Episode 29 + Episode 30 of Centered

I actually went on a vacation for the first time in years. Since BEFORE the pandemic, in fact. My family and I did two weeks in New England—first in the Berkshires and second in Vermont in a beautiful treehouse. We napped and had ice cream and found swimming holes and hiked in the woods. It was a wonderful time, but it also meant I neglected this blog, my newsletter, my podcast, etc. Oh, and I had all my female bits removed, so I did deal with some, you know, healing time!

Here are my last two episodes of the podcast. First, the monthly earth medicine for August and whew boy, is it a doozy!?!? and then of course, another Q+A episode with my first recorded message, which was so awesome to receive. I hope you enjoy them!

nice to meet you

It has been a while since I launched the Moon + Stone Healing—almost a decade of healing work through Tarot, Reiki, crystals, shamanic work + sharing my medicine, writing + research under my belt. I realize in all that time I have not spent too much time introducing myself. My first newsletter launched into a full historical discussion of the Corn Moon without a second thought about letting you know who I am.

I hoped “who I am” would slide into the background, anonymous in that way that we can be when we are of service to others. It was a thought borne of humility and shyness. Unsurprisingly, who I am infiltrates everything I do, every client I help, every class I teach. It never slips into the background. I often share my wisdom through my own stories and experiences—it is how Spirit often speaks through me. When I think of how often I tell a personal story to illustrate the medicine for my clients and students, I blush wildly.

“Gaw, Angie, talk less. Listen more. You are so embarrassing,” sighs my inner teenager complete with eye roll and exasperation.

But when I think about talking less, I wonder how much of it is truly humility or has it been, as I am loathe to admit, a fear of intimacy, a subconscious pushing back from vulnerability. If someone said, write about you. I would say, “Meh, all these people know me already—all I do is write about me.” Recovery has taught me many valuable lessons, but possibly most important is that my story, my mistakes, my “failures”, my experience, is my medicine. It is what I have to pass on. It is why the broken amongst us are often the best at holding space and being healers.

Thinking about “my story” reminded me of working with my mentor Pixie Lighthorse. She asked us to think about what we are exceedingly good at. She said, figure out how to tell your clients who you are.

And so, I thought about all these things I would say:

I am Angie Yingst, nee Kenna.

I am an identical twin.

I am 48 years old.

I love the color red, moss, mushrooms, crystals, plants, and animals.

But those things are not really who I am. When Pixie asked me this, what she wanted me to do is figure out WHO I am.

I am a mother.

I parent three children earth-side and one ever-newborn who died during labor at 38 weeks, so I am a joyous mother and a bereaved mother. I also mother dogs—an 8 lb Jack Russell terrier named Louie and an 80 lb Chocolate Lab named Charlie, who love to make trouble just when I jump on a livestream for our students at Hibiscus Moon Crystal Academy. I mother my clients by giving them unconditional kindness and positive regard, or you know, unconditional love. It is sometimes the first time my clients have felt that. I have mothered circles of people, taught them how to hold space for one another and for themselves and how to heal the deep trauma of being highly sensitive in a very sharp, loud world. I even mothered my father when I became one of his caregivers at age 24 until his death three years ago.

I am also a daughter.

I am literally a daughter of an immigrant who comes from a family of storytellers and musicians and drunks. My mother gave me strength, resilience, confidence, grounding, and healing through her journey to the States, her mothering, her nurturing, her unconditional support, though disconnected from her family, the rainforest and ocean, and her homeland hurt parts of her soul too Still, I learned the stories, the connection to the Earth, the medicine of my ancestors. My mother taught me resourcefulness and laughter. I am a daughter to a person broken by trauma and alcoholism who also taught me hard work and resiliency. I am the daughter of Mother Earth, like my father, I am also her steward, the one who carries her medicine.

But maybe most importantly...

I am a wounded healer.

