The Psychic at the Airport

Of a cross-country flight, a rose gold walker, women giving back to other women, and the stranger who saw me before I said a word.

EXHAUSTION

I have spent my adult life being paid to doubt. You may remember that about me. It matters again here, because I am about to tell you a story that my analyst brain has audited six ways from Sunday, and it still stands.

It starts at BWI – after one of the most turbulent, life changing two weeks of my life. My husband and I had accomplished what I think was close to the impossible – getting word my practice needed to find a new home through no fault of my own, swallowing the news and picking up my strength to smartly and swiftly find the home OUAC was always meant to land at – Buttercup Cottage.  Moving an entire studio, getting our kids back to school, my immune system taking a hit and getting sick, getting well enough to push forward and getting on a plane to California for a moment I waited a lifetime for – start my PhD.

I tell you all of this because part of me was already wondering if I fell asleep somewhere along the way and it was all a dream.  The dream part would make sense for what I am about to share – you know the kind of dream where you see yourself and all kinds of pieces are moving around you that even in dreamland, you simply have to say “Ummm what in the actual fuck is happening here?”.

So here we go!  BWI airport…

ABOUT THE ROSE GOLD MOTORIZED WALKER AND HEREDITARY SPASTIC PARAPLEGIA

This part is not a tangent – it matters for this story.

If you have been around me, you might see me walking around, maybe looking like I have stiff muscles or a little limp on some days, other days with a cane, and sometimes with a walker.  I have hereditary spastic paraplegia.  It makes my legs spastic (tight) and weak – and a whole lot goes into the recipe of unpredictability as to what their agenda is for any given day.  I do know that part of their recipe for tightness and weakness includes stress, sprinkled with an extended period of not moving followed by a need to walk a long distance.  I already shared the stress piece so couple that with a cross-country flight and walking across a large airport or two.  After getting literally stuck at a NASCAR race this summer and having to sit until my legs calmed down, it was time to upgrade my mobility equipment.  My husband announced that a rose gold motorized walker/power wheelchair combo was on its way to me.

That rose gold motorized device was exactly what I needed for this journey.  And it turns out she turns a lot of heads and gets a lot of questions.  I love it – she is gorgeous, unique and I am happy to tell people about her if it helps even one person.

So, I was not surprised when a woman with her own walker came up to me while I waited to board my flight to California.  She looked about 35-40 years old – beautiful, gentle and definitely some sass as she had decorated her walker with flames.  We shared information about our walkers and then I boarded the plane.  She sat a row behind me – I zoned out, headphones playing something I do not remember.  Rest.  Finally. 

THE WOMAN WHO WAS NOT GOING TO LET ME SHRINK MY TRUTH

When I deplaned, I was waiting for my walker and so was the woman who had chatted with me before we boarded. She looked at me and began another conversation –

ENTER the unbelievable. She asked:

“What do you do?” I looked around and repeated the question back to her.   This happened a couple of times before she finally said "What do you do? Are you a healer?"

(I imagine she was thinking for God’s sake – answer the question! 😊 )

I had not said a word about my work. Not to her, not to anyone, not in six hours.  I was NOT about talking on that flight.  I was about rest.  I asked her why she asked me that – she must have really wondered how long my answering questions with questions was going to go on.  Eventually I spit out a proper response and I said, “I own a somatic healing business”.  I had a feeling she was asking more but I was still in ‘just sprinkle what you do Shannon – you don’t need judgement’ mode.  Again I asked, ‘Why did you ask me that?”  There I was minimizing the important and hard work I have been pouring everything into.

After my very vanilla and minimalist response and my zillionth inquiry as to why she asked me that, she nodded like I had confirmed something she already knew. Because she had. She responded to me:

“Because I am a psychic and I do similar work.  I wanted to ask you when we had a little privacy – you know you can’t just go up to anyone and ask that kind of thing”.

Yes Ma’am – I get that.

A psychic saw me in an airport and knew “what I do” and “who I am”.  MIC DROP – see why I mentioned that feeling of being in a dream that you know doesn’t make sense?

My “I’m 50 and don’t care what people think” brain turned on and I took the gloves off. Why not – also I was never going to see her again.  It felt good to try telling my truth on for size.  I told her my truth - that I am a somatic healer and a clairvoyant Reiki practitioner. That I see things when I work and I draw what I see. That I run a studio where women come to put down what was never theirs to carry. I told her honestly that I didn’t want to say that out loud for fear of judgement.

In that exact moment, she showed me what our relationship was going to be made of.  I didn’t realize it because risk analyst me was still wondering what the hell was going on.  But she said to me,

“Don’t DO THAT.  You tell people who you are.  You say what you do.  I saw you. I knew.  Your truth will send the wrong ones away and let the right ones who need you find you”. Remember this word – MENTORSHIP.

I was in a swirl of assessing whether I was dreaming, if I was being scammed, if I missed somewhere at BWI where I randomly announced who I was or what I do (spoiler alert – none of those hypotheses were accurate). She pressed on, told me her first name, and told me to email a person at an institute in NY.  I’m not trying to be vague.  She did say the name of the person and the institute, but by the time I got my walker and was on my way, I couldn’t remember most of what she said.

I got to my hotel, remembered at least the name of the institute, sent an email off to any contact I could find on their website, stating I had no idea why I was supposed to email them but a woman at the airport told me I needed to. Brilliant, Shannon.

I went to sleep. I woke up the next morning, and her name was simply there, waiting for me, the way information sometimes arrives for me now – with a first name, good rest, and a little info, I researched and I found her online:

Monique Chapman. Psychic, Healer & Mentor to Women Entering Entering Their Sage Era.

