Peggy Rometo became a professional intuitive healer in 2000, at age 40, after years of resisting her psychic talents. Today, thousands of people turn to her for guidance about their physical and emotional wellbeing, and her fans include celebrities like Demi Moore, Deepak Chopra and Donna Karan. Here, she talks about the dramatic lead-up to her reinvention and why a Second Act is sometimes set in motion by painful events, and she suggests ways even skeptics can tap into their own intuitive wisdom
Stephanie: First, could you explain exactly what it is you do. What does being psychic actually mean, and how do you help people heal?
Peggy: I am able to access flashes of information in the form of words, pictures, feelings or sensations about past, present or future situations. This information helps to provide healing to others. Some people simply need to hear the right words. Others need a more detailed conversation that speaks directly to them. People find this process to be authentic, validating and cathartic. Individuals have reported back to me that after this process they have been healed from serious illnesses, or that it has helped to correctly identify a mystery illness. Sometimes it has helped them cure a condition as simple as nail biting. While the process doesn’t always end up in a physical cure, people absolutely receive emotional relief.
Stephanie: In your twenties, you worked briefly as a flight attendant, and then you ran a real estate investment business in your thirties. Were you aware of your psychic gifts during this time? How did they figure into your life?
Peggy: As a child, I got glimpses into the future and I always felt the presence of spirits. But I was afraid of all this. In my twenties I really started to see more things, have more déjà vu moments. Then I had a dream that my brother David would die, and a couple of weeks later he was killed in a car accident. Afterward, I didn’t want to have more experiences like that. David’s death shut me down, psychically, even more. A couple years later I met my husband. We got married, had three children (two sons 17 and 14 and a daughter now 10). We lived in Kansas City and ran a real estate investment business. I was raised Catholic—I still occasionally participate —and my husband started to read spiritual books such as Conversations with God by Neil Donald Walsh, Quantum Healing by Deepak Chopra and Awakening to Zero Point by Gregg Braden, just to name a few. The books made me nervous until I understood we were still talking about one God. I started to gravitate toward a broader view of spirituality as well, but I didn’t want to walk away from my faith. Then, my older brother, Larry, was killed in a tragic way. He was 40 and had been battling manic depression ever since David’s death, which had shattered his life. He’d been on medication ever since, and was finally managing his emotional imbalances. Then one night, while driving on the interstate, his car went down an embankment and crashed. In spite of a head injury he managed to climb back up to interstate. Passers-by couldn’t see his car, only this bloodied man staggering along the center median. They reported the accident on their cell phones, but no one stopped. So he stumbled into a lane of traffic and was killed instantly by a semi truck.
When I heard the news, I bundled up my daughter, who was then three months old, and drove for five hours to see my parents in Iowa, praying all the time for a way to say goodbye to Larry. I prayed for five hours, and over the next three days, I saw both my dead brothers. I communicated with them. I foresaw small benign events and the next day I would witness them happening. I bless my husband because, thanks to the books we’d read, I understood that these were spiritual experiences. He had a sense that what I was experiencing was extremely important, and he became the mediator between me and my parents, assuring them that I was not flipping out like Larry had after David’s death. He reassured them that they were not going to lose me, too.
The whole experience of seeing and communicating with my dead brothers, and then telling my husband what I’d seen and heard, was so reaffirming and validating that it awakened in me a huge thirst to discover what this was all about. I wanted to know: what was my life purpose. We had just sold our business, and we realized that it was the perfect time to explore and figure out my experiences. My husband requested that I consult with a cousin who is a psychologist to make sure I was okay, which I did, and she put me in touch with an energy healer who helped me learn how to control my breath to get a clearer connection with what I now call Spirit. I discovered that when I was afraid, I would see and hear things that would creep me out (what psychics call “interference”). But when I embraced my abilities, the visions were clearer. I practiced my psychic skills over the phone with my cousin, Dr. Julie Dunnwald, the psychologist who I had initially confided in. We would speak every day for an hour or two. We’d work with a story in the news—for example, there was a story about a woman who was abducted—and I would intuit information about what had happened to her. When the details about her case started coming out in the news, I discovered my intuitions were correct. It was very reaffirming. I realized I wasn’t going to hurt people, disappoint them or steer them in the wrong direction. I decided then that I needed to take one step at time, work at a methodical slow pace, and I would know by the results if I were going in the right direction. I learned from my mistakes. It took about a year to build confidence. One day, Spirit said in meditation: you need to charge for your services and people will start coming to you. The following week, out of the blue, through word of mouth, 10 people came to consult with me. That was in 2000, the year I turned 40.
I still had to work on myself to achieve results—especially my fears and my relationships. I went to various healers to heal my insecurities and anger. I needed to release these heavy emotions and become lighter. My gifts became stronger as I healed myself. One day, during my morning meditation, I was writing down the information that was coming to me. I wrote that I would be working with celebrities like Demi Moore. My husband came up to me and looked over my shoulder to read the list of celebrity names I’d written, and he said, “that is the biggest bunch of ego bullshit I have ever read.” I said, “I know, I know!” I crumpled up the paper and threw it into a corner. Two weeks later, I got a phone call from a friend who said he’d given my name to a friend of his, Demi Moore. Demi has worked with a lot of different healers, and her belief and support in me took me to the next level. She’s the only person I talk about, because she has publicly supported me.
Stephanie: Many of the Second Act stories featured on MORE.com and in the magazine are prompted by a loss, a serious health problem, or a tragedy similar to what you experienced. Why do you think this is?
Peggy: After a tragedy, people often experience a painful, terrifying “dark night of the soul.” No one can help you get through it except a higher power. Even if it’s a business loss, we experience a death of the life we knew, and this cracks us open. It takes us to a place we’ve never gone before, where we give birth to a desire to be seen in a new way and to make every moment count. We start to look outside of ourselves for a way to work for our community, and live in more joyful space. We learn to start to live in the moment. When you live in the moment a space is created where healing can begin.
Stephanie: In one of our Second Acts stories, Denise Cerreta recounts having an ah-ha moment, an intuitive insight that lead her to found a nonprofit, pay-what-you-want restaurant. What’s the difference between an intuitive insight, and just getting a good idea?
Peggy: With an ah-ha moment, it’s as if time stops and then all of a sudden you hear, feel or know some new revelation. In my workshops, I teach people how to connect with this space so they can access it all the time, any time. You learn to trust it through practice. If you venture away from knowledge you’ve intuited, you’ll feel as though something’s wrong and you’ll be redirected. If you follow your knowing, then you can trust that you’re meant to go in this direction. Often, people will change direction only to find out it’s the wrong decision. Which leads them right back to their initial instinct. These are good mistakes to make because you’ll learn over time to trust that knowing or feeling part of yourself.
You can also do this exercise when you have a question: Write it down on a piece of paper. Make the question very specific, with time frames and other details. Put it on your nightstand before you go to sleep and ask to get the answer in the middle of the night or the next morning. This way you open yourself to the knowledge. Also, psychic information is circular, meaning if you don’t “get” it the first time, it will come back around again and again. You can also just observe yourself as you hold the written question in front of you, and see if you get a strong knowing or gut feeling. It takes constant practice and awareness to hone your instinct or intuition, but the more you use it, the stronger it gets. It took me a long time to fully trust the information that was coming through to me, and I found that the more I trusted it, the deeper the impact would be for the people I was seeing.
For information about classes, seminars and events, or to schedule a private consultation, go to peggyrometo.com. And check out her regular columns at wowOwow.com.