Sometimes in the great suburban race, the 12-16 minute mobile (make that coffee at home next time) Starbucks mayhem, the hurry up and wait on 95 South or the panic-slash-dread that so often ensues when we realize we forgot to order the Edu-Kit before school starts, we need to slow down, step back and connect with something larger than ourselves. Anna Raimondi knows this better than anyone. As a medium, speaker and teacher, she’s met us where we are, seen what we cannot and reminded us above all else, to trust our intuition. She may not see dead people but she can (“Pipe down, Otis!”) hear them and although Lesley Gyorsok sadly had to Google: what a “Mayberry-esque feel” meant, she slowed down, stepped back and really connected this time. Raimondi has that effect on people. It’s her gift in fact.
1. Where did you grow up, and what is your coming-to-Wilton story?
Anna Raimondi: I grew up in Valley Stream, NY on Long Island. When my husband was transferred to Stamford for work, we moved our family from Woodmere, NY to Connecticut. At the time we were raising our children, so finding the right community was incredibly important to us.
We chose Wilton because of the wonderful school system but there was something else about the town that drew us in. It had this… Mayberry-esque feeling to it. Neighbors knew one another, children played outside and there was a real sense of community. It felt like the kind of place where we could raise our children and put down roots. We came to Wilton because of a job transfer but we stayed because it became home.
2. Did you always know you had psychic abilities, or was that something you discovered later?
Raimondi: I was born with the ability to communicate with those in spirit so I never knew anything different. It was simply part of who I was — and still is today.
My parents would tell stories about things I said when I was very young, describing people in spirit in remarkable detail. They were devout Roman Catholics and their attitude was very simple: God gives people gifts. They accepted what was happening with me and that made growing up with my ability so much easier. I was never afraid. Why would I be? To me, communicating with those in spirit was just a natural part of life.
Not everyone felt that way. I had an uncle who believed I should be institutionalized. You have to remember that mediumship wasn’t something people openly talked about or understood when I was growing up. So I learned early on to be careful about whom I shared that part of myself with. Mostly, it stayed within my family and a small circle of my parents’ friends.
As I got older, those friends began asking me questions about loved ones who had died. The funny thing is, I remember wondering, why aren’t you asking your own children? I truly believed everyone could see and sense what I could.
It wasn’t until I was around 12 that I realized they couldn’t; and once I understood I was different, I wanted nothing to do with being different. I wanted to fit in. I became a cheerleader and later I started collecting degrees — almost as if I could build a perfectly normal life around this ability and hide behind it. But you can hide from who you are for only so long.
My ability never went away. Eventually, I stopped trying to make it go away. The turning point came during one of those miraculous moments in life that changes everything. I almost died and during that experience, I made a promise to God: If I lived, I would do the work I had been sent here to do. And so I did.
It still took me years to fully understand and accept what that meant. But today, I no longer try to hide from this part of who I am. I see my ability as something I have been given to use in service to others. If I can bring someone comfort, healing, hope or peace, then I am deeply grateful for it.
3. Have you ever been called in to help solve a case or been involved in any sort of crime investigation?
Raimondi: Yes, I have been involved in a criminal investigation and I learned pretty quickly that it wasn’t the work I wanted to do. Television makes psychic crime work look fascinating and dramatic. The reality can be very different. There can be a tremendous heaviness to it, particularly when you’re dealing with frightened or grieving families; and sometimes what you receive isn’t what you (or the family) wants to hear.
That experience also helped me understand what my work was really meant to be. For me, it’s about love, healing and hope. It’s about helping someone who is grieving reconnect with a person they love and perhaps walk away feeling a little lighter than when they came in.
I can’t take someone’s grief away, nor would I ever pretend that I could. But if I can give someone a moment of comfort or help them understand that the love they shared with someone hasn’t ended, that means something to me. That’s the work I choose to do.
4. Why is it important, especially for women, to trust their intuition?
Raimondi: I would actually say it’s important for everyone — not just women — to trust their intuition. We all have it. We just don’t always listen to it.
Sometimes intuition isn’t dramatic at all. It’s that feeling in your stomach telling you something isn’t right. It’s thinking about someone you love moments before they call. It’s walking into a situation and immediately feeling comfortable (or uncomfortable) without being able to explain why.
I think we sometimes talk ourselves out of those feelings because we want a logical explanation for everything. But I’ve learned that you don’t always need one. The more you pay attention to your intuition, the more you begin to recognize it and trust it. It can guide your decisions, alert you when something isn’t right and help you understand what is right for you.
I have a very simple rule that I’ve lived by for years: If it doesn’t feel right, it’s not right.
5. Why do you think it’s difficult for some people to suspend their disbelief when it comes to the other side and communicating with those who have passed?
I think a lot of it is fear — fear of death and fear of what we don’t understand. Movies and television haven’t exactly helped. The spirit world is often portrayed as something frightening, dark or dangerous.
That hasn’t been my experience at all.
For me, communicating with those in spirit is overwhelmingly about love. I’ve watched people walk into a reading carrying enormous grief and leave a little lighter because they heard something deeply personal — something that reminded them of the person they loved or reassured them that the connection between them hadn’t disappeared. Those are the moments that stay with me. Death ends the physical relationship but I don’t believe it ends the love or the connection.
For some people, an experience like that also opens the possibility that consciousness or the soul continues after physical death. For others, it simply brings comfort. Either is okay with me.
I never feel the need to convince anyone that what I believe is true. I’m not here to change someone’s religion or beliefs, and I certainly don’t expect everyone to believe what I do. I’ve found that when someone needs this kind of experience — and when they’re ready for it — they somehow find their way to me.
