on openings + closings
Lately, I have been putting posts on Facebook with a kind of Ask-Me-Anything feel, so I can cover your questions on my podcast. Sometimes just coming up with ideas exhausts me and jumping off points are so very useful.
After wanting to be a doctor, then an architect, then a journalist, at some point in my thirties and forties I decided that I wanted to be an advice columnist. I love advice columns, because they delve into the experience of being human, being compassionate and being action-oriented. I used to love Cheryl Strayed’s Dear Sugar column on the Rumpus.
Beautiful writing + advice column + pontificating on the experience of being human = Angie Heaven.
I thought about what it would be called—Dear Nerd. Or Ask a Know-It-All. (Hey, I’m in recovery from being a Know-It-All!) Or What Would a Research Monkey Do? Nowadays, I like the idea of Dear Shamanic Practitioner And Energy Worker Who Reads Way Too Much And Loves To Do Research + Has an Inordinate Amount of Useless Information Floating Around her Brain, but it just doesn’t roll of the tongue like Dear Nerd.
In many ways, I have gotten to fulfill this fantasy in my actual work life, particularly with my work at Hibiscus Moon Crystal Academy as a Curriculum Specialist and Crystal Coach. Every Wednesday night since 2017, I go live and just answer questions from crystal healers and practitioners about issues coming up, trying to understand certain aspects of healing work, etc. It honestly brings me endless joy and fulfillment. I connect with so many amazing healers and get to constantly be challenged to think about issues, scenarios, healing and ethical quandaries and more. I have five years of questions and answers, have talked to hundreds if not thousands of crystal practitioners about healing work. DREAM JOB LEVEL—UNLOCKED.
So many people ask me what I do, where I work, etc. If you are outside of the United States, this is normal convo…”Hi, nice to meet you. What do you do for work?” and I have to sort of list it out. It is even confusing to my closest friends when I say something about work…they are like, “Which work?” So, yeah, I have three jobs. They are all interrelated. They are all spiritual/healer-oriented/tarot-y woo woo and also not. I have a business called the Moon + Stone Healing. I added Academy later just because I wanted to start teaching classes. When I first launched my tarot reading + crystal healing + reiki + moon circle business, this is what it was called. It was out of my house, and I offered in-person work, women’s circles, spiritual counseling through tarot, crystal healing sessions, Reiki and then tarot readings. Eventually, when I moved to Central Pennsylvania, the Moon + Stone Healing became my online practice, the name of my website and distant sessions. It became the hub of my online teaching. In 2020 as I moved online for Pandemical reasons, the Moon + Stone grew to offer memberships with my monthly tarot readings. I also in 2021 hosted my first retreat in Central Pennsylvania. So, I guess that is Job # 1.
In 2013, I moved to Central Pennsylvania and found my home at Alta View Wellness Center in Harrisburg, which is run by my sister from another mister Sharon Muzio. There I started really offering classes, seeing clients for crystal healing and tarot readings. During this time frame, I started SouLodge Earth Medicine school four-level Earth Medicine Practitioner program, which not only changed my training—it changed my work, my approach and honestly, my life. At the time, Pixie Lighthorse was working within the framework of shamanic journey and shamanic approaches. I believe now, she would change that wording. I find it a good shorthand for what I do, but I was not trained by a shaman in the way some practitioners are. We were trained to do our work, and then when called, we could begin working on others. It was many years before I was called to integrate this work into my sessions, but once I did, there was no looking back.
By the way, I am a long-winded, neurodivergent, Gemini rising who goes off on tangents constantly. Nice to meet you.
AT ANY RATE, my second home in Central Pennsylvania will always be Alta View Wellness Center. Sharon has created an amazing community of practitioners (we all seem to be earth signs, btw). It is there I do all my in-person teachings, classes, one-on-one sessions, tarot readings, and trainings. And Sharon and I have offered shamanic healing circles together that are just mind-blowing (to me). So, Alta View Wellness is JOB #2.
My jobby job, my day job, is with Hibiscus Moon Crystal Academy. Hibiscus Moon trained me as a Certified Crystal Practitioner and an Advanced Crystal Master. In 2014, I started working with HMCA as a Crystal Coach, then in 2017 I became the Curriculum Specialist, which was just amazing. I was helping HM create content for our students, learning how to write content and plan content that was responsive to our students, making quizzes and competency tests, even writing and editing our work as a company. Hibiscus Moon Crystal Academy might seem like a woo-woo academy, but I assure you we take what we do seriously, and work within a structure, have a whole team of professionals who help make it look easy. I don’t want to say it is corporate, but it is kind of corporate, and I love it. Honestly, I thrive in an office environment.
