Reluctant Psychic Solves Her Own Mystery

This season of 2 Lives is sponsored by the Women’s Foundation for the State of Arizona. Learn more at womengiving.org.

Learn more about Kiersten Parsons Hathcock here.

TW: A heads up we mention an incident of sexual abuse in this episode. 

You should also know this is a woo woo story. As a journalist for more than two decades I don’t typically report ghost stories. I’m used to focusing on events that are fact based with hard proof evidence – wildfires, uranium contamination, homelessness –  things I can touch and see. I’ll be honest, initially I was reluctant to tell this story. But you’re just going to have to trust me – or not – decide for yourselves. 

Kiersten Parsons Hathcock wasn’t looking for spirits. They came to her. In fact they wouldn’t leave her alone. 

KIERSTEN: So I would be in the workshop and, and I would look over and nails would have moved from one place to the next, on their own. 

She was a children’s furniture designer – building toy boxes in her garage.

KIERSTEN: I was hearing voices. I was hearing kids call out ‘mom’ and I'm thinking, okay, wait, my kids are at school. Who was that? <laugh> so naturally, you know, my brain wants to push it all away. And I start to come up with, well, there's probably a child outside. But it was when I started to see things actually move on their own and that, you know, nails moving across the work bench, chairs being pulled out on their own.

She and her family lived in Los Angeles but she says this wasn’t caused by an earthquake. Things were moving on their own. 

KIERSTEN: And then very quickly it ramped up to, you know, me making a sandwich for the kids and seeing out of the corner of my eye, seeing a child walk through the living room and looking over like, oh, well, did Grace just let one of her friends in, from down the street? No. Who was that? 

Kiersten would shake her head and try to move on with her day.

KIERSTEN: Of course I thought I was losing my mind. I thought, you know, when I started hearing and seeing kids and I actually, the first thought I had was that I had been breathing in too much polyeurithane in the garage. Like that was it. I'm going crazy. 

But she wasn’t the only one in the house who saw the spirits.

KIERSTEN: It was a huge relief when one night we're laying in bed, Scott and I in the, and it's dark in the room and we're kind of just talking, but we're not quite asleep yet close to it. And he said, he looked over to the corner of the room and he said, ‘do you see that girl standing there?’ And of course I had, because I had spoken with her earlier that day, but that was so instrumental for me. I couldn't believe it, that he could see her too.

This is a story about how Kiersten became a reluctant medium and how the spirits helped her heal from her own traumatic past.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

Kiersten believes she’s always had this sort of sixth sense. The earliest memory is from when she was 8 years old.

KIERSTEN: I have one personal memory of seeing what I now know was my grandfather in spirit at his funeral. And I remember thinking, well, there's grandpa over there in the corner. And I believe I even mentioned it to someone, one of the adults around and they said, oh, no, no, no, honey, that's not grandpa. That's not grandpa. I'm sorry, honey, he's dead. You know?  

After that she suppressed it until she was 35 and feeling not quite herself. She said she should’ve been happy. 

KIERSTEN: I had a wonderful husband, great kids. My furniture company was thriving. We had a pool at our house in Los Angeles, you know, I kind of felt like on all fronts I've made it, but I still just felt an emptiness... I guess you could equate it to sort of a depressed feeling  on all accounts like big things were happening, right? Like I was getting on shark tank and celebrities were buying my toy boxes and I should have just been through the moon and I would wake up and think, huh, okay. Another day here we are.

Everyday on the way to her kids school she’d pass a psychic shop. 

KIERSTEN: And I thought, you know what? I don't know if I believe in this stuff, but I'm gonna see I'm gonna go see.

So one day near her 36th birthday she stopped at that psychic shop.

KIERSTEN: Even just stepping into that psychic shop was pretty freaky. And I almost left, um, I'm glancing around, I'm looking at everything that's there and I'm just thinking this is way out of bounds for me…I remember looking up and seeing this, uh, kind of what I would call a woo woo tapestry. 