Monique Chapman

Monique’s desire to mentor women on their journey to Sage is her literal mantra. She shared with me:

“In my professional work, my focus is on supporting women's success - specifically guiding a woman as she turns 50 and steps fully into her power.

I often share that turning 50 is a rebirth, where age 50 represents a newborn phase, 51 represents a one-year-old, and so on. By this stage in life, family dynamics have often shifted, as children are typically self-sufficient adults, or very close to it, and personal relationships have stabilized.

This milestone is an opportunity to begin living for oneself. I refer to this as the "Sage/Crone Goddess" phase: combining the openness, innocence, and exuberance of youth with decades of acquired wisdom to step confidently into one's truth”.

Image of and provided by Monique Chapman

A FAMOUS MENTOR & THE GRANDMOTHER EFFECT

Monique Chapman.

Famous psychic. Decades of practice. Television appearances. Faculty at the very institute she had named. Real, real, real.

So, I emailed her, and she answered the same day. Not with a polite brush-off. With an introduction, a real one, to the institute she had named – in an actual coherent message recommending me as a speaker. And then she did something I did not see coming: she kept showing up. She shared with me that she is 73 years old –

OK IF THE REST OF THIS BLEW MY MIND, HOW WAS THIS WOMAN I THOUGHT WAS 35-40 ACTUALLY 73 YEARS OLD?

I made my way back home after an amazing weekend at school in California.  I certainly felt empowered – and I felt seen and validated.  Monique seeing me and saying it was a huge part of that.  I won’t minimize what the need to move my studio felt like in the weeks before I got on that plane.  Pain, self-doubt, uncertainty, fear.  But the universe, God wasn’t standing for that.  In quick order, coming down from that mountain in California, I knew I had been held and I was never alone through it all.  I remembered my value. 

After I was home, Monique asked me for a phone call - and the entire purpose of the call, its only agenda, was to pour into me. Contacts. Guidance. Belief. A famous psychic found me in an airport, saw me through six hours of silence, and then handed me a piece of my future. MENTORSHIP – she told me she had always known she would give back and she would do that by helping others start their path.

There are studies and theories on the Grandmother Effect –

that is the role grandmothers play in society.  The grandmother effect shows the impact the shifting role of the post-menopausal woman has on her family, on her community.  Her time having to raise children has come and gone. In that transition, her very valuable role in extending her reach to lift up her family as a teacher and as a wise woman pouring into her greater community is a role that has been studied and shown to have profound impacts on those she pours into.  I love this and I see it unfolding.

Here is what I have come to understand about that day.

I had just come through the hardest professional season of my life. I had been carrying something heavy for months, and I had gotten good at carrying it, which is exactly the problem. The universe was not going to stand for me continuing to carry that heavy, and it was certainly not going to keep whispering about it. It sent a psychic to an airport. It sat her a row behind me for six hours on a flight. It made her ask out loud the question I had been answering too quietly for too long. It made her let me know that she saw what I kept whispering. 

Yes, her message to me was clear - STOP SHRINKING. The woman asked if I was a healer and I almost said no, some nonsense about a little studio. I am a healer. I am a clairvoyant. I am doctoral student building research on seemingly sporadic hereditary neurological conditions, the inheritance our bodies carry, studied by a woman whose body carries one. None of that is small, and pretending it is small serves no one, least of all the women who walk through my door hoping I will show them how to stop shrinking too.

Beyond that loud message she wasn’t even trying to send to me quietly, there was so much more.

THE CONNECTION. EMPOWERMENT THROUGH SISTERHOOD.

Monique not only supported me writing this blog and sharing the story of our encounter – she encouraged it.  And she went a step further – she shared something with me that I think brings out the shine of her soul even more – the idea of Connection and Sisterhood through empowerment is literally Monique’s mantra and in an airport far from her home, she found a woman who had just turned 50 running a business called Once Upon A Connection – just coming into her Sage era and committing this time to bring other women into their empowerment.

In a very rapidly paced moment, I saw

CONNECTION. EMPOWERMENT. THE CYCLE OF WOMEN POURING INTO EACH OTHER WHEN THEIR FONT OF KNOWLEDGE WAS OVERFLOWING.  Lift EACH OTHER UP.  BUILD, REACH OUT A HAND. VALIDATE.

HEREDITARY SPASTIC PARAPLEGIA AS A TEAMMATE

I saw other things – the hereditary spastic paraplegia, the walker – the thing that sometimes makes me feel like less – it opened a pathway, a conversation to that connection, to that pouring in.  And my absolute fortitude to push forward in life despite tight and weak legs can open pathways for others to push forward – my rose gold walker my ambassador. 

A NERVOUS SYSTEM AT REST

This is what I mean when I say my work is about connection and women's empowerment, and that the two are the same thing wearing different coats. One woman saw another woman across an airport and refused to let her stay hidden. That is connection. That is empowerment. That is the whole business model of the universe, and we so often brush it aside or cover it with self-doubt, rushing, never pausing to see it or to remember to pour into each other. 

Connect. Empower. Give without expectation of receiving something in return.

And my nervous system, the one I tend so carefully, the one I teach other women to listen to? It appreciated the settling. Somewhere between her question and her answer to my email, something in me that had been braced for months finally sat down.

Six hours of silence. One question. Everything that is the beginning after.

And Monique – thank you for finding me and knowing to mentor me into year one of my Sage era.

I gifted myself this photoshoot for my 50th birthday - this is how I’m rolling into my Sage Era.

With Warmth & Empowerment

Shannon Elizabeth Marsh

Once Upon A Connection