You are about to listen to Internationally acclaimed Medium Suzane Northrop, a true treasure and dynamo who is a font of information about the art of helping people validate their connections/contact with deceased loved ones who have crossed over to the Other Side. In this episode, Suzane talks about grief, the importance of healing and the incredible insights she has learned from connecting with the deceased.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR ABOUT THINGS LIKE:
- What inspired Suzane to pursue this calling
- How our deceased loved ones can connect with us without the aid of a medium
- Why the grief process is different for everyone
- Suzane’s goosebump story about communicating with a deceased grandfather through his very young grandson
SOME QUESTIONS IRENE ASKS SUSANE:
- How does mediumship help to heal a grieving person’s heart?
- How did your music background enhance your mediumship?
- Why is it important to have passion and purpose in our lives?
SHOW LINKS:
http://www.suzanenorthrop.com/
CONTACT INFORMATION:
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Listen to the podcast here
Suzane Northrop – Medium, Author, Talk Show Host And Expert On Psychic Phenomena
I’m your host, Stephanie Barnhart, along with author and trauma survivor Irene Weinberg. We’re here to encourage you wherever you are on your healing journey. In each episode, we will chat with incredible grief and trauma specialists, healers, mediums, and celebs as well as remarkable people who have inspiring healing stories to share. If you’re looking for a show that’s both uplifting and inspiring, you found us. Let us help you find your joy in life.
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In this episode, we have a very special guest. I’m excited to introduce her. First, I have to be joined by my favorite co-host of all time, Ms. Irene Weinberg. How are you?
I am spectacular, especially because we’ve got Suzane Northrop on. I am one of Suzane’s biggest fans and dare I say longest living fans. My first experience with Suzane was many years ago. I’ve seen her and followed her a few times. She’s absolutely amazing. She’s a pioneer with all of this working with people and helping them communicate with their deceased loved ones. She’s spectacular.
Medium: If every single person had this experience with somebody they love that went to the actual physical death transition, they would do death very differently.
I’ve heard so many good things. I’m excited to actually chat with her myself for the first time.
I want to add Suzane has written three books. One of my favorites is Everything Happens For A Reason. I want to start with that, everyone. If you’re wondering why stuff happens in your life, that’s a good one for you to read. She also has A Medium’s Cookbook: Recipes For The Soul and Second Chance: Healing Messages From The Afterlife. She hosts a monthly radio show, which I’m very honored that I was on. Suzane, should we let you get a word in edgewise and say hello to everyone?
You guys are doing great. I’m having a good time already.
Why don’t you tell people how you came to this path that you’ve got? Some people who are reading this are very well-versed in spirituality and mediumship and others are beginning to learn about this world. How does someone like you find your way down this path and start doing what you did?
How did you realize that you have a gift?
First of all, the thing that I always like to share with people is this. When we all go through our lives, depending on what’s going on with our lives and the period that happens within our lives, it has an awful lot to do with either our direction of where we go or how we end up or any of the above. I don’t know what time in my life I did not connect with the other world. I’ve been speaking with them since I was about five years old or somewhere along there. I don’t know if there’s anything to do with it, but I did get hit by a car when I was five years old. I got thrown down the street. My shoes and socks went a long way.
I have no idea if that had anything to do with it, but nonetheless, I don’t know a time in my life when I did not connect with the other world. With that, as I was saying to you earlier, when things happen to us, depends on when they happen in their life, it has an awful lot to do with this down the road. When you have things as children, it has an awful lot to do with your surroundings. If you have an intellectual family, if you have a religious family, or if you have any of those above and you start having experiences as a child, it can be a great experience or could be not a great experience, especially if they think there’s something wrong with you. They want to take you to the people who want to lock you up, which they did by the way.
I don’t mind telling you that when I was young because I’ve been around a long time. That’s what they did. When you spoke to what no one else saw and heard in those days, that’s what they did. If as a religious thing, depending on what your religious orientation is, they thought you were possessed by the devil. This is all very true and very real. Fortunately, for all of the above, I didn’t come in with a strong religious family. As a matter of fact, I was the one in my family who even went to church and I did that because of my great love of music. There weren’t any books too much in my house so I didn’t have to worry about the psychiatry parts. I was raised in a rural town. Both my parents came from farm families.
I was an only child for a very long time. I played a lot alone in the woods and whatever it was. The other world presents itself to me at a very young age. I knew things before I had this Tibetan dude who visited me. There was nobody in my neighborhood who looked like him. This was my life from a very young age. At the age of thirteen, which is always a fun age to begin with, my paternal grandmother made her transition. She was very influential in my life. Here was this big exotic woman larger in life that went from whatever she was down to 80 pounds. The last time that I saw her in the hospital, that’s what she looked like.
