• For my first reading, I went to the highly-reviewed Brooklyn, New York psychic Emily Grote.
• Grote contacted my late grandmother and also told me more about her own story.
• The reading completely changed my preconceived notions about psychic and mediumship.

For most of my life, I pictured psychics as mystical, mysterious women who stealthily read auras and kept all-knowing tarot cards handy, living in magical, faraway places, usually covered in beads and crystal balls. Or I'd think of "That's So Raven." Not at all the same, but there was never much in between.

I lived with this caricature of psychics in my mind for a very long time, feeling curious, open, and skeptical all at once about the idea of having my fortune read.

As soon as I met Emily Grote, that changed.

Emily, a psychic medium based in Brooklyn, New York, directly opposed my unrealistic, misinformed view of psychics from the moment I met her because not only does it turn out that she lives in my neighborhood, but also she embodies an even more mysterious kind of magic: the ability to be an everyday person, a working mom, and the possessor of an impressive gift.

And from the moment I met her, Emily Grote also felt like a friend, which was especially important considering the subject matter.

I went to Emily's home for a reading, the first in my life, prepared to ask her tough questions about my family and my life as well as to hear her story. I walked away with a whole new perception of psychic energy and intuition, changed in ways that I don't think even Raven could have predicted.

Despite growing up a major skeptic, I felt open and relaxed as soon as I met Emily.

I was comfortable enough to give her a photo of my late grandmother, who passed away before I was born. As Emily took a minute, closed her eyes, and focused on connecting, I worried that she'd draw a blank or, honestly, just tell me a bunch of things that I knew weren't true and I'd have to awkwardly deny.

Luckily, neither of those things happened. Immediately, Emily provided me with some interestingly specific details about my grandma, down to even a hat that she wore. As I asked Emily questions and she served as a sort of psychic interpreter of images in her mind's eye, I felt a genuine connection with the woman she spoke to, who I'd never met but had heard so much about.

I'm not the only one who's impressed by Emily's skills.

"I highly recommend Emily!" one Yelp reviewer wrote. "I felt my reading with her was incredibly insightful and rang very true to me."

"My meeting with Emily has had such a positive and powerful impact on my life," another said.

Emily's journey began long before Yelp reviews or "That's So Raven" and hearing her story affirmed the depth of her intuition even more than what she'd communicated to me.

A pastor's daughter, Emily grew up in tune with certain elements of her spirituality, but didn't pursue or elaborate on those things until later in her life. Instead, she pursued art and graphic design after college, working in restaurants and then in a corporate environment as a marketing designer for publications like USA Today.

But she knew that she wanted something more. From the beginning, Emily said she didn't necessarily feel as though the stuffy corporate world fit her or what she wanted to do with her life.

"I was asking myself, 'What am I supposed to be doing? What's my purpose? Where am I going?'" Emily told me after our reading.

As she was asking those questions and working her way up through her career from a server to a designer, Emily also noticed that she was experiencing some strong intuitions, some of which she explained away at the time as coincidence or paranoia.

One incident in particular was jarring for Emily, who moved to Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in 1997. She'd arrive home late at night from shifts as a server with goodies in hand to share with her neighbors and enjoyed living alone, but said she felt a strong intuition about something dark on the horizon.

"From the moment I moved into that apartment, I had this voice in my head that was telling me I was going to get mugged. I had no concept of my intuition then, I just thought that was my anxiety," she said.

One night, she stepped off the subway and she said the same voice told her, "It's going to happen tonight."

She ignored it and said that as she headed towards her apartment, a man came up behind her, gently unclasped her earrings from her ears, and put his arm around her to keep her under his control as he walked her down the street.

As the man attempted to lead her down an even darker block that she'd known to be dangerous, she decided to listen to her intuition this time, calling out for help to a nearby group of people before sprinting away from him and getting home safe.

Afterward, Emily started to become more in tune with her feelings and suspicions, communicated through intuitive voices, and she also took self-defense classes. She'd considered giving up running, a hobby she'd enjoyed thanks to a friend's encouragement, but decided to keep it up.

As she ran, Emily noticed what she calls "the cutest yellow house" in her area. She said that it had "a hold" on her and it served as a sort of landmark during her runs.

Eventually, Emily decided to move out of her first apartment and headed into the city to comb through listings in the Village Voice in the hopes of finding a new place. She looked through the paper, still hot off the press after a Tuesday night delivery, and called what appeared to be a near-perfect listing.

She made an appointment to check out the home with the landlord and when she arrived she was stunned. There it was: the little, yellow house.

Margaret Othrow, Emily's then-landlord and the current owner of that home whom she calls Marge, has now become what she her "fairy godmother," encouraging and mentoring her to expand upon her mediumship. When Emily first told Marge of her intuition, which she'd realized had been present at so many points in her life, including meeting her husband, she said that Marge told her of the house's history of being handed down from fortune tellers to psychics, beginning in the early 1900s.

Marge still owns the property, but has named Emily the home's next landlord, making her the fourth generation of female psychic mediums to own the cheery, yellow house.

For now, though, Emily lives in a brownstone with her husband and her kids. In 2013, she decided to pursue mediumship full time, taking courses and getting an education that's helped her recognize how to be even more in tune with her intuition. She works as a medium out of her home full-time, but also owns Rainbobo, a line of talismans, lucky charms, and sigils that she designs.

The only people Emily won't read are her family and friends. She's attempted to read friends in the past, but it just didn't work.

Leaving her previous jobs, Emily told me, has allowed her to leave behind negative energy that held her back and it's made her life easier in many ways, giving her the ability to be herself and connect with people.

"I don't wanna do hard work anymore," Emily said. "This doesn't feel like work. It's easier to show up, be myself, and draw on what comes naturally."

According to Emily, the only way it would feel like hard work would be if she were faking her skills, doing things like Googling or researching her clients ahead of time in the hopes of gathering information.

In my case, that would have been impossible because there is little record of my grandmother online nor did I tell Emily personal details about myself. My questions, many of which I've chosen to keep private, were unable to be found on Google or even in past writings. And, as Emily pointed out, there are frauds in every career field.

She also welcomes skeptics, but makes it clear that there just aren't going to be scientific explanations to her abilities.

"I appreciate skepticism, it's essential, but you should use your own experience to be the arbiteur of whether or not it's true for you," Emily said. "Because it's not rational, because it can't be quantified, because it can't be studied… That's inherently difficult because our society, we value the rational, we value the things that make sense. This whole world doesn't make sense."

And that's what shocked me – and almost empowered me – the most about the experience.

It's easy to emphasize the "rational" or "logical" things, but it's harder to put faith in more spiritual, intuitive, emotional matters. And I'd been guilty of perpetuating this sort of prejudice by perpetuating stereotypes of psychics as shifty, exotic people or as being unreal, unable to be found as mothers or neighbors or activists like Emily, who's active in social justice-based causes, particularly the fight for transgender equal rights.

It's easy to dismiss that which you don't know. It's even easier to dismiss that which you can't scientifically prove. Sometimes, you've gotta go with your gut.

And to the fullest, most informed extent, that's exactly what Emily Grote does.

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