In 2008 I met a couple and did readings for both of them, separately, a few months apart.  Paul asked me to do an interview for him, so I did!

Below is the interview from 2008.  Since the time of this interview, we have become friends but prior to 2008, I did not really know either of them.  I mentored Drea for a few months, (around 2009), and now she is also doing readings and Reiki healing/teaching, as her main line of work.

Here is the INTERVIEW WITH A PSYCHIC (as first published on Paul’s website many years ago).

An Interview With a Psychic

By Paul Piotrowski on Aug 1, 2007 in Spirituality

Just over a year ago, I asked myself the question of “Are psychic’s real?” and “If so, how do they fit into the realm of personal development?”   Naturally, mainstream science and what we’re taught in school tells us that psychics are not real because their abilities have not been scientifically proven yet by mainstream science.  However, if their abilities are not real, then how come some law enforcement agencies in North America use them to solve crimes?  I mean, aren’t police officers some of the most skeptical people out there?  Why do movies continue to show psychic characters and how they fit into the world around us in different ways?  Is it because deep down, we know that it is possible?  Or is it just superstition?

I decided to look into this further, but I wanted first hand experience instead of someone else’s biased opinion so I ordered a few readings online via email.  I asked some questions and got some answers.  Although the answers were very insightful, and the advice very practical, I was still not convinced that there was any psychic phenomena involved in delivering the answers.  There could have been, but the answers also could have been given by anyone who has read my blog and used it to get a profile of who I am etc.  I was looking for more “proof”.

Shortly after, for my wife’s stagette party, her bride of honour hired a psychic to do readings for them as one of the activities during the day.  This is when things got a little weird.  The psychic that they had do their readings was Tamara Hawk.  For my wife’s reading, my wife didn’t have any specific questions so she just got the psychic to give her a general reading.  After telling my wife a few things relating to her, she started telling her some information about me and the kind of things I was struggling with at the time and what would happen.  My wife told me about this the next day and I was rather surprised because she was pretty much bang on in terms of describing the things that were happening in my life, and these were not things that you could guess by being in our house, or by reading my blog or anything like that.  My wife was really impressed, and asked Tamara to leave a brochure.  When I looked at the brochure and saw a picture of Tamara, I instantly knew, intuitively, that she was real.  Don’t ask my why, but I trust my intuition.  I didn’t pursue a reading at that time though, and I’ll admit that I was a bit scared.

A few more months passed by and I had another email reading done with another psychic, and once again the answers were great but not convincing.  I was back to square one, more confused than anything.  Shortly after that I decided to get a reading done with Tamara.  I checked out her website and found out she also does email readings which is what I was looking for.    This time, however, the questions I asked had zero interest in “testing” whether psychics work, but rather I wrote my questions from the point of view of already believing the psychic is real.  I did this because I wanted to make sure that this time I had zero intention of “testing the psychic”.  This is something that Tamara and most psychics will tell you blocks their ability to give a proper reading.  If you’re simply doing a reading to test if the psychic is real then your ego will block everything and you might as well save your money.  I wanted to get my ego completely out of the way on this one.  I sent her some questions and anxiously awaited my answers.  Since these readings take a bit of time, a few days passed, I got busy at work and I forgot all about it.

