My clients and my students ask me this all the time. Unlike my scholarly path, the answer was never a straight line. It is a story. This is where it begins.
This was never a direct path.
Cherise Pollard · Ma'hara
As far back as I can remember, no entity came to me and told me I had a gift. Nobody in my family talked about having psychic abilities. Later I would learn that there were some women in my bloodline, on both sides, who had abilities, or who dabbled in divination. But in the beginning, I was just a regular kid who rode her bike around our neighborhood in Farmingdale, NY, who played with her siblings and her friends, and who loved her grandparents and great-grandmother like nobody's business.
There was a moment when I fell out of a car onto the highway, Route 110, the Sunrise Highway on Long Island. I felt something protecting me. Something stopped an 18-wheeler from running me over. I survived with a few scrapes on my arm and some cracked ribs, and because one of my lungs collapsed, I had to be hospitalized.
When I came home, our dear family friends, Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, visited me. I remember his fervent prayer. He was a deacon in his church, and the energy was so powerful. Again, I felt something moving in the space around me.
Long Island · the first knowing
I did not realize it at the time, but I learned to read energy so I could anticipate the movements of the bullies I met in elementary school, on Long Island and then in Central NJ, where we moved in the early eighties. I was always trying to figure out how to get ahead, or at least out of the way. I was different enough, a bit weird, always awkward, that I mostly kept to myself. I did have a small group of friends who have stayed in my life from middle school until now.
In high school I was drawn to horror. I gobbled up every Stephen King book I could buy from K-Mart, and I devoured Rosemary's Baby when I found it on a shelf at my grandmother's house. I thought I might write horror. I still might. The difference is that now, the stories I would tell are not fictional.
I started writing in the first FPAC creative writing cohort, the Fine and Performing Arts Center of the Freehold Regional High School District. I did not realize it yet, but writing, for me, is a form of channeling: tapping into the energies and telling the stories that come through. Later, at Rutgers, I know there were energies in Demarest Hall, the dorm I lived in for two years. I felt things I could not name. I thought I had anxiety. I felt emotions that were not mine.
Reading, writing, and rooms that were never quiet
When I moved to Pittsburgh for graduate school, my abilities started to develop. I was living in old buildings among people I did not really know. Energies moved through those buildings, and of course through the Cathedral of Learning. I learned to read tarot with my friend Christina Bell, and we read all the time.
It was intense, and we did not really understand that we needed good energy management. Scary things happened. After a while, I stopped. I put my cards away, and I did not take them out again for almost twenty years.
In those years I lived alone, mostly, and I talked to people on the phone constantly. I gave everyone advice. I was always asked about relationships, especially the ones just beginning. I could tell people whether the one they wanted felt the same, and whether it would last. I thought I was being logical. I was really reading the couple's energy. I did a lot of free readings back then.
Old buildings · almost twenty years of silence
When I graduated, I moved to West Chester, PA, to start my job. Along the way, my favorite shows were Touched by an Angel, Medium, and Ghost Whisperer. I watched Sylvia Browne on Montel Williams and John Edward on Oprah. I was transfixed by their talents, and I never once thought that would be me. Ever.
Things changed when I was at the house of a friend who had abilities. She said, casually, that my grandfather was present. I paused. I felt him near me. I acknowledged him. Chills of recognition, and then confusion. Would that happen again? Could it?
The moment it stopped being someone else's gift
Well, it did happen again. I started to learn about crystals. I bought my first stones for energy protection, because everything scared me. I had no idea what I was doing, and I did not want to encounter anything bad. I learned enough to build a spiritual Fort Knox in my home. Nothing was getting in.
Outside the house was another matter, and I had a great deal to learn. So I bought books. The first was You Are Psychic by Debra Lynn Katz, and it is still the bedrock of everything I do. When Chester County Book's West Goshen location closed, I bought an entire shelf of psychic and mediumship books.
That is how I found Amy Major, and Rescue Mediumship. I tracked her down in New Hampshire and asked whether she would offer her courses online. After a few months, she did. I believe I was her first remote student.
You Are Psychic · the bedrock · Rescue Mediumship
In the midst of all this, I learned how to fight spiritually, how to protect my energy from attack. I connected with old friends who practiced African Diasporic, earth-based spirituality. My awareness opened as I learned about the Orishas, and I became aware of ancestral spiritual empowerment. I connected to my Native American roots and started practicing Shamanism. I spent one summer meditating to talk with my mediumship guides in the morning, and journeying to the other world in the evening. To round out that awareness, I studied Wicca, remembering the power of ritual and the power of nature. I have become a Reiki Master Healer and Teacher, and Reiki is an amazing gift to the universe.
Along the way, I have become a channel for spirit and for galactic entities, meeting spirits from other dimensions and timelines. I have sung Light Language and spoken with entities from other galaxies. I have cleared unwelcome energies from people and their homes. I have healed clients, friends, family, and pets, near and far, with Reiki. I have helped friends and loved ones transition to the other side. I have held, in my own heart, the energy of those who were too afraid to go, and I have helped them across.
Channel · healer · a doorway for those who are ready
I have had so many fascinating experiences. I have even used Reiki to bring my own physical and mental health into balance. (I still see my regular doctor and a whole roster of specialists, make no mistake.)
But the most rewarding part of this practice, the one I have built in community and in conversation with my psychic, medium, Shamanic, Wiccan, and Reiki friends, is the support, the healing, the laughter, the innerstanding. It is the being seen, heard, and understood in all aspects of myself and my life. And it is being able to hold that same space, the space that is necessary for fully healing, for learning, and for simply being here, for those who desperately need it.
If any part of you recognized itself in this, that recognition is the beginning. There is no rush and no pressure. When you are ready, the door is open, and I would be honored to meet you there.
A warm, unhurried welcome · held in complete confidence
