Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Infinite Life, Infinite Lessons with Susan Grau

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

In this episode, I have the pleasure of sitting down with my lovely friend Susan Grau, an incredible intuitive medium who has gained international recognition for her work. We'll be diving into her new book, Infinite Life, Infinite Lessons, as well as exploring her journey and the fascinating experiences she's had along the way. Susan's story is truly remarkable. She has faced and overcome immense challenges which helped her to discover her intuitive abilities and connect with the other side. She believes that there is hope in eternal life and love and that by understanding our own experiences, we can find healing and growth. We explore so many fascinating topics including how to connect with loved ones on the other side, how to tell the difference between spirit guides and passed loved ones who are coming through, and so much more. Susan sheds light on how to recognize the constant support available to us from the angelic realms and how to invite it more actively into our lives.  I hope you're as excited as I am to delve into this conversation with Susan Grau. Her wisdom and experiences are sure to inspire and enlighten us all. Susan and I dive into: How Susan's near-death experience made an impact on her perspective on life Susan's early childhood experiences with intuitive abilities Susan's experiences as a medium and helping others through grief How to connect with the other side and find hope in eternal life and love The difference between spirit guides and loved ones who have passed away How to develop a strong connection to our divine and intuitive skills  Remember to grab a copy of Susan’s book Infinite Life, Infinite Lessons. Happy reading! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, and celebrities about love, sex, and relationships from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. and that way my goal is to awaken your mind body and soul it's time to become fluent in the language of love susan grau is an internationally renowned intuitive mediums and her readings offer the gift

of healing and knowledge that our loved ones never really leave us she has a new book out called Infinite Life, Infinite Lessons. And we're getting into not only Susan's personal journey, which is quite astounding, including a near-death experience where many of her intuitive powers were honed and magnified, but also she shares a lot of wisdom

about how to connect with the other side in everyday life, how to sense our angels, our guides, our loved ones on the other side, and gives so much hope that feels tangible, that life is eternal, and that love never dies, and that our loved ones are still here with us even when they're no longer here in body. So I'm so excited to share this conversation with you with Susan Grau. Susan Grau, it's so good to have you on again. Hello. Hi. It's good to see you. you too now you've been on the show before uh once before and it wasn't long after Sammy died

I don't know maybe six months and I've told you this like you know you cut you started doing a reading I don't even that wasn't the purpose but of course these things happen you started doing a reading on me and you were telling me things about him and about even my husband and other things and I was listening but I wasn't really registering because I was still in the shock bubble. And then years later, I went back and I was like, holy yet, this is true. But full disclosure, guys, since that time, Susan and I have become really close friends. I just adore her as a human being. And we've had the opportunity to like work together around grief and helping others in grief. She was one of the speakers at my good grief day and volunteers her time all the

time. So I just want to out that because, you know, I always like to out when I'm friends with or have a personal relationship with someone I'm interviewing. So I know Susan, not just professionally, but personally. And I'm telling you, and I say this all the time, you know, I'm picky about my mediums, my psychics, whoever, you know, and Susan is the real deal. And Susan has a new book, cut off the presses, infinite life, infinite lessons, wisdom from the spirit world on living, dying, and the in-between. The book is fantastic, but what I love about it, and we're going to get into your story. What I love about it is that you don't just hear Susan's really like insane story of going to the other side. And it's a kooky story that

happened to her when she was four years old, but it is profound. So we learn a lot about her story, about what spirit has taught her about life and about how we live and what pain is really about, but also how to step into your own connection to spirit and your own intuitive powers. And And I know, Susan, you feel the same way I do, that we all have these gifts we can cultivate. Some of us are born this way. And we're going to get into that in a second because you were. We experience things that open the portal, thin the veil, whatever you want to call it. And you had some of those too.

You know, so you've got these powers on steroid, but you can also teach others how to access it, which I love. So with that huge wind up, I'm so excited to dive into this with you today. I'm excited too. Yeah, it's been a wonderfully long, beautiful journey. I hope it's longer. Every experience you go through teaches you how to open up those areas. I always say my darkest past is my greatest asset to doing this work because everything that I've gone through has just opened that pathway a little more and a little more. And that's, I think, part of the goal of the soul. I really do. I do too. I really think that if I had to say it was one thing, it's that we come here to remember who we are, to remember how powerful we are, to remember how

loved we are to remember how tapped in and tuned in and part of the oneness we really are. And our whole life is a journey, right? From the head to the heart, as they say in The Course in Miracles. I think that's so cool. And you talk about that, is that about overcoming obstacles and about how those worst things that happen to us are often those most challenging traumas and cracks, so to speak, the big thing is what are you willing to do with that? Right. Cause so often, and it does, you know, when horrible things happen, it does of course take you down. We don't want people to bypass that, but there, you talk a lot about how there's also a choice that all of us can make day to day and moment to moment and pain to pain to use that gift as a gift

to see the gifts. And I do want to pick on that a little bit with you. I agree with you 100%, but I know that for lots of people, that doesn't really make sense. How can you say the most painful thing that happened to me was my greatest gift or is a gift even at all? How can there be anything good? It's not. Let me clarify that just because I understand. I've had a lot of pain myself and what it what happens is is that we as human beings with beautiful souls create a gift out of it so bad things happen on the planet bad things happen to us that are the most horrific of things when my mother committed suicide it dropped me to my knees it was the third one just in my immediate family i've had five so i went right to my knees i mean i didn't think i'd