I don’t remember exactly how many days it took to get my reading back, but I do remember all of a sudden thinking “Oh yeah, I wonder if that reading is done yet.” and checking my email and in that exact moment my reading came in.  Tamara’s reading came at the perfect time, and I remember having a smile on my face because in the reading she said “I hope it arrives just at the rigth time”.  The reading answered the questions I asked, but more then that she gave me some insight into a few things I didn’t specifically ask about.  This is where I was shocked.  She told me that amongst my spirit guides there was talk about a move coming up very soon for me, and she described the circumstances of the move and how the move will provide my family with more comfort especially in terms of space and lifestyle, and that the move will be slightly outside of my comfort zone moving into a new city.  I was excited.  She was bang on with her reading.  We had just gotten an accepted offer on a home we were trying to buy, outside of the city we lived in on a property about 40x the size of our current home (talk about more space!).  The thing is that besides my realtor, my wife, the seller, and I think one other person, nobody even knew about this yet.  I can hear you skeptics thinking she somehow did a lookup on the public property records for real estate, but that’s not possible because we only had a signed accepted offer not a completed sale with title transfer, so there was no public record of us buying the home yet.  I give this example, not to convince any skeptics as obviously this won’t do it for them.  In fact, nothing you read ever will, so if you’re truly interested in knowing the truth you’ll have to do what I did and experiment on your own by getting some readings done personally.  I’m just relaying one of the things in the reading that was bang on in terms of telling me something I didn’t even ask about, that nobody except a very small group of people should even know about.  The rest of the reading was also pretty amazing, but I won’t go into details as that is not the purpose of this article.

This article is about doing an interview with a psychic named Tamara Hawk.  After my reading with her I knew I was dealing with the “real thing” so I started to do more research on psychics.  I read some books, articles and such and even played around with a Tarot deck for fun.  One of the books I was reading titled, “But You Already Knew That”, gave me a totally different perspective on who psychics are.  They don’t all work at the local fair with a crystal ball in front of them and a deck of Tarot cards.  Not all of them choose to do readings, but rather keep their abilities to themselves, while others only do readings for people they trust who won’t judge or ridicule them.  In fact, you could be working with a psychic or a few psychics at work and you wouldn’t even know it.  Heck, Bill Gates could be psychic and just choosing not to tell anyone!  Ok, maybe not.  But anyhow, I now had a lot more questions on my plate and I contacted Tamara to ask her if she would be willing to answer some questions about being psychic that I could post on my blog.  I was really excited when she replied that she would do it so I began working on my first set of questions for her.  Keep in mind that I was not interested in coming up with questions to try to prove/disprove her abilities, because that would be (1) pointless as nothing posted on this blog or any other will ever convince any skeptic, and (2) would be rather insulting and a waste of time for Tamara.  Instead I base all of my questions on the assumption that her abilities are real.  Pretend that you’re sitting in front of her, she has just proven to you in person that her abilities are real, (whatever it would take for you to be convinced), and now you’re all confused and curious how all this works.  That’s how these questions are written.

Ok, now that we’ve got the background out of the way, let’s dive into the first set of questions I sent her.  I hope you find them as enlightening and interesting as I did.

Paul: Tamara, tell us a bit about your history being a psychic.  Have you always been psychic or did the ability develop at a certain point in your life?

Tamara: Well, from what I hear from my family I saw and knew things as a child. I don’t really remember specifics but I do remember knowing things, I just didn’t realize that not everyone knew what I knew. I also remember that I had many friends that I played with that no one else saw.

There are many psychics in my family. My maternal grandmother saw many things, my aunt is psychic like me, my mother sees and knows things but doesn’t acknowledge it all that much, and my sister also sees people and is an awesome animal communicator (her whole life revolves around her animals and always has).

Before I even thought about the possibility of being ‘psychic’ my sister and I would play ‘psychic games’ for fun. I remember doing this all through my school years. We were not exactly rich so we shared a bedroom right up to the time we both left home. We had bunk beds and used to take turns ‘guessing’ what the other was thinking of.

I remember during those years that occasionally ‘someone’ (a spirit) would be around. One particular night I said to my sister “do you see that?” She said “the old man by the closet door with the hat?” I said, “yeah the hat with all the fishing flies” She said “Nope, don’t see him” and I said “me neither”, things like that made us nervous, not scared though, it was common in our family. This happened quite frequently to us but I still never thought of myself as psychic, I wasn’t the only one seeing them after all.

It was so ‘normal’ for my family. I was raised to be totally accepting of souls and visions etc. so I never really thought of myself as being ‘psychic’. In my mind, I just saw what was right there & figured that anyone could see it if only they were open to it.