It was a long colorful tapestry of the seven chakras, or energy centers. This was all new to Kiersten. That’s when a short, silver haired woman stepped into the tiny waiting room.

KIERSTEN: She was the epitome of everything that you think of when you think of psychics, she had the scarves, she had the long flowy dress, you know, she, she central casting.

LAUREL: Full Stevie, Nicks,

KIERSTEN: Totally full Stevie Nicks, central casting would’ve said yep.

The psychic introduced herself as Sophia, sat down across from Kiersten and asked what kind of reading she’d like. Kiersten said she didn’t know she just had the urge to pop in. That’s when Sophia took hold of her hand, closed her eyes, and changed Kiersten’s life.

KIERSTEN: She started telling me all of this stuff, that she, there's no way she could have known. There were things that, you know, they're not published online… 10:40 my grandfather was abusive to my mom and it, and I think mostly emotionally abusive, he was abused. Right? So we're talking about generations of cycles of abuse…10:20 it was enough to make me sit up and say, ‘whoa, there's something to this,’ because how could she know any of this stuff?

She also told Kiersten what she saw in her future.

KIERSTEN: She said, you are gonna help millions of children. And I said, ‘well, that's really interesting cuz I'm making high priced furniture in my garage in Burbank, California. And I don't know how that relates to me helping millions of kids.’ And she said, ‘you are, but you have a lot of healing to do a lot of healing to do.’ And I thought what? I don't even know what she's talking about. So this is where, you know, I was listening, but I was also like, that makes no sense to me. What kind of healing do I need to do?

Then she finished up by telling Kiersten she was going to help people.

KIERSTEN: You are going to be a force for healing. You are, you have similar gifts to me, but you're not going to in her words, you know, hanging a shingle like I have. Yours is going to manifest differently. 

Kiersten walked out feeling confused but also intrigued.

KIERSTEN: When I left her shop, ‘that was so weird.’ That was my first thought. This was so weird. It almost felt like there were two parts of me fighting each other internally. One was saying, ‘but how could she have known all of this stuff?’ So there has to be some truth to this. The other was saying, ‘this is just weird.’ Like I don't, I can't wrap my head around this. 

Then she put all of it out of her mind and went home and things started moving by themselves.

One afternoon while the kids were at school and Scott was at work Kiersten was scrolling through Facebook when she came across something written by a couple she knew in high school who had just lost their teenage son.

KIERSTEN: I saw a post about his memorial and I hadn't even like his parents, Denise and John, we were not close in high school. They were a couple years older than me. I did not know them. I knew of them cuz they were a really cute couple. And um, obviously they went off and got married after high school, but I did not know them very well, but we were still friends on on Facebook. So I did not know that they lost a son. And as I'm sitting there reading about Nate and the memorial and seeing his picture, I see him standing. I see him kind of like, I feel this presence coming up next to me on my right hand side. Then I hear him say, ‘hi, Kirsten.’ And I had chills from head to toe and I was almost scared to look, I'm staring at my laptop and I'm just sort of, <laugh> hunched over my desk and I'm thinking, did that just happen? I don't even wanna look to the right cuz I don't know, you know, ‘is this Nate I'm talking to who is this?’ And so as I started to kind of wrap my head around the fact that this is, I think this is Nate, this looks like Nate. He started to speak back to me and I said, you know, ‘are, are you okay? Do you, you know, do you need my help? Do you, why are you here?’ I am sure I had a lot of questions for him. And he said, ‘we'll get to that.’ 

LAUREL: Are you speaking out loud when you speak? Like are you, or is it that's

KIERSTEN: It's both. Um, and it depends for me. I think at that point I was speaking out loud because I didn't know anything about any of this. So I naturally just thought, well, if I speak out loud and he's right here, then maybe he can hear me. And the reality is they can hear you if you speak in your mind as well. 

He asked Kiersten to share some messages with his parents back in Ohio. So Kiersten ran to her bedside table and pulled out a notebook and pen and took down the message. Kiersten was a bit shaken by this encounter and didn’t know how she would approach Nate’s parents about all this so she put away the notebook and kept it to herself. A couple days later she was in the garage building a toy box.

