hippie chickA few years ago I found myself driving to Byron Bay for my first spiritual retreat.

A lot of weird things had happened to me that year – smelling things that weren’t there, knowing things I couldn’t know, and spiritual guides showing up when I least expected it (i.e. during meditation in my yoga class) – and my mentor said the retreat would be helpful.

I wasn’t so sure.

Most of my contact with psychics until that point had been with women who lived outside the mainstream. They weren’t like me. None of my friends were psychic. My mentor was more mainstream but even so, I wasn’t sure how I would fit into this world I was suddenly part of.

As I drove the 2.5 hours to Byron Bay, I kept saying ‘I’m not a weird hippie chick, I’m not a weird hippie chick’ over and over in my head. It’s not that I had anything against hippies (be whoever you want to be, I say) but I definitely wasn’t one.

I was a public relations professional who wore suits and loved stilettoes. I had no desire to live an alternate, off-grid lifestyle. Psychics in my mind conformed to a cliché that, it turned out, wasn’t real at all.

During the five-day retreat I was constantly surprised at how normal everyone was. In fact, a lot of them were just like me and came from all walks of life.

There were some with hippie-like tendencies but there were also business people, a senior government administrator, a counselor and a dress designer. Others worked in nutrition, teaching and a range of other professions.

They were mainstream, just like me.

The retreat helped me to understand that maybe I wasn’t so strange after all and I wouldn’t need to abandon my mainstream life just because I was psychic. I could still be me.

These days I frequently meet people who are psychic. I’ll find myself in conversation with someone at a wedding, in a workshop or even on a bus and serendipitously it will come out somehow. I’ll be chatting about that part of my life and suddenly they’ll be sharing their own experiences. Sometimes they will have been too cautious to tell anyone about it before. And as we chat, I’m able to reassure them that they are normal and not going crazy.

My psychic journey has been tumultuous in many ways and it’s been a challenge to balance my life with the gifts and insights that have opened up to me.

But I am still me.

So for all of you out there who see the spirits of those who have passed over, have insights about things you can’t possibly know, feel the emotions of others or have other psychic happenings, please know you are not alone. You are one of many who walk this planet living a mainstream life.

And being psychic doesn’t mean you have to be a weird hippie chick.

If you’d like to meet other people who are beginning their psychic journey, please join us for A Night for Spiritual Beginners on Wednesday, 18 March 2015 in Brisbane. There are still a few spots available and you can find out more at http://wp.me/Pirqj-g1