What a Psychic Sees

Psychics are lauded for their ability to see what others don’t. It’s right there in the language: 

·       They’re called clairvoyant, which translates to “clear seeing.”

·       Their gift is referred to as Second Sight.

·       They access Universal wisdom through their Third Eye chakra.

When we talk about psychic seeing, we often mean seeing the future… but there’s more to a reading than just predictions. Because we humans? At our core? Well, each one of us is a freaking kaleidoscope of divine light, and that light illuminates past and present as well as future. The trouble is, most of us struggle to see ourselves for the luminaries we are – present company included! For the vast majority of my life, I saw myself only as I was reflected to me by my environment – and that reflection was about as reliable as a funhouse mirror. It wasn’t until a few Seers saw my light and showed it to me that I began to really believe in my own luminosity. 

A Good Therapist

Any empaths out there? Anyone learn codependency around the same time they learned to walk? Anyone find themselves magnetizing narcissists? Same. Same. Same. Empathy hurts when you’re a kid. I would constantly feel the pain of others and then jump into action to make us both feel better. I was the fixer of broken hearts and the solver of problems for my friends. I was comedic relief when tensions ran high or the vibration dropped low in my house. Then when my usefulness and entertainment weren’t needed, I put myself up on a high shelf. Out of sight, and out of mind. This particular cocktail of nature and nurture amalgamated into one core belief: I must be Useful, Entertaining, or Invisible in order to earn love. My core belief was reinforced so strongly in childhood that I inevitably constructed realities where it had to be true as I grew up. Narcissists, codependents, and generally needy people always seemed to find me, and they rewarded me with love when I performed to their liking. If I could successfully lighten the mood or solve the problem, I was gifted some affection and affirmation. Luckily for me, I was smart and capable so I earned my love rewards often – yay! Otherwise, if I wasn't going to say something helpful or funny, it was best not to say anything at all. 

I distinctly remember the session where I spelled all this out for my therapist. Don’t you love when you confound your own therapist? It’s a real scream. Months into our relationship, she came with the question, “Who are you? What defines Lauren?” Of course I didn’t understand because my brain simply won’t compute a question that vast. She phrased it another way and asked about my core beliefs. I was proud for having defined them so succinctly. It sounded a little cynical, sure. But a lifetime of evidence – all of which I’d been presenting to her in our weekly sit-downs – supported my claim. 

She is a good therapist, so she systematically broke down that flawed belief system to reveal the bad information that helped form it. Over the course of months, we extracted Who I Really Am from the rubble of that fallen creed. Utility and entertainment and invisibility do not define me – those are simply things I can do. Who I Am is witty and charming and creative and smart and observant and deeply feeling and highly compassionate and a host of other indefinable things. Most of all, I am deserving of love, full stop. Love is not something I have to hustle for or earn, it’s my innate right as a human. My therapist showed me that. She was one of the first people to hold up a real mirror, a true mirror so I could see Me. And even then, we were only scratching the surface.

A Psychic Bestie

Abby* was the next mirror the Universe gifted me. We met while she was teaching in my daughter’s 2-year-old classroom, and we got to be friends when she started babysitting for us outside of school. One morning, my daughter, Em*, started the day by telling me, "Mama, I'm yellow and pink today!" I made the joke to Abby that my little girl can see auras! Abby offered the much more rational albeit less fun explanation that in the classroom they use colors to express feelings – yellow means happy, and pink means love. Made sense I guess. "Actually though," Abby went on, "I can kind of see auras." Eek! How exciting! Like so many people, I had always been intrigued by psychic phenomenon and paranormal whatever-the-heck even though I was admittedly quite a novice. I tried to sound interested and casual, "Oh wow, is that right? How casual and interesting." She told me Em’s aura was bright pink – a very, very loving color. That made me happy, and while I was bursting to learn more, I tempered my curiosity so as not to completely freak out this person whom I barely knew. A couple days later, though, I was still thinking about the aura thing and just had to text Abby, "So like… what's my aura or whatever." Real smooth like that. She laughed and told me she saw me as indigo. Me, going for casual again: "Mhmm, yes I see. And how strong is it?" Auras have varying strengths, right? She said, "It's pretty strong to me!" I didn’t ask her what it meant because I didn't have to because the internet. I looked it up and read the first and simplest chart that appeared. "Indigo: benevolence, highly intuitive, seeker." Cool! Maybe I’m psychic or something ha ha just kidding! 

For the rest of the year, the roots of mine and Abby’s friendship grew down a foot every time we were together. We went from chatting during Em’s nap time to spending intentional, kid-free time together. She showed me her tarot cards and her crystal collection, we swapped war stories from childhood, we inexplicably ate a lot of ice cream, and we had the occasional séance. It was a heck of a time. 

We discovered almost by accident that Abby is prolific with psychometry – she can read the energy of an object just by touching it. One weekend, I was helping her pack her apartment for a move. In lieu of packing paper, I had brought over a box of scrap fabrics for wrapping breakables. She was packing the kitchen and picking through the fabrics when she came to an old swaddling blanket of Em’s. Her hand hovered over the blanket, and she exhaled a deep breath. "I don't think I can touch that," she said. I didn't know what she meant, but when I saw the blanket I was flooded with emotion. That blanket was covered in sadness – my sadness.

