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 EnoughBeing Prepared for the WorstThe 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/-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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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