🔮 Calling Reassurance: What I Wish the Psychic Would Say to Me

Can I skip the $300 and just say it to myself?

Rachel Dratch as “Medium Impressive” via John Oliver’s episode on Psychics

Every few weeks, my fingers twitch toward my phone. I visit the website of an intuitive I met with several times a few years ago at critical life junctures, recalling how spot-on-accurate she was about many forthcoming events in my life. She came highly recommended through a friend, and though I was hesitant at first, I was always awed by her abilities by the time I hung up.

She got right down to business. She would answer the phone and almost immediately begin speaking, confirming details no one could know and unsearchable from the internet, like my grandfather’s name. She saw rings and celebrations the year Michael and I got married before I knew that we would get married. She saw me traveling to Europe several times during the year I was hired by a luxury fashion retailer for two in-person trainings in Paris. In 2020, she said I was entering a very creatively fertile period, a few months before I launched a new podcast and started working on my third book. When I lived in the NoLIta studio apartment, she saw books teetering up to the ceilings. Indeed, my books were stacked in piles even atop the 4x8 Ikea shelves, all the way up to the ceilings.

Some of this may have been coincidence, the power of suggestion, or affirming a choice I might have made in the months ahead anyway — but most of all, I remember hanging up feeling reassured and hopeful. Someone saw me, handing me a new paddle to row through the sea of uncertainty, and leaving me with the sense that it was all going to be okay. (Though, of course, an intuitive can’t promise that if that’s not what they’re seeing).

I haven’t spoken with her in a few years. But recently, I have been overcome with the urge to book a session. My own reassurances to myself aren’t doing much. Clearly something in my psyche is itchy for it—aka I’m feeling vulnerable and seeking answers outside of myself (tsk tsk, say the Personal Development Police).

That’s why many psychics get a bad rap, and rightfully so—they prey on people’s vulnerability and desperation for an answer from someone, anyone.¹ (Michael and I ran into a woman he knew from Lebanon at a Lower East Side house party once running exactly this kind of 800-line scam, and she admitted it was a complete sham).²

One of the biggest reasons I hesitate to call the one I know is that I have no business spending money on something so optional and ephemeral when I don’t know where the mortgage payment is coming from. Every $300 counts.

And yet, I recall fondly those warm fuzzy feelings when someone tells you what you want to hear.

I do believe some people have true gifts in this arena, in sensibilities most of us are not tapped into. When I have met with intuitives who are experienced and wise—and whether a reading ends up entirely true or not—there is a calm that washes over, even just for a moment or for a day.

Can’t I save the $300 and just tell myself what I want to hear?

What if I just imagined that I booked a call with the intuitive? I could just conjure up what I wish she would say to me, what might provide a balm to the nerves and questions rattling in my brain, what would make me feel redeemed.

She might reassure me that I haven’t been veering too far off the best path (for me) after all, that my stubbornness is leading somewhere important.

I can almost hear her delivering a set of just-for-me set of fortune cookies:

• Wow, this time has really been a crucible for you. You will be able to do so much with it on the other side.

• Don’t worry, things will improve. They will take a little more time, but you will start to feel more grounded and balanced soon.

• All the work you are putting in now is not for naught, keep going.

• You have creative gifts! Don’t be shy about pursuing them.

• Your career is not over, you’re just in a prolonged liminal state.

• I definitely see a fourth book in your future, and it will do really well. It will bring you many surprising gifts.

• You and Michael are strong, and you always bounce back stronger together from challenges.

• Yes, you do thrive in New York City, and you will get many invitations to help you leave and recharge in nature, too.

• I understand these years have taken a toll on your health; this is a priority now, and you are already returning to a state of wellness with proper focus. Keep going!

You would think I could skip the call (and the spending) and just read the statements above to myself as a list of affirmations. But the thing is, lately I’m finding it hard to believe them. My morale is low, as I have shared in previous posts. Sometimes it makes a difference just to hear someone outside of your own loopy mind say it.

These statements above are all rose-colored desires anyway. Maybe the psychic would tell me I’m delusional and need to throw in the towel on my business and New York City already, and that the jig really is up (a favorite line of my inner critic).

For now, I’ve put down the phone. I can only take things one day at a time, and remind myself that no one has all the answers—not me, not the crowd, and probably not even the psychic.³ The only answers I need to heed are the ones deep inside, from that still quiet voice that only I can hear.

❤️⁴

1. Check out John Oliver’s episode on Psychics from Last Week Tonight:

And the spoof site that accompanies it (source of the gif above)

2. The New York Times ran an interesting piece on all those NYC psychic flyers, “Keano Is N.Y.’s Most Famous and Mysterious Subway Psychic. I Found Her.” (Gift Link)

3. Probably. But what if she does?!

4. If you enjoyed this post, you might also appreciate:

🙃 Are You in Your Flop Era?

🗽Listening to the Magic of New York City

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