ever get up but i our human nature and our survival mechanisms that were created for us and our soul expansion makes the decision no matter what we go through to expand our choices on how fast that happens how long it takes i guess is what i want to say our choices in what direction we want to go in expansion i know people that expand in negative and that's where they need to go and it's okay. However we expand, but I do know either way, it's a teacher, you know, it is our greatest lesson. Yeah. That's why I call them AFGEs, another freaking growth experience because everyone will crack you open. And you even in the beginning of the book, you talk about how we come, let's just start at the beginning. You know, we come into the world, call it, you

a perfect rare vase that's completely whole and then we chip and we crack and we even can shatter and those horrible things that happen to us affect us but on the soul level we're still perfectly perfect right but it's our human self they created our soul and i think when we when we understand that it can't be anything but perfection because they created it it changes our viewpoint on what our soul is about now our heart our mind uh body our spirit not our soul our spirit of being here the spirit of being on this planet gets broken and shattered and damaged and all of those things now no wound is not there is never a wound that can't be healed that's why they call it a wound I love because they can heal it and we can heal it. But that doesn't mean it's going to look the same. If you got burned and you had a terrible wound on your hand, you would have a scar. But what you do with that scar, you're going to say, don't ever touch that stove because I got burned and look what happened to me. Be cautious.

Are you going to utilize it that way and show that wound? Or are you going to go, I'm going to let them burn themselves because I'm not letting anybody know I have this terrible, ugly scar on my hand. And I made a decision to reveal my scars. Yeah. And you have very honestly. So you share very openly and beautifully. And this is one of the things I love most about you.

Like you say, you're an open book. You're open about what's happened to you. And you've had a lot of trauma in your life. So you came in with this awareness. And I remember reading how you were see animals die and you would kind of see their soul lift out. You could see things when you were really little. But what you didn't know was that your mother also had the same gifts. And she's not only not believed, but she was deemed crazy and even institutionalized. And so she was not necessarily going to she probably saw those gifts in you, but she was not going to cultivate them, honor them, you know, acknowledge them because she was trying to protect you. Right. So you came into the world hyper attuned and sensitive as this little beautiful girl. And then some unthinkable things happen to you. And you talk about how not only sexually abused by people around the neighborhood, but even trafficked around your neighborhood. And so I'm wondering if you can talk about that. And also, I thought it was so powerful how you described because this is exactly how it is that to you, you didn't know this was strange or you just thought this is how things are because it wasn't just you. It was other kids being molested and trafficked as well. So you just thought this is what happens when you're a kid. So can you share what happened? Yeah, just to back up just one second, if you don't mind, I do want to say that my mother

ended up having some real serious emotional issues because I think partly of what she saw and not understanding it and being suppressed. So I want to be honest about that. You know, she ended up having a lot of them. So she wasn't present. Yeah. I mean, I've often felt that when people are diagnosed as schizophrenic or having severe mental issues that very often are seeing things that aren't there. And so they're, you know, whatever. I think often they really are seeing things, but they don't have a context for it. They don't have permission for it. They've been punished for it. And what makes them, quote unquote, go crazy. What's that really? But let's just use that term for simplicity

is not the powers they have. But like you said, the repression, denial and confusion over the power exactly my brother was schizophrenic and I know he was extremely gifted and my mother had some real personality issues because of it and my sister had the gift and so my father and my other brother didn't have it so what happened with my mother the reason I was so easily and readily available to abusers was because she would disappear inside a book or inside herself if she was reading a book you could call her name a hundred times and she wouldn't say a word sounds like she did she wasn't available yeah she just disappeared and you know in those days she's from Dubuque Iowa and in those days you'd send your kid out and when the street light comes on

you bring them back and you don't ask questions there's nothing to ask right you just assume they were fine yeah so we had some pornographers well it started out with the younger boys and they groomed me for their parents, the pornographers who would take pictures of me. And, you know, I have a lot of recall of it, but I don't have everything. I don't need it. I'm one of those that says, you know, if your brain doesn't need it, it won't utilize it. And why have it? You know, so, and I was passed around through all the young boys. I believe that my brothers were part of having that abuse and possibly carrying that abuse over because sometimes kids do that and what they don't know they don't know it's wrong they don't know it's it's off they

don't understand I didn't understand I thought it was perfectly normal to go to a door and have them open up the door with a camera and be completely naked and the whole household was naked I thought that was normal in their household yeah it's like oh I got a friend who likes to be naked and swim naked and their family's naked you know and that but they were pornographers the way I found that out later was someone that knew my sister had babysat and saw the films of me. So I don't even have a total recall of being filmed. I just know I was. And then when that happened, it kind of triggered it for me. And I remembered some of it. I was just going to say, you share this story about the first moment that you realize like, hmm, you know, maybe there's

a bad girl. Yeah, I'm a bad girl. And you immediately internalize the shame that so many victims so unnecessarily and automatically understandably do, thinking that, you know, there's something wrong with them when they are, there's nothing wrong with them. They're victim. Well, it felt good. It felt good. Yeah. And it felt normal emotionally to me. So when I was up there one day, they wanted to go swimming and I called my Nana and said, can I go swimming? She's babysitting us. And she simply said, yes, come get your suit. And I simply said, but we don't wear suits here. They don't wear clothes. And my Nana had a meltdown, but she too kept silent. You know, I think she meant, she told me to come home, of course,