KIERSTEN: And all of a sudden I had this really weird sensation come over me. And it was a calm and the calm basically said it's time. And I thought, what? What's time. And then I saw a flash of Nate's face it's time. And that was, uh, so peaceful. It was, it wasn't the fear I was feeling prior when I was writing all of the notes down, it was a feeling of everything is gonna be okay.

Nate was trying to tell her it was time to contact his parents but not to worry.

KIERSTEN: You are not gonna be, or maybe you will be the laughing stock of your hometown, um, you are not most importantly going to hurt them with these messages, because that was one of my biggest fears as a parent. I don't wanna bring any more pain to this wonderful couple. who's already lost a child. I can't imagine. So, uh, the feeling of calm and the feeling of it's gonna be okay is what led me to reach out. So I went back inside and I thought, well, I feel good about this right now. So I'm just gonna go ahead and do it. So I opened up messenger on Facebook and I wrote to Denise, Nate's mom. And I just said, Denise, I don't know if you remember me or not...And I don't even know how to say this, but I am. I'm learning that I have these abilities to speak with those who've passed on. And I, and I was reading a Facebook post of yours and Nate came in and I would love to share messages if you're open to it. If you're not, I completely understand. I don't wanna bring any more pain to you…And so she immediately, I remember getting a message back very, very quickly and she said, ‘oh my gosh, Kirsten. Yes. Thank you. I know, I remember you.’..and I thought, oh, whew, okay, this is great. You know, this is going well so we, we wrote back and forth a few times and, uh, and then agreed to talk on the phone.

Kiersten relayed the messages from Nate, acting as the go between or medium for him and his family. His spirit would come to Kiersten with a message, she’d write it down and call his mom and dad. Sometimes they were messages, other times images.

KIERSTEN: He was showing me himself backing out in a Camaro and the Camaro, um, you know, made me think of the eighties. Right. And he was 13. So he never drove. Um, not that I know of, but I knew that it wasn't, that was more symbolic. And the song was driving in your car, turn on the radio. 

So Kiersten called Nate’s mom.

KIERSTEN: The first one I wanna share with you is this, he's showing me this and he's singing this song. And I don't know if this means that tomorrow or later today when you go to, uh, they were planning to head out to the, um, to the graveyard basically. Um, and to his headstone that day in memory. And I said that maybe he's gonna be turning the radio on, you know, on the car. I don't know, but I just, I just know to pass this message. And she said, okay, let me talk to John, John. She immediately writes back and says, John just said he has had that song stuck in his head for two weeks. It's just kind of unbelievable, right. 

The next time Kiersten went home to visit her parents she visited John and Denise’s house and met them in person.

KIERSTEN: I remember sitting with, uh, their youngest son, Jack, and we spoke for an hour, I think. And I don't remember a lot of specifics about what I said to him, but whatever it was helped, helped kind of pull him out of where he was and his grief. And so it was really interesting because of course, I didn't find any of this out until a couple years later. 

Another spirit came to Kiersten around this time. She was visiting her close friend Kelly, when a little blond haired girl tried to get her attention.

KIERSTEN: I know started to notice when I was there at her house, that my toes would be pulled on in the middle of the night and that I would get, you know, I, I, I was, I was being alerted, right. I would think like what, who was pulling my toes? This is so strange. Uh, strange things were happening in her house that she was telling me about… 

The girl was named Carrie and she told Kiersten to dig a hole in Kelly’s backyard. She was urging Kiersten to dig for the evidence that would show that Carrie had been kidnapped and murdered in the 1970s. 

KIERSTEN: I'm starting to realize that, oh my God, Kelly, like prior to Kelly, moving in this house was probably owned by a group of people that would do this type of thing, you know, pedophiles or one pedophile. I didn't know. Uh, and that was absolutely what happened. She, Kelly and her husband had bought the house after a real estate agent had flipped it and made it beautiful. But prior to that, in the seventies, the, the neighbors who had been there for a very long time were saying, ‘oh, there were men coming in and out of the house all the time, we knew it was a drug house. There were black trash bags on the windows…’ So she's directing me to dig in the backyard and I thought, this is crazy, but I'm gonna do it. So I went out and I just started digging. And I remember Kelly's husband thinking I was absolutely bonkers because he didn't believe in any of this stuff.