A few days later, she came into my bedroom. She stands at the bottom of my bed and she does what grandmothers do. She says, “I want you to keep up with your piano lessons. I can’t visit you very often. I’m going to give you my favorite house, my Ruby diamond ring, and know that I’m always going to be there.” I’m looking at her and I’m thinking, “This is great because Grandma is big and fat again. She’s not sick like I saw her last time. Maybe the house might be somewhat normal again, or whatever that means.” The next day or the day after, my mother says, “We got to go to the parlor.”
I don’t know what the hell the parlor is, except for then later I learned we go in there and this woman dressed in my grandma’s clothes looks nothing like my grandmother in a box. I’m pretty appalled because I’ve seen her. She looks great. I don’t understand why the adults are doing this. I must have been speaking out loud because, at that point, I think my mother ran down the aisle hysterically, “Your father is going to be freaked out. Go sit in the car,” and that’s what I did. I would sit in Grandma’s car and then we proceeded to drive 100 miles an hour in our one-street town. That’s how it was for me.
The thing about that experience was that, to me, it was as if it was yesterday. The thing that I also talk about quite vividly is if every single person had this experience with somebody they love who went through the actual physical death transition, they would do death very differently. In my thing, I knew that Grandma was well. I didn’t understand. I was trying to put this together why everybody else was not experiencing Grandma being well and everything being fine except after a certain period of time, she wasn’t around and she wasn’t in the hospital. As I said, my father went off the edge. I figured it out. That was my journey with that.
At the age of 18 or 19, I moved to New York City. I had all these friends who were studying to be shrinks or therapists or any of the above. I’d go out on dates and the date’s dead relatives would show up. I didn’t know they were dead relatives until the person was saying or the guy would say, “That was my grandfather, but he was dead.” It’s not great for dates. I went on this journey not knowing what the story was. Finally, what happened is that the wall started closing in because I was thinking, “There’s something going on here.” Most of my friends are good about it. They knew I was different. They never saw I was crazy, so I went through that for a while and then the walls did start coming in. I left New York and moved to Northern California because they’re all crazy there.
As I said, it took a little while. In those days, I don’t like to use those expressions, but it’s true. There wasn’t a lot out there. I mean there was a lot out there if you had an inkling to study metaphysics or the British philosophies and things of that sort, which I didn’t. That was the place to go but, in the days, they quite literally put you away for talking to what no one else could see. It made me a little gun-shy of, needless to say, that profession. There was a period of time that it was intense and they did want to put me away and they wanted me to go through periods of shock treatment. That was not a lot of fun, but I did figure it out. I knew it wasn’t crazy and the rest is history. It was like doing it professionally.
I had this background in music and I have a degree and I’m quite talented, but this was in my face. When things are in your face, it’s a little different. From that on, I put my shingle out and the rest is history. Since there were not a lot of people interesting enough during that period of time and you lived in New York City, you can’t help being thrown into the medium world, which I was. It was interesting because I got to deal with the Anthropological Society of New York, the NYU Bar Association, and all of these radio shows and television shows because there wasn’t anybody doing it at that time.
For me, I’m fascinated because they say if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere, and that’s true. If you’re good at what you do, you’re gifted in what you do, and you’re thrown into the public eye, you’re going to have a very different response even if they’re still going to test you and do all that stuff. You can’t get away from it. That’s the long story short of how I ended up this way.
If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. Click To Tweet
I’m curious, for our audience, what do you play? I know you’re very talented and I’m wondering if that musical ability that you have, in some way, also helped you to be so sensitive and in tune with what you do.
That’s a very good question, and I’m so glad you asked that. Most of us, when we’ve learned to speak English to when we’ve learned to grow up to speak, we learned phonetically or by sound. My audio area is very heightened because of my background in music. When I hear, I happen to hear names that are very common with people. We know that there are certain sounds like C and S may sound like but a C and a K will be different. If I hear a name like Kathleen, even though it’s spelled with a C, I’m probably going to hear the K sound, but even though the C and S may be similar, Susan or Sarah is going to sound a little different. Those sounds to me are my link to how I’ll connect with people. There is clearly a thing between clairaudience and clairmediumship.
Some mediums are more through sound and feel. That was very clear for me to have that connection at a very young age. My instrument is piano but my real love and passion was for composition. To me, I was hearing music from the other realms. This wasn’t any different except it had to do with connecting with those who have already gone through the process of physical death because it is a physical death. I don’t make light of it, but we can’t die. Body dies. With that, it was very similar to how I would hear music. A lot of that played into it. By the way, it’s a good question, Irene, because there are a few other mediums that did have background music. That’s not a big stretch.
