24-year-old Monica Ten-Kate, star of the Freeform (formerly ABC Family) show, Monica the Medium, was technically born in Washington, D.C., but was raised right here in Northern Virginia. Ten-Kate grew up in Herndon’s Franklin Farm area, attending St. Joseph Catholic School, Rachel Carson Middle School and then Oakton High School. To this day, she fondly remembers the little things about her hometown, like playing at Frying Pan Farm Park, shopping at the Reston Town Center and, she says with a laugh, getting Chipotle from the Franklin Farm Village Shopping Center.
“It wasn’t really until high school that I started to feel and hear and sense what I later found out was Spirit trying to communicate with me,” says Ten-Kate, who went on to pursue a B.A. in Communications from Penn State. It was there, in “Happy Valley,” Pennsylvania, that Ten-Kate “started to come out of the ‘medium closet’” and give readings to fellow students. Within six months, Ten-Kate racked up a one-year wait list, prompting a school publication to write an article which caught the attention of three TV producers.
Monica the Medium premiered in 2015 and ran for two seasons, but now the San Diego, California, resident is focusing on other ventures: a Wine & Spirits with Monica the Medium podcast; live Messages from Above events; online courses and workshops for those that believe they, too, have the ability to communicate with people who have passed on; and possibly working with terminally ill children in hospice care to help ease their concerns about life after death. Ten-Kate no longer provides private readings, but does offer them periodically via giveaways.
Here, Ten-Kate talks to us about her ability:
When spirit comes to you, is it something that you can just shut off?
I have learned how to have an on/off switch. There are occasionally times where somehow, even when “my lights are off,” a really pushy spirit will still manage to come through when I’m trying to be “off the clock.” But for the most part Spirit respects it now. I have set better, stronger boundaries in my day-to-day life, otherwise I would be too burnt out all the time.
It’s funny because people who might have watched my show and seen episodes … they expect when they meet me that it must be like that 24/7, but what they forget or what they don’t really think about is that we filmed 12-hour days, four to five days a week for three months, so [the producers] have tons of times where I go to the mall and I don’t wind up giving a reading, but it’s a show about a medium so obviously people want to see me do that work. And the other thing is, when I was filming I was obviously being more open to connecting to Spirit because we knew that’s what people wanted to see me do.
What are the different ways that Spirit connects with you?
With my process, Spirit communicates in several different ways. I hear from Spirit, but it’s not like the way I hear people talking to me, I hear them in my own thoughts’ voice. I also see Spirit, but it’s not like I’m seeing a dead person standing in front of me, I see them in my mind’s eye. I feel Spirit, and that’s when I can feel not just their emotions, but also their physical symptoms or physical ailments and illnesses that they would have dealt with here in the physical world. So if they passed from lung cancer, I’ll get that laboring in my breath and it will be hard for me to breathe.
On top of all that I also have my “spirit dictionary.” Over the years as I’ve done this work, I have formed all these different signs and symbols that Spirit knows they’re able to show me, and when I see this certain image or get this certain phrase that’s a part of my spirit dictionary, I already know how to interpret it. So it’s a combination of hearing, feeling sensing, seeing and also having those signs/symbols that Spirit will use from my spirit dictionary, and I put that all together and interpret it as a message for the client that I am giving a reading to.
The process of mediumship is all about energy. I basically have to raise my vibrations, my energy, really, really high, and Spirit has to lower theirs and we meet somewhere in the middle in order to communicate. So when I’m saying slow down [in a reading], it’s not so much that they’re talking so fast, it’s more so that their energy is so high up there, I need them to slow down their energy in order for them to meet me in that sweet spot where we are able to communicate.
Have you ever seen or heard from any negative spirits?
Luckily for me, I never really dealt with anything that’s like “ghosty-ghost,” earthbound, negative-type energy, and I think a big part of that is because I am very good about doing my daily protection rituals and setting boundaries and little things in my day-to-day so I am not so open for anything like that to come through. So for me, it’s like the positive, good energy—moms, dads, brothers, sisters, people’s loved ones. There are some people who have the gift of connecting with Spirit that, unfortunately for them, they feel the good and the not-so-good.
