My Mother, the Psychic

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Louise Helene & Kim Osborn Sullivan, authors of I Saw Your Future and He’s Not It: A Psychic’s Guide to True Love.

I’ve spent my life surrounded by psychic energy, learning how to listen to my intuition and helping others do the same. That’s why it felt so natural to write my upcoming psychic relationship book, Saw Your Future and He’s Not It: A Psychic’s Guide to True Love. Looking back, it seems inevitable that I’d grow up to be a psychic advisor, carrying on the tradition started by my late mother, the original Louise Helene. She was a psychic advisor, medium, radio talk show host, minister in the Spiritualist Church, and mother of ten children. She was my hero. But there was one downside to having a psychic for a mother—she knew what kind of trouble her kids would get into before we did.

When I was a child, my mother let me sit on her lap while she conducted psychic readings for some of her regular clients. The female clients would bring me candy and greet me with a hug and kiss. I was always fascinated by these wonderful smelling, stylishly coiffed women with their color coordinated shoes and handbags. I was convinced they were movie stars.

Sometimes my mother’s clients had questions and problems that weren’t appropriate for a little girl’s ears. When that happened, I was gently told to go play and sent from my mother’s office. But fascination with my mother’s crystal ball, Tarot cards, and fashionable clients enticed me to linger outside the door, straining to hear what was happening on the other side. The solid wood was thick, though, and I couldn’t hear anything. One day, I decided to employ a spy technique I had seen on television. I pressed a water glass to the door and put my ear to it. But instead of hearing juicy secrets from my mother’s client, I heard my mother’s voice say, “Put that glass away now.” I was mortified and never used the glass again.

My mother’s children weren’t the only ones subject to her uncanny insights. Her grandchildren also had to worry about Grandma Louise knowing too much. Kim Osborn Sullivan, my niece and co-author on our upcoming book, was one of those grandchildren. In the 1980s, when Kim was a teenager, my mother was especially suspicious of young men who drove those big conversion vans. She called the vans “bedrooms on wheels” because the big empty back end could hold a mattress and offered lots of room for all sorts of activities. She predicted that Kim would date someone who drove a van and said she should be very careful. Kim, being a teenage girl, didn’t take the warnings too seriously.

That changed the night Kim went on her first date. She was 15 years old and very excited, but when her date pulled up out in front, Kim’s heart nearly stopped. He was driving a battered black conversion van. She could practically hear Grandma Louise’s voice repeating the words “bedroom on wheels.” Fortunately there wasn’t any mattress in the back of this particular van, but Kim still spent the evening pressed in the corner of her seat. She wanted to stay as far from her date as possible, so as to avoid giving him the wrong idea about what possibilities the spacious van held. When he dropped her off at home, she darted out of that van like a pack of wolves was chasing her.

Today Kim and I are both grateful for the time we had with my mother and the guidance she gave us. She kept us out of trouble, even though at the time we didn’t always appreciate it.

Our thanks to Louise & Kim for their guest post! For more from Louise Helene & Kim Osborn Sullivan, read their article “Relationships: 4 Ways to Win the Waiting Game.”