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Have you considered seeing a medium to connect with a loved one who has died? Claire gives you some tips on ways to find a good psychic medium and how to get the most out of your experience with them. Plus, she answers a question from a listener who had ceased contact with her mother but feels guilty now that her mother has died.

Check out these resources mentioned in this episode:

• Read After This: When Life Is Over Where Do We Go? by Claire Bidwell Smith
• Listen to Medium Fleur’s New Day episode

Do you have something you want Claire’s help with? Send her a question to be featured on an upcoming episode by emailing us at newday@lemonadamedia.com or submitting one at www.bit.ly/newdayask.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Claire Bidwell-Smith

Claire Bidwell-Smith  00:00

Can the dead really talk to us from beyond? And should we even be listening? I’m Claire Bidwell Smith. And that’s what we’re talking about today on NEW DAY. Grief and psychic mediums. There’s a long history of people going to see psychic mediums after they lose someone they love. But there’s also a lot of taboo around this practice, not to mention a lot of skepticism. I’m here to tell you that I don’t think it’s a bad idea. And I’m even going to give you some tips for how when where you should see a medium after you lose someone you love. Look., if you’re listening to this episode, you must be curious. And the reason you’re curious is because someone you love died and you fucking miss them. If there’s a chance you could hear from them or talk to them. It’s hard not to be a little or a lot curious. That’s okay. A lot of people go to mediums when they’re grieving. And for good reason. They miss their person. They want to know if they’re okay. They want to tell them, they love them. It’s normal, even if it’s scary to think about. I got really curious about this for myself when I became a therapist, and so many of my clients were either going to mediums or they were expressing interest in seeing them. I was really skeptical but felt like it was important to the work I was doing. And even to my own grief process to explore this realm a little. I ended up writing a whole book about it. It’s called after this when life is over where do we go. And for the book, I saw over a dozen psychic mediums ranging from famous ones like John Edward and James Van Praagh to like random mediums I found on Yelp, and I even visited a whole town in Florida that is literally door to door mediums. What I found was surprising. First, for skeptics out there, I went into my research, highly skeptical as well. I also used fake names and email addresses blocked phone numbers, I paid in cash, me and my parents deaths were too easy to Google. So I tried to be as absolutely anonymous as possible. I had some experiences that completely blew my mind and set me off in a personal direction of really exploring my beliefs and spirituality. But I also met with quite a few shitty psychic mediums who were definitely charlatans. I also had some average experiences that were not impressive. But I will say that the few really good mediums I met with have definitely made me think that I’m still connected to my dead loved ones in a way I didn’t imagine possible.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  02:19

But right there is the main thing I walked away from the research with. In the end, I decided it didn’t even matter if it was real. What mattered was that I felt connected to my loved ones again, in a way that I hadn’t felt in years. What mattered was that I witnessed many other grieving people find a new sense of connection to the people they had lost. And finding ways to stay connected to the people that you’ve lost, can be really healing when you’re feeling lost and stuck in your grief. So if you’re curious, which you probably are, if you’re still listening to this, I suggest trying it. The worst thing that can happen is that you waste money. And the best thing that can happen is that you find a new sense of connection and possibly new feelings of peace and hope. So where do you start? Ask around, see if anyone in your friend circle or grief support group has seen a medium, get recommendations. Do a Google search. Watch a Netflix documentary about mediums? Read a goop article about this stuff. Search Yelp one of the best mediums I ever saw I found on Yelp; I kid you not. Next, make an appointment. Use a fake name and number if you want but I promise you, I know enough mediums now to know that they are not sitting around memorizing your shit. There is no time for that in their schedules. Not to mention, they don’t need to know that a phone or zoom session is actually just as good as in person. You don’t need to be sitting across from medium for them to connect with your loved ones. Before you go into your session, I recommend that you ask if you can record it. Most of them will let you there may be a lot of things that they say that you’ll want to revisit. And at the very least take notes. Remember that you can ask them questions in the session. You can even ask to talk to someone specific. You can also ask the medium to tell your loved one things that you want to tell them. For a little more on all of this, check out my episode with Medium Fleur. We have a whole conversation about mediumship and what mediums really do and how they work. Lastly, take your time processing the session you do have if it was a shitty experience, let it go. Maybe try someone else. If it was great. Take some time to let the things that you learned and felt settle for you. Let yourself open up to the whole thing. Let yourself feel connected to your loved one. It’s a good feeling.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  04:25

