Madelaine grew up traveling the world as the daughter of an American diplomat, packing a suitcase and boarding a plane every few months until she was nineteen. To keep her education stable, her parents sent her to boarding school in England — at Wardour Castle in Wiltshire, a grand old mansion with a history of its own. It was there, among the castle's resident spirits, that her psychic abilities first stirred. Her history teacher, also a psychologist, listened to the students' nighttime stories and pointed to Madelaine: she was the one with the gift.
In her early twenties, after a few years in London, she moved to the United States to study art at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. There, an intense and troubled presence disrupted her sleep and her studies. Seeking relief, she saw a psychiatrist — and instead of medication, received a reframe that changed everything: she wasn't unwell, she had a sixth sense, and it was a gift meant to help others.
She married, settled in South Pasadena, and raised two sons. When she began quietly sharing her sensitivity with friends, word spread, and people started asking for readings — often to connect with passed loved ones and spirit guides. Madelaine could see them vividly: their clothing, their hairstyles, their mannerisms, and the messages they wanted to pass on. She worked this way for about five years.
Her grandfather — a WWII bomber pilot and Navy Cross recipient with whom she'd always been close — remained present for her after his passing, offering guidance through what she now understands as a higher dimension. As her life underwent its own upheaval, he told her plainly: she wasn't going to be able to control everything, and the healthiest path was to let go.
Her grandmother, a self-described “white witch” who read tarot during the war, had always earned her grandfather's respect for what she could do. Inspired, Madelaine bought her first tarot deck in 2007. The traditional Celtic Cross spread didn't resonate — until she heard an instruction to channel a grid of her own. What emerged became her signature Head / Heart Alignment Grid: a spread that separates the situation, your thoughts about it, higher guidance, likely outcomes, your feelings, your thoughts about those feelings, and finally an eleventh card that draws everything into alignment.
Word of the new method spread quickly — a reading for a friend going through a difficult divorce helped her relationship recover so completely that she remarried, and offered Madelaine a reading in return. For a stretch of years, Madelaine traveled without a fixed home, reading cards wherever she went: at restaurants, for strangers, for waitresses who told other waitresses. It was during this time, reading for a family in a rented Idaho cabin, that she recognized her calling fully — a reading so precise it brought a stranger to tears was the moment she understood: this was her divine purpose.
Astrology arrived last. For a year, Madelaine had been asking her grandfather when she'd find her true partner and true home, and he kept pointing to the stars — a gesture she couldn't decode until her mother and aunt explained that he had navigated his WWII bombing missions by starlight, guiding his squadron safely home through the dark. He was telling her, in the clearest way he knew, to learn the stars herself. She has been studying and practicing astrology ever since, crediting it with the stability of her career and the clarity of her life's biggest decisions. Today she reads charts and teaches astrology daily, helping others align with their most abundant path — work she still credits to her grandfather's guidance.