Cool People I Know - Barbara Balkin
Local Edition
I grew up in a culture of seeing other women as the enemy and pushed to compete with them in any way I could. I never liked it. That culture is just exhausting. And there seems to be a lot of competition in the spiritual community here in Maine. I still don’t buy into it. There are enough clients for everyone and every mystic and healer has a different take on things and a different language of symbolism than everyone else. We are each unique and, therefore, valuable. So, I do not gatekeep any of the cool people I know or have worked with. I share every useful person and thing I come across. I don’t think of any of these people I am going to share in this series as competition nor do I think I am at risk of losing clients by sharing them with you.
First person is Barbara Balkin. She reads out of the Leapin’ Lizards shop location in Freeport, Maine. She was the first non-scam artist intuitive I visited when I moved to Portland 15 years ago. I may have already mentioned her in other posts. She introduced me to the cult like group several years ago. (That is such a fun story). When I went in to see her, I was living terrified. I had probably already lost a couple jobs at that point and didn’t have a friend to my name. Virtually no support to be down here on my own. When I look back on that visit, I was very much a little girl.
When you have a reading with her, she holds your hands and looks into your eyes to connect with your energy. She immediately told me that I am a healer. I had never heard of energy healing before that day. She told me about Reiki and gave me the name of her friend who is a Reiki Master. It took me several years to have enough money to take a Reiki class, but I did go to the person she suggested. And he has become a good friend over the years as well. I will share him later.
I can’t remember anything else she told me in the reading. Probably just a general message that I would be okay. She gave her home phone number and told me she gets lonely and loves to chat with people later in the evening and I could call anytime. I don’t know if she always gave people her phone number and invited them to call, but I am grateful she did then. I needed some real supportive people in my life and people who were mystical - I needed them even more desperately.
I eventually did call her and continued to call her a couple times a week for years. We became good friends over the years and she taught me how to use my own gifts and how to connect with my spirit guides. She introduced me to some wonderful people, all of whom I will share in later posts.
She calls herself an intuitive psychic. She gets her messages through feelings and reads tarot cards. Any time I went in to see her for a reading, she would feel whatever ailed me, which was usually knee pain. Once a bee sting and another itchy skin.
One of the things she can do that fascinated me to no end was read people’s energy through a photograph. As long as she could see their eyes, she could read them. She was spot on too! Knowing nothing about the person I was showing her, she read my sister like a book. I thought this gift was so cool that I worked hard to learn how to do it myself. I am good at it too. I had a friend who would parade picture of men she connected with through online dating and I would practice my skill there. She would show me the picture and I would tell her what I saw. Then she would tell me about her date with them and my reading was always in line with her experiences of him. That was a fun little game.
Barb is in her 80s and I don’t know much longer she will be with us or working in Freeport. I highly recommend giving her a visit if you are in the area. She works on Sundays and Mondays and there is a link above to where you can buy a ticket.
If you have already subscribed and want to further support my work, you can donate through Venmo (@Mindyfulness) or PayPal (min.morin8@gmail.com). You can also upgrade to premium for only $8 a month and receive all of the benefits of that tier which includes premium only posts, workshops and an opportunity to be the first to try out anything new I am working on. There are also super discounts on Akashic Records and Akashic Reset sessions. You can upgrade by hitting the upgrade/subscribe button above.