Loving Conor: A Clairvoyant’s Memoir on Loving, Bonding and Healing

Loving Conor: A Clairvoyant’s Memoir on Loving, Bonding and Healing by Tami Arlene Urbanek

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

“That winter Bethany had just turned a  year old, which meant I could enroll her in the college daycare center and I could take some classes.  I received a Federal Pell Grant and a State Grant that paid for my tuition, books, and childcare and which even left me an extra $900 per semester and that I could use to pay bills.  Money was still tight, but I was no longer afraid of drunken weekends and I was excited about beginning college.

 

I loved having a goal to work towards, a degree that would take me beyond working at McDonald’s.  Many times it was exhausting and I would think about quitting during those draining periods, but I would push forward by reminding myself how much I wanted to become a teacher.

 

Over the next year and a half, life took on a routine state with working, going to school and caring for Bethany.  But, I was still looking for that perfect guy.  Since I was not focused on improving my own self-respect, I attracted another unhealthy relationship.”

Loving Conor is essentially a story spanning twenty years of the author’s life, succinctly told in 235 pages.  She tells about her own early relationships, her experiences as a mother, and her daughters relationships.  As the story progresses Tami’s viewpoint becomes increasingly colored by her psychic beliefs.  Here I do need to have a quick sidebar on my personal beliefs.  I don’t believe that 99% of claimed psychic activity is real, so at best  I guess you could say that I read this as a strong skeptic, and I remain one.  The main purpose of this book though is not to convince the reader of anything so I will not hold Tami’s beliefs on this topic against her.  (I do think this book may be primarily written to bring exposure to the family business however, and I would personally discourage dabbling any further.  But that is neither here nor there.)  The book reads very quickly, I finished it in about 3 hours, and it is written in a very straightforward simplistic manner.

On the whole I did not care for the book too much.  I disagreed with most of Tami’s decisions.  She feels strongly that punishing a child is wrong.  She didn’t understand the purpose of it, instead she only wanted to talk with the child repeatedly even though the behavior wasn’t changing.  I think that punishing a child is what teaches them that actions have consequences.  If you leave the location I drop you off at without permission then you will not be allowed to go to this location by yourself.  Consequences.  If you do not come home by curfew you will have to do your socializing at home.  Oh and by the way, you my fifteen year old daughter will not be allowed to date anyone over the age of eighteen, period.

Tami spends most of the book making decisions based on “spiritual advice” as opposed to making decisions with her family.  I think this was another huge mis-step, and is my reason for saying that dabbling down this path is an error.  The advice she receives isn’t helpful, and doesn’t lead to great outcomes.  The person I feel the worst for in the whole book is Conor.  He is still a child, but now there is a book out  that he will eventually read I am sure that will tell him the tragedies of his past life.  It will tell him that he hates women and is angry.  These are things that I think become self-fulfilling prophesies.  He won’t have the chance to decide for himself who he is because he’ll be brainwashed by this “past spirit.”

Oh yes, by the way the labor to bring Conor into the world was eighteen hours long, “proving” that he was a reluctant spirit.  What hogwash.  First time labors are frequently eighteen hours long – or even longer.   All in all, I suppose if you are dealing with a troubled teen, and feel alone this book will at least show you that others have been through this battle.  However, I think that you would be better served by reading a book by someone other than a clairvoyant.  I won’t be recommending this book, and I won’t be looking for other books by this author.