![\"In](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Connie-Stewart-2012-com-200x300.jpg\" "\\"Connie")
\u201cI grew up in a shack alongside the Louisiana bayou,\u201d Stewart said. \u201cI had to shut my eyes to the poverty and abuse I grew up with in order to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once, Stewart literally lost her sight for a while, when her alcoholic father beat her about the head.<\/p>\n
\u201cSubconsciously, he hated my psychic abilities so he always went for my head,\u201d she said. \u201cBut hard as he tried, he never could, because I would jump out of my body and go up to the stars.\u201d<\/p>\n
There, floating in the ether amongst her \u201ctwinkling friends,\u201d Stewart knew her spirit was safe: a \u201cquiet, soft, normal\u201d feeling she otherwise only felt at her grandmother\u2019s house.<\/p>\n
After her father threw her out as a teenager, her life became conventional. She married, had a son and left the bayou to work in a corporate environment. Occasionally, she would experience a \u201crandom and chaotic\u201d sixth sense \u2013 knowing, for instance, that someone was about to die or a disaster was going to happen \u2013 but it was more frightening than empowering.<\/p>\n
When psychic ability comes to someone randomly, Stewart said, it can feel scary. \u201cYou never know when it\u2019s going to come, and you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to hit you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Consequently, she tried to ignore such prescience. But she would not escape her gift as neatly as she\u2019d escaped the bayou, and when the company she worked for sponsored a seminar in intuitive leadership, her life took a turn toward the work she now considers her \u201ccalling.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the women in the class aligned with her, Stewart recalled. \u201cShe sat down beside me one day and said, \u2018Just face it. You\u2019re \u2026 psychic.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Until then, no one had ever spoken those words aloud. Not even Stewart herself.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a defining moment,\u201d she said, and she interpreted it as \u201cpermission\u201d to begin investigating and developing her abilities.<\/p>\n
But Stewart was still afraid and conflicted. It wasn\u2019t just that her father had tried to annihilate her for the \u201csomething in my eyes that he couldn\u2019t understand,\u201d she said. She also feared becoming \u201ccrazy\u201d like her mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cMama was either crying or eerily silent most of the time,\u201d Stewart remembered, and whenever she was about to have a mental breakdown, she would rock in her chair and sing the same song over and over.<\/p>\n
Stewart still shudders at the memory. Yet while she could keep her psychic visions at bay during the day, when night fell they arrived in the form of dreams. \u201cThere were shaman, medicine men, and a lot of mystical people from times gone by,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
At first she was terrified, but then it hit her: she was being shown that she was one of them.<\/p>\n
Realizing that she had a previous life as a healer, Stewart was growing excited about her powers. But she said her husband was horrified. Just as her father had been, he feared she could see through him and accused her of reading his mind.<\/p>\n
This time, though, Stewart could neither suppress nor ignore the internal process that was in motion or, for that matter, the objects that were moving around on the outside.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was sitting in my car \u2026 when all of a sudden \u2026 a tree branch fell on the hood. But [there wasn\u2019t] a tree in sight,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Kleenex boxes, water bottles, books: they were all moving \u2013 seemingly of their own volition \u2013 and Stewart was petrified.<\/p>\n
\u201cI called the woman in the [intuitive leadership] class, and I said, \u2018I\u2019m so freaked out; I think I have poltergeists.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
But the woman wasn\u2019t alarmed. She assured Stewart it was not spirits or ghosts, but her own energy, or gift.<\/p>\n
It was then that Stewart decided to find a mentor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said to my husband, \u2018I need to find somebody who has all the abilities I have but who knows what to do with them,\u2019\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n
Within an hour, the phone rang. It was a woman from her hometown in New Orleans, a clairvoyant medium and healer she\u2019d met only indirectly once before, inviting her to attend a workshop.<\/p>\n
But when Stewart\u2019s husband learned his wife planned to spend two weeks studying with a psychic, he threatened divorce, she said. It was an ultimatum that gave Stewart pause.<\/p>\n
Torn, she hesitated. If she studied with the mentor, not only would she risk losing her husband, she\u2019d also have to travel back to Louisiana, deep into the forest to connect with the energies her father had tried to exorcise years earlier. Rather than continue to be afraid of her gifts, however, Stewart was determined to learn to summon them at will. She accepted the adventure that beckoned.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went into deep discovery,\u201d she said. \u201cFrom sun up to sun down, we worked, we worked, we worked. \u2026 I had all the raw ability, but I didn\u2019t know what it meant, how it worked, or how to willfully direct it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pursuing the path toward her heart\u2019s desire felt glorious, yet returning to her husband, who remained resistant, was heart breaking. Convinced she needed to be \u201cfree on a soul level,\u201d Stewart decided to abandon both married life and her corporate career.<\/p>\n
For the next five years, before opening SoulSync in 2002, Stewart read part time for clients. Financially it was a struggle and, at first, she also held a part-time job. But she soon found she needed to devote all her energy to honing her skills.<\/p>\n
The work involves much more than readings. \u201cIt\u2019s all this research, and all the things you have to do to be ready, and coherent and alert and observant,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of energy work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dream interpretation, remote viewing, energetic space clearing: such services require regular retreats into her \u201cinner forest\u201d to commune with spirit guides and replenish healing energies, she said.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s work that she does with her eyes shut. After all, as the poet Rumi wrote, we must \u201cclose both eyes to see with the other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Business Name: SoulSync Consulting<\/strong> \u2014A Whim and a Prayer profiles the trials and triumphs of entrepreneurs whose businesses have evolved out of their passions and life experience. If you are a local business owner and you would like to be featured in this column, contact Celene Adams at writeyourbusinessstory@gmail.com or visit writeyourbusinessstory.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Clairvoyant closes eyes to see more clearly A Whim and a Prayer | Celene Adams Hillcrest clairvoyant and medium Connie Stewart began life by closing her eyes to her surroundings.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":245972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"In sync with the stars","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n Business owner: Connie Stewart<\/strong>
\n Business type: Clairvoyant, medium<\/strong>
\nYears in business: 16<\/strong>
\n Services: dream interpretation, remote viewing, mentoring, speaking, intuitive profiling, couples sessions, energetic space clearing<\/strong>
\nMarket niche: individuals; couples; LGBT community; corporate<\/strong>
\nBusiness philosophy: To facilitate healing on the soul level<\/strong>
\nWebsite: soulsync.com<\/strong><\/p>\n