We can't die, only the body dies. Click To Tweet
When you hear things, so people can understand how it works, Suzane, do you get a vibration that you’re translating or there’s voices that come into your head? Do you also see things? I know you feel things also.
What I was saying to you is that I do believe that in our childhood, we bring a lot to our life from what we all know in the prevalent years to where we are. There are some children who can draw and in this new world, tech does it. That has an awful lot to do with fine-tuning. One is our skills down the road on how we have them or how they play within our lives. That’s why I happen to be a very big believer that if you possibly all can, and I believe we all can within a certain level, follow your passions because you have them for a reason. Do them while you’re young and while you can because if you choose to start a family and all the other stuff and you haven’t done it, you’re going to feel, in a lot of ways, like you’ve missed out. You need to follow whatever that means to you as strong and significant as you can.
Follow your passions because you have them for a reason. Click To Tweet
Dead people is what you call them. I love that you call them that because they’re not really dead. They’re alive on the other side. They’ve left their bodies. When you hear from them and you’re hearing sounds, are you also getting pictures or body sensations? Tell them so people can understand how this works for you.
How many mediums did you have on the show? You haven’t had any like me. I’m going to keep talking here. I’m not only am I a traditional medium. I’m a traditional trance medium, which means that I go into different levels of consciousness when I work. I don’t do that as much as I used to but people can always tell me that I’m not all there. They’ve looked into this and she’s not all there but because of that energy, it will naturally overflow or run into what we would call that natural level of consciousness. Trance is a different state. I think we all work with different levels within that. That’s been my background traditionally as a medium. I definitely think that there’s an energy thing that does happen with me with electrical things for sure.
It happens all the time. My monthly radio show is always challenging what’s going to happen or what’s not. Truth be told, as I mentioned to you earlier, I have no control over this. It’s them doing their thing however they do their thing. If somebody wants to write me a question or interplay where we want to go to the next level, I’m more than happy to be there for this process. Let’s talk about this. I’m going to go back to this one again because this one, to me, is a real important one. Irene, when you talk about grief and rebirth and all of that, in that zone for me, I want to say that a lot of that is pulling your life together, trying to figure out the next steps which God knows none of those are easy. What I do know is this.
In life, when we are stuck, we don’t know where we want to go and we’re dealing with so many things in our lives. We need to have some focal point. If that focal point means something that we like doing in our life, whether that’s cooking, sewing, canning, or gardening, do it even if you may not be able to make a living at it. A lot of times, people do turn their passions into it. They may not make the money they want in their life, but they may live their lives doing what they love, which to me is key to life of how we get from one place to another. Enjoy it because life journeys can be challenging sometimes and they’re exceptionally challenging when we have great losses in our lives.
Medium: Life journeys can be challenging, especially when we have great losses. We have to rebuild on a lot of levels, but if we have some purpose or reason, it will help pull us through those hard times.
We have to rebuild on a lot of levels, but if we have some purpose or reason for whatever that might be, it will help pull us through those hard times. As I say, it’s a great thing if we can match it up with making a living with it. That’s a great thing but that doesn’t happen with many people. I already started to say, “You need to do the trade-off if it means having rejoice in your life of having children, even though you may have to work to support them. Do that because that’s got to be where you’re directing your passion.” These are the little things but the big things that help us in our process.
A lot of times, people ask me what are the most common questions that I am asked. There are a lot of those by the way and somewhere along the line, I’m going to tell you a couple of wonderful stories. The number one way of contact with our loved ones who have made the transition is through dreams. That doesn’t mean it’s the only contact but that is the number one contact and a lot of that has to do with how our brain operates and the state of our consciousness. In a dream state, you can disavow or do anything you want to do about it. The point to disavow it that’s significant is that the state that we are in makes that contact much easier is very much in a dream state. That’s part of the reason why they contact us.
The other reason why they contact us during that time is so we don’t have heart attacks and join them because when you have dead people standing at the bottom of your bed, you don’t know what to do with them. You’re not supposed to see them. It can be sometimes a challenging experience for one. They take their cues from you by the way of how close they’ll come, the information they’ll give you, or the place where that contact happens. Dreams are the number one way. Also smelling, feeling, sensing them, looking for things that would only be significantly connected to that person, billboards, license plates, all those things that we dismiss our ways that they make contact us. The state of grief sometimes is a state of New York or the state of California for each one of us in our journeys.
