Psychic Telephone · 53
Joanie
Not sure what Psychic Telephone is all about? Check out our first and second posts for an introduction to the project. And read our first post about Joanie here.
Joanie has done some trainings with other mediums, especially early on. There’s a very active medium community in New York, so she went to a medium group for a while, and message circles and séance groups. But a lot of what she’s learned has just come through experience. Like at first, she felt like if she received a message, she had to deliver it. She felt she was obligated to share it, to provide this service for the dead and for their loved ones. So she’d go around saying, Can I tell you something crazy? But crazy felt like the wrong word, like it cheapened this profound and heartfelt thing she was doing. And she doesn’t think she’s crazy at all—though who knows? It’s all the same channel. So she tweaked her language and started saying, Can I tell you something unusual?
And then as she was practicing those muscles, it became too loud, very loud. Other mediums have talked to her about this too. As soon as you can connect to the other side, because it is uncommon that someone can do it in this very concrete way, you become a beacon of light in the spirit world and they just flock to you. For her it was like there was a door in the back of her head with the dead all lining up behind it, knocking on that door. A whole line of ancestors waiting, wanting her to deliver messages for them. Everywhere she went—restaurants, crowded trains—she’d feel the knocking, feel the line of people waiting. It can be hard to navigate the world like that.
Then she had a very bad experience. She was on the train, next to a woman, and as it was crossing the bridge from Brooklyn into Manhattan she started receiving messages from a mother and father—the woman’s parents—saying it was her birthday. And they were so excited that Joanie was there to speak for them. They described a cake they made for the daughter’s birthday every year and were so sorry they couldn’t make it for her this year. Joanie wasn’t sure about just turning to a stranger on the train. But the message was so concrete, and she saw there was just one more stop before she got off at 14th Street. So she thought, worst-case scenario it’s awkward and she leaves.
This was when Joanie still identified as male, but she was so obviously gay that it never occurred to her that someone might take it the wrong way. So she turned to the woman and started saying, Can I tell you something very unusual? And the woman just went, No! Get away from me! Stop! Shouting this on the crowded train. And everyone looked at Joanie. And at the time she was this weird-looking guy or whatever, so everyone thought she was doing something skeezy or trying to sexually assault this woman. It was so scary that she got off and just ran away, really struggling because the family was very upset that she hadn’t been able to deliver their message. They were so unhappy and disappointed, and it took them an hour to leave her head.
At that point she realized that she needed to find ways, build some walls, to protect herself from that kind of thing. It was a process of learning how to turn it on and off at will. And establishing a system about when delivering messages is or is not appropriate. Some mediums literally work a nine-to-five schedule. The agreement they have with the spirit world is that they’re available between those hours and that’s it. For her it’s a little more loosey-goosey, but she definitely has some different boundaries in place now.