When I was a young girl, my mother told me that God answers all prayers - we humans just don't always choose to hear the answer. "Sometimes," she said, "The answer is 'no.' And we almost never chose to hear that. Yet, by denying that God has answered, we lose the chance to explore and to understand the wisdom of His answer. He has not failed us in speaking plainly; we have failed him by listening only with our ears and not with our hearts and minds."

When listening to Author Suzane Northrop, I am reminded of my mother's wisdom. Northrop "hears" things most other people cannot. In fact, she makes a good living listening to (and forwarding) the messages of dead people. It is the professional trance medium's contention that anyone can do what she does - if they could only learn to listen with more than their ears, and then have faith in the process that she teaches in her latest book, Everything Happens for a Reason.

"It is a two-way deal," she says. "Many adults have lost an innate ability to connect in a way that is natural to most children. Or they aren't attuned to the energies around them in the way that their pets are. So much goes unnoticed or denied, but that doesn't mean it isn't there." We can't see radio waves, but we know they are there. We can't see or hear our prayers being answered, but the faithful believe it happens. Yet to acknowledge that messages from our dead loved ones may be sent to us on the lips of a psychic mediumà that is to be asked to accept more on faith (much more) than many of us comfortable allowing ourselves to hope for.

I first interviewed an exhausted Suzanne Northrop for bookreview.com in a hotel room in St. Louis during the last leg of a book tour promoting Second Chance (Jodere Group, 2001). In the heart of the Bible Belt, Northrop was openly declared by a small vocal group to be "Satan" and "A Devil Worshipper," though she had a phenomenal turn-out for her lectures and readings. During our chat then, Northrop turned the tables on those who usually pushed the hard questions her way. She openly attacked her critics. "How much proof is enough proof?" she challenged. "Those who do not believe, choose to not believe! It isn't my mission in life to convince these people that the message has being delivered!" But she admitted that the constant stream of taunting or nitpicking doubters sometimes get the best of her: "There are those pinched, closed faces in every crowd, those people who were dragged in to the audience to see 'the show' - and I don't care if they are skeptical - a little skepticism is a great thing! But how much proof is enough proof?! I tell them things no one else could know and they still flat-out refuse to acknowledge the message their loved one is sending! Well, that makes me pretty mad sometimes. I get hot because I won't deny a message. My pact is with the dead, not the living. But I'm exhausted after a show like that. It saps a lot of energy."

During our more recent conversation in January 2003, Suzanne was on vacation in the upstate New York home she had just moved into, and fresh from making snow angels with a bunch of fifty-something year old friends ("Not a kid in the group!" she laughed). The famed "Queen of the STance" is a little more magnanimous, a little more in tune with the philosophy of turning the other cheek. Her latest book, Everything Happens for A Reason, dwells on the importance of understanding that the soul has lessons to learn - and every human being has the free will to move toward those lessons or to shun them in this lifetime. She believes that each person chooses their own "soul path" pre-carnation and no one (not even she) can make value judgments about how they are choosing to walk that path after reincarnation.

"I may not know what is happening in someone's life right now, this minute, or how they will feel six months from now," she said. "I've had mothers refuse to believe it is their children [who appear during a sTance], or say to me outright, 'I don't care what they say, don't tell me.' I don't force it. And I don't get angry anymore. They will hear it when they can most appreciate the message or the process. It isn't for me to understand; the message was for them."

For those on the other side of the table - those hopefuls who are impatient to hear even the briefest of messages and who would give anything to hear directly from a beloved family member or friend! - Northrop offers a step-by-step outline for contacting dead loved ones alone, without a medium. And wise up, she advises, to the efforts to communicate that the other side may already be making that we are dismissing (and so missing.)

"The soul's job is to connect with us however they can," Northrop says. "And they may be trying to come to you in many different ways. If something happens unexpectedly that causes you to think of them, stop dismissing it as coincidence or 'nothing'! They are not allowed to interfere with our paths, but they do have an ongoing purpose in our lives after leaving us here, and that is to let us know that we are loved and cared for as we continue with our own soul program."

All that Zen stuff is well and good, but the latest soul soup du jour isn't likely to put butts on seats when Northrop lectures. Her fans show up alright - and not only for her legendary skill with trance reading, but also because of her reputation for being a plain-speaking instructor willing to tackle the hard topics that other mediums sidestep. Why are we here? What is death? And what's with all the pain? Is the grief of a parent who lost a child a different kind of grief that a man who lost a wife? Who would choose to reincarnate knowing that they would lose a baby in the pending lifetime?

The heart of Northrop's message in Everything Happens for a Reason is the one-two punch of "Free will" and "personal responsibility." She believes that souls are reincarnated and, although the soul's path is constant and pre-determined, personalities are transient and attached only to lifetimes.

"God gives us free will of choice prior to incarnation as well as after," she explains. "Before we are "born" into this world again, we are allowed to choose our parents, siblings, the issues we will deal with, and our personalities. But then, being more connected to the human side than the soul side after we re-enter, we don't take responsibility for learning those lessons! Instead, we blame God and everyone else because we are angry with the choices that, really, we made! Anger stops some from experiencing all that is out there for them to know and learn."

I talk to the author in the presence of a mutual friend who is a bereaved mother. "I've read both of your books," the woman begins tentatively, stringing together her words carefully, "and I appreciate the tutorial on preparing my mind to listen. But how can I be sure? How can I know, when I hear his voice in my head, that it is my son who is talking, and not just my own hopeful wishing?" When Northrop answers, her tone is gentle: She once did an unexpected reading for this woman during a public seminar that caused a crowd of more than 150 to gasp at the level of detail and the amount of "inside information" shared. The reading ended to thunderous applause, the audience thrilled with their own vicarious experience. Northrop knows that Donna isn't doubting her (Suzane's) ability: Donna is doubting her own.

"This is a fair question," Northrop says. "It's fair because the activity is not an outer activity that can be measured and quantified - and therefore stamped as genuine. It is an inner activity. It most often happens inside ourselves and we have been taught to ignore our innermost intuitions and feelings as 'untrustworthy.' Yet trust is a key component. One day, it will happen and you will know it. In the meantime, you have to be consistent in your listening and practice - put the energy and time into it that someone else might put into learning to play the piano. It is a skill. And it is a special kind of trust. If you don't have that strong a faith in yourself right now, have it in your son."

"I just want so much to keep the connection to him," the mother whispers wistfully. "There is always a door with love," Northrop says softly. "Always a doorà with love."

What is as equally important to me as a medium is helping others validate their own connections/contact with loved ones who have passed over. Although our dreams, beyond a doubt, is the way most communication happens, contact does happen very differently for everyone. More importantly however, what I've come to learn is we need to believe and know without any uncertainty that we all have the right and permission (by God or a higher source) to contact or be contacted by a loved one who have passed over into the spirit world. This is the ultimate test of our faith.

It is not my job or my place to convince you of what I believe...that we do not die or that we can and are contacted by loved ones who have died. You need only have an open mind, or be open to the possibility of life after death. There is a growing body of research in my field, and wonderful people, practitioners, researchers, philosophers and every day people sharing their own experiences. Recent discoveries in physics regarding energy and matter have given new credibility to psychic phenomena, to mediumship, and to works of other ages and other belief constructs concerning life's continuing passages.

Books: Everything Happens for a Reason