Arts & Entertainment
GUIDING LIGHTS I ON THE COVER
Psychic medium Rebecca Rosen's new
book helps readers connect
on their own to their spiritual guides.
Gail Zimmerman
Arts & Entertainment Editor
I
n April 2001, the Detroit Jewish News published a cover story on a
24-year-old psychic medium named Rebecca Perelman, a trans-
plant from Omaha, Neb., who, working out of a coffee shop on
Orchard Lake Road in West Bloomfield, delivered messages from ener-
gies on "the other side hoping to "bring peace of mind, comfort, healing
and direction" to clients who had lost their loved ones.
After that article — and its client testimonials about her specific,
spot-on messages, all delivered in a loving manner — "the phone rang
off the hook:'
"That story changed my life says Rosen, who married her husband
of 8 1/2 years, Brian Rosen, just two months after the article appeared. "It
was a launching pad that gave me the platform to come out and share
my gift, demystifying the paranormal."
On Monday, Feb. 1, Rosen returns to the Detroit area for the national
launch of her first book, Spirited: Connect to the Guides All Around You,
which will be released by HarperCollins ($24.99) on Feb. 2. On the day
of its national release in bookstores, she'll appear at a Borders in Ann
Arbor.
In the book, co-written with Samantha Rose, Rosen shares her own
personal journey — and experiences of some of her clients — to
explain her work as a spiritual medium. The book is dedicated to her
late grandmother Babe and to her father, the late Shelly Perelman, who
took his own life in 2006.
"It may sound strange to call my father's suicide a gift:' Rosen writes
in her book,"but ifs indeed an inspiration to work on my own stuff and
to continue my work as a medium, to help others."
Another impetus for the book, Rosen explains, is that, in the last few
years, more and more of her readings have moved beyond providing the
comfort that comes with the realization that our "souls are eternal and
our deceased loved ones are at peace and always with us."
About 50 percent of her readings are with repeat clients "simply hun-
gry for spiritual truth and a deeper understanding of why they feel lost
and stuck in their lives." Rosen found that "in addition to offering closure
around their deaths, spirits started coming through to help the living
with their very down-to-Earth, daily problems:' like depression, financial
woes, substance abuse, anger, relationship and body image issues, and
low self-esteem.
While Rosen loves her life as a psychic medium, she says her least
favorite part is working with "clients who [repeatedly] can't make a
decision without consulting me." It is unhealthy, she says, "to disconnect
from your own intuitive guidance."
Rosen says we don't need a psychic medium to connect us with the
spirit guides who can help us resolve Earthly challenges that hold us
back. Her book, she says, provides the exercises and meditations that
Psychic medium
Rebecca Rosen:
"I am human like
everyone else in
that I lose my
patience with my
kids, get tked at
the end of the
day and need my
breaks. Truly, the
only di
'Spirited' on page 36
January 14 • 2010
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