...a curandera + a bone-picker, one who pulls the meat off the bone, examines it, helps process it, facilitates transmutation and regeneration, but even as a healer, I am wounded nonetheless. Simply, I was called to do this work. After years in deep grief, hidden alcoholism, trauma-burying, and caregiving burnout + fatigue, I found myself seeking my own healing. In thousands of ways, I sought it—through traditional therapy; through quitting drinking + 12-step recovery; though uncovering and working on my own physical illnesses, chronic pain, + the doctors; through meditation, prayer, + psychic work; through travel + howling at the moon; through learning the hard way how to create, hold + maintain clear boundaries; through learning about self-love and radical self-acceptance; through art, writing + creativity; through parenting and being a wife; through research + reading + experiencing other people’s healing; + through navigating my own deep wounding + shadowlands without imploding. And as I healed and continue to heal, I was called to help others, to hold the lantern in the dark, like the Hermit, to guide others through their own wounds and heal.

As a healer, it empowers me to watch another person find their truth, to have revelations about their path in this world, to make connections between the earthly realm and Spirit, to begin to live in the flow, and most importantly, to begin that process of reconciliation and healing, because I can still remember my own journey of uncovering my truths, of having those moments of great revelation and inspiration.

Through all these things I have learned what works for me to revitalize me. The slow surrender to the will of the Earth and God energizes me, validates my work. Circles of peers, long soaks in hot salted water, morning meditations and prayer time, regular sleep, simple food, conversations and laughter, walking/hiking, and art (painting, singing, playing guitar and dancing) restore and empower me. And my work. My work with you. That inspires me.

Thank you for being part of it, and being part of this amazing journey. It is nice to meet you.

Much love,

Angie

understanding the medicine, even when it is disturbing

Friends, this is an essay I wrote a few years ago on my newsletter. I thought I would revisit it on my podcast and blog today as it ties in with the Deer Medicine of this month’s Guided Shamanic Journey. If you are interested in receiving my readings at the Full Moon and/or New Moon, which are collectively pulled, but surprisingly personal, or if you are interested in received an audio guided shamanic journey with an animal each month, which goes in depth with the medicine of the animal, then has a 15-30 minute guided shamanic journey, I can read more in-depth about it under the membership section of my website: MEMBERSHIPS. Several of my journeys are available on my website, and I am working on getting them all up there with three years of guided shamanic journeys for my memberships, which have so many amazing journey including frog, horse, butterfly, bee, beetle, whale, vulture, panther, great blue heron, fox, cougar and more.

On the way to one of my mentoring circle, one of my students hit a deer. She was devastated. The deer most certainly will die, or already had died. She asked me, “What does this mean?” As a circle keeper and an earth medicine walker, I found myself stumbling over my words. Why does this happen to us who walk an earth medicine path? Others chimed in with their thoughts—the deer knew you could hold space for its transition; it was destined to die; better you than someone else.

A few years ago, after a circle, I was driving home. I live in the boonies, as we say, out in the sticks, where I worry about hitting deer. Pennsylvania ranks as the second most deer collisions in the country. So, I drive slowly, cautiously through the fields, and frequently stop for all kinds of wildlife. But I was still in the city, headed home, and bam, a deer ran into my car. It hit my front quarter panel. I pulled over and the deer laid on the side of the road, panting, clearly injured. I called the police and sent Reiki. I envisioned the Reiki energy repairing the deer’s legs and head, and strengthening it. I did this Reiki for almost 15 minutes, and the deer stood up, steady and whole, then ran right out into the street to get demolished and killed by a massive truck.

The truck tore the deer apart. I shook and cried as well.

What does this mean? Is it still medicine for us if we see our medicine dead on the side of the road? And how do we interpret it?

As I meditated on the death of the deer, I could see this interplay between the deer’s medicine and the encroachment of humanity. The medicine of deer resides in its deep vulnerability. When deer interact with humanness and urban environments, we begin to see just how vulnerable these magnificent creatures are. Humans have disrupted the balance of the predator and the prey. Our ancestors decimated the predators—wolves, mountain lion population, the bears—who would have hunted the sick and weak, keeping populations down. Massive deforestation also affects deer populations. Whitetail deer flourish in edge environments, right where the forest meets the suburbs. Streets and cars encroach on the delicate ecosystems. And hunting is down around the country with the ease of shopping for meat in the supermarket.

