I’ll never forget those haunting scenes. At the time, my psychic mind was more concerned with what happened and not the finality of it.

Right before I cut way back in this work, I starred in a half hour show, Psychic Witness, which played on the ID channel all over the world and on Netflix for a year, and made me mini-famous. Reliving the murder during the four days of shooting the show felt beyond horrible, since I had seen it in my mind’s eye the first time. The capper came when the man playing the murderer asked me the killer’s motivation and I had to explain it to him, all the while wishing I could have prevented it.

I made a decision to not be famous. During that mini-famous time, my thoughts were so jumbled. People wanted to be my friend and it wasn’t about me. Others stared at me in stores. I didn’t want to leave my young son and spend my life on the road as a psychic. I’m a teacher, writer, and musician and I didn’t want to be pigeonholed as just a psychic. I think about this decision often, with some pathos but little regret.

My respect is huge for everyone in law enforcement. It’s a difficult and dangerous job for low pay. My heart goes out to every single one of them.

Loss & Gain

I started life as an athlete. By age eight, I gleefully ran the four safe blocks that my mother mapped out. The next year, I rode my bike. By sixth grade I was the fastest runner in my elementary school and one afternoon, I rode forty-two miles and wasn’t even winded. I excelled as a fast and furious basketball guard, but quit because of the rule that I had to stop at half court and watch my target make baskets. For fun, I practiced the long and the high jumps, but our school had no girls track team. Fie on that, since my conservative parents refused to get a lawyer to try to put me on the boys’ team.

In seventh grade, I followed my older sister into cheerleading. A quiet child, I discovered all the yelling helped me find my voice. By tenth grade, several grown-ups involved in picking new cheerleaders told my father that I was the best for squad tryouts. Once in my thirties, one of those men even expressed his deep regret over the unfairness of what happened. The girls on the varsity squad convinced the coach to let them help pick the new squad. They outnumbered the adults and didn’t chose me. I’ll never know why, but I think jealousy. I felt devastated and shock, and I cried all night.

Weeks later, I attended the first meeting for the school musical. The director boomed out, any people in sports, leave now, cheerleaders leave now. Destiny had paid me a visit. In my junior and senior years I had the lead in the musicals and senior play, and to this day, I’m a performer. I thank my lucky stars that those girls ruined what I thought was my future path. Although I don’t know any adult cheerleaders.

Horrible things happen, and then wonderful things happen, and we are forced to follow newly opened paths. In the midst of horrible it’s hard to hope for wonderful, but it comes.

Trouble: Avoid It or Dip In?

Part of my psychic ability is knowledge of trouble before it happens. That keeps me a bit protected and safe, but I’ve had my share of bad luck. Sad but true, I knew it was coming. Instead of adapting, I’d forget I was forewarned and then have to face it like a big wave, with a last-minute choice to swim under it or flip over it.

Every decade a horrible thing has happened that I thought I might not live through. But here sits a happy old lady, a cockeyed optimist. That’s from South Pacific, my first Broadway show, and my daughter took me. But let me get back to trouble. When I hear the word, I think of River City and the Music Man. I planned to buy a Broadway ticket for the revival but it’s $600 and crowded, so I’ll go to Vermont instead. Anyway, Music Man is a holdover from my youth, so maybe it should stay there.

Conflict is present everywhere. In writing classes, I learned the necessity of it. Every story, every joke, and most days of our lives contain conflict and resolution. How we face the resolution part is what divides the optimists and the pessimists.

Someone asked me again last week, do you predict bad things? I tell them it’s a matter of whether they want to know everything. I also explain that it’s like voice lessons. I don’t tell my students that they’ll never be as successful as Adele or Justin Bieber, but I do lay out the improvement strides that will occur.

When bad things happen, if you can’t swim under or jump over the problem, get to the other side with optimism. It’s good for your cells. 

Longing

If I played that Facebook game where I oddly explain what I do for a living, I’d say I address longing. In music lessons, I help with a desire to capture the beauty of making music to find rapture. In psychic readings, longing is omnipresent. Love, health, work, and coming to terms with the past, that’s some of what I discuss. This week, at the end of a reading, a woman said, you’re a medium, tell me more about the people who have passed. Meanwhile, I had spent most of her session as her mother. She saw me in that room, but the voice coming from my mouth was not mine. Why can I not remember to explain that as it happens? 

The most important things in life are not things, but stuff you can’t touch or prove. Yearning, love, frustration, and yes, desire for your next experience. As a child, I longed to be grown up and free. As a teen, it was romance, in my 20s, adventure. In my 30s, 40s, and 50s, I wanted to be a good mother and enjoy my work. Now I long for serenity, a continuance of my lovely career, and a whole bunch of trips thrown into the mix. I live for the future. When I think about mistakes, I ponder the longing that took me in that direction.

Today is my once-a-week ice cream day. What will I long for when I’m 90 and decide to eat it every day? Maybe it’ll be new friends to replace those who have passed, a driver who makes me laugh, and the continued ability to move my body. I wonder if psychic people with dementia can still predict?