Paul: How did the realization that you had an “ability” that others didn’t, and that is certainly not accepted by mainstream science yet, affect your life?  Was this something you kept secret?  At what point did you begin to openly express your abilities publicly?

Tamara:  When I was 15 my aunt was living out of town. She came for a visit one day and asked me to do a ‘reading’ for her using psychometry (holding an object and getting impressions). I told her that it was her and my sister that did that, not me!

She insisted that I try it to humor her. She remembered what I saw and did as a child and she knew the things that I took for granted as just being there, were not the norm so I tried it. I saw things and talked for over an hour – got kind of lost in the moment and what I was seeing.

After I was done, she told me that she had just been to see a psychic before coming into town and apparently I told her all the same things that the psychic had – and more.

For the next 10 years, I proceeded to practice and freak out my friends in high school and then later the local pub with my ability to hold one of their objects and see things about them. It got to the point in the pub when I was older that I couldn’t walk in without someone coming over and asking me something. After a time, I realized that I didn’t really need to hold anything of theirs. I found that I would start to get visions, or information or whatever you want to call it, the minute that they walked over with the intention of asking me a question. This rather baffled me because I was very used to having the ‘crutch’ of holding an object. I was also concerned that if I let on that I could see things without holding an object that people would start being afraid to talk to me.

Then I started to have spirits come in while I was talking to people. I tried to mostly ignore them for a long time, but occasionally one would come through that would not go away until I mentioned them to the person I was sitting with. By this time, most of the people around me knew what I did so it wasn’t overly disturbing to them when I told them that someone was there who had something they wanted to say.

As for keeping it secret.  There’s still a lot of people that I don’t share it with.  Some of my neighbours know, some don’t.  I don’t mention it to other mom’s at my son’s school much.  I seem to always ‘know’ when I can tell people though.  In my personal sphere I mostly keep what I do to myself unless I get a feeling that the person I am talking to will be receptive to it or if they ask me.  A lot of people are scared of what I do for numerous reasons and I don’t want to put them in that position.  The people who know most about what I do are people that are led to me or who are looking for someone like me.

Paul:  How have your abilities affected your personal relationships with family members, relatives etc?  Were you raised in a family environment which believed in psychic phenomena and/or encouraged it, or was it a subject that wasn’t encouraged?

Tamara:  From my maternal grandmother on down, there are a lot of psychics in my family.  I remember my grandmother teaching me yoga and meditation and teaching me to be able to use visualization to see things.  She read every Edgar Cayce book there was and talked to all of us about it.  I remember my mom used to read us bible stories almost every night.  She would tell us we could do anything we wanted if we only had faith.

I had constant gentle reminders that anything at all was possible.

Paul:  What exact psychic abilities do you have?  Can you “see” the future, read minds, speak with deceased ones, etc?  What is the terminology used to describe your abilities?

Tamara:  I am a medium so I can communicate with spirits from the other side.  I don’t always see them like I would see you sitting in front of me.  I used to see them a lot as a teenager and they scared the heck out of me.  So I asked them to please not just appear in front of me like that.  Now I usually get messages from them in my head like telepathy and I can actually see them better with my eyes closed.  I can ’see’ them quite clearly this way and it saves me from being startled by having someone appear in my line of sight.

I am also clairvoyant (clear seeing – as in seeing things that have or will happen past/present/future), clairaudient (clear hearing – meaning I hear things that others can’t), clairsentient (psychic perception of smell, taste, touch, emotions and physical sensations), psychic.  I’ve heard that all mediums are psychic, but that not all psychics are mediums and this makes a lot of sense to me.

It’s like there is this Universal Energy and everyone is affected by it.  You can call it an energy grid, a matrix, whatever name suits you.  Everyone taps into it to some degree (gut feelings, feeling strange in a certain place etc.), even ‘mass hysteria’ – this is everyone feeding off of everyone else’s energy.  It’s all energy.  The way it feels to me is that when I’m doing a reading, all the information is right there and all I do is access it.  Tap into the energy grid and there it is.