immediately. But then I kept going when my mom came back and my dad came back from vacation, I kept going up there. I don't know, you know, I there, you know, people don't talk about those things, especially years ago. And I don't think she did. But when I would tell my father that one of the men would act out on me, he'd say, Oh, that was an accident. Like if somebody would turn around and turn back and they were exposed in my face, because I was little, right? So they would, I would have been right in front of their, you know, penis. And I would tell my dad and he'd say, Oh, it was an accident. You know, they were in so much denial. My dad went after one of them and the guy ran in his house crying and my dad went home. So there was no protection for my,

for the children in our family. And I'm sure many of the children in that area. And, you know, I know there were many children. I saw them and they were there too, you know, but the older boys became a lot of my victimizers, a lot. They were always grooming me and doing some pretty horrendous things to my body. You know, and there's no reason to go into detail. I would happily, but there's, you know, it's not been helping much. We can imagine and we don't have to, you know, but they sexually and physically were. Absolutely. And, and combine the two together. So it was very traumatizing, but I didn't know it was traumatizing. So it changed to me, obviously internally, but I wasn't aware of the change. It wasn't until later in life when

I was having struggles with sexuality, I was overly sexual. Yeah. Which is really common. Yeah. Yeah. And I thought anything goes. And then I didn't know, of course you have a sign on your head at that point. And so every molester is going to find you. And that's what happened. And I thought I was finding them and, you know, I'm 11, 12, 13. I thinking I'm finding them at that point because this started when I was about four years old maybe a little younger because I can't remember too far back but um I guess that is far back so my life was centered around having the control you know if I could seduce I could control and you didn't get to decide I did and really in truth I wasn't deciding anything I was broken and I was harmed and I was trying to have

power somehow with the male population. And then I thought they'd love me. I thought they were going to love me and they'd walk away as though we didn't even just have an act and ignore me. And I was devastated. I thought, what's wrong with me? So it was a continuous abuse of myself through myself, my unknowing self, and also needing to gain that power and control. So that was kind of my life story until I got older. So you just so beautifully articulated the whole abuse cycle in such a beautiful way. So thank you for that. Because I know that so many people right here with us now are resonating with that and understanding maybe what happened to them on a new level and the degree to which the shame and guilt that they carried with them is unwarranted.

the actions and choices that happen as a result of that kind of abuse are a result of that kind of abuse, not active conscious choices that you were even able to make as a victim. And so around the time that you were four, you had another majorly traumatic, but also transformative experience. And I don't know, maybe this was with the boys, the same boys that were grooming you or hurting you, but you wanted to play. Of course, as a little girl, you wanted their approval. You wanted to play with them. And so you were playing with these older boys and all excited to be in the light of their attention, which is totally usual and normal, especially for someone who's being groomed or abused. They told you to go get popsicles from the freezer in your garage.

And you ran to do that. And it turned out the freezer was unplugged. And the next thing you You know, they have slammed you in the unplugged outdoor freezer and locked the door. So interesting when you say that to me, because I've been so disconnected from the fear of that experience. But when, since I've written the book, I can feel the connection and I almost get a, you know, like I want to cry like that poor child and still have that little bit of disconnection. They did. They slammed the freezer door and then they closed the garage door that was separated

from our house by quite a distance. We had a lot of land and distance for a child, I would say. And they went, went out and played and went home when they went home. And I was in there, I was facing towards coils. And I remember it was one of the first standup freezers. It was the thing. It was the 1960s. My mom had bought it. She put it in the garage because she didn't want it anymore. She wanted a regular refrigerator in the house, obviously. So she was supposed to bolt it and turn it towards the wall and she didn't. And so she didn't want my dad to know. So the whole thing was like a secret. Well, you know, when you grow up in an alcoholic home, everything's a secret anyway. Everything. Yeah. And so how long were you in the freezer

before? And, and by the way, she describes exactly what, I mean, it's a, it's a beautifully told harrowing and true story, but there are other aspects to it. But when your mom finally realized that you were there, it had been how long? She knows for sure 20 minutes, but she thinks it's closer to two hours. And I know it's somewhere in between because she heard your baby's in the freezer and didn't respond. And she said about, she said she heard it again in her head about 20 minutes later, didn't respond. And then she heard it again and she didn't know the length of time. And then all of a sudden it hit her that she was actually hadn't heard from me. I hadn't come in the house and this is real. And her intuitions stepped in finally. And I was calling her. I mean,

I could feel her, but I knew I was going to be okay. I just didn't know when. And I didn't know that in the beginning. And I didn't have the separation that other people have where they look back at their bodies. I didn't have that. Yeah. And I guess, you know, we also have to understand that you had the experience as a four-year-old girl, right? And then now, or since you've become adults, I know this isn't the first time you've been, you've articulated what happened to you, but now you're speaking as an adult, but through your child's eyes, you know? So you were in there and you basically, you know, if you're in a locked freezer, you run out of air pretty quickly. And you were unconscious and not breathing when your mom pulled you out.