Carrie became the first of many missing persons cases that Kiersten would work on. Kiersten says it suddenly seemed like in the spirit world a big spotlight was shining down on her. As draining as the work was, Kiersten says her life had gone from gray to technicolor. She was following her life’s purpose.

KIERSTEN: We walk around this world and, you know, we think we are only seeing what we see in front of us, but energy is still alive. Right. So spirit is still alive and they're, they're kind of everywhere. And that's what happened with me. So once I started speaking with other children, uh, those children were saying, ‘she'll listen, she's a doer she'll go dig up your backyard,’ you know. <laugh>

About five years later in 2014 Kiersten and Mark Pucci, a former NYPD detective, were contacted by a mutual friend to help with a high profile missing persons case in New York.

KIERSTEN: The man who was missing, I very quickly realized he was passed on. He had passed on. And so he can comes to me in spirit and he gives me a lot of information and a lot of their details I can't share, but he gave me information as to location, um, as to, you know, just different things that, that would impress a New York cop <laugh>. 

Kiersten met with Mark, who’d already done weeks of boots on the ground investigation on the case, and they compared notes.

MARK: She was so genuine in her desire to help she was doing it thru her own volition pro bono to do the right thing because she felt she had been given some info the way I knew almost immediately.

In his 25 years as a detective Mark had worked with mediums before but he’d never met anyone like her.

MARK: Kiersten had started to recite to me were very very specific accurate details facts, topography of certain area as I’m saying that I’m getting goosebumps literally nobody else knows this but me…that’s when I started to say wow she’s very very accurate and her intuition is right over the target.

The day before Mark was planning to survey the location both he and Kiersten had pinpointed as the body’s so-called dump site, Kiersten called him and described the suspect.

MARK: She’s reached out to me and said, ‘listen I have this overwhelming feeling I woke up in the middle of the night if you go to a certain area you may be in direct danger.’ … so please please be careful she indicated a certain geographical specific accent.

Mark drove to the commercial shipping area, parked his car, and walked along the narrow road. He saw cars with surfboards and fishing poles driving towards a public access beach nearby when he noticed one car slow down and roll down the window. The driver asked in a thick accent, ‘are you lost?’ And Mark told him no, he’s ok. That’s when it clicked. He fit the exact description Kiersten had given him the day before, about the possible murderer. 

MARK: I notice he’s following me at a very slow pace and gets parallel with me again now his voice has changed and he’s curt angry he says something to the effect of wait! I’m not done talking to you yet what are you doing here…I immediately realize literally the hair on the back of my neck stood up I immediately went into a very defensive mode of thinking and posture now I turned and I was directly facing the drivers side of this SUV…He looked right at my right hip gripping my handgun my vocal demeanor changed i go into the voice inflection I used with NYPD it becomes very instructional I raised my voice I’ll spare your listeners the language I used. ‘You’re probably picking the wrong guy.’ What I noticed he had started to open the drivers door of the SUV …I saw that his right shoulder and arm were dipping down possibly consistent with reaching for something under his seat.

Mark reached for his gun. And when the man saw that, he sat up straight, put his hand on the outside of the door, closed it and slowly drove away all without breaking eye contact.

MARK: I have no doubt that recognition so early on in the midst of this escalating confrontation allowed me to get the drop on him. I have no doubt I’ve played it in my head 10,000 times since that day literally 20-30 second difference in my reaction time would've been all the difference in the world would have been a full on confrontation with two firearms at close range less than 6 feet from each other. LAUREL So would you say Kiersten saved your life? MARK: I would absolutely say that 100%.

KIERSTEN: That's what bonded us, honestly. Uh, you know, I think that he definitely felt like she's the real deal.

