Sometimes a parrot isn't a bird

Never Done: Consulted a psychic

I'm a skeptic, but I'm a curious skeptic. I pass by street psychics all the time and wonder what it would be like to go talk with one. More than anything else, I think it's a vague sense of embarrassment that has kept me from going in. Having a Never Done list and a public Never Done project is a great way to work around mild embarrassment though, and so I did a little internet research to see who would be a good person to go see, and I found great reviews for Gemma Deller.

The first thing that happened is that I worked straight though my appointment with her. When she sent me an email asking me where I was, I realized I had messed up the time. She was nice to me about it and we rescheduled for later in the day. When I told her (via email) that I'm usually hyper-organized, and don't miss appointments, she wrote back, "yes... I know... I had already picked up your energy... it's all good." Which felt to my skeptic self a predictable thing for her to write. Still, I was looking forward to the session with a genuinely open mind.

The first thing that she asked when I got there was, "Are you a writer?" I said yes, knowing that that's one of the easiest things to find out about me on a Google search, and also knowing that it is possible that she has real abilities to tell things about people. I made a decision right then not to worry about any of that, and to just be in the moment, and to accept and engage with the her and experience respectfully and open-heartedly. And I guess I'll ask you to do the same as you read this.

She channeled both my parents -- and said they were great communicators, and that she liked them a lot. She/they talked about themselves, my sister, and me, and urged me not to worry about whether or not I am good enough (at what?) -- because the answer is yes. She mentioned that I would, or should, or might travel to Spain in June, and that "I should document it." Then she said she suddenly heard the phrase, "Monkeys at the zoo." This didn't mean anything to me, and I said so. She said not to worry if something like this didn't mean anything, but to write it down, because it would be common for it to make sense at some later time.

Skipping ahead past some other stuff (I'm cherry picking the most specific and interesting stuff for this post) she asked if I'd recently had a falling out with someone. I couldn't think of a falling out specifically, but I did think of a discomfort with a particular person that was raising questions for me about how I should engage with them. Gemma said, "Their name is something like xxx, or xxy." The second name she mentioned was the (uncommon) name of the person I am feeling uncomfortable with. I have to admit, I was a little shaken and surprised by this. She went on to say that this is not a bad person, but that if I give too much they will take too much, and that it's a good opportunity for me to work on boundaries. That I should not get muscled by their mouth -- that I need to speak my piece too. That I should hold on for a while, that this will work out.

The experience of listening to a psychic talk is fascinating. You can't help but impose your own thoughts and experience on what you are hearing, especially when there's a hook like a person's uncommon name. At the same time, you want to be careful not to impose too much of your own experience onto what you are hearing. At the same time, you want to keep your own perspective, and be open to your own interpretations of what you are hearing, and figure out your own responses. For example: Gemma said that I should hold on for a while, that this will all work out. That's open for interpretation, right? It could mean that I should keep things the same with the person I'm uncomfortable with, but it could mean that I'm supposed to hold on by putting the breaks on a little, and that things will work out by changing. In other words, I don't feel like I should necessarily take a literal approach to everything she told me, but use it as a guide to discover what makes sense to me.

But let me go on, because amid the love life perspective and the career perspective and the parenting perspective she offered, something strange happened. She said that out of the blue, my mother said, "Parrot." This didn't mean anything to me, and I said so. To which the psychic said that my mother said, "Ask your sister."

I thought to myself, "My sister and I are really not in that kind of casual touch -- as much as I would love us to be." But I didn't say that aloud, and just wrote it down like she had told me to earlier when there was something that didn't mean anything to me.

That night, I had just finished a project when the phone rang, and it was my sister calling. I asked her what was up, and she said it would freak me out a little but everything was OK. And then she told me that my cousin Kenny's wife Gwen had breast cancer, and had recently had a double mastectomy. Let me back this up a little. Yesterday I got an email from my uncle Steve telling everyone what time to show up for Christmas, and to try to incorporate pink into the presents -- even if it was just the wrapping paper -- for breast cancer awareness. I wondered why, and put it on a list to call him to check in, and forwarded the email to my sister to see if she knew what was up with that, and to Josh just to show him, and then went on with my day. When my sister got Steve's email, she picked up the phone and called, and reached our aunt Julie, who let her know what has been going on. She also found out that Kenny and Gwen had been posting her progress and process on Facebook (which hadn't posted his updates in my news feed.) So when I got off the phone with my sister, I went to Kenny and Gwen's Facebook pages, and saw the whole story of her diagnosis and surgery and healing, and even a couple photos. And then I noticed that on her page, under her photo, it says this:

Maiden Name: Gwen Snyder, previous married name: Parrott

Which of course I knew, but was not thinking about when the psychic said that my mom had said "Parrot" and "ask your sister." Crazy, right?

I've been thinking about how to look at this experience through a Mussar lens. The first thought I had was the mide (middah) Humility: Seek wisdom from everyone. In this situation, I have the opportunity to seek wisdom from Gemma, from my deceased parents; from my sister; and from Gwen, who sought wisdom from her physical therapy colleagues who recommended a different course of treatment (bilateral mastectomy) than her doctor had originally recommended (lumpectomy and radiation) which ended up being a great decision, because they found a second, more pernicious, tumor that hadn't shown up on her mammograms, would have gone undetected, and could have spread. (I am so glad she listened to her friends, and that her doctor listened to her.)

Also, ultimately, humility means that I get to seek wisdom from myself -- starting with not letting a little embarrassment keep me from doing things I'm actually want to do.