On Grief, Mediumship, and Failing to Juggle It All
- AmericanWitch13
- Jul 27
- 6 min read
I grieve hard.
I let it consume my soul.
I wallow in the pain.
I replay conversations in my mind, reread texts and emails, listen to old voicemails, and watch videos relentlessly. I scroll through social media and take so many screenshots it's ridiculous.
And then I get back to work because I have bills to pay.
But I want more time. I want to feel every moment of the loss, take the time to dig through my memory banks and write down everything I can remember.
But there's the mortgage and the water bill. The cats need food, and so do I. The dishes need to be washed. The carpets need to be vacuumed. The litter, scooped. All before I run out of energy.
Adulthood is an endless list of errands with no gold star in sight.
But I want to lie in bed all day reading books they would have read. I want to reach out in my mind and have conversations with the dead.
Maybe that's why I do what I do. Maybe that's why I'm a medium. But I don't know which came first.
I was three when I realized I could see the dead. Prior to that, I'm not quite sure I could tell the difference.
In this excerpt from my book, 30 Real Signs from the Afterlife, I wrote about the earliest experience I can recall:
My grandfather had recently passed. I walked into my grandma’s bedroom and asked, “Why are you crying?”
“Because Grandpa is gone,” she replied.
“No, he isn’t,” I said. “He’s over there.” I pointed to a chair in the corner.
Many people have said to me that death shouldn't bother me because I'm a medium. Yet it's not really death, per se, that sends me to the brink. It's the transition. The going from dealing with said person in the physical, mundane world, then having to rediscover them as spirits.
Some change, some don't. Some ascend and seem to never return; some ascend but stick around helping out. Some seem to shun ascending, either because they don't know they're dead or because they have some unfinished business they think they need to take care of first. Some go quickly and quietly. Some seem to take forever to cross. There have been a handful of times I've connected with folks still in the process of their life review. It felt like going through a Doctor Who time warp with rainbow colors, sparkling lights, and cinematic memories flashing into infinity. (Typically one should wait for that process to finish before communicating, though.)
But sometimes… Sometimes I'm too grief-stricken by the loss to be able to handle the transition of a living person (or pet) to spirit buddy.
I carry a list in my head of all the names of cats and people I had the hardest time letting go. I talk to them constantly and feel their presence. They prop me up when I don't want to put the laundry away, and they communicate through automatic writing and other means when I need guidance.
But sometimes, even when they have the best intentions, their presence tumbles me into a free-falling spiral… My short-term memory gets zapped, I either have no appetite or binge eat garbage, I either can't sleep or sleep all day, and I struggle when they visit.
That's typically why we have the ritual of wakes and funerals, I think. To help us collectively support each other, process the loss, and move on, but sometimes I'm just not ready to do that in a socially acceptable timeframe.
I can't even tell you how long ago my cat Weasel died, yet I still grieve for him every day. I may not still break down into tears every day, but the pain is still there.
My recent friend's death continues to hit me despite the fact that she visits in spirit form nearly daily (or maybe because of it).
I knew she was gone before I knew it. The signs were all there, but I didn't want to see them. My husband, who's an atheist Buddhist, even saw her in the house before I did. He kept saying, “There's a ghost in here, and it's really disturbing me that you can't see it.”
I even videoed an odd occurrence with a refrigerator magnet.
But I still couldn't accept it. (When I finally knew she was gone, I heard her say plain as day, “For such a good medium, you can be a real blockhead sometimes.” lol)
And then Lilith showed up. A young, pregnant, long-haired tortie.
I knew she was Lilith instantly. And then she experienced a predictable traumatic birth. Because I had a feeling, I was able to act fast, but it still wasn't fast enough. We could only save one, but at least we did that.
I had all these grand plans after the Conscious Life Expo, where I won a freaking award for my book, and yet I've barely been able to celebrate that or finish everything I wanted to do between grieving my friend and rescuing a too-young mama cat and her three-legged boy.
And here's the final secret personal project I've been keeping to myself that’s added to the pile…and that I’m only sharing now because I need to get it off my chest…
I'm moving!! (In fact, I had hoped to be fully moved by now, but the universe decided we had to stay and save those two lives.) And it's a freaking lot to deal with selling your house and moving. So much!! I'm overwhelmed. And I can't even afford to take any time off because my husband has barely been able to work for well over a year. (Entertainment industry shenanigans.)
For comparison, he usually makes 3-5 times what I make. Largely by choice, because when he's working he makes so much that I don't really have to work full-time. When he's gainfully employed, I work just as much as I need to for my car payments, subscriptions, cat supplies, and whatever I want to do from U2 concerts to ghost hunts. But when he's not working, I have to work 3 times as much to take on the big bills, including the mortgage.
And if you're friends with me on social media, you know how much I love my garden but how much I'm not loving my neighborhood lately. I grew up in the country, but I've lived in cities for the last couple of decades (Boston, NYC, and LA), and I'm ready to go back to peace and quiet, wide open spaces, and mortgages that don't swallow me whole.
Don't get me wrong, I love my clients, I love giving readings, but I need more balance. I need more “me time.” After working so much to pay the bills, I have zero energy to create.
And I'm tired of consuming content without creating.
The imbalance is toxic to my soul.
And part of having more “me time” is having more time to grieve a beloved friend, who literally single-handedly helped me find myself so I could even have a career, and who supported me every step of the way, whether I failed or succeeded.
And I, her.
My friend and fellow cat lover, who sent me Lilith in cat form, and her precious son, Phoenix, who rose from the ashes of the traumatic birth. (We buried 4 kittens. I cried for days and days.)
But I had to get back to work because I had to pay the bills. And so I did, but along the way I had to drop several balls, or I wouldn't be able to function.
I post this now as a mea culpa to everyone I let down. I know I had a lot of things planned, and they're all delayed, but they're still all on track to happen eventually.
For now, I'm slowly coming out of my grief cocoon. (And attending a beloved friend's gorgeous fantasy realm wedding was the perfect kickoff despite Mercury retrograde nonsense.)
But I wanted to write this not simply to apologize for delaying retreats and guided meditations, but also to show you that it's ok to be human. It's ok to love someone so much that when they're gone you break down. It's a blessing to love someone that much. It's a blessing to know someone so magical that they change your world for the better. And it's ok to miss them and wish they were still here, even if they chose to leave.
And it's ok to take a long time to grieve. It's ok if you're not a hundred percent. It's all ok.
It's ok if projects need to be delayed and you can't juggle everything.
It's ok.
I tried. I failed. I flailed. And now I'm baring my soul. Here I am, messy human, and all.
I have a long list of classes, events, appearances, and interviews to share with you, which I'll do in the next post, but I wanted to catch you up on what's going on with me before blasting you with everything. I had meant to trickle it out, but, alas, here we are.
Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you soon!
Much love from LA,
Mel
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