When you are in a state of grief, you may dismiss it and we all know grief is a huge thing. They can stand in front of you but sometimes you’re grateful not to let that happen. With that, that often happens right after the passing because that’s when they’re very prevalent or within the first year. Speaking of years, the second year of somebody’s path is much more difficult than the first year for the record because, in the second year, reality sits in. In most people, it goes back and does their lives and you’re so stuck with the situation. They’re not going to call or walk through the door and you’re left with it. That doesn’t mean that the other people in your life don’t care about you.
Medium: The second year of somebody’s path is much more difficult than the first year because in the second year, reality sits in and most people go back and do their lives while you’re so stuck with the situation.
It means that they have to go on with their life so you’re stuck with it and stuck with whatever journey you got to go through that figuring out what that deal is about. If people know that they’ve been contacted, it does make a difference. Sometimes, in our group, it doesn’t happen. I would suggest you only go to a good medium because a bad medium will put you on a very bad path and it might even put you back. To be honest with you, I’ve had plenty of experiences where people have not had great experiences, and that one will make you feel, “They don’t love me because the medium didn’t pick them up. They didn’t tell me what I wanted to know. I didn’t think they got connected to me and they’re not dead.”
You’re going to go through the whole thing that you don’t need to go through at that point in your life. As I’m saying, those are the different ways but everybody is very different. Some people do well with groups. Some people will do well with connecting with other people on journeys. Some people do well in therapy. Some people don’t. You have to find out where your way is and it doesn’t happen overnight. There is a process to that. You have to be willing to go through that process. Interestingly enough, a lot of people are not. I can tell you this because I know a lot of people who do great grief work and do all kinds of ceremonies and things like that but more people would prefer to go to Medium and do that.
That’s all I can tell you from my experience because I know plenty of people who have gone through some journeys. I know Irene was one of those and she certainly did the medium path but she did a whole lot of other things too to help on her journey. That made a big difference as to where she is now in her life and embracing that. On some level, you have to embrace it because this becomes the current program in our life and that’s where we are. The way they make contact is a lot of different ways, but I’m going to tell you one of my lovely favorite stories. The animals, the four-legged beasts, are one of the number one good ways of contact. The four-legged will often look at something. You don’t see it there but I can assure you that it’s one of your loved ones that’s made the transition.
Children are another one. They’ve done some studies over the past year or so that children up to the age of 5 or 6 don’t differentiate what we would call real and not real, which comes back to the old term of children seeing things other people don’t see or children having imaginary friends. It goes back to that premise of a long time ago. In any case, this is new testing, the brain of where we are right now is that we know children up to the age of five can’t differentiate between the two of what is real and not as real and it has an awful lot to do with that energy. I had a client who lived on Long Island. She had lost her husband many years ago. She had this big old house with 14 or 15 people and on top of it, she was into antiques and stuff so she would have a lot of these sittings.
I would come there and she invited people and we would have a good time. As I said, she had lost her husband many years before. Her son found a nice lady and they got married. It took a long time down the road and she finally got pregnant and they had a little boy, Joshua. I think Josh was probably right around that age I’m talking about, 4 or 5 at that time because he could speak and that’s when our sounds started to form. He was having a bad day and his mother was doing what mothers do. “Josh, what do you want?” I fed him. I gave him his favorite toys and he kept saying to me, “Grandpa said eat it.” “I didn’t understand what he was saying. Do you want me to feed you this and that?” She got very frustrated and my friend, Grace, her mother-in-law, lives not far from her.
She said, “When he kept saying Grandpa, she’s like, ‘Let’s go see Grandma.’” It’s because Rap has been dead for a long time. They went to Grandma and Grandma said, “Josh, what’s the matter? What’s going on?” He kept saying to her, “Grandpa says eat it.” She looks at the boy and her daughter-in-law and she says, “My husband, your grandfather’s favorite Opera was Aida.” They put the Opera on and Josh was his content as a land. There you go. That’s one of my wonderful stories.
The children are very strong conduits. If you think about it on a level of love and because somebody becomes ash before you come in, they’re still going to be grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Why would you come to visit them? It would make sense for you not to come visit them. That’s how they present themselves to us. That’s one of my other favorite stories. I want to tell Irene that she is absolutely correct in her analogous of that story of what you said about her recording stuff. That is very well and true. In any case, that to me says a whole lot of wonderful things about children being conduits, and they say out of the mouth of babes. I’ve had many people say like, “My daughter and my son said to me.”
Medium: Children are conduits.