Yeah. She said I was completely ashen and I was not conscious. And so while you were there, you had an experience. So tell us what happened. I was screaming really profoundly, very frightened. And I remember just screaming at the top of my lungs. I remember being very hysterical and I didn't realize it wasn't a joke. And then there was silence. And I realized I was part of this joke. And whatever this was, I was in trouble. And innately, I felt that I was going to die. And I think that that's part of our human condition. I think that we are programmed to know that even at four, I didn't know what death meant. But I didn't know that I was going to die. I was in trouble, big trouble. And I was

going somewhere. Yeah. And I looked over and I heard stop crying, we're going to get your mama. and I saw three lights. One was very, very bright. One felt like, I want to say Mother Mary. It felt so mothering to me. And I, you know, I believe they come as we understand them. And I understood Catholicism at that point in our journey. After that incident, by the way, my family left the church. Long story there. And that was part of it. I remember being pulled, but I wasn't looking back. I wasn't looking at my body. I just remembered then all of a sudden, I was at the bottom of this set of stairs. I wasn't really told anything except for to stop screaming and crying that I was safe. I ended up on the top of this stairway. I don't know how I got there because

I was thinking, how am I going to get up there? I felt very jello-like, kind of floppy. I was there and I was at the edge of this well. Now, later on, Dr. Raymond Moody said to me, you saw a well other people see a tunnel other people see you know and but it's all the same thing but I saw movement in it and it was quite profound and it was movement and today in my life I know it looked like DNA twirling and swirling and it was people's desires and I looked over at these lights over in the corner and I said they felt angelic and I understood angels and so I felt safe and I said what are do you answer all those because I knew they were people's questions and they said no Susie sometimes what people desire the most is not good for them and then I saw this golden path

and from there it was just this room after room after room of beauty understanding you know there was a room of knowledge I think people call it the acrostic records the here I don't relate to that to me it's the room of knowledge there was the room of companions I didn't get to see the companions people have asked me that but I knew they were there which is animals there were people they were walking through where the well is and then they were walking down this golden path and and i saw people trying to pave their path and they were hysterical and this is just shortening it up but they were you know dropping to their knees begging for help and i saw this angelic presence come in and start putting things back in this pyramid of pavers and i just knew innately that

it was their journey their life journey and they were unbalancing it because they were pulling from the bottom. And I watched a game. Yeah. Yeah. There was no Jenga then though. So I just saw it as golden papers and I have always called it the yellow brick road because I saw the wizard of Oz. And so that made sense to me. They told you many things probably in childlike terms, but, but that's a lot. You share a lot of the lessons and the wisdom they told you about life, about death, about souls. And this image you saw, I haven't been able, I just was used it in a session with a client the other day, I was referring to this golden brick road thing, because another part of that description, you were talking about how you saw these people, it was clear they were

the souls of the people that were, you know, on earth or wherever, you know, living their lives and that they were like on their knees calling for help. It was almost a metaphorical image, right? Like they're trying to move forward. They're trying to make something happen and it's not working. And then these angelic beings coming in and smoothing the way or fixing. And one of the things they told you, which is a major spiritual truth, is that they can't help if we don't ask. And they also told me that, yes. And they also told me that they were the pavers of the path. we were not all we had to do was walk it they are the beginning the middle and the end and they we

think we know what's best for us with our thinking they know what's best for us and we fight them you know we'll bang our head against a wall and they talked about that you know banging your head against the wall and getting battered and bruised at best you can get through the wall but that's all you're going to get from it or shifting your energy and looking for the answer from them which we don't do easily and readily. We'll have everybody join us. It's supposed to look this way. It has to look this way. And they said, no, we don't know. We're being followed by our brain and our brain is beautiful, but it is not part of our soul. It doesn't go with us. Our heart has 40,000 neurons in it, neurites, and it has memory capacity and learning capabilities and all these

beautiful things. And I really believe the heart goes with us because the brain has so much junk. why go there with it yeah so we use our brains here and we end up banging our heads against the walls and having these expectations that everything's going to be okay well we know internally in our souls and our intuition this isn't working but we continue and continue until we finally surrender and once we surrender they come you know because we're surrendering to the path that they've paved for us and things start to unfold it took me years to understand that I spent my whole life fighting everything, banging my head against the wall. That's the truth.

I didn't come back from this like some adults have. Right. Where they have this, oh, you know, their world is filled with beauty and all these wonderful things and they're healed. And I didn't come back that way. I came back and I was going to have a tough life. And that was that. But that was maybe how children have to experience it or I had to experience it.