By this point Kiersten and Scott made the move to the northern Arizona mountain town of Flagstaff. They were tired of the big city life and two psychics had told Kiersten that Flagstaff would be healing for her. She didn’t quite understand why she needed healing but the Hathcocks fell in love with Flagstaff and made the move.

So many children were coming to Kiersten with their stories and messages that she finally came out as a medium on her furniture blog and started the website Little Light Project, where grieving families could contact her. She didn’t ask for payment, she just wanted to help. She’d receive an email from a grieving parent and sometimes the face of a child would appear. If not, she’d put them on a list and hope they’d arrive later.

One day Kiersten says she was milling around the house when a new vision came in: A belt buckle, a forest that looked familiar, first person perspective.(set the stage in my read, slow down)

KIERSTEN: I'm now starting to recognize in this one particular vision that was, uh, the first one was outdoors. It was at a park. And I remember seeing a belt buckle and I did, but I didn't see his face, but I, but as sometimes in the visions, you're, I'm seeing it kind of first person in a way. Um, sometimes I'm seeing it as a reporter off to the side and it flips it when it flipped. And I saw my little face and I saw the back of him. PAUSE I couldn't, I couldn't believe it. And I couldn't really process it. I would just remember feeling, you know, that feeling when you got, um, you start sweating and then everything just sort of, it's almost like all the blood drains from the top of your head, all the way through your body, to your feet. PAUSE

Kiersten couldn’t process how she could have been abused as a child and suppressed the memories. But one night when Kiersten was cleaning the kitchen she heard her grandmother’s voice tell her, her uncle’s abuse stems from a cycle of abuse that goes generations back. Kiersten stopped loading the dishwasher and put her hands on the counter. She couldn’t catch her breath. Her grandmother had confirmed she had been abused by her uncle.

After that, Kiersten would take a walk in the pine forest near her new home and her memories came back. 

KIERSTEN: Eventually got to the point where I knew exactly who it was because I was being shown who it was. And I was being shown myself between the age, multiple times, between the ages of three and six. And one of the, uh, one of the strongest visions came much later, but I was basically being raped when I was five. And it was a, it's just an uncle of mine. I couldn't, I couldn't wrap my head around it. I didn't wanna believe it. I wanted to just push it all away. PAUSE But at the same time, it finally answered the question. Why are they coming to me? You know, why are all these kids who've been abused and murdered coming to me? And I realized that I was in their club. I, I wasn't murdered, but I was in their club.

So Kiersten asked herself what can I do to make it go away? She tried different types of therapy.

KIERSTEN: Like I was checking all these boxes, but they weren't the right ones because I just kept thinking, I can do this away. You know, I'm a, a doer. I can make this go away. I can heal myself by just acknowledging that it happened. And then it will all go away.

Then she decided she needed to tell her parents. She didn’t want to hurt or blame them. She just knew telling them would help her to heal.

KIERSTEN: This was horrifying for them and, you know, very difficult I'm sure to believe. But at that point they had also seen the proof that I have delivered in cases with cops, with grieving parents. Um, you know, it was, I'm sure it was really, really difficult for them to reconcile.

But the images kept coming so she made the difficult decision to send her uncle a letter.

KIERSTEN: And I thought, you know what? I'm just gonna tell him, I know what he did. I know I'm not one of the only ones. And, um, and he hasn't broken me and that I'm actually going on and using this and doing good, you know, good things. I'm making something good out of a horrible, horrible thing that happened to me. And, um, and again, I've told him, I don't know if I'll never forgive him, but I want him to know. I wanted him to know that he has not broken me. PAUSE As I'm, as I'm writing on the envelope, I'm addressing it to his address… You know, that feeling you get it burns in the back of your throat and you feel the tears coming on, I felt none of that, but I looked down and there were just a flood of tears falling onto the envelope. And it was, you know, muddying up every the address I had just been writing. And I had to feel my face to understand that, oh my God, I'm crying. That's how separated I was from my own inner child. That was little Kirsten crying because someone finally stood up for her. And that was, uh, that was a moment I'll never forget because I realized at that, wow, I didn't, you know, she's been here with me this whole time and I need to help mother her in a way I need to say, I've got you, you're safe now. PAUSE 

She noticed how every time this inner child showed up she felt a buzzing or electrical current sensation in her right hip.

