How I Became A Psychic Medium
by Dawn Carr, C.Ht.
Today would have been my grandfather's 104th birthday. His name was Harold and he passed away in 2002. Strangely, I began seeing images of him during my waking life in the early months of 2004. I didn't know quite what to make of these images...visions, whatever you want to call them. When he would appear, his message was always the same: "Dawn, you have a gift that you need to share with the world in order to help others." I did not know what that gift was, nor did I understand what the heck was going on in my world. I didn't want to tell anyone because I didn't want them thinking I was losing my mind, so I kept it to myself.
As months passed, my life began filling with more psychic experiences.
I had been working as a professional clown since my children were born because I had the skills, needed a job, and loved working with kids. When I was nine years old, I taught myself to ride a unicycle. When I was eleven years old, I was privately tutored by a French artist and learned how to oil paint (which turned into face painting). At fourteen, my friends and I learned how to juggle during a junior high afternoon class. We even formed our own entertaining group under the guidance of our juggling instructor/band teacher. Our little group was allowed to visit nursing homes during school hours to entertain and bring smiles to people's faces. I loved making people smile!
After having my first child at the age of twenty-five, I didn't want to leave him with anyone, so I found a way to still earn a living while being able to raise my babies. I bought a book at the store and learned how to twist balloons into hats, animals, swords...anything! At one point, I was invited to teach juggling and balloon twisting classes at the local elementary school for the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students. It was even more special because my eldest son was in these classes.
Years down the clowning road, I began noticing more coincidental things happening in my life. I saw patterns and could someone know why certain things were happening without knowing exactly how I knew. If you have listened to my radio shows, you've heard me tell stories of my psychic awakening unfolding as my children grew from toddlers to school age students.
My youngest child entered kindergarten in 2001, and that's the year my psychic mind really started seeing things. It was wild!
In January of 2004, the visions of my grandfather began. Since I wasn't sure what to make of them, I just ignored it as best I could. A couple of months later, a nonprofit that I had supported in the past while working as a professional clown contacted me to fill me in on their latest fundraiser. They were hosting a big psychic fair at the local VFW and asked if I would help spread the word. "Of course!" I said.
On the day of the psychic fair, I went down to support the cause and discovered that the word had indeed gotten out. The place was packed with people! Since I'm not a fan of standing in line, I looked around and saw a round table in the very middle of the room with a woman sitting at the table. No one was around her, and it was kind of weird because every table had at least two or three people with lines of more people waiting their turn. If it was a movie, the camera would have viewed the scene from above with a perfect circle of emptiness around the table for cinematic effect. That's how empty the space was around this woman's table. I walked over to her table, sat down and told her "I choose you," using my best Pokémon phrase at the time.
Her name was Nonie and she was a psychic medium and a spirit artist. While conducting readings, she would sketch a picture of the person in the spirit world with whom she was communicating. A weird sidebar here is that I have never seen nor heard of her again after this event, and I have been in this profession for over twenty years now. Bizarre.
I sat across from her as she began to both speak and sketch throughout the reading. "There is a man here. He feels like he's your grandfather. He says that you know what he's going to say." She was right. I did know. He always said the thing about helping people with this special gift that I didn't know about. I nodded my head. She spoke to me for fifteen minutes about my grandfather. She told me that he wants to know what I'm afraid of, since I've done so many things in life that could be deemed as scarier. I said that I didn't want people treating me differently. I knew psychic stuff was going on in my life, but I didn't know how to control it or what it all even meant. Looking back on my life, I can see all of the psychic events that took place. When they were happening, I just thought they were kind of cool. I didn't realize that I was actively participating in psychic exploits. I thought everyone had similar experiences.
At the end of the reading, Nonie turned around her sketch pad and it was a picture of my grandfather as a young man. It was amazing. I thanked her, rolled up the picture and sat in my car for a bit, processing everything that I had just experienced.
A few months earlier, I had met a couple of people who were working as professional psychic mediums and one was also affiliated with law enforcement. They told me that I had healing hands. That's not the first time I had heard those words from intuitive people, but I never understood what it meant. They coached me a bit about psychic stuff, but I learned practically everything else from being immersed directly into the intuitive world. Still, I couldn't quite grasp my natural intuitive skills and without a proper teacher, I went on with my life.
Autumn rolled around in 2004, and my psychic world continued to grow. One of the psychic mediums who had coached me was hired by Johnson and Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island to provide readings for their guests during Parents and Family Weekend. The problem she was experiencing was that they needed two psychic mediums for readings and she couldn't find anyone to work with her. Everyone she contacted was scheduled to attend some big psychic convention in Hartford, Connecticut on that same day. When she asked her spirit guides who she should call, they said my name.
She called me on the phone and explained the situation. Johnson and Wales University wanted everyone who stood in line to receive a five minute reading, for a four hour duration. She said she was really in a bind and asked if I could help. Being the helpful person that I am, I told her that I might be able to talk about astrology for five minutes, since I had been studying it for many years. She agreed and the event was less than two weeks away. As it grew closer, I started freaking out because I didn't think I could do what they wanted. I kept thinking that these people are going to want psychic stuff, and I'll be talking about astrology. Major league freak out!
On the day of the event, my family did their best to calm me down. They fed me and reassured me that everything would be fine. I met the other psychic medium in the parking lot and we walked in together. There were so many people inside! The entire campus was crowded and decorated for the weekend. A magician was performing in a gymnasium nearby. We walked up the stairs and entered the room where we would be working. People were already lined up in rows! The university had set up two tables on each side of a large room, with a portable divider offering privacy for each table. I sat at one table and my cohort took her seat on the other side of the divider at her own table.
When the clock struck the top of the hour, we began.
The first person who sat at my table was a middle-aged woman with dark hair. I asked her what her birthday was (because my role was as an astrologer), and when she told me, I began hearing and seeing things that I could only imagine were related to her in some way. I told her what was happening, and she told me that I was correct. (Wow!) She started asking me questions, so I answered them based on what I was seeing, hearing, and feeling. Again, she told me that my words were true. (Double Wow!) When her reading was complete, she thanked me and someone else sat down in her place. This went on for four straight hours! When everything was said and done, those four hours felt like minutes. It all went by so fast.
After the event, I met up with the other psychic medium. She asked how I was and I told her that I couldn't believe how fast it went. I asked her how come no one told me it was going to be that way, and she said that my grandfather's been trying to tell me, but I've been too scared to listen. She told me that halfway through the event, she peeked around the room divider to check on me. She saw my grandfather standing behind me with his hands on my shoulders, so she knew that I would be okay. On the drive home, I saw my grandfather's face reflected in the windshield. He smiled and said "I knew you could do it."
A week later, I received a call from the psychic medium that I had worked with on that night. She told me that she needed to tell me something. "Are you sitting down?" Uh-oh, I thought. I must have said something wrong during one of the readings and now I'm somehow in trouble. "What's up?" I asked.
"Remember that psychic convention in Hartford that everyone was planning to attend? Well, the wrong date was printed on the fliers and it was actually scheduled for the following weekend. So, if there had been no errors, I would have had my choice of people to work with on that night, but as it happened, I chose you." This is why I tell people that I didn't step into this profession on my own. I was tricked into it. (I say it as a joke.) You never know what your origin story is going to be. You just have to let it unfold.
Within four years, they were writing about me in the New York Times, Beechnut Baby Foods was hiring me for their Christmas party in New York, I was flying to Paris for readings, and the television show Real Psychics had just filmed thirteen episodes about my work. Life is strange, funny, weird, and worth the adventure. I hope you all have similar adventures that lead you to your passions and gifts in life. Remember to have fun!
March 21, 2026
