My family and I just got home a few days ago from a trip to Mt. Rainier National Park. We went camping, hiking, and exploring in the gorgeous mountains. On Monday we went on a hike in a place very fittingly called Paradise. It was beautifully misty and full of summer's last wildflowers. Being out in nature is always so reinvigorating for my soul, and it was wonderful to have a little break to breathe and take photos and focus on the little beautiful things.

In this work, I have found it important to schedule in a few days of rest here and there, and make sure I am never over-doing it. It's important as mediums to make sure that we are balanced and feeling well emotionally, physically, and spiritually. This is partially because all the information that comes through in a reading from spirit is being filtered through our minds. That means that our state of mind can affect our readings, because it can taint the information coming through. Feeling balanced and rejuvenated is the best place from which to do readings.

However, despite all efforts to take enough breaks and disconnecting from stress, life has a habit of just happening without seeking permission or checking schedules to see if it's a suitable time. Us mediums still have clients we need to show up for and do readings even if we're in the middle of one of life's crazy messes. We can't put our lives on hold. And we can't always reschedule our readings until next month.

That means that sometimes we have to do readings when the back of our minds is on some crises going on on in our lives. Or we might go through something that affects our energy levels and how we connect to Spirit. I personally had an awful week last week. Nothing horrible happened in my personal life, nor did anything horrible happen professionally, but internally I was a complete mess. And so my energy-levels were much lower than normal, and I just wanted to hide under a blanket with a book. But I still had readings to do and an audience reading to turn up to (the monthly one where I work with two other mediums). At the audience reading, I just let the audience know that I had just had an awful week, and therefore might have lower energy than normal, but that I would try my very best.

Being honest, for me, takes the pressure off of having to out-perform what I am capable of at the moment. The energy of my readings that day felt a little different than normal. They weren't flashy, or high-intensity. They were simple and gentle, but I managed to keep the flow of information from Spirit going. And it all worked out just fine.

I prefer to be honest about where I am at, and I think that actually helps the process. In my experience I've never been successful at pretending I am somewhere else and trying to force it from there. I am just honest with my clients if I am going through something personally, and I let them know I will try my best, but if I'm not able to connect well, then we will reschedule and try again at a different time. I have done some readings during some pretty anxiety-filled changes in my personal life, and those readings (with a lot of help from Spirit) still went amazingly well. But I had to accept where I was at, and just trust that it would all work out how it's supposed to.

I have also been receiving the sweetest signs from Spirit lately. Almost every day for the past couple of weeks, a car driving in front of me will have the word "HUG" on it's license plate. I don't believe in coincidences.

Be gentle with yourself this week.
Hugs,
Thea

A big part of my work is talking to animals who have crossed over. It seems that over the past couple of months, I have talked to many more who have recently lost their beloved animal companions. I find that there is often just as much grief and guilt that comes with losing an animal as there is when losing a human loved one.

I wanted to share some of the messages that repeatedly come up in readings with animals who have crossed over, hoping this might help someone who feels stuck in the grief of their loss. 

Before I begin, I want to note that I do not pretend to know everything about the other side (I think there's a lot we cannot even fathom). This post is just based on my experiences from the past 5 or so years of talking to animals who have passed.

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Guilt is a common part of the grieving process when we lose someone. These are the ones I see the most in my clients who have lost animals:

• That they were gone a lot of the time, and didn't spend enough time with them
• That they didn't realize that their animal was sick
• That they did suspect something was wrong, but didn't bring them to the vet in time
• That they weren't able to find the animal if the animal was lost (they didn't look enough, or not in the right places)
• That they did something unknowingly that contributed to their passing
• That they didn't try hard enough to help the animal through their aggression issues
• That they didn't give them enough attention
• Worry over whether or not euthanasia was the right choice for the animal
• Worry over whether or not the animal was confused about why they were being euthanized
• That they somehow unknowingly caused the animal more pain by not choosing or not getting the opportunity to choose euthanasia

Animal companions are unconditional love. In life, they might experience trauma or other things that drives them towards less than loving behaviors (such as with animals that are trained to fight, or animals that have been abused), but in essence they are unconditional love. They retain both their personality and their essence of unconditional love when they cross over. In fact, that essence often becomes more pronounced after passing (just like with humans when they pass).

This means that animals do not usually hold grudges when they cross over. In fact, they often show deep understanding and compassion for their human companions. I have never had an animal want my client to feel guilty about anything they did or didn't do. 

(Of course, I have never had a client who intentionally tried to harm their animal companions. I have spoken to animals on the other side who expressed strong dislike of previous owners who were abusive, but not towards my clients.)

In a reading with an animal that has passed, they will usually show me the thing that my client feels guilty about. Then they might show me the circumstances of the situation (why the owner had to do the thing, or not do the thing). They do this to prove that they know why the client had to do that, and show that it's OK. They understand. There's nothing to forgive. Then they might prove that they are still around you, and most of all, they want to show you that they are more than fine on the other side.