So, deer medicine is not only a medicine about the individual deer’s vulnerability to predators but the species. Deer, particularly those with antlers, have a strong connection to Spirit. Their antlers are said to reach high to our guides and angels as antennae for messages. Deer connects with the subtle energy system and has heightened senses from hearing to vision to smell. They are always sensing the disruption in the force.

I could not help thinking as my student told me about the deer and her accident that this was part of the critical message for her. Knowing that she is going through a beautiful spiritual opening, deer medicine can come in this way to remind us of our vulnerability during our spiritual opening. When we experience all this light and love that begins to channel through us from Spirit, we live in a bubble of good vibes. When I started opening, I just was always blissed out and only able to tolerate other lightworkers. When we take all this gentle light and vulnerability into the real world, our first encounters with the sickness of our society, the toxicity and negativity of people, the harshness of the news and the suffering of others, we experience this world just like the deer, hit out of nowhere by real life. This modern world is cruel to the vulnerable. Deer medicine embodies vulnerability, quiet, and gentleness. Nothing is more profoundly indicative of the imbalance then when nature interacts with urban life. Where we see how pollution hurts wildlife, or cars kill deer.

This grounded, counter energy to very high vibrational work is part of the medicine lightworkers need to carry as much as the light message of our power animals. When you open in profound ways, you are, of course, more susceptible to those deep wells of grief and compassion. But it goes deeper. There is nothing natural about carrying vulnerability or being an empath in a narcissistic world. We also have to experience and learn about the shadow medicine of our animals. Shamanic work is not always easy or light or fun. It is mostly about challenging ourselves to go beyond the surface, to experience the more profound message, to become stewards of the Earth, spokespeople for the Mother. When all of this starts, we want to live in that amazing Other World of Spirit. When we practice earth medicine, we become intrinsically tied to Mother Earth and Grandmother Moon, and their incredible cycles. Life and death, happiness and grief, masculine and feminine—this delicate balance becomes second sight to us We can see it without trying. Impermanence and suffering of life and of the human condition is part of our medicine and the spiritual experience. We must hold space for both light and darkness, birth and death. As we begin our opening, this can be a harsh reality.

If this happens to you, or you are driving and notice an animal sacred to you, dead on the side of the road, my suggestion is to begin asking what is the medicine for you—both in the animal’s living experience (how does it live, love, eat, hunt, raise its young, etc), then as your medicine interacts with the brutality of this world.

If you are able and feel up to it, take the hair or an item from the animal that was killed (always remembering that if it stinks, it will always stink. If it has bugs, your house will have bugs, so only newly killed animals can be harvested, but that is another post) and use it in ceremony. As medicine keepers, we need to honor the medicine and the allies and giving them a good death is part of this process. You can use that medicine you harvested on your altar or in a medicine bundle.

One thing I know is that none of us aim for the deer or squirrel or bird, so release guilt. Guilt is the illusion of control (if I did something different, it would have changed the outcome). Just be with the profound grief. That is enough suffering. Create a ritual of honoring the medicine of the deer. Sit in the discomfort of your humanness and the ways in which we can mitigate the harshness of our living on the earth. Allow the tears their flow. Fall into ritual and ceremony.

Remember anything, all of our human experience, can become our medicine. To ignore the death, suffering, and violence inherent in our animal medicine is to ignore the full power of its medicine. May you walk gently on the Earth, friends.

rebirth

I have been thinking about rebirth so much these past few weeks, maybe even months, as the animals of rebirth began appearing for our monthly journeys in the Spring. Jaguar showed up first, the Queen of Shadow work and the one who often appears for dismemberment, then Snake, the shedder of skin and the symbol of transformation, and then in August, Beetle came…a small guide of rebirth who turns literal shit to nourishment, recycling our difficult experiences into powerful spiritual lessons. My personal work with Vulture prepares me, of course, intimately connecting to death and rebirth.

Through this entire process with breast cancer, it has felt like the end of a dis-ease, not the beginning. A personal invitation to be reborn into the healed Angie, the one who has done the work. That might sound strange, but it felt like the culmination of many years of working through trauma, grief, soul loss, and heart chakra imbalances. Like there is this part of you—over the heart, that has manifested cancer in my milk ducts. Interestingly, the cancer developed in a breast I was never able to produce milk out of. That is not exactly true. The milk was produced, but it could not be expressed. (Is that a metaphor or what?) I had a child who died, and I remember how engorged and painful my breasts were, filled with milk and no child to drink. I put huge cabbage leaves on it, until they withered and I smelled like an Eastern European soup. I would cry in the shower as my breasts would weep milk. Except the right one. It would just stay hard and engorged and no milk would weep until it just stopped trying.