KIERSTEN: And that buzzing sensation was little Kiersten. And I didn't realize it at the time, but that was little Kirsten trying to speak up... So it's fascinating to me that the physical body will show you signs of what's happening, you know, not just on a physical level, but on an emotional level and on our subconscious level and how powerful that was.

Kiersten and her husband Scott had been together for 18 years when Kiersten realized she felt like she was suffocating in her marriage and exhausted from trying to make everything okay for everyone around her including her husband, who had recently been laid off. He told her she was everything he needed in life, and for Kiersten that felt claustrophobic.

At 40 Kiersten was quietly, unconsciously coming undone while preparing for her biggest furniture licensing deal to date. In April of 2014 she was excited about signing a lucrative contract at High Point, a massive furniture trade show in North Carolina. She was also excited to meet Tony, a mutual friend who was an international furniture designer. They’d only connected on Facebook. He told her he loved her furniture line and wanted to talk about a possible design partnership.

KIERSTEN: He was, um, charming. He was kind of unlike anybody I'd ever met before. Um, he was this person that seemed kind of bigger than life, but also extremely outspoken in a way that I had never, I'd never encountered either. Um, he was very supportive of me.

Tony and Kiersten hit it off immediately. He quickly studied her blog and looked into her work and her life. He told Kiersten he wanted to talk to her about his dad and the abuse he suffered as a child. He’d known about Kiersten’s abuse because he read one of her posts about it. He sent her long messages and poetry about the instant deep connection he felt to her. He flirted with her at group dinners sending her text messages telling her he wanted to kiss her and be alone with her.

At the same time the contract fell through with the furniture retailer. So Kiersten, feeling rejected and still rocked by confronting her childhood trauma and looking for an escape from her overwhelming marriage, fell for Tony’s advances and had an affair. The kids in spirit she had helped in the past weren’t telling her he was dangerous. Her intuitive sense made her feel like she had known him for a very long time. 

KIERSTEN: I was hit over the head so strongly with chills, from head to toe. Like I, it was almost as if there were, they were waving a flag like this way. Yes. Now my brain, as a woman who was devoted to her family and her husband, uh, was saying, this is wrong, of course, but everything else in me, I mean, I've spun around. I had just been dealing with all this childhood sexual abuse memory. I had just lost my job. It was quite literally the perfect storm. And I felt in that moment, like I wanted someone to take care of me and that's the connection we had. And he was, he was very good at that. Oh, let me get this for you. I got this. Let's do you know, I'm gonna help you do this. I'm gonna help you get back on your feet again.

The week Kiersten returned from High Point, she told Scott she wanted a divorce. What Kiersten didn’t know was that Tony was grooming her like he’d done many times before.

KIERSTEN: Grooming is where they make you feel safe enough to open yourself. And so he made me feel safe and he made me feel cared for …So to have someone swoop in and try and take care of everything was really comforting, but he found out a lot about me … he was very bold. Uh, he would say he would look me in the eye and say, but are you really happy? You're so beautiful. He's texting me across the table at dinner. You're so beautiful. I really wish I could hold your hand. Uh, he's writing me notes saying things like, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm totally in love with you. …And I just remember thinking, I can't believe you used the word love, like we've known each other for like a week. Well, at the end of that week, I'm saying I'm totally in love with him. I'm saying he's a soul mate. And I mean that, who falls in love like that, right. That's not love.

He made Kiersten feel safe by opening up about his own childhood trauma.

KIERSTEN: He took what he learned about me and he mimicked it, which is very common in grooming, uh, in narcissistic abuse and psychological abuse. Um, he made up stuff… And he also knew that I was extremely vulnerable at that time. 1:59:00 I didn't even understand why I was feeling attracted to another predator and understand the concept of wounded detachment that I'm going to subconsciously be attracted to that type of energy, because that's what I endured as a kid.