After Em was born (and before an ounce of therapy), I described my love for her as "debilitating empathy." Every time she cried, I felt like a knife was being driven into my chest. It triggered the same fight-or-flight response as if I were watching her get attacked by a bear. All day, every day. I wore myself down to nearly nothing trying to protect her from the pains of existence, all while the people around me were either scared of or annoyed by my heightened emotional state. No one saw how much I was suffering. No one saw that I was triggered. No one saw that it was more than just “hormones and a little baby blues.” They saw me lose 45 pounds in the first year postpartum (because I was too heartsick and panicked to eat) and congratulated me because I looked great! They saw me cry every single day for a year and thought it was just so sweet to be a new mom with so much love! Not my wife nor my mom nor my friends knew how sick I was. 

But Abby being confronted with that blanket three years later… she knew. Of course I had already told her about the agony I felt during Em’s first year. She knew what a strain that had been for me, but now she could feel it, too. She said, "I don't think I can touch that," and backed away from the box of fabrics and started to sob. She said, "I could just see how sad and scared you were, and then I started thinking about how alone you were in that… and that just makes me really, really sad." I hugged her and told her I was ok now and that everything was ok. She kept crying, and I cried too. Mine were tears of gratitude. I finally felt seen in my most vulnerable, most desperate state – and the person who saw me hadn't even been there when it was happening. 

When I wasn’t marveling at Abby’s psychometry skills, I mostly just sat back and watched her be psychic. I loved when she pulled cards and talked to spirits and told me things she had no business knowing (ethically, of course). I was in the middle of admiring her one day when she told me, "You're psychic too, you know…" Umm, no I don’t know and how dare you – is more or less what I said. Now, maybe there were times pulling cards that I knew as soon as she did what was going to come up. And maybe I had had dreams about totally unlikely happenings that eventually came to fruition. And perhaps during yoga and meditation I could feel energy in my body much more palpably than others could… but everyone could do that at least sometimes, right? I needed a second opinion. It was time for my first ever real psychic reading. 

A Psychic Mentor

Many years ago, my rational mind put psychics in a box labeled, "Con Artists," and stored them away in the basement of my psyche. Now, it was time to dig them out. I had researched psychics near me before and hadn’t found anyone I particularly related to. I wanted to be read by someone like Abby, like me – someone that existed in the metaphysical space but was more on the Quirky Aunt side than the Professor Trelawney side of the spectrum. Which led me to Gina Scarpino in Louisville. 

Our reading was over the phone. I sat at my kitchen table and tried to calm my nerves and soothe my energy. She called, we chatted briefly, then she jumped right in. She asked me to kick us off by stating my name and the date, and as soon as I did the energy in my heart space flared like a tiny sun. I could feel Gina’s energy exploring mine. My chest was alive and tingly, almost like the feeling of butterflies but way up around my heart and shoulders. She talked about my love life and what might pan out there, and then she mentioned something about codependency. That word is triggering for me because, The Past, so hearing it made my pulse stumble. When it did, Gina immediately broke in, "Ohh and as I say that word codependency… there is a little bit of trigger around it either with people coming into your life or you yourself… this is connected to your mom and your mom's side of the family and the culture there." WHOA. The fact that I felt a sensation in my body and she immediately picked up on that feeling and put it into words turned me into a believer that instant. 

The reading continued and she offered a beautiful balance of seeing me as I am, seeing my life situation, and understanding my unspoken desires. She talked about my career in which I am a Program Manager for a Fortune 500 company, but out of the blue she asked, "Ooo are you a writer yet??" Bingo again! My deepest desire is to be a writer, though I had not begun pursuing it or even talking about it much at the time. Then finally, on the topic of my soul path: “I also have to say you're insanely psychic.” Whoa, talk about a heart flutter. "Like, insanely psychic. You know this, I know this. You can just think you're smarter than everyone else, but you're psychic. And doing it for a living is the simplest thing ever, you just have to step over the fear and the judgment." 

A brand new pathway in my spiritual journey opened up. I believed in this Seer because on some level, I had started to believe in what she saw in me. After the reading, Gina became my mentor. For the next several months, I was awed and humbled at how Spirit moved through me in our sessions. My training progressed from interpreting oracle cards to reading auras to communicating with loved ones on the other side (apparently I’m a medium, too!). Each step in the journey fortified my resolve to continue. I could do this. I was doing this. There were definitely dark days, periods of doubt, and attacks of ego along the way – heck, there still are. Because I’m human. But human limitations won’t keep me from doing this work. I have discovered my gift of Sight, and I owe it to myself to use it. More importantly, I owe it to you. 

Your Personal Seer

When I step into a reading, I’ve often never met the person that’s sitting for me. Each time though, the sitter states their name and opens their energy space for me to know them – and I immediately do. In my style of reading, what comes through most clearly is chakra activity. I can see the size and shape and luminosity of each person’s love center and communication center and psychic center, and with that I can describe You to you – usually like no one ever has before. I can see the source of buried pain, and I can start to lay breadcrumbs for leading that pain up and out. It’s been my experience that when people feel seen at the Soul Level, we both walk away a little brighter than when we came in. 

The love and light of Energy Workers helped me discover who I am and what I have to offer.

They drew me out of spiritual isolation and offered me community.

They validated my struggles and affirmed my strengths.

They saw my light, and in doing so, empowered me to see it for myself. 

You are luminous too, Dear Visitor. I see you, and I’d love to help you see yourself. 

*Names changed to protect privacy