During those days, I often thought about this class on Death and Dying in college with one of my mentors Dr. John Raines. He said that babies cry because they know they deserve food, comfort and love. And the cry, he explained, was exactly designed to be uncomfortable for humans, it is a noise we want to stop. It is only when they cry and no one comes that babies stop crying. My breasts were the same. They eventually stopped weeping milk because no baby came to feed.

It is interesting that this tidbit came from a class on Death and Dying. We have those moments we face death both metaphorically and literally. Maybe we survive a great trauma that threatened our life, or we stand and face our demons and get sober, or we ask for a new way to be in the world. In the process of earth medicine initiation, we undergo the process of rebirth through the shamanic experience of dismemberment, where, in the journey state, we literally ask our animals to rip us apart, tearing at us, killing us in journey, so that we may rebirth. With Vulture as my guide, she asked me to release my soul. She could not tear me apart alive. This process of releasing brought up so many emotions and feelings of helplessness that had permeated my life…how do I let go when all I have been doing is holding on tight? It is a zen koan, a paradox for survivors. Somehow I did, though. That is the thing…somehow we do. We do it when the holding on is killing us.

When I had my first chakra balancing many many years ago, my heart was completely closed. The pendulum did not move. It just stood stock still. It disturbed me. I had learned through my many years of life how to shut my heart off. Immediately, the self-punishing thoughts flooded in. “Oh my God, I am broken. My heart is shut. I am a monster.” (This is why I teach my students to be kind and gentle when doing a chakra balancing.) It has been decades-long work to open my heart and to trust people. It was well before I became a healer that I started, but I knew then that the pendulum was telling me something I needed to pay attention to. Opening my heart involved many healers, many therapists, many releases, many times feeling so vulnerable and fearful that I took steps backward and then when I was ready, started back on the path.

I say this because there is no healer that isn’t a wounded healer. Our DNA, our strength as healers comes from our wounds. It comes from our humanness, not our divinity or otherworldliness. While I appreciate there are many who feel shadow work is not as important as light work, I politely, yet adamantly, beg to differ. Any lightwork done without being aware of your wounds ultimately will take you back on the same path again and again. You encounter the same lessons, the same kinds of people (friends, lovers, colleagues, enemies.) Our wounds are invisible blocks that keep us in an eternal loop on the spiritual path, like Sisyphus, the Greek King who cheated death twice and was forced to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down. Sisyphus’s story has come to represent any futile, yet difficult task. Unless, we can identify our own triggers, wounds, and blocks; make them visible then dismantle them, we stay in this endless Sisyphean cycle. This is the rebirth. To simply emerge from the tedious work, to slowly break down that rock, our wounds into smaller pieces, so then we can break that cycle. Then our journey isn't so tedious.

Where shamanic and earth medicine work excel is in the rituals, ceremonies, symbolic work of that rebirth. We call in the snake, the beetle, the vulture to help us find a way to break our cycles. This work is a lifelong process. I have been intimately involved with this trauma work and work around my own heart for so long it is almost comical, but also I didn’t start it to be a good healer or to write a newsletter or blog post. I started it because that heart, the one closed and unable to weep, demanded I look at it. This petulant, hurt child within me said, “I cannot be ignored any longer. I will not be neglected. I need to be loved.” It began crying and I began responding. And in turn, I healed those around me, who tried to get into that closed heart for years.

Self-care and self-love sound like such bullshit terms, but they are juicy, deep, life-altering journeys. They aren’t just bubble baths and dark chocolate and masturbation. Self-love embodies self-compassion, self-care, self-worth, and self-actualization. We must remother ourselves, or refather ourselves. That has been the challenge—seeing and loving myself unconditionally. But when I struggle, I look at my own children and think, "You are just like them--beautiful, perfect, worthy of care."

