07/12/2025
Psychic Insights Don’t Have To Come From The Third Eye.
“Here’s A Story Of A Lovely Lady…” If you were a television ju**ie like me growing up, you might recognize this lyric from ABC’s The Brady Bunch. I was only two when it came out in ’69. I recently realized that almost all the after school TV I watched growing up were reruns.
A little while back, a client’s name happened to be Brady, a detail that would lead to a couple of piercing psychic insights.
From my years in New York and Honolulu— two multi-cultural, melting-pot cities—I became attuned to regional accents. Some of my clients have moved around a lot. When a mix of timbres come out of someone, I don’t attempt to plumb origins. Others can say one word and give away the region of their roots.
Have you ever conversed with someone whose accent is as flat as a newscaster, and then they pronounce the word, ‘about’ as ‘abōat’? You think, “Wait a minute! You’re from Canada aren’t you?”
As idle entertainment, check out a fascinating website that explores the world’s infinite accents. It’s replete with a jillion locales in two minute mp3’s. It’s The International Dialect of the English Archive: https://www.dialectsarchive.com.
The same poem is read by people of all ages from all over the world—Hong Kong, Barbados, Northern Ireland…on and on. You can make a fun game to play at an intimate party after dinner: everyone goes around the table seeing who can mimic the accent best.
Anyway, many accents are subtle, like someone from WiscAHNson will pronounce the A in Chicago as if they have the flu and were hacking out the words, ATtitude or ANgular. You have to smile big with your teeth and employ the throat. I’ll probably be in big trouble for this description.
I’m working towards some psychic magic here. This Brady lady is vacationing in Honolulu (Bunch Insiders: sound like a familiar episode?). She books a session in person. Her reading felt cathartic and insightful, mostly because of her willing participation and buoyant spirit. The same energy happens in a phone or on-line session. The most rewarding readings are sprinkled with levity between the tender moments. This was one of them.
Her accent is completely neutral. No drawl or glottal stops. None of the vowels have diacritical marks. My opening question to her might have been because her name is Brady. I leaned back and thought of Florence Henderson, the mother on the TV show. For years she famously appeared in TV ads for Florida Orange Juice. But surely that show was filmed in Hollywood? I asked, “Do you happen to come from or live in Orange County California?”
She looked at me for a good five seconds. A closed-lipped smile slowly appeared on her face. “I was born there and raised between Huntington Beach and San Diego. How did you arrive at that?”
“Ah, Madam! This isn’t the space to delve into the mechanics. We can do that another time.” I continued, going off the Brady Bunch impression. “So you have, uh, two families?”