My favorite role at HMCA is being Coach Angie, where I get to answer our students questions. First in the FB group, but then also in my Live Office Hours videos each week where for an hour to 1.5 hours, I just go through all the questions and answer them. I do tons of research and nerdy explorations, and then talk, pontificate even, about my research. I feel like I know our students and have personal relationships with them. It remains one of the most fulfilling and exciting jobs I have ever had.
Dear Coach…maybe that is the name of my advice column.
Sidenote: did you know that my public speaking skills are borne entirely from recovery and sharing in 12-step meetings? I used to break out in hives and cry just thinking about talking to a group of people. Then when I actually did speak, I would stutter terribly in front of others. You can still hear it when I get excited or nervous. Now, I just think SLOW DOWN, ANGIE, YOUR BRAIN IS MOVING TOO FAST.
As most of your probably know, Hibiscus Moon announced her retirement earlier this year. It was not a shock to the team as she wrestled with the increasing pressure of growing this beautiful, but unwieldy, academy. It demanded a lot of her, and one of the things I most love and respect about Hibiscus Moon is her commitment to her own self-care and dreams. We have lots of meetings, and hundreds of small tasks that make an online academy run. IN the end, she followed her intuition and guides, and made the difficult decision to close.
Through this process, HM and I talked a number of times about how she wanted her legacy to continue and I think it will. It continues through all of us who had the privilege to learn from her directly. Through her integrity and compassion, through her total commitment to crystal healing as a modality. She changed the landscape of healing work forever, and I know I will miss being in daily contact with her, and sharing that amazing creative and healing space with someone who is so authentically them. I hope I can be the same for my students.
So, 2023, my jobs go down to two, and I am looking to build my Moon + Stone Healing Academy into a full-time gig for me. (Don’t worry, I will always do one-on-ones and classes through Alta View Wellness Center.) But I want to grow my own teachings. Through the years, I have found my approach to hands on healing, which is a combination of laying on of stones and hands, earth medicine work/shamanic work, traditional healing, and dropping into journey during sessions is not found everywhere. I want to share that. I want to share my research and case studies and approach to healing.
I currently am reworking my mentoring circle to be a more earth medicine based or shamanic healing mentoring circle and centering it for distance students. I believe I will launch that in early 2023 and it will be a many month circle for people interested in learning about earth-based medicines and shamanic journey as a form of personal healing. I am so excited about it!!
I will teach my Tarot class in 2023 as well and do more of that. I also plan on teaching my crystal workshops online. I’d like to teach some of my magick work as well. I just started my Moon + Stone Crystal Academy Facebook group to share my daily musings and teachings and as a place for my community to discuss things like their shamanic journeys, personal tarot pulls, etc. I am thinking about doing weekly Q&As not unlike my Office Hours except for anything under the sun.
I wish I had a clean way to end this email. I don’t really. I just want to say, if you like my teaching style, or maybe you know me just as Coach Angie, please stay in touch. More is coming, I promise. I am working hard on being more regular with my emails, my blogs, my podcasts, etc. And if you have a wish list, please please do me a solid and answer this quick quick survey, which will help me target the future of the Moon + Stone Healing Academy. (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/JHYQRNB)
My love is always with you,
changes
We're so grateful for this deeply precious life. Looking around, we see your love in all things. Allow us to feel more blessed than baffled, more clear than confused, and to let go of the ropes we've bound so tightly around our own fighting arms.
-- Pixie Lighthorse From "Honoring Release" a prayer in her new book, Prayers of Honoring
My mentor Pixie Lighthorse just came out with a book of prayers called Prayers of Honoring. The humility in each word, the grace, shifts me. It makes me want to write my own prayers and songs, particularly of change, release, and transition, and so I do. As Vulture medicine comes in, transformation and change pushes right on my heart chakra, right on my back in between my shoulder blades. I sit to catch my breath sometimes. Shifts, reinvention, transformation, I mistake it for a person pushing, sometimes. Urging me forward. I have been looking at my offerings and classes, my ways of doing things, (including this newsletter,) my parenting and partnering, my self-care and diet. I can feel shifts, major earthquakes, within me, breaking me open, helping my spirit soar. It reminds me of what my friend Delfina says, "The ego cannot tell the difference between annhiliation and transformation."