It is strange to see my body without breasts. I don't NOT like it. It is just an adjustment. I am almost starting to like it more. I have been trying to take some time with no bra and no shirt to just get used to how I look now—a huge scar running across the place where my babies suckled. My belly sticks out like a big Buddha belly and my chest goes in, almost concave. Right now it is all puckered and there are major folds in it that are angry and tight. They will soften over time. Just like the other scars I have healed in my life—things soften with time. I can honestly say that I feel complete, even without my breasts. This body does not seem ugly, or unlovable, or unworthy at all. It is simply an adjustment.

This is what healing gives you—unconditional radical self-acceptance. I have been working on it for years by demanding I love myself. I thought that if I just said it enough, wrote it out on enough intentions, it would happen, but the truth is—that isn't what did it. You are not in control of the healing timeline. It is something you cannot fake. You simply love yourself until you are willing to accept the love. That's the thing--for me, self-love was about accepting the love, not giving it. Giving love was easy for me, but accepting it was a whole other thing altogether. You become gentle with your inner voice. One day something weird happens—you get diagnosed with breast cancer, or your partner leaves you, or you notice that your face is wrinkled and your hair grey, or you break something valuable and through this long rebirthing process you realize you aren't mad at you, or disappointed, or embarrassed, or ashamed. You stand tall and you say, “Yep, that is me, still me, still the same me as yesterday, still worthy of love and acceptance. I love you. You got this, kid.”

You got this, kid. I love you.

healing messiness

This is from my latest newsletter. You can subscribe here.

dearest friends,

The birds feast on the sorghum that has sprouted from bird seed. It is beautiful how they know how to do this, even if they have never seen sorghum before.

In the winter months, I watch the birds from my meditation room. They congregate around the feeders, the suet and the fresh fruit I put out for them. I put a handmade feeder on the deck this year, because I couldn’t reach it on the feeding station and besides, they are fun to watch during meals. I love the drama of it. My husband complained about the mess they made. He lost patience when a small carpet of sprouts began spreading in late Spring on the newly mulched walkways. We spent a few days pick axing, clearing, digging out and planting flowers and bushes to have these unsanctioned plants begin their fight for life and survival. 

I root for the weeds, I admit. I cheer them on in whispers and stolen words. Once you begin the process of learning what and why the weed-plants grow in your yard, it is hard to pull out the ones that simply were here first. They are designed to feed the native animals and insects. But I began the process of cleaning the birdseed from the deck. And by cleaning, I mean, I swept them onto the lawn, beyond the mulched pathways, right at this place where I struggle with the mower, because it is too steep and I have an active imagination, particularly in regards to my own death. I thought the birds might find some food among the grass and be apt to scratch at the Earth a little. Let’s see what happens, I thought. I pulled the mulch up with the sprouts, carrying them to a tree stump on the hillside, and simply spread them out. Grow here, I invited them. Fill in the area. Be plentiful. I put an old planter stand there too, and that is where I put the handmade feeder. Problem solved. 

It wasn’t long until I received a message from my local birders group that there is an avian pandemic, spread through backyard bird feeders and well-meaning bird enthusiasts. We are encouraged in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic to stop feeding them at collective stations, so I just left the feeders heartbreakingly empty. Because I didn't have the heart to cull all the bird seeds that started becoming plants in Spring, they grew and grew in Summer—five feet tall and beyond. They covered the entire hillside. Now, I have the most amazing garden of sunflowers and sorghum and millet, colors of bright yellow and ochre and oranges and reds. The Sunflowers are beautiful and then when they wither and grow brown, leaves falling, the birds began to visit again, and eat the seeds. The Sorghum turns burnt umber and the birds come in droves to eat and pick at their amazing heads. Golden Finch and black birds, starlings and cowbirds, hold onto the strong stalks and peck at the seed that grew out of their own messiness and shit. 

This is something I relate to.

