Sylvia Browne - Psychic: My Life in Two Worlds

I n case youre wondering why Ive chosen now to write my memoir, let me make something clear right up front: Im not retiring, and Im certainly not going Home yet. Ive got far too much left to do.

The simple answer to Why now? is that Ive decided Im ready to talk about my life and my work in my own words. In fact, I may make a habit of doing this every seventy-three years whether I need to or not.

To some of you whove read my other books and/or come to my lectures, many of the stories in this book will be familiar. To all of you, I promise there are stories in this book youve never read or heard before, stories we can all laugh about and cry about and learn from together.

Ive included overviews of many of my philosophies and psychic experiences in these memoirs, and if you find yourselves wanting to read more about any or all of them, know that Ive written entire books about each and every one of them. Ive even written entire books about the fact that theres a Father God and a Mother God, by the way. So please dont let it throw you that for the majority of this book I refer to God simply, with male pronouns. The alternative is to use the word They, or He/She, which is just plain annoying. Besides, I dont believe for a moment that They care what we call Him/Her, as long as we commit our lives to His/Her service. (See what I mean? In writing, as in life, get too bogged down with technicalities and you miss the whole point.)

For the most part, though, this book isnt about the spiritual psychic I am. Its about the woman I am, not remotely psychic about myself. When I look back on this particular incarnation, Im as mystified as you might be at the choices in my life that actually seemed like a good idea at the time. If youll forgive the clich, this isnt the story of a victim; its the story of a survivor, flaws, missteps, and all.

Its coming straight from my soul to yours, and I truly hope you enjoy it.

I believe that before we come here from the Other Side to start a new incarnation, we write very detailed charts for our lifetimes to help guarantee that we accomplish the goals we set for ourselves. We choose our parents, our siblings, our friends, our enemies, our spouses, our children, our careers, our assets, our challenges, our health issues, our best and worst qualities, the best and worst qualities in those who are closest to us, and certainly the timing of it all.

As I look back on this long, strange, complicated life Ive lived, I just have one question about the chart I wrote:

What the hell was I thinking?

I TS V ALENTINES D AY 2009. Im seventy-two years old. Im blind in one eye, and I have a limp from an irreparable crack in my femur (a lasting token of my first husbands esteem). Im standing at the head of an aisle in an ivory silk dress, holding a bouquet, surrounded by a room full of family, friends, and my Novus Spiritus ministers. Smiling confidently back at me from beneath the arch at the end of the aisle is a tall, handsome, sixty-two-year-old man named Michael Ulery. In the year weve been together hes seen me at my best and my worst, and hes been nothing but kind, supportive, patient, hard working, and thoughtful. Hes so good natured and in such a perpetually good mood that I frequently stare at him, especially first thing in the morning when he brings me coffee without my asking, and say, Whats wrong with you?

Michael is a successful jewelry designer and businessman. I first saw him in a jewelry store near my office in Campbell, California, at a time in my life when my position on relationships was a firm, nonnegotiable, Spare me. So you could have knocked me over with a feather when I found myself asking the store owner about the attractive man behind the counter who was busy helping another customer. On our first date a week or so later he apologetically admitted that when we were introduced he didnt have the first clue who I was. Just when I thought he couldnt be more perfect. And the rest, as they say, is history.

So here I am, limping down the aisle into marriage number four (or number five, but only on a technicality), impossibly happy but also chagrined at the fact that obviously, when I was on the Other Side writing my chart, it seemed like a great idea to wait until I was in my seventies to meet the real Mr. Right. I repeatwhat the hell was I thinking?

Then again, if it took this long, and this much, to get to this moment, I might write that same chart all over again.

T O GET THE requisite details out of the way: I was born Sylvia Celeste Shoemaker in Kansas City, Missouri, on October 19, 1936.

My father Bill and I adored each other from the moment we first laid eyes on each other. He was a good-looking, funny, warm, affectionate extrovert who made me feel like the most important person in the world when hed wink at me and say, Thats my girl. He was a postman who exercised his love of show business by emceeing all sorts of local events, and even in the worst of times we could make each other laugh until we cried.

And then there was my mother. Celeste. As mean, self-involved, humorless, and disconnected a woman as youd ever hope to meet. She was physically abusive when my father wasnt around, and she delighted in telling me about lying awake at night trying to figure out how she could kill me and get away with it. Her way of dealing with situations that displeased her was to retire to her bathtub and soak herself into pretending they didnt exist, which is probably why I remember her as being prune-y most of the time. My father had several affairs throughout his marriage to my mother, and I didnt blame him. In fact, I always believed that the only reason he never left her is that he would have had to kiss her good-bye.

Ive come to know that there are people in this world called dark entities. Dark entities are those who, because theyve turned away from God and abandoned His light, choose to spread nothing but darkness in their lives. By their own choice, when they die, their spirits dont transcend to the sacred perfection of the Other Side. Instead, they enter whats known as the Left Door, plunge through a Godless, joyless abyss, and cycle right back into some poor unsuspecting fetus again. If one of these days you read about someone in their late teens triggering a violent uprising in some historically peaceful country, you can confidently say to yourself, Oh, look, its Sylvias mother.

It seems important to add that I took care of my mother in the last years of her life. My Gnostic Christian beliefs demanded nothing less, and beliefs without the actions to back them up are nothing but rhetoric. I admit it: I did it more for my own peace of mind and my certainty that it was just plain the right thing to do than out of any delusion that she would have done the same for me.

My very earliest childhood memories involve my enraged mother chasing me through the hallway waving a wire hanger she intended to beat me with (after seeing the movie Mommie Dearest I wondered if my mother might have been the technical consultant); standing in my crib peering out the window, watching anxiously for Daddys black car to pull into the driveway so Id be safe from her for awhile; and the incident Ive come to think of as The Time She Tried to Burn My Foot Off.

I was three years old. It was bath time. What I distinctly remember is Mother putting me into the tub, turning on a full blast of scalding hot water and leaving the room. My foot had to be treated for second-degree burns. Much of the aftermath is a little hazy. There was something about Mother explaining to Daddy that shed had to leave me alone to answer the phone (take it from me, there was no phone call) and that shed warned that damned building maintenance man a thousand times to stop cranking up the temperature of the water heater. And there was a loud conversation behind the closed door of my mothers bedroom between her and an aunt and uncle who threatened to take me to live with them if there was ever another hint of abuse, no matter how accidental she claimed it was.