Nearly a year ago, I saw my first client at Alta View Wellness Center. We had just bought our wee farmette, and I was three months pregnant. I knew virtually no one in the area, yet Sharon Muzio took a chance on this earthy, knocked up, goofball mystic. She gave me an opportunity to offer crystal healing to Central Pennsylvania, offer classes in Tarot, art, and crystals, circling up women seekers on the moons with the deep medicine of the Earth. I will always be grateful for her trust in me. I have met such incredible women and healers here, learned about deep reserves of wisdom and medicine keeping within me.
As I began, Kate Pruiett and I partnered up just as she was finishing up her crystal healing certification with Hibiscus Moon. We have had an incredible first year here at Alta View Wellness Center, offering classes on crystals, monthly workshops and crystal healing events. It has been exciting to build this presence in Central Pennsylvania, and gather men and women who resonate with crystals to delve deeper into their connection. Through this year, Kate and I have enjoyed a fun and comfortable working relationship, building on each other's strengths, honoring the other's cycles and trials. Through co-teaching the crystal classes, we have shared our love of stone medicine with many people here.
As happens, life shifts and morphs, obligations from afar call us, and we shift and flow with life. Kate and I honestly looked at our work together and our future. Kate decided to step back from Crystal Healing at Alta View Wellness to focus on her passion, Reiki. She teaches all of the Reiki curriculum at Alta View (Reiki II is offered this August 8), as well as leads the Reiki Shares and offers sessions throughout the week. I so enjoy teaching with her, but also honor her decision. We gratefully move forward as colleagues and friends.
For my clients, I will still be offering crystal healing sessions as I always have. I will still be teaching the crystal workshops on the first Thursday of the month, albeit alone, and leading all the crystal healing events by myself. I anticipate they will also shift and change as I move into a rhythm of teaching and presenting as one person instead of two. I know I will be offering more Crystal Healing Events which are great ways of experiencing a group meditation and crystal healing session while I play bowls. I feel called to do more meditation and channeled work for those events, so stayed tuned.
For my other Alta View Classes, I am going to be revamping my medicine bundle circles and creating a more connected circle for those souls who choose that path. We will meet more often during the bundle work, as well as be connected throughout the process. It will be more expensive, but well-worth the money. The medicine is powerful, and those who sign up for that work need more support and more mentorship than I had been offering. In that vein, I will also be offering more moon circles that incorporate journeying and work with the cycle of the moon. These will be love donation circles so we can welcome more sisters into the fold here. It is a great way to connect with like-minded people. I was also asked to offer a monthly art workshop, and this is something I am still kicking around, but hope to start in Autumn. I have also revamped the Introduction to Tarot class offered in October of this year, making the classes longer and more in-depth. I am also publishing my newsletters as blog posts, so that you may comment on them there, joining a discussion. The link will be at the bottom of the email for you to connect to.
For my newsletter and on-line presence, I am committed to offering on-line Tarot classes in the upcoming months, so if you are interested, let me know. As always, I offer distance Tarot readings, and crystal healing sessions for those who live far away. They are powerful gifts. I also wanted your feedback, as I have been sending out my musings newsletter separately from an events newsletter. I have lost quite a few non-local people after my last events email, saying it didn't apply to them. I have created a local newsletter list for those who want information on my classes and events. If you want to opt into the Local Events, listing basically all my classes and events at Alta View Wellness Center, please fill out this opt in sheet. Otherwise, my events will always be listed at my website and on the sidebar of my email. And in case you missed it, my crystal mentor, Hibiscus Moon, interviewed me for her blog. You can read more about my philosophy of healing there.
Thank you, Great Spirit, for this amazing holy day. Thank you for the dirt and the seeds, the fruit and the compost. Thank you for the bird and insect songs that fill the air--songs of family, of growth, of warning, of summer. Thank you for the process of emerging from shells, as difficult and uncomfortable as it makes us. Thank you for the process that builds our strength. Thank you for the mysteries and knowns and all that I experience in between. Thank you for the discomfort with those places, as I remember my own smallness in the wake of your large, unspeakable love. Thank you for the moon moving within me. Thank you for the heat, which makes us easy with each other. Thank you for this most amazing day.