However, it has happened twice in my life where I did see a spirit outside of myself. What was crazy was that one of the times that it happened was actually either Halloween or the Day of the Dead, and at the time I was working out with a trainer [who] had lost his very strong, Puerto Rican grandmother. We were talking about her and I looked over my shoulder and I saw her standing right there. The only other time that I have ever seen a spirit outside of myself had happened years prior and it was also somebody’s Puerto Rican grandmother!
Do you avoid walking through haunted houses and cemeteries?
I try not to put myself in certain situations or certain places where I would even be potentially opening myself up to that kind of thing, but regardless of the mediumship side of things, I’m an empath. When you’re an empath, you can feel the emotions of others and the energy and feelings of others as if they were your own, and for some empaths it is really hard to be in certain spaces based off of residual energy in the room. So regardless of the mediumship side of things, I get that overwhelming or uneasy feeling sometimes where the energy is overwhelming, maybe because something was going on in that space, or there is some history there, which would explain why I am feeling uncomfortable or overwhelmed.
Is the Ouijja board real?
I think that it can absolutely work, but it is something that I say don’t use. It blows my mind that a children’s toy company, Hasboro, makes that. I would say don’t use it, stay away from it, it’s like asking to open the door to negative “ghosty-ghost” type things. Yes, there are some people who have had positive experiences where they can connect to one of their loved ones, but it is so much more likely, especially for people who are using it who are not trained in energy and protection and boundaries and all that stuff that they could accidentally open a door to something that is not so great. Don’t use them, don’t get them, get them out of your house. I don’t recommend.
What is your understanding of “the other side?”
I don’t want to say with 100-percent certainty that this is exactly how it is going to be when we die, and I also won’t know fully what happens over there until I’m one day there too, so take it with a grain of salt. But what I have learned through this work and what Spirit has communicated, is that we all have this soul contract. Before we are even born here in the physical world, we set out to create this to-do list for our journey through earth school of what are we going to go through, what lessons are we going to learn, what people are we going to need to help us go through those tasks, those lessons, these different things that we set out to achieve and learn and grow from in this lifetime.
As part of that soul contract, as part of that to-do list, also is the timing of when we agreed that we will return home, because [Spirit] shows me that this is the temporary and Heaven is the home we go back to. We come here to go through these different lessons, go through that journey for our growth, and when we cross over we go through a period of life review where we watch back our life not just through our eyes, but through the eyes of people around us. Then we meet back up with our spirit guides, which is like our counsel people on the other side, and we take a look at what we actually did, what things we checked off, what things we actually followed through with, because we all have free will. So even if we had said, “On my to-do list, on my soul contract, I am going to do X, Y and Z,” we have free will so we can decide “I’m not going to do those things,” and go against it. And that’s where, when you go back and review, you’re like ‘Oh, I didn’t do some of those things, maybe I should go back for another lifetime.”
I do believe in reincarnation, that we come back until we learn all of those lessons that our highest self is meant to learn and grow from.
What do people need to know about their loved ones who have passed away?
I’m the first one to acknowledge that you don’t need a medium to connect with your loved one. You shouldn’t feel like that’s the only way that you can feel that closeness again and reconnect with them, because they are working day-to-day trying to do everything they can to get our attention to let us know that they are around us. They do hear our thoughts, they hear our prayers, they know what we are going through, they know how much we miss them and how much we love them; they spend so much energy and effort to send you those “hellos from heaven,” those little signs from Spirit.
People might get pennies; they might hear that song on the radio or have a spirit visitation dream; smell the perfume that their mom used to wear when they are out and about; or see rainbows or dragonflies or cardinals … [Spirit] has their special little things that when [people] see that, they know that it’s their loved one saying hello. You might not see their physical body anymore, but feel and trust and know that they are right there with you in spirit and that you are not alone.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited and condensed.