Did they warn you? because I think I remember reading that they warned you that, you know, it's not going to be easy. All along the way, they've warned me. Till this day, they warn me. They still warn you that are more things coming? Yes. And I feel them. So when things happen in the world, about three or four weeks before they happen, I'm telling my students something big is going to happen here kind of like 9-11 it's going to be maybe even worse and I want to prepare you it's not going to happen on this land it's good and it's just like it comes to me and and I think why do I need to know this well I think they're preparing my soul to be able to share truth with

people and mediums psychics intuitives we're always having to prove ourselves we're called energy vampires or we're called grief vampires I think people are correct in some instances but I also say to people when they say that to me, I agree with you. I am sucking in all of that person's pain. I am holding space for them while they grieve. And so in some form, I am sucking it in. So I guess you could call me a beautiful, beautiful, great vampire. If you're sucking away the pain and not the life force, which is what you do. And when you came back from that as a little girl to make matters more complicated. I mean, it wasn't like the trauma stopped at that point or the pain stops, but now, and this I've heard from pretty much, and strangely, I mean,

this is my world. I meet a lot of people who have died and come back. One of the universal things, and this was certainly true for you, and I can't imagine this as a four-year-old little girl, is that the veil between this side and the other side is super thin or non-existent. Like you can access things, things, channels open up once you've had that, the experience itself opens up the channels. I think for some, for some, not all, I think some people just block it, but yeah, I, I believe I couldn't. No, I mean, obviously, and, and how could you is even as that, I mean, how could you, I just can't imagine being a little girl holding all that. I mean, I know that you had already kind of been seeing things from as long as you can remember, but it must've been really

scary. Very. I used to cover my pillow with my head and say, go away, go away, go away. I can remember when I needed to go to the bathroom, go potty, you know, in the, in the nighttime I'd call my mom and if she didn't come, I just pee. I wouldn't walk down the hallway because I would see people looking in my window under my bed, the corner of my room, down the hallway, they were everywhere. And I didn't understand. So when my mom would finally take me to her room she put me on the floor because I kicked you know and rolled and she couldn't sleep and I'd look and there they'd be again so that was that's like a horror movie it's like a horror movie and I thought they were the boogeyman but they weren't doing anything mean they weren't

they were just present and once I understood that as time went on it became kind of my abnormally normal life but I never talked about it really number one my mom told me not to but also I really believe that it was so normal to me. It was kind of like when I was trafficked, it was so normal to me at that point that there was nothing to talk about. I didn't go and ask, you know, Hey, when you go outside in the rain, do you get wet? Yeah. That's what I prepared to. As most of you know, for the past several years, I've been on a pretty intense grief journey and it's been a path of healing. I've shared lots of that healing with you and lots of the healing resources that I found. And I am so thrilled to announce that I am doing my first ever retreat

for grieving mamas. So if you or someone you love is a mama who has lost a child in any way, at any stage, at any age, I would love for you to come join me at 1440 Multiversity in the Redwoods near Santa Cruz, California for four amazing days of beautiful, uplifting community and healing. We've got David Kessler. We've got Paul Selig. We've got Catherine Woodward Thomas. We've got me. We've got body work. We've got organic food, beautiful rooms. Go to 1440.org. Check it out. It's right there on the homepage. I really hope you can join us. When you're sitting alone in your room at night, don't you see spirits around you too? Like that's a normal thing. So when did you realize

this isn't necessarily normal. And I may have access to a realm that most and I might be able to use this for good. I think I was 17 or 18, probably 18. And my Nana died. And I had never had someone that close to me. I adored my Nana come to me when they died. And I didn't know she died. And my parents called me the next morning. And she talked to me and I said, go away, go away, away like I always do but then it dawned on me I know this energy always knowing that your loved ones have a familiarity to you that's how you know it's them and she was familiar to me and I said Nana and she started talking to me and I knew at that point something was different that that was it was really real she wasn't a stranger she wasn't some random thing this was real yeah

You weren't just imagining things, right? Right. This was real, yeah. Right. And when I got the call that she had passed, I called the Paranormal Society. And I told them, and they said, sounds to us like you're a medium. I told them kind of my story. And I hung up, scared the heck out of me.

Like, what's that? You know, what does that mean? And they gave me just a little bit. And I, you know, when I hung up the phone, I was panicked. And then I kind of stepped into doing grief and addiction therapy and things like that to try to help people because I wasn't aware that I was supposed to use this. I just would be with a friend and say, oh, I can feel your dad, you know, and then I'd give information at their last conversation or something quite profound or someone would come to me and say, I'm going to do in vitro. And I'd say, oh, you're already pregnant. They say, no, no, I start my in vitro next week.

And I told him, no, you're going to have a little girl next March. You're already pregnant and it would be regal. And I thought, what the heck is this? Then I knew I still only used it in a very small circle on most of my life. It was only about, in honesty, about 18 years ago, maybe, that I said, I need to expand this somehow, some way. I think that I felt safe, you see, because now I was older. I was in charge.

I understood it differently. I had been, you know, a counselor for so long. And I just felt like, you know, and during that time, I had all the suicides. And so I had grown even more and became more expansive. You were ready. And it's beautiful. I mean, one of the things that I just I was giggling with our friend Tina about this the other day, we had gone out to dinner, guys, after Good Grief Day. And, you know, we were talking to Susan and we were recounting some of the insane reading because she just starts impromptu medium. She was speaking a good grief day and then people came out to ask questions and then all these spirits were coming in from the loved ones who were up there. And we're going to talk in a minute about, because we have about spirit guides and our loved ones. And you touched on this a second ago and how to recognize them, sharing these things, these messages from loved ones and details about their lives and who they were that you couldn't have possibly known. And the gasps were audible in the room. You know, people were just like totally amazed and so much grace comes with that because then you know that your loved ones really are still here.