I often say I am talking to “Spirit”.  Spirit to me can be many things.  It can be departed loved ones or ancestors; it can be the ‘higher self’ of the person I am doing the reading for; it can be spirit teachers or guides; or the energy grid.  Spirit is an easy way to define it because the word itself encompasses so much.

As for ’seeing the future’ – I don’t believe that the future is ever set in stone so I don’t ever call myself a ‘fortune teller’, nor do I ever tell people I will ‘tell them their future’.

I have a lot of clients that say “it happened just like you said it would”.  I can see things coming up for people for sure.  The thing is, is that what I see coming up can be stopped.  I talk a lot about this in my writing.  We all have free will and choice in our lives.  We have crossroads in our life all the time where we could go one way or the other.  Sometimes I’ll see something coming up for someone and let them know that if they take road #1 this is where it will lead.  If they like that, then we can leave it at that.  If road #1 is leading somewhere they don’t want to go, options are provided saying — if you take this other road #2 then these different things will present to you.  There is always choice.

It’s important that people know this.  A lot of psychics will tell people that this lousy thing is coming up, sorry, your life sucks.  There are always options or other ways of looking at things or changing things.  If I see something coming up for someone that may be uncomfortable, I’ll give them ways to get through it easier, or a lot of the time, ways to avoid it completely.  I think that it’s really important that people do not give their power away to a psychic.  We are here to help people to get through things, and provide gentle guidance and timely advice (or yes sometimes warnings).  We are not here to exert power or control over another person, nor to live their lives for them.

I could go on and on about ‘future’ and things, but we’ll save that for another time.

As for reading minds.  No, I’m not a mind reader.  I can pick up energies for sure.  There’s the “I was just thinking about you” thing when someone calls you.  This is usually energy, not mind reading.

I don’t have any desire to know what everyone is thinking.  I’m sure we could all do it if we tried hard enough, but that’s not my thing.  I connect with people’s souls (or higher self), not their minds.

Paul:  How long have you been doing readings, and what made you decide to pursue that as a path in life?

Tamara:  I started doing readings when I was about 15.  Through my 20’s I was a ‘career woman’ and didn’t put much focus on doing readings except for fun or if someone asked me.  I had other things to do and it wasn’t my focus (although in hindsight I still always knew certain things).

Here I was, going along in my career, working my way up the corporate ladder, doing really well and something told me this was not what I was supposed to be doing.  I ignored it of course, this is what I’d been working on for 10 years, I was making a name for myself.  Not to mention the money I was making.  After a while, I decided that it would be okay to put myself out there and do readings for more people and make it like a ’side job’.

Then I got sick and had to take about 6 months off work.  Talk about a reality check.  My day job started to suck the life out of me.  I went back to work, for over a year.  Then I was ‘told’ (by spirit) to quit.  Scary thought.  By this time I was listening to my guides and higher self a bit more though.  I decided that if “X” happened, then I would leave the next spring (6 months).  Within about 48 hours “X” happened.  I figured it couldn’t be much clearer than that (this was in the fall of 2003).  In March 2004 I ‘retired’ from my government job at 38.

I still wasn’t sure exactly what I would be doing.  I just knew that I had to take one step at a time and keep moving forward and trust.  The more I listened to ’spirit’, the more things fell into place for me.  One thing led to another, and doors kept opening (once I looked in the direction of the door).  So here I am.

Now, I put a lot of trust into messages I get and I will follow my intuition even if it feels uncomfortable at the time.  I always land on my feet and wind up just where I need to be when I connect with and listen to my higher self.

Thanks Tamara for sharing with us some great insight into your life and I look forward to diving into this further with some more questions soon.  I’m sure my readers will enjoy this article.  In the meantime, if you would like to learn more about Tamara, you can visit her website at www.TamaraHawk.com and if you’d like to book a reading with her over email, MSN Chat, phone or in person you can visit her contact page at http://www.tamarahawk.com/contact/.