But Kiersten said for several months she fell down the rabbit hole. She ignored the red flags. Tony was possessive and jealous of any interaction she had with other men.

KIERSTEN: He was making comments about the fact that, you know, I, I noticed that you had a lot of eye contact with that guy. 

Pretty soon his comments turned into fights.

KIERSTEN: When he was yelling at me and screaming at me and he was verbally abusive, um, he was emotionally abusive. Um, I knew that there was, it would get to a physical point. Um, I knew that intuitively I was being shown that as well in visions … that's when I would have this buzzing sensation on my right hip. And I started to finally pay attention to that. And it was literally little Kirsten in my intuition, screaming at me like this is not okay…I took it as he just doesn't understand. I just need to make him understand, you know, how much I love him and how much he's my soulmate. 

Kiersten flew across the country every chance she had to be with Tony. He told her they were soul mates and tried to isolate Kiersten from her family and friends. About six months in, one of the spirits she’d helped named Jason who had died at 23 of a heroin overdose came to her.

KIERSTEN: 1:29:30 But he just came in and he said, this is not what it seems, Kiers. And I was like, what? Everything's great. Are you kidding me? I'm on cloud nine. He's saying, it's like heroin he's your drug. Don't do what I do. You know, did don't do because his heroin addiction also involved a girlfriend that he kept going back to. … 

But Kiersten ignored the kids in spirit’s warnings even after neighbors called the cops saying they heard Tony yelling and Kiersten crying. She ignored her intuition. 

Scott worried about Kiersten, pleading with her one day when she dropped the kids off at his house.  

KIERSTEN: He was the one saying, please let it be anyone, but him not, it doesn't have to be me it's anyone, but him, because he was seeing me, I was, I was emaciated. I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a week. My hair was falling out. Um, I was a shell of a person and he saw all of that and he saw the way that it was affecting me and affecting the kids. 

But Kiersten stayed with Tony for three years. 

KIERSTEN: I'm a strong, smart, secure woman, had a internationally known furniture business. And I, because of childhood wounding and a whole bunch of other stuff, I fell right down the same rabbit hole that many of us fall down. And I ignored my intuition while I was in it. 

One night after Tony flew into a jealous rage, Kiersten called her friend and fellow medium. She told Kiersten with the help of her grandmother’s spirit that she needed to get out of the relationship that Tony was never going to change. Of all the people to get through to Kiersten her grandmother was the one. She had married a violent man Kiersten’s grandfather, who withstood his own child abuse and time as a prisoner of war. She convinced her. Kiersten knew it was time to end this toxic relationship. 

She called Scott right away in tears and he told her to come home.

When Kiersten had asked for a divorce Scott went inward and discovered he had relied too heavily on Kiersten to make him happy. Fortunately neither one of them had filled out the divorce paperwork. After Kiersten finally left Tony, they spent time together as a family, and Kiersten came to understand that she was suffering from PTSD from Tony’s abuse. 

KIERSTEN: Being in a relationship with a supportive person after you've been in a relationship with an abusive one, gave me the freedom to continue to trust my intuition and all of these children started to come back in again. One of the kids, a new child popped in and said, we've been waiting for you. And that was, I mean, I cried. That was so such an amazing moment because I was feeling like not only had I let myself down, I let my family down. You know, there was a lot of shame involved in being in an abusive relationship and, and, um, falling in love with someone inside of your marriage. I felt like I'd let the kids down. And now I had the opportunity to really, truly help them. 

She worked hard with a therapist to rewire her programmed responses and ask herself, do I really want this? Kiersten just published a memoir called “Little Voices” where she explores getting in touch with her intuition, her inner child, and the spirits around her. 

KIERSTEN:  I didn't realize it at the time, but that was little Kiersten trying to speak up. Uh, once I healed her and, you know, and went through everything that I went through, um, I, I haven't felt it again.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.