I remember when I was the mommy too. That’s another day for another topic but there’s this continued love thing and that’s a fact in that. Without any other questions that you want to have, I’m going to give you one other quick story. This one is a little more intense, but it has a wonderful thing at the end. I had a student for many years and she was looking to get married, which is so true for the world. Her mother didn’t understand why she wasn’t getting married. Anyway, down the road, she meets a young man. He happens to be a rabbi. Her mother is beyond thrilled. She’s a little later in life when she gets married and they were concerned that she would or would not get pregnant. As the world would say, she got pregnant and she got pregnant with twins.
Moving backward, when she would come to my classes, I would always say to her, “Sheila, I don’t know why but I’m always seeing twins about you.” She goes, “No. It’s impossible. I’m an only child.” Apparently, it kept coming up and coming up. One day, we had luncheon and this was right before she was getting married. I said, “I don’t know why I always see twins around you.” She went home and said to her mom, “How could she be right about these other things that you’re wrong about?” Her mother would never say anything. Lo and behold, she got pregnant and she had twin daughters.
I went and I said, “It’s so wonderful. I’m so pleased. Congratulations to you. I don’t know why but I’m still getting twins around you. Now you have twins, but for some reason, I keep feeling that there were twins that were passing your family or whatever it was.” She went back home that day and real quick to Mom, “I don’t know why Suzane is assisting Thomas.” At that moment, her mom broke down. She said, “Suzane is right. There were twins born before you were born.” Her mom’s family were Holocaust survivors. She lost her entire family in the Holocaust. She had a very intense thing when she lost these two little baby girls at birth and she couldn’t go down that road. She felt that she couldn’t talk about it. What was wonderful about that is we solved the question about where the twins were.
However, the other part about it, which was wonderful is that her daughter felt that these twins she had were the twins passed and she felt it was a full circle of healing for her mom of that loss. They had a relationship they had never had in her whole life when that happened. That was quite a wonderful story to end on because those babies kept coming through. They were trying to identify all of these people that her mom had lost where they were all there together. The opportunity to have them come back again was quite wonderful.
As they say, never close the door on something because you never ever know in the grander scheme because there is a continuum to it all. You can’t argue that factor. You got it. I’m going to end with trust it. If you think you’ve come in contacted, gotten a message, or it’s them letting you know, trust it because every time you open up that door will make that door stronger and stronger. They’ll know that love never dies and that is true. Even the body made with love never does. It’s good to know.
Never close the door on something because you never ever know in the grander scheme. There is a continuum to it all.
Even though I lost my dad, it’s nice to remember to look for signs and remind yourself to stay open and pay attention. A lot of these things happen and we’re like, “That’s just a coincidence.” It’s not. You’re right. Trust it.
Coincidence is God’s way. It remains anonymous.
That’s a good one. I may use that again.
You’re welcome. I don’t own it. Go ahead.
Do you want to give us your tip for joy, Suzane?
My tip for joy is you’ve got to have some passion in life. You have to be plugged in somewhere. That’s why I use my story. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter what it is because if you don’t have a plug-in, you’re going to have a hard time having joy in your life. As I said, it’s great if you can combine that with making a living, but most of us cannot. We all know that 70% to 80% of the population don’t like what they do professionally. Whatever it is, when you’re starting out your life, try to go for it as long as you can. If that doesn’t happen, this way, you can still probably do it. Maybe not make a living at it and you may have to make a living at something else, but do it because passion in life is important. It keeps us alive and it keeps you alive through your whole life. That’s the whole thing.
Passion in life is really important because it keeps us alive. Click To Tweet
It will keep you alive throughout your whole life. By the way, that happens to be an American thing. That’s us because we’re so programmed. I call them bliss moments. I call them moments where it’s like “This day doesn’t get better. This moment doesn’t get better.” Those wonderful moments will carry you through because it’s memories of the people that we love. Those memories, no one can ever take them from you. Nothing can take them with you. Those are yours. They’re in your heart. If that means that carries you through then so be it but you’re right, we tend to overwork. It’s great. Irene, we’ll do this again.
I love to let you go and talk. These stories are great. Maybe we’ll have to do another one some other times but we do have to wrap it up. Thank you for your time, Suzane. Until next time. As Irene loves to say, to be continued.
Guest Links:
- Suzane Northrop’s Website
- Suzane’s Books: Everything Happens For A Reason, A Medium’s Cookbook: Recipes For The Soul, and Second Chance: Healing Messages From The Afterlife
Host Links:
- @IreneSWeinberg on Instagram
- Irene Weinberg on Facebook
- Irene Weinberg Twitter
- Irene Weinberg – Grief, Rebirth + Healing Podcast on YouTube