Like that's confirmation, you know, and there's such grace with that. That's such a gift, right? So we were at dinner and we were like, oh my God. And when you said blah, blah, blah. And then guys, what Susan kept saying was like, really? That's amazing. because when she goes into like the mediumship mode, you basically channel

and you're the kind of channel that doesn't, Susan doesn't really stay in the house. So you don't remember the insane stuff that comes, you seem like, I mean, to me, you are still Susan and you're talking with your voice and with your personality and everything else. But a part of your conscious awareness probably has to leave room for the information to come in

and the messages to come in. And so she doesn't remember, but I was peeing in my, like I was laughing so hard because you were almost more amazed or as amazed as we were. Yeah, honestly, I don't know what this is in me, if it's humility or if it's an awe,

but I always think they're crazy. I didn't say that. I didn't do that. It wasn't that good. Or they didn't relate. Or I didn't say enough. You know, there's always something. you know I'll remember bits and pieces for about 24 hours and then I think I get the grace of you

know God to me it's the grace of God that I don't have to carry all that every minute but there are some things that I don't forget there are some things that are so powerful that I I'm in agony I come home and I sob and you know it's when it comes to children people losing children it's my area and I just, I don't try to take their pain. How dare I try to do that? But it's just that I can't release their pain. Yeah. You, it was, and you're such an empath. So, you know, your feeling of that happens to me, I wouldn't be able to do, I mean, I, I can't even talk to parents who have recently lost their kids. I call them, I don't mean, I mean this in a tongue in cheek way, but not in a disrespectful way. I call them freshies. Like when we're fresh in the, like,

I can't, I can't hold that. Like I, I, first of all, I have my, you know, it'll trigger the intensity of my pain, but, and that won't help anyone, but also it's just like, it's a lot to hold. So I get why your beautiful brain and your spiritual support is like, let's just erase the blackboard, you know, at least chalk it up a little bit, chalk it up, smooth it out a little bit. What was interesting at the dinner, I do want to say that what was interesting at the dinner is I recall as you guys were talking that there was a gentleman in the room with one of your friends and I,

that's where my focus went. It left what you were saying. And sometimes people think I'm not listening to them, but a week later I'll say to them, remember when you were talking to me about blah, blah, blah and they go, I didn't even think you were listening. Because I'm already doing that, you know, there I go. No, I know I have other friends who have parallel gifts

and I know when their eyes glaze over, they're seeing something, you know, not that they're bored with me because, you know, at this point, you just tell me if you're bored with, you know, I want you to tell me if you're bored with me, but I know you're not. Who could be bored with me? No, I'm just kidding. But my, yeah, please. You are doing that to my friend, Hope, who had come with us. And she's so attuned and aware of everything happening to everyone in the room that she noticed that you were seeing something over her shoulder. So she said, who are you seeing? And, and then you said, I'm, I'm seeing your father. No, I'm seeing a man, you know, and you started telling her about him

and she said, yeah, that's my father. And then you gave her a mat and you said you knew that he left her, which frankly, you know, I've been friends with, with her since graduate school. She's one of my nearest and dearest friends. And I, and I know the gist of what happened to her with her father, but I didn't know those details that you told her. Yeah. Yeah. 30 years. But you were telling her the specifics of how he left and why he left and how old she was and how it impacted her and how, and also your messages are always because on the other side, and this is one of the lessons you learn, not only when you went to the other side, but in the millions of communications you've had with spirit sense that we go back, we become pure love. We still keep

aspects of our energetic frequency and personality, but all the egos, jealousies, nastiness, personality crap, all that stuff just disappears with the body. And so they look at their lives and their impact on us from that perspective. And so that's why your messages are so healing because, and this is a perfect example, because in addition to telling my friend, you know, these things she already knew, but I didn't, I mean, we just never got into that much detail about it, but she was confirming that. Then you gave her the message of like, he really sees that, you know, and that he understands what he did and the, and the shame and not that he feels shame, but that he's aware, you know, he had to work through the way that his

actions affected her when he got to the other side, you know, and that he really honored what the wounds that he really, you know, honored her in the wound and was proud of her. It was a really beautiful. And I also she's really tough. My friend, really tough and really but really empathetic and kind. But for herself, she does not. I mean, she's like mastered the deadpan like no one I've ever known. And she teared up. And I tear, you know, with grace. And then I teared up and I was like, oh, you never cry. Like I've seen you cry three times in 30 years. And she's like, you know, it was a really sweet moment. You know, people are confused about them understanding that what they did and when they drop lower in vibration, I certainly can't get

as high as them so they have to drop down their job then at that point is to carry that memory simply in order to for you to recognize them so they're given grace and when they go back to that higher vibration they're not carrying all that they understand the beginning the middle and the end so they understand what we needed to learn and what that person needed to learn and so they've healed but but when they're down at that lower vibration if I said to her oh your father is an amazing, loving, gifted, giving. Yeah. So who's that? Yeah. Right. Soul, but not our human dad. So you talk about the difference between our spirit guides and loved ones. And I love what you said about how you, because I have noticed this since Sammy died because of that, I've

started to differentiate what I call the energetic signature of my different loved ones. Like I know what my mom feels like. I don't really get into it with my dad much at all. I've had very little, mostly I know because of me, but that's a story for another day. That's because of him and his behavior. Me and me not having put my attention on doing the healing I want to do to be ready to connect with him that way. Right. I'm not ready. I'm just, I got too much other shit to work through still. But I know my moms, I know my grandmothers, I know. And then I started playing with it with my live kids. So when I'm sitting next to my youngest Jackson, for instance, I will just,

you know, he's playing on his phone and I'll just kind of sit there and ground and go into my energy self and feel the unique, his unique energetic frequency without like, we can all do this guys. You can do this with the people you love. And so my guess is from what I was, what you were describing, and even what you mentioned earlier that, you know, we won't necessarily see an image, but we absolutely can feel the energy of our loved ones when they are visiting us or near us or when we're accessing them. So I'm wondering if you can, and we also have these spirit guides that have been with us. I don't know if they're with us for all our lifetimes or just for this lifetime, you can have to tell us, but talk about spirit guides versus