Finding medicine and nourishment in my own messiness and shit. Maybe that is what I should write on my website—Angelica Yingst, specialist in finding medicine and nourishment in your own messiness and shit. It is my new mantra--Nothing is wasted. I write so rarely in this newsletter and yet, you have probably heard it many times. I try to embody and model for my clients, my students, my children, my friends, and my family how to deal with shit. How to reach out, how to find a community, how to make things sacred. When I am vulnerable and open, it heals not only me, but also is of service to other people. I recognize this, and yet it is still hellishly hard to be vulnerable and open. I tell stories about bird seed and sorghum and shit because it is hard and I am having trouble getting to the point, so suffice to say, this is me sweeping my bird seed and my shit onto the grass to see what sprouts.

A month ago now, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

It just came, out of a routine mammogram. Nothing extraordinary—no lump or bleeding or pain or strangeness, just something they saw on an annual scan. They told me it was early and that I was lucky. 

I feel lucky.

They told me in the same breath that I would have to decide what I wanted to do, which was basically one choice…one boob or two? Or rather a single mastectomy or a double? Which would I like? Would I like a single mastectomy or a double? 

With one boob, I could shoot archery like an Amazon, but I would still have to wear a bra with a prosthetic tit. With two gone, I could have a weirdly unnippled flat chest, which will probably be lumpy, rather than flat, because let’s face it my entire body is lumpy. I probably won’t like either choice, they said, but maybe this choice will save your life. We think it will. Maybe you can avoid chemotherapy and radiation and death, they said, but honestly, you are so lucky to have found it now. 

I feel lucky. I chose to remove both of my breasts.

A friend reached out telling me they saw a hawk flying with a snake. I saw the same thing a few weeks ago, like an Aztec myth or a Homeric saga, we are seeing similar signs. We wondered if it was a global message or a personal one. Maybe it is both...I can't help but think, in the way I did so many years ago when my daughter died, that life continues. That hawks capture snakes and people go to the mall and buy stupid shit and dogs bark at the neighbors even though things are happening in slow motion and in fear-o-vision for me. There are signs and synchronicities and healing, but I still have cancer. I am dealing with this by organizing my cabinets and buying hoodies.

When I was given this diagnosis, I kept thinking, "Angie, how will you make this sacred?" How can I capture this time before my breasts are gone forever? If I sprinkle this old bird seed and shit onto the grass, will it grow into something beautiful and nourishing? I know I will create artwork and write, because that is what I do with everything. I have created a crystal grid and an altar and called in Magdalene and Mother Mary and Kali showed up and Vulture…and yet, I simply want to lie in bed and stop the relentless litany of "Things I Need to Do Before DMX Day." And I can’t also, because the litany and the list are real and, from having done the lying in bed, obsessing about not obsessing thing, it doesn’t help. Organizing and making lists makes me feel in control when everything is out of my control.  

I am lucky. And yet, how will I release my breasts, the body parts that fed my babies (do you want tetita? I would ask them, as they turned their heads to latch on.) How will I release the chest they lean on, cuddle into, grab for when they are scared? How do I offer up the boobs that offered hugs to my hundreds of clients over the years and my sponsees who ask for their bosom hugs? How do I cut off the breasts that held pleasure and sensuality for my lovers? The breasts that are my husband’s favorite body part? 

It is easy to release them when I think of that time in my life when I was still a girl, when my breasts seemed to grow overnight. One day, my landscape was flat, and then small hills appeared. I remember how much they hurt when a football hit my chest. I remember when the boys started snapping bras and reaching over me, so they could graze them for a cheap thrill. I went from a flat, athletic girl to one leered at, an object of lust who still wasn’t sure if she wanted to play dolls or cut out Teen Beat pictures of George Michael. They have been the part of me people glared at, evidence that I was a slut or a hoochie mama intent on stealing their boyfriends. They brought derision and discomfort and pearl-clutching if I wore a spaghetti strap tank.  I have wanted them off since they were first unwantingly groped by creepy men or whistled at when I was just mindlessly walking down city streets. My breasts have brought annoyance and trauma and healing and love. It is a complicated relationship. 

This is the thing about us humans—even if we have never faced this particular crisis, we know how to make it sacred. I have learned to make it sacred by including people, by reaching out, by asking for support. Innately, we know how to eat the sorghum that grew from messiness and shit. We invite our bird friends to share.

