April 30, 2009

May Healing Communication News

Hello Everyone,

What a month -- challenging, heart-breaking and hopeful. We have a lot to share about what's gone on for us on a personal level and a couple of announcements to make. The most important announcement being THE RETURN OF OUR SLIDING SCALE! Don't let money get in the way of getting the help you desire. We also plan to travel some and may be available to do sessions in-person if you happen to be where we plan to go -- CALIFORNIA PEOPLE, PLEASE TAKE NOTE. See below for more information.

By the way, we are still interested in finding a healing retreat center or similar service that would like to offer our services in conjunction with what they do on the premises. The perfect place would be specifically oriented towards holistic healing, education, and spiritual growth. We envision it as having private spaces for spiritual counseling and healing work, perhaps a metaphysical / New Age gift shop, a cafe or community gathering space, and -- who knows -- perhaps a bed and breakfast or spiritual retreat center associated with it, too.

We have nothing to invest but our time, effort and expertise. But for the right situation there is a LOT we can offer in that regard. For a place interested in hiring us for their staff, we can offer a variety of services in addition to our spiritual counseling and healing work. We are both accomplished writers. Sheryl designs websites and does most of our marketing work. Paul is a professional photographer. And we both have experience running businesses of our own.

We are open to moving to various parts of the country.

Hope to see or hear from you all soon!

Love,
Sheryl and Paul

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This month's newsletter offering is about the heartbreak we mentioned above. If you'd prefer not to read about that Paul wishes to offer you an alternative, an amusing short story he wrote many years ago called "Something About Kay".

THE ULTIMATE TRAPPER
by Paul Hood

Quite some time ago, last year in fact, Sheryl got advanced warning that one of our cats would not survive long if we moved to Arizona. We didn't share that info with anyone, and at the time I'm sure Sheryl was a bit of an antennae for news of anything that could go wrong. I didn't really want to hear it though, she didn't either, so we did our best to dismiss it. I will say that we've kept a pretty sharp eye out for coyotes, however, as that's how most people lose cats (and dogs) out here.

Much later, when we were both considering relocating (again, from here to somewhere else) we both had an independent spiritual encounter with death. It's not so hard to describe if you've ever been there: death is the game you don't win. As a healer, encountering death itself is kind of like being on a surfboard when a 100 foot tall tsunami hits. You might paddle a bit anyway, but the situation is a bit de-motivating. In this case death felt as close as my breath fogging in the night air.

I'm talking about death now, not the afterlife nor anything more than confronting the transition.

Aside from my family and friends having to deal with a whole lot of death and dying lately, there's been some scary illness a little too close to home, and it's also obvious that "transition" is in the air in other ways.

So I posted a blog a few weeks back with a picture of our precious cat, Pipa, and in that same blog posted a photo of a small reed, transplanted from the grave of one of our deceased pets. That bothered me. It didn't bother me nearly as much, however, as when Pipa actually did get sick a short while later-- and Sheryl and I got identical "hits" that there was essentially no point in giving her food and water. Very upsetting. She wasn't even that sick yet. We ignored what we heard. We took her to the vet multiple times. We did healings on her day and night. She appeared to get better, then worse, and I'm very, very sorry to report that Pipa did not make it. We miss her terribly, but we're not sorry that her suffering has ended. We did the best we could. We lost. Death is like that. We're not enemies of death. We're partners, eventually.

At "Trapper"s the other day (a favorite local diner) we're having our burgers and chili fries and I've already taken a photo of a skull on the wall. A real skull. This is not Santa Cruz, California. . . we're in Arizona now. There's a group of people sitting beneath the skull having their casual conversation and it's all about death. Later on we watch a video called "Illusions" and it's set entirely on the death bed of a character played by Kirk Douglas who looked uncomfortably close to death himself. Yeah, OK, we get it-- don't shrink from what's in front of you, deal with it. The caption beneath the rather macabre looking skull at our favorite diner is so faded that it's barely legible. It says, I think, "The Ultimate Trapper". Meaning death itself, I think.

So we've been doing a fair amount of mourning. And in the middle of it all our primary print on demand service decided to hack the commissions of all 6.5 million artists and designers who have built their business up from nothing. We'll all lose about 70% of our income from that source-- essentially, they've killed that portion of our business until we can replace it and build it up again elsewhere. Interestingly enough, we've already encountered several upsides to this. We've now communicated with more fellow artists than ever before. We've reconsidered the big picture of our art and design work as a whole. We found a new print-on-demand service (Zazzle) with a lot of better design services and options. And, we've resolved not to put all our eggs in one basket this time. We even re-examined just about everything that we're doing and not doing.

The death card in Tarot, is not what a lot of people think it is. It's usually not about literal death, but a transition from one state to another. Often it's a happy card to get after you get past the "yikes!" factor. Azriel, the Angel of death is not a fallen Angel. He's got a job to do, and he does it. He's not a merciless bastard, however, as many of you know. He appears to have some flexibility; arrives on time-- but he'll step out for a cup of coffee sometimes, come back a few minutes or years later.

Out on our front porch the hummingbirds are going bananas doing their mating dances. The cottontails are everywhere. Things are actually turning greener out here-- as if the plants are freakin psychic about Spring because we haven't seen much that passes for moisture. And while we are sad for departed friends, money, jobs, we can't help it, we're hopeful.

