Finding love—or ‘a proper love’ as an English psychic put it to me in 2014—was the last thing I thought I’d get from Teal’s death. But I did. This very psychic predicted I was soon to meet someone named Deborah. “She’s a lawyer… or maybe in transportation?” she said with certainty.

I was skeptical. But I shouldn’t have been, for this is exactly what happened about two months later.

What follows is an excerpt of my new book that captures the many …well… mystical things that happened after I began connecting with Teal’s spirit in the Afterlife.

The Korean baths were nearly empty that Saturday night, and I enjoyed the luxury of sitting alone in the steaming whirlpool. I’d driven into San Francisco to attend a party in the neighborhood. But first, I stopped by the baths for some intensive self-care.

On the other side of the large tiled room, an Asian woman who worked there quietly went about her business, picking up towels. The silence in the spa was deep and complete. I closed my eyes and sank a little more deeply into the hot, swirling water. I felt my whole body give way and relax, and as I did, I could feel Teal make her entrance.

“Hello, love,” I ventured.

Hi Mom.

“Whatcha doing?” I asked.

A small laugh bubbled through me. It was the usual Teal-laughter for no reason other than the joy of being. On the other side of the room, the attendant looked up. She gave me a smile and I beamed back at her.

I’m preparing you, Teal continued.

Preparing me for what? I asked.

You’ll see.

This time, instead of disappearing, she lingered for a while. Her presence soothed me as she suffused the whirlpool with her energy.

Sinking back into the pool, I surrendered all of my tension, my worries, and my sadness. Allowing it to swirl out of my body into the water, I let go. I breathed in the fizz of Teal’s essence, the possibility, the joy and the pure love that she was now, my disembodied sparkle of a daughter.

Thank you, I murmured sometime later. She just glowed as a laugh pushed through me once more. Then she was gone.

Twenty minutes later, I walked up Filmore street to The Girl Party. This massive, roaming party of lesbians happened every few months in some generous Bay Area person’s private home. This time it was in San Francisco. I walked up to the doorway of the old Victorian and saw a friend just inside.

“Thank God you made it,” she said. “This place is packed! The doors are just about to close.”

I pushed into the house as lesbians of every description chatted, drank and partied all around me. Tatted, pierced girls in their twenties danced while middle-aged women gossiped and older women sat together in the back on lawn chairs, watching and sipping wine.

I put my pot luck offering down on a table in the backyard and looked around. One empty seat beckoned to me; a bench across from a few chatting women. One of the women looked up at me as I neared.

She was a beautiful and silver-haired, and her face glowed with the zest of a life well lived. “Join us,” she said. We smiled at each other as I sat down across from her.

“We were just talking about a recent overnight we made to the hostel at Point Reyes. Are you a hiker?” she asked.

“I am,” I replied.

We began to talk. Within a few more moments this mysterious silver haired woman was sitting next to me, and our conversation had deepened. She began telling me about her adventures cycling twice across the country, solo hiking sections of the Pacific Crest Trail and backpacking deep into the wilderness of the Sierras.

“Why backpack?” I asked. “Why not just car camp?”

She cocked her head and looked at me. “Have you ever backpacked?” she asked.

I replied that I never had.

“When you backpack, you can finally find the silence,” she explained, her voice filled with rapture. “Imagine being in a place in nature where you are totally alone for days on end, where you can see every last star in the sky and there’s no one else around for miles. I know places off the trail where nobody goes. Nobody at all,” she assured me. I didn’t doubt it.

Who was this woman? I studied her, trying to understand what was happening as I became more and more enraptured with each purring, lilting word she spoke.

“Why are you telling me this?” I finally asked.

She looked at me levelly. “I’m looking for some activities we might do together,” she explained calmly. Something in my groin stirred.

This was it, I thought to myself.

“What ‘s your name?” I asked.

“Deborah,” she replied.

Deborah! My mind sputtered and reeled, and I felt like I was waking up from a very long nap.

“I’m Suzanne,” I said. A moment of silence ticked by as we looked at each other, recognizing something. I thought back to my last reading with Joanne.

There was once last acid test. My true love was supposed to be in law—or possibly transportation.

“And what do you do for a living, Deborah?” I asked.

She smiled and looked down. “Oh, I’m a lawyer, but I’m retiring,” she said. Then she glanced up brightly. “In my heart of hearts, I want to be a conductor on Amtrak,” she added with a laugh.

A shot of electricity poured through my body in confirmation. Yes, this really was it.

My love had arrived.

Excerpted from my new memoir, Free Spirited; How My Daughter Healed Me From the Afterlife

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