*** 

I know this is shocking. It is shocking to me. But I have to tend to myself.  I have shut down everything in my shop—distance readings and healings, sales and memberships. I wish I could be present and hold space for you, but right now, this deep healing is reserved for me. Besides all I think all day is, “I have cancer. I am so lucky it is not worse.” My thoughts are dominated by this particular paradoxical truth. It is a niggling mantra that I keep wrestling with, like a Zen koan. I am devoted to my clients and students, but I am healing and coming to terms with this and making it sacred. And in that process, I have had to simplify and not be so bloody busy, as well as quarantine before surgery and prepare my home.

I have one more event before surgery on September 15th at Alta View Wellness Center with my bestie, Sharon Muzio. We are doing a shamanic healing circle on August 29th at 4p at Alta View—Sharon will lead the guided journey and I will do the hands-on healing. You can register here. 

I am beautifully interconnected to a vast, powerful circle of psychic, empathic healers, priestesses, shamanic wisdom and medicine keepers, seers, seekers, practitioners and beautiful souls like you, many around the world who I have been privileged to work with. If your expertise and experience falls into working with cancer, healing from surgery and making this process sacred, I’d love to hear about it. Please email or call (717-770-9109) and with that being said, hopefully, you understand that I am overwhelmed easily, so I might not get back to you immediately, or take your advice. Please do not take this personally as I am trying to intuitively navigate to what feels healing to me right now at this time. 

When I return, I will let you know. I may even write you a love letter or two.

summer solstice check-in

Early Summer in Pennsylvania blossoms into Wild Black Raspberries, Mugwort sprouting up wherever you let it, Wild Yarrow that hides in the tree line and roadsides, pretending to be Queen Anne's Lace. I see the snake tails disappearing into the long grasses and listen for the calls of the nighthawks. It only takes opening the eyes of your eyes and the ears of your ears to see the medicine all around you.

I turned my chicken coop into a potting shed and have fully dived into herbalism classes and study. I had always dabbled, but I wanted more formal training, and so I am getting it. I have always grown herbs to use for teas and salves, but it is different this year when my eyes became more finely tuned to the subtle healing of all the native plants of my area. My kids thought I was magick when I chewed up a Fleasbane Daisy and put it on a bugbite of my son, and it disappeared. I felt like magick too, as he said, "I thought that was a weed."

Weeds are just a matter of perspective, son.

I think about that quite a bit--how the thing we think is a nuisance ends up becoming the medicine. How a flower's beauty is all a matter of perspective. Same with humans. I think about how hard I work pulling unsanctioned flowers out of a bed I am trying to plant flowers in. We learn the things we learn through nature. I have never wasted an experience...I have used it all in some way. I would venture to say you have too.

I have spent the last few years healing trauma from different realms of my life--big traumas and little ones. I honestly just started calling things by their proper name. It has been the most humbling, difficult aspect of my work with self-love and self-compassion. I suppose this is called shadow work, but it feels more like integration work.

I remember being particularly keyed up and triggered by something and losing my patience with my kids a few minutes later. I put myself in time-out and my husband followed me. I was crying. And in that crying without thinking I said, "Why did bad stuff happen to me?" It is a question I never let myself ask, really. It feels so immature, so unevolved, to ask that question, and yet, the child in me needs a voice too. I have suppressed her for too long. Sometimes the work we need to do is just to say--that just wasn't fair.

For me, sitting in the unfair, is not comfortable. I am a fighter (not a flighter or fawner). I prefer fighting for justice. I don't usually struggle with fighting for my rights or the rights of others. But just sitting with injustice is so difficult for me. And yet that has been the work of the last few years...sitting in injustice--in our outer world with the struggles of black and indigenous people (761 bodies of indigenous children found this week outside of a residential school is such a horrendous example of this), and people of color, and then in our inner world with our own suffering and struggles healing trauma, addiction, codependency, fear, grief, anger, physical and mental struggles...we have to sit with injustice. All of us.

After I sit and feel the weight of it, I take a breath. I process it. And then look at this unsanctioned act and make medicine out of it. When Elizabeth Kubler Ross and David Kessler mention the 5 stages of grief, they were talking about acceptance of death. It was written for those who were dying, not those who were living, but quickly, it was adopted by the grieving. Recently, I read that Kessler postulates another stage for the grieving--making meaning. This is what humans do. We make meaning. We seek a story. We want to thrive.

