Shirley has spent the last 40 years understanding and developing her psychic mediumship skills. These skills were innate as a child, but they didn’t fully emerge until after the birth of her second daughter and the unwelcome news her daughter had a terminal pediatric liver disease. Often times, shocking news breaks one open.

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After her divorce in 1989, she became a freelance court reporter enabling her to get on her feet, make a living and move onward. Court reporting offered her skills she still uses today, demanding a high standard of acute attention, focus and concentration. She worked in this field for 25 years.

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In her path of self-discovery, she made the transition from a heterosexual woman to a lesbian woman, acknowledging the fluidity of her gender preference. She was with a woman for 15 years, raising a blended family together, before she was killed in a car accident. A devastating loss, but one that Shirley had premonitions about, experiencing firsthand access to the unseen world, as well as experiencing her late wife’s visitations shortly after she made her transition. It was another tragic experience that broke her more open, more willing to experience life beyond the veil.

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Shirley searched for tools she could use to help herself and her family, and she found Dr. Susan Jeffers’ book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. It was a resource she depended on for many difficult years and events. She became a licensed trainer in Dr. Jeffers’ work around fear, and for decades empowered people using Jeffers’ techniques allowing them more emotional freedom to find peace in their lives and follow their dreams. She grew into a strong caregiving advocate.

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Through the 32 years she raised her two daughters, she journaled daily memorializing ways she was coping with the ongoing stress and deterioration of her daughter’s health. After a lifelong battle with liver disease, Shirley’s daughter made her transition in 2014.

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Riga wrote Tools for the Exceptional Parent of a Chronically-Ill Child (Strong Voices Publishing, 2016) a self-help book offering daily advice to caregivers, with a follow-up workbook, Tools for the Caregiver: A Workbook for Finding Yourself Through Caregiving (Strong Voices Publishing, 2018) a workbook to help manage your caregiving journey. 

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Turning inwardly searching for more understanding for the grief and loss in her life, she followed her desire to integrate a spiritual dimension into her passion for helping others, Shirley completed a two-year Spiritual Director certification. This training helped develop her deep listening skills, compassion and awareness of each person's essence and the many ways the sacred manifests in people’s lives.

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Shirley has devoted her life to energy healing, psychic readings and mediumship along with her continued self-care and mastery of self-acceptance. She is a Shining Light parent, continuing to build a close relationship with her daughter on the other side. They have plans to write a book together in the near future.

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She has a special interest in supporting caregivers, people experiencing bereavement, and the LGBTQIA community.