Related Blog Posts:

When Miraculous Healing Isn't Enough

Being Prepared for the Worst

The Rainbow Bridge



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THE RETURN OF OUR SLIDING SCALE AND A NEW FLAT RATE FEE

Don't let finances keep you back from an appointment any longer. We now offer a sliding scale fee of $50-150 / hour or $25-75 for 30 minutes. The way the sliding scale works is this: Pay what you can afford. You don't need to ask permission. If you decide later that you want to pay us more or make a donation to help us keep our services affordable for others, there is a "Donation" button available on our "Make an Appointment" page for that purpose.

For those of who you who can afford it, our new flat rate fee is $150.

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READY TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT?

Visit our "Make an Appointment" page to make your appointment now.

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TRAVEL PLANS -- WILL WE BE SOMEWHERE NEAR YOU THIS SUMMER?

We have been invited to stay in southern California (Yorba Linda, Orange County) for a few weeks late June through mid July and plan to sell Mama Love in various places along the way. If you would like an in-person session with us while we're in southern California, please get in touch with us and we'll try to arrange it.

SANTA CRUZ CLIENTS AND FRIENDS: We'd love to include a trip to Santa Cruz on our way to Southern California in June BUT we will need a place to stay for a week or longer and enough sessions to make it financially feasible. Interested people, please contact us! We'll see what we can do!

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CAN'T WAIT A MONTH TO HEAR FROM US?

Follow our blogs:

Paul's Blog... http://paulhood.blogspot.com/
Sheryl's Blog... http://healingcommunication.blogspot.com/

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THANKS FOR ALL YOUR REFERRALS!
Simplest way to tell people about us? Forward this email with a note saying you like us. It's easy!

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April 5, 2009

April Healing Communication News


Hello Everyone,

Last month will probably go down in our personal history as the time Sheryl discovered the spiritual significance and emotional healing value of grass. No, not the kind you smoke! The kind most of us walk on and never even notice. Trust us, in the desert grass is a pretty important feature of the environment and, as it turns out, it has wonderful energetic properties from a flower essence point of view that potentially have great usefulness for all of us -- life purpose, learning to intersect personal callings with the needs of the greater world, community (and knowing how to function within a community on the "grassroots" level), learning to adapt within the conditions our modern societies have created for us -- really important stuff. Sheryl hasn't finished processing the implications of all she's been studying yet herself but she has lots to share about it anyway -- blog links galore!

It's also been pointed out to us that the vast majority of people who know us don't have any idea of what we actually do. If you've had a session with us you might have a better idea but the scope of our practice has actually turned out to be wider and more varied than we ever anticipated ourselves!

If you haven't visited our website lately you might want to visit our "Typical Session" page -- that's been significantly changed !

And here is a just a SHORT list of some of the things that we have helped people with -- if you think of other things we should add to this list, please send us a note! Click the links to find out more.

Marriage and Relationship Counseling

Life Purpose, Career and Life Direction

Business Relationships and Decision-Making

Intuitive Health Consultation

Parenting and Family Caregiving

Shifting Long-Standing or Repeating Patterns

Relocation and Major Life Changes

Spiritual Growth and Development

We also want to announce that the price of products in our Art and Photography Gift Shop has been greatly reduced. If a gift-giving or personal upliftment desire can be met by beautiful words, photography or artwork on a T-Shirt, mug, greeting card, etc. be sure to check out our shop at http://www.cafepress.com/paulnsheryl . We both have published lots of new items in recent months so if you haven't checked it out lately, be sure to come by and look again!

And, if you or someone you love is currently taking care of an elderly friend or relative, you might like to know that Sheryl's latest book, "The Spiritual Journey of Family Caregiving", is now available for $14.95 plus shipping directly from her at http://www.healingcommunication.com/myproducts/spiritualcare.html . (The Lulu.com and Amazon.com prices remain at $21.95.)

Love,
Sheryl and Paul

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THE PURPOSE OF LIVING ON PLANET EARTH FROM THE GRASSES' POINT OF VIEW

Soul in the Grass
Knowing the Grass
Grass Flower Essences
Quaking Grass Flower Essence
Is Life Purpose Important in Challenging Economic Times?
The Energy of Life Purpose Using Wild Oat Flower Essence
The Dilemma of Wild Oat
Finding Your Space/Place with Corn Flower Essence
Mother Corn
More About Space vs Place and Corn Flower Essence

In addition to almost daily writing Sheryl went wild with her camera producing images of desert grass like you've never seen it before! You can see most of these images all gathered together in a single gallery -- either as framed or unframed fine art prints -- or on posters, greeting cards, mugs, T-shirts, etc in her "Desert Grass, Cactus Spikes and Barbed Wire" collection at Cafrepress.

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READY TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT?

Visit our "Make an Appointment" page to schedule your session now.

Or send us an email or leave us a voice message at (831) 325-4076. (Be sure to tell us what time zone you are in and several good times you might be available for an appointment. Thanks!)

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MORE WRITING AND PHOTOGRAPHY THIS MONTH

Paul's Blog
Sheryl's Blog

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THANKS FOR ALL YOUR REFERRALS!
Simplest way to tell people about us? Forward this email with a note saying you like us. It's easy!