Well, spirit guides are guides that decide to stay behind. Maybe they've done lifetimes with you before. I always think they have. They stay behind to guide you on this particular journey. And I think they stay with us through this journey. There are people. There are people just like our family here. And they're our family.

But the familiarity of them is very different. So a spirit guide will say, what are you thinking? You know better than to turn down that road. you know better than than to get involved with that person why are you doing it and we go oh but i because i want to be good and i want to you know i want to trust them and they're like you can't and we're not listening right so they're much more open and straightforward and the familiarity is not there in the same way you know that's something talking to your intuitive self but it's not that love familiarity our our and our guides are very powerful you have to invite them in so i always

tell people the reason that I struggle with psychic readings and that that's me that's just me I don't I don't disregard that for anyone else I honor everyone else but the reason I struggle with it is because I know we have free will and our guides know that and if I know you're free I know what you're going to do in six months and I know your free will and they know your free will and so there is no free will so we're not making choices to grow our soul we have choices aligned in front of us you know there's this thing when you know when the door closes open it it's a door right and I love that I don't I don't even know who wrote it I know it's someone else did it's not me but that's kind of what your spirit guides are saying too it's like okay that door closed

open it it's a door it's meant to be opened and that's how kind of they talk to us and they don't they're not like angelic where the angels oh baby oh sweetie oh you know I'm here feel my love and that's all you feel unconditional love loved ones have a familiarity of this planet their smell their scent you sense them their feel uh you maybe you'll feel what they went through maybe you'll feel how they felt here you'll feel your your heart kind of pulsate almost like like my mom you know that kind of feeling there's a thing called a psychomantium that dr moody i trained under him and for it and they put a mirror it's called mirror gazing years ago but they put a mirror in front of you and I remember I hadn't had any contact with my mom and I felt

all these other entities coming through and then my mom nothing could convince me it wasn't my mom I felt her that love that mom love that even though sometimes she wasn't loving I felt it and it I knew it was her so it's kind of that's the difference of what they feel like there's three. There's the angels, the guides, and our loved ones. And angels do exist. I say that, and I mean it. It's not a religious connotation. Yes, religion has taken it and created with that what they choose, but they do exist. And they may not have wings. I don't know. I guess for whoever understands them, they're going to come as you understand them, but they exist. They have never walked on this planet. Guides have. They can't guide you if they don't understand this

planet. So they're not here to guide us. They're just here to love us and to protect us and to help repave the, are they the ones that do the repaving or is that? Yes. They're the ones that are paving the path and they don't protect us. We have to learn to protect ourselves. Now they'll step in, in, in, in, in situations like accidents. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You're yes. I thought you meant up here, you know, we have to learn to make the choices. No, I meant like life or death things, or if it's not our time or whatever that.

And so people ask me, why don't they protect everyone? Well, that's not possible. Not everyone will allow them in, number one. You know, they have to be welcomed also. You know, the afterlife is not sitting there, you know, waiting for you to push them away or welcome them in. They hear you when you call them. Yeah, I think that's so important to hear, guys. And that's true for all our loved ones, our guy, you know, they're around, they're right here, but they won't be able to, they don't intervene, step in, interact unless you invite them or ask. Yes. And they can't read your mind. Now I know there's mediums that say they can, it's not what I experienced. So I'll just say in my experience, they can't read your minds and they can't see your private things.

You have to welcome them in. I think I'd lose my mind. I think I'd be crazy. They're watching me in the shower or having sex with my husband. No, they are not. Okay. So now we can all, like we were saying earlier, build our own connection to the divine, our own intuition, intuitive skills. We all have this capacity. I always say we take into our brains 40 billion bits of information every millisecond. But if left to our own devices, most of us just take in about 2,000 of those 40 billion bits consciously. So we only take about 2,000 bits of information consciously every millisecond. So when you start to hone these skills, or someone like Susan, when you start to hone these skills, then you're taking in more than the 2,000.

you're opening up and you're almost training yourself to open up unless you're Susan or go through something that opens it up for you. You open it up, right? Yes. Yes. And I think what then when they study the brain of mediums, they're using a different area of their brain. So you have to be willing to release all that information that's constantly coming and telling us you're crazy. You don't know what you're talking about. It's not really there. You know what we've heard our whole lives. Whatever that is, it could be good, bad, but it's always resonating in that arena. I heard this. This is not my saying. I heard this years ago. Awareness, acceptance, and action. And the action is trust. So you become aware. It's the three A's. You become aware.