Today’s question is a tough one. So many things about grief are super complex and confusing. And if you have a question about something you’re struggling with, I’d love to be able to help. Send me an email at newday@lemonadamedia.com or fill out the online form at bit.ly/newdayask, you can find the link in the show notes. Pam in Missouri wrote in and asked how do you deal with the overwhelming guilt when you’ve gone no contact and your mother passes away alone. Oh Pam, thank you for writing, I’m sorry to hear about this loss and the way it played out, this is really hard. I’ve met with a lot of people in your shoes, and it’s never easy. I’m going to assume when you say no contact, this means that some boundaries with your mom were at some point put in place for probably various reasons. And while this may have been the very best thing for both of you, it’s still really hard when someone passes away and you weren’t there, and you haven’t had a relationship recently, lots and lots of mixed feelings. I imagine probably grappling with a tricky combination of regret and sadness, and relief and confusion. And all of those things are valid. The first thing I want you to understand is that it’s okay to feel a lot of different stuff, you don’t have to pick just one thing. You can feel angry and also sad. You can feel regretful and also relieved, you can feel sorrow and also numb. When we’ve had a really complicated relationship with someone who dies, it can be hard to sort through all the stuff we’re feeling because your grief probably doesn’t look the way it’s supposed to. But you’re the only one who really knows what this relationship was like. And so it’s important to be true to all the feelings that come up. Also know that you’re likely to grieve a lot of different things, you’re going to grieve the loss of your mom, yes, maybe the positive aspects of that relationship if there were some. But also you’re going to grieve the loss of a relationship that maybe wasn’t what you wanted it to be, you’re going to grieve not being able to be there too, even if the boundaries that created that scenario were important. So I do think it can be helpful to do some things to process all this complicated grief, I think you can write your mom a letter or a series of letters in which you talk to her about your relationship and say the things you need to say. You can certainly sit down with a therapist for a few or a lot of sessions to talk through all of this as well. I want you to know that sometimes we hold on to guilt when we grieve as a way of holding on to the person we lost. So maybe think about different ways you could find a hold on to your mother or to honor her. As for the not being there with her part, you wrote that she died alone. That can be a really tough image for you to have in your head. I suggest exploring your spiritual side a bit. Give yourself some time to think about death and what it means and what you believe happens after this lifetime. You may find some comfort there. Or perhaps in some Buddhist teachings. I’ll tell you that I wasn’t there with my mom the night she died and it really ate me up for a long time. It was really hard to forgive myself. For me, it took a lot of self-compassion. It took a lot of letter writing to my mom. I even spent some time in meditation just imagining myself being there. I would visit her hospital bed in my head and say all this stuff I needed to say to her and I would hug her and I would lay down with her and my imagination and it brought me a lot of comfort. I’ll be thinking about you Pam and hoping you find some peace with this.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  07:50

As  always, thank you for listening to new day, and make sure you come back on Friday for my conversation with Connor Franta. He’s a YouTube star, queer advocate and also hosts the Burnout podcast right here on Lemonada Media. I really think you’ll love Burnout. So subscribe to new day and then search for Burnout in your podcast app. And then come back here on Friday from my conversation with Connor, see you then.

CREDITS  08:16

NEW DAY is a Lemonada Media Original. The show was produced by Kryssy Pease and Erianna Jiles. Kat Yore is our engineer. Music is by Hannis Brown. New Day is produced in partnership with the well-being trust the Jed foundation and Education Development Center. Thanks for listening.