And so I challenge you to make meaning out of a loss, to find a weed and make it medicine. There is beauty in every flower. It is just a matter of perspective.

Episode 5: Coming Out of the Broom Closet with Kristin Gallagher

Eclectic Pagan Witch Kristin Gallagher and I sat down for a little talk about coming out of the closet—the broom closet, that is, and being a public witch. It is something we have privately talked about for years—sharing our experiences with being public and sharing our personal spirituality. I absolutely love Kristin and her energy. She has gotten super popular on TikTok, sharing her witchy content and Witchy Mamma lifestyle.

You can find Kristin on TikTok at @onewitchymamma  or on Instagram at witchy.mamma – Instagram and coming soon (no videos up yet) WitchyMamma – Youtube. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Kristin Gallagher. Hope you enjoy my conversation with Kristin!

Episode 1: Chakras with Sharon Muzio

It was so fun to talk to one of my BFFs Sharon Muzio from Alta View Wellness Center in Harrisburg, PA. She is a long-time practitioner of energy work and massage. She is the OG in this area. I wanted to talk chakra with her, since she works with the chakras do in-depth. As COVID-19 has reared up, she has recorded journeys around each of the chakras, which will soon be available. She actually has a journey coming up on June 2nd called Shamanic Journey with the Chakras, which you can register for now. It is being held on Zoom, and seriously, she leads a beautiful journey. You can register by getting in touch with her at avwc@comcast.net

Have a listen to my conversation with Sharon:

Distance Healing

Throughout the pandemic, healers have had to dig deep into new ways of serving our people and communities. In the last few weeks, I have had a phone call with my rheumatologist, sent photos of my skin to my dermatologist, had a telehealth video appointment with my therapist, had a distance psychic reading with an amazing reader in Colorado, attended twelve step meetings online, and all kinds of new, different ways of connecting with my healing team. As energy healers, we are taught that energy transcends time and space. Distance healing usually is part of our training. As a Reiki practitioner, we use the distance healing symbol to create an etheric tube to send healing to a time, person, place or event. We can work with the past, present or future.

Energy healers work with energy (duh). Energy is not bound by the three-dimensional experience. As a shamanic practitioner, I use the journey state to access a dimension that exists simultaneously with other times. The journey world powerfully goes beyond what we can see. We call it the Non-Ordinary Reality. Shamanic States of Consciousness or Trance state is access to enter NOR where I can see the body and work with guides to heal spiritual, mental, physical and emotional issues. It’s incredibly powerful to do this work. I know I lose people when I start talking about this. It sounds so woo-woo and far-out.  But I can assure you that you do this already through prayer, sending healing or love, focusing energy toward someone far away (including in the past or in the future).

I have been working with Distance healing since I started my practice and have clients all around the world and country. I have developed some really specific ways to connect with clients.  I was incredibly honored to be asked by my mentor Hibiscus Moon to teach a class at Hibiscus Moon Crystal Academy on Distance Healing called Distance Healing Logistics. This is designed for energy healers of any background or modality to learn some techniques for offering distance healing to clients. Particularly important during this time of social distancing.

I offered this live on May 12, but you can now buy the recorded class and all the information I researched for this class through Hibiscus Moon Crystal Academy.

Distance Healing Logistics

Through that class, I offered a one-to-many model of distance healing and provided a beautiful healing with Mother Earth. During that, I used my beautiful distance healing proxy grid board that I designed. I have been using proxy boards for many many years. I have a woodworking husband who always has told barn wood in the barn, then I wood burn the design on reclaimed barn wood. I love combining artwork and working with my hands with my healing work. Well, people were asking me where I got this board, and would I sell one, and I thought about it. My husband and I decided to put these up, and we are selling out faster than we can make them. I have a few in my shop now, if you are interested.

Distance Healing Proxy Board 18” X 18”

Distance Healing Proxy Grid Board 18” x 9” (look around because I also have some Live Edge pieces which are absolutely gorgeous!)

I also offer distance healing sessions and tarot readings too.

Hope you enjoy them!