In my experience, animals (just like humans) have a certain time they are meant to cross over. If they didn't pass in this one way, their soul would have found another way to pass soon anyways. Nothing that you did or didn't do could would have kept them here any longer. For whatever reason, their soul decided that this was the way to go now. 

Often animals will share that they passed after helping their humans through a particularly difficult period. Their soul was done with their life-purpose, and so it was time to pass. I have also had animals share that they passed right before a period of big changes in their human's life, because they felt they could better help their humans through it from the other side (by helping to orchestrate events, etc).

I always encourage people to establish their own spiritual connection with their loved ones and animals on the other side. However, I usually recommend waiting until you are through the worst of the grief, before you try to communicate with them yourself. Communicating with animals and those who have crossed over is such a subtle art. It can be hard for beginners to discern between what is from their loved ones and what is just made up by their own mind or just random energies passing by. It can also be easy to taint a message coming through with our own pre-conceived notions or the guilt that we feel. When receiving true messages from our loved ones or animal companions on the other side, they will always feel positive and uplifting in some way.

I also have to mention that spirits have shared with me that deaths usually have a lot less suffering than we tend to imagine. Souls will leave their bodies before even the body has died in a lot of cases, (especially in very traumatic passings). Also, their loved ones and our loved ones help them cross over when it's time. Your beloved animals are never truly alone when they pass.

In my readings, animals will also share with me their happiest memories from when they were alive. These are the memories they want you to think of and focus on when you think of your animal companion. These memories and thoughts help lift your spirits, and can help you feel their presence around you even stronger. From doing this work, I also know that our animal companions love to be around us after they've crossed over. As soon as you think about them, they can feel that, and they'll draw closer. And they love to share in those beautiful memories you created together.

Sending you all lots of healing thoughts,
Thea

Hello everyone. I hope your summer has been going wonderfully so far.

Last weekend we went on a camping trip by the Oregon coast. We played games and indulged in ice cream sundaes and treats. We were right by the ocean so we played on the beach, and on our way home we stopped at a river to go swimming. It felt amazing to connect to the energy of water again. Water, especially the ocean and rivers, can be very cleansing energetically. It can help to release the old in order to make room for the new in your life. I've been feeling lots of shifts myself lately, and was happy to let the water wash away anything that no longer serves me so that I can more fully step into the changes coming up.

One such change I've decided on is that I will no longer be offering psychic readings as a service in and of itself. That means that I will only be offering mediumship readings and animal communication as services (along with animal reiki of course). In a mediumship reading we might go into topics that are typically talked about in psychic readings (such as the client's life etc), but it probably won't be the main focus of the session. The reason for this is that I don't find plain psychic readings as exciting any more. I simply feel more passion towards mediumship and animal communication right now.

The main difference between psychic readings vs mediumship readings, is that with mediumship I am communicating with your passed loved ones, and with psychic readings I might look at the energy of your life: past, present, and future. With mediumship, there's a lot of healing happening, but your loved ones might also bring up things going on in your life presently or they might bring up things coming up in the future, but it's typically not the focus of the session (although, you never know with Spirit). Out of the two types, mediumship readings is where I find I can be of best service, and so that's where I want to focus my energy (along with animal communication of course).

One of my closest friends laughed when I told her my plan to change my offerings, because she knows that there were so many times that I toyed with the idea of giving up mediumship instead and sticking only to psychic readings. Did you know, that even though mediumship was the first type of reading that I properly learned, and it was always something I adored, it was also the one that I always resisted the most? Not because I was ever bad at it, but because I didn't see myself as a medium.

For the longest time, I resisted doing mediumship readings professionally. I was so intimidated by the grief people feel in someone's passing, that it felt like too much pressure. I felt like I was trespassing on that grief by doing a reading for them (even though they were the ones scheduling the session with me).
I resisted it by thinking of myself as more of a psychic than a medium. I resisted owning the title of "medium", even long after I started my business as a psychic medium. I was so nervous anytime someone would schedule a mediumship session with me. I hid behind my psychic readings.

It was a slow transition to seeing myself as a medium over the years. I slowly began to do more and more mediumship, and less of the psychic readings, but I still wasn't fully owning the medium part of me. I think my real healing came after I started doing larger mediumship audience readings a year ago. I finally began saying "Oh, OK, I guess I am a medium". I think I kind of assumed that most of my audience readings would be more psychic in nature, as opposed to Spirits coming through. Turns out Spirit really wanted to connect through me, even in front of an audience. Isn't it strange how we don't accept obvious things about ourselves, or refuse to see it, even long after we've started doing it?

And now, mediumship is one of the things that brings me the greatest joy, and the healing that comes from it is my absolute favorite part of it. It doesn't replace the grieving process of course, but it can surely help it along a little, giving the client some peace and healing and faith that their loved ones are watching over them still. These changes that I'm making might not last forever of course. I might go back to offering psychic readings specifically as well, but for now, this change feels right to me.

I am of course still doing animal communication, with both living and passed animals. I think I might write another blog post soon about animals that pass, as I've been doing a lot of those readings as well lately.

Sending you all heaps of love and hoping we can all move forward into our truest selves!

Thea