Bertoldi - Do Dead People Watch You Shower?

I know youve got a lot of questionsafter all, thats the reason you picked up this book, right? But before I get to those, I thought it might be good for you to know who it is who youre talking with, so Id like to tell you a little bit about myself.

First of all, lets get a few things out in the open. I consider myself to be a spiritual person. But that does not mean that I am a perfect person. I have plenty of faults. If Im just hanging out with friends, I can swear like a sailor, I enjoy a good dirty joke, and if the truth be told, I dont get along with my mother-in-law. From the moment I first got together with her son, in fact, shes been a real rock in my underwear. A real pickle-puss. But dont get me started. Aside from the usual number of human flaws, I think Im pretty easy to get along with. Just your average Jersey girl who talks to the dead.

Im a pretty upfront person, but I havent always been open about that last bit. Ive accepted it now, sort of grown into it, but especially when I was younger thats the last thing Id want anyone to know about me. I havent been public all that longonly for the past ten years, and that took a lot of prodding (Ill say more about that later)but now that I realize how important it is, Ive become a lot more willing to talk about this ability and the incredible things Ive learned from it.

As soon as I made the decision to go public with my unusual talent, the questions came in full force. There have been serious questions, silly questions, sad questions, snide questions. I answered them truthfully, patientlyand repeatedly . This book is an attempt to answer all of the questions I have been asked over the years, and finally put an end to that one question I am asked most: When are you going to write a book?

In the past I would respond as any severely dyslexic girl who didnt know how to type wouldI changed the subject. But after a while I realized it might be easier to just write the damn book than to keep fielding the damn question.

Within these pages I am going to be as upfront and open as possible. I will try to keep the cursing and mentions of my mother-in-law problem to a minimum. But you should know that it may come up from time to time. Sometimes even a rock in the underwear can be a good teachereven if the lesson is that you cant please everyone! I hope I can bring some understanding to the subject of what happens to us all when we pass over from the land of the living to the Other Side. I hope some of what youll find in these pages may be comforting to you. And if I can make someone smile, so much the better!

A medium is a psychic, but a psychic is not necessarily a medium. Someone who is just psychic can give you a prediction, but they cant tell you where or who they got it from. I (and other true mediums) not only can tell you what is going on and what will happen, but we can tell you who on the Other Side is bringing the message. Im the whole package, baby!

I cant say exactly, but certainly it was when I was a small girl. It wasnt really having a conversation, I just knew something. I understood so little at that time, I had no one to explain to me what this knowing was. One of my very earliest memories of this was walking home one day when I was about nine years old (this wasnt the first, but one that I strongly recall) and realizing that my older brother was going to be taken from us at an early age. As I was walking into my backyard, I heard the Other Side (I didnt know at the time thats who was communicating with me) tell me this. I cant recall the exact words I heard. Im not even sure it was a full sentence. Nevertheless, I knew what they meant, and I remember it like it was yesterday.

Other messages like this one came to me at other times. I was told, for example, that I would never in this lifetime have children of my own. I was also told that in a past lifetime my soul had been married to my fathers soulone of the reasons, Im sure, why I completely adored my father in this lifetime. The effect of these messages, for me, was one of grounding me. Even if I didnt like what Id been told, even if, like anyone would, I fought against losing my brother and against whatever it was that decided I would not have children, the fact that Id been told these things in advance eventually helped me gain perspective.

I dont think it even dawned on me to talk about these things. I guess when youre young, you dont really know whats normal to know or not know. But I remember one event that my mother has said was the first time she was aware that anything special was going on with me. I was just a small child playing outside in the backyard. My mother recalls that I came into the kitchen and declared that my uncle Jerrys leg was all bloody. My mother was shocked that I would say such a thing, and told me to go back outside to play. A short time later, our kitchen phone rang and my mother got the news that her brother Jerry had been in a motorcycle accident and they were going to amputate his leg. Fortunately, the doctors were able to save his leg, but my mother was never the same! She didnt know what to make of what I had told her and at the time she was really frightened.

When my father came home from work that night, my mother told him the story. As my mother tells it, he just sat there without any expression. Finally he said, Well, looks like Pop was right. He said she had the gift.

My grandfather had been a gifted medium. He crossed over when I was very young so I dont really remember him from this side. But were in contact now and Ive gotten to know him from the Other Side. Maybe now is a good time to say that even though my grandfather said I had the gift Im not really comfortable with that term. I would never say that about myself. To me, it kind of sounds pretentious to say, my gift . I think of it more as an ability, the way everyone has different abilities. But sometimes in this book I may use the term gift just because its shorter and I tend to talk fast.

I believe that it is just like any other talent that seems to run in families, like the ability to draw and paint, or having a good ear for music and being able to sing or play an instrument. We dont really question that, its almost expected: Well of course she can singher mother was a music teacher! Nobody would think it the least bit weird if Picasso had a son who was a painter. But, like any other talent, theres also a choice that goes along with it. Maybe everyone in your family was a teacherthey just had a knack for communicating ideas, and maybe you also have this knack. But you cant see yourself in a classroom with kids all day long, your whole life. You might choose to use that talent in another way. Or you might decide that thats not the most important thing to you, theres something else youd rather do. You still have the talent, but you dont have to use it at all. Thats our free will.

Right now, my brother Bobby and sister-in-law Chois little girl, my niece Bobbie Concettashes six years old and a real sweetheart!has the ability I have and that my grandfather had. She has spoken about people who are on the Other Side and has described a lot of things about her past lives. One time, when she and her mother were walking by a church, she pointed to a statue of a woman with clearly Caucasian features and said, Thats the way my last mommy looked. Being my sister-in-law, Choi knows all about this kind of thing and showed no fear, maybe just curiosity. So there is a strong likelihood that with this support Bobbie Concetta will retain the ability she has now. Is Bobbie Concetta currently giving readings to her little friends? No. And she may never do what Im doing. Its up to her. Shell have to decide for herself.