I am aware that they are near me. That's it. It's that simple. Accept it. Acceptance. I accept that they're near me and the action is trust that they're near me and when we do that they start to recognize it it's like oh they're gonna they're gonna accept me right now i'm gonna give them a little sign i'm gonna bring a hummingbird into their house chasing them or there's a bee that will leave the garage that doesn't sting them but just keeps following wherever they go or whatever it is they use they love to use little creatures and things like that but they're when you become the first A, aware, they become aware that you're aware. When you go into the next phase of acceptance, they are aware that you are accepting them. And then that action of trust, once you

trust what you get or what you hear, what you sense, they go, they're actually, they're feeling it. I'm going to do that more. Yeah. And I think that's so important to say, you know, we've talked about, you and I have talked about this before that, you know, what we often do and what I had done. So one of the things you told me during that first reading that I'd forgotten about is that I had been hiking at, with a friend and I saw these lizards everywhere doing pushups. And I was like, what the hell is this? And I called my oldest son, who's a herpetologist. He's like, I don't know. Some lizards do pushups for mating season, but it's not really mating season. And then I said to my friend, Oh, what if this is Sammy? And then I immediately, I know

that's way fricking crazy. It's not Sammy. And then like, fast forward, I think it was not even And a week later, I was talking to you on this interview we did. And you told me, you know, he's showing me lizards doing pushups and saying that was him, you know, I was like, ah, OK. But what you had said to me and I've heard you say to others is that when you write it off or don't trust, right, don't take that action of trust, but instead take the action of dismissal or telling yourself it's not real, then their hands are tied. they're like, okay, well, that didn't work. Maybe I can find something else. But that's why the

trust is so important. And you also have said, I'm telling you all the things you say, but I'm just reminding you of them. But you've also said that when you do that, when you say out loud, like I see you, you know, thank you for the message that that not only, even if you're wrong, right talk about that even if you're wrong even if you're wrong what you're saying to them is is that they could do that now and you would use utilize that as a connection to them you would witness it and recognize it everything is about recognition of what's going on around you so for me i built a dictionary and and most mediums do and people can they can build a dictionary so for me anytime there's a birthday i see a balloon go up in the air that's what i see in my mind's

So, yes, I could do 10 readings today. And if there's 10 birthdays within two weeks, one way or the other, I'm going to say I see a balloon go up in the air and people go, well, she keeps talking about that same balloon. Well, that's what they use. Yeah. Right. So it's learning to trust what you receive. And once you trust it, they go, OK, they trust when I give her a balloon going up in the air that there's a birthday. OK. And I don't you know, I'm always cautious. It's got to be within a couple of weeks because we'll find one. Yeah. And we don't want to find it. We want it to be accurate information. Not we don't need to be right. I'll say a million times I might be wrong because and I have to be willing to do that. I don't like it. Yeah. But I have to be willing because I'm I'm having a human experience. Well, so let me ask you this. You're talking about the balloon, that dictionary you created, and that we can all create one, because this is helpful to me because I have this thing with my mom around hummingbirds. That was the messenger that I chose for her, and I've shared before the amazing experience I had in March in Chicago when I proclaimed that she would come to me as a hummingbird and told her spirit that, and then went downstairs thinking, there's no, you know, okay, if I see a hummingbird and then I go, cause it's winter in Chicago and there aren't even hummingbirds in Chicago, much less in the winter. And I go downstairs and my

kids are watching a documentary about hummingbirds. And then I saw a hummingbird in one form or another for an entire year. And eventually I'm not even sure when it transitioned to this. I think I started realizing that a hummingbird will always show up immediately in the moment that I am speaking the truth about something. And my mom was really big on, like when you said something that really resonated and she knew to be true, she would let you know in a beautiful way, you know? And so now I notice that when I see a hummingbird, I'm like, oh, what did I just say? What was I just talking about? That's important. That's the truth, you know? So is that an example of a dictionary? Yeah. And they'll help you with your dictionary. People say, well, do I have to write it down? No.

what happens is like anything repetition so if every time i say to someone i see a balloon go up there they say yeah we just had a birthday or tomorrow's my birthday or today's their birthday that happens repetitively or you know keeps repeating and repeating that's it becomes my dictionary naturally inherently just like you know anything else that we get used to open up the handle of the car every time i own up the handle of the car you get inside you know the car opens that kind of start to realize. So there, so in the book, she talks guys about all sorts of ways to, and, and, and the end of each chapter, there's prompts and exercises and all kinds of guidance around cultivating your own intuition, your own relationship with the spirit world,

which I love about books like this. Cause you know, a memoir is amazing and can take you on a beautiful journey. But one of the things I love most about you is that you've used that journey and service to creating service out of it. You know, that the journey was not only part of your soul's growth, but part of developing the gifts that you use in service to the world. So I'm so grateful. The book is called Infinite Life, Infinite Lessons by Susan Grau. You can also, We'll put the link to the book in the show notes as well as Susan's website and social media so you can follow her. She does events.

I'm going to make her do some more grief events with me. I'm happy to do it. I love it. I love helping others. Yeah, you really do. You're wonderful. You're so generous that way and just a generous soul. We're so grateful that you're on the planet and helping all of us learn our infinite

lives and lessons. Thank you. That's for sure. Wow. Thank you. There is no cure for a crush