I got home too late last night to take a walk. It was all I could do to eat dinner and write my post. And while I was tempted to do a quick ‘walk-around’ (which is our usual 2.2 mile trek – which I swear, we’ll be taking even after we’ve shed our mortal coils, we’ve walked it so many times throughout the 34 years we’ve lived here), Karl disabused me of that notion when he described how he and Spartacus got caught in a drenching downpour a bit earlier.
The air was so thick with mugginess when I walked from my car into the house, I could practically wring it out like a terrycloth towel. So no, I wasn’t inclined to risk it.
75% Chance of a Soak? No Thanks
Then tonight, even though I was tired, I was itching to walk. Missing one day is ok. Going two days without my time in nature doesn’t sit well with me. But again, the atmosphere was laden with moisture. It was gross, frankly, and while Karl said he was game for a ‘walk around,’ he checked his phone’s weather app.
“75% chance of a storm – right now,” he said grimly. “75% in an hour, too. And oh look! The hour after that it bumps up to 85%.”
Well, that put the kibosh on that idea. And now I’m kicking myself because I don’t think it actually ended up raining this evening (although it is now). In fact, I just checked again and we’re under a Flash Flood Watch from now until Friday at 1:00 a.m. – over the next 24 hours we could get up to 3” of rain!
So here I am. I may need to suck it up and walk in the rain tomorrow. It won’t be pleasant for the pups, but we may have to go for it anyway.
I’m sharing the photo below, which I took over the weekend, to remind us all of sunnier days. You have to admit, those are two happy, if a tad tuckered, pups. I took this after we’d taken the longer (4.1 mile) ‘walk-about,’ (as opposed to the 2.2 ‘walk-around’ – we need to keep our terms tight here, folks!) at one of their favorite places along our route where they always, without fail, stop, drop, and roll around in the lush green grass.
Spartacus & Sheila ‘chillaxin’ – Photo: L. Weikel
And the photo leading off this post is actually one I took last night as I was driving home from a session. (I was actually at a stop light. I wasn’t driving!) This was before I started encountering banks of fog along the river.
I just had to share. (And FYI, it took over 13 hours for Verizon Wireless to deliver this photo to my email! What the heck?)
Have a great day – here’s hoping for some Walk Time (or your equivalent) for all of us.
For all my waxing rhapsodic about our whole house fanthe other night, I have a confession: Karl and I caved last night.
When we realized we were both wide awake, restlessly trying to find a patch of cool sheets (or draping our legs out of the respective sides of the bed), we knew the oppressive humidity being pulled in by said fan had beaten us down.
It was amazing, really. Only a few days ago, I was basking in the delight of the fan. But wow – add some serious humidity to the mix and I realize just how grateful I am for that window air conditioner!
And I know we weren’t alone. The beasts were restless as well – but once we put the a/c on, life returned to being a haven of blissful Boston Terrier snores.
I must admit, the humidity last night (and continuing tonight) has been formidable. Indeed, I took a couple photos of the very low hanging clouds that were lurking as I left the office tonight because they were so obviously laden with moisture. And then on the way home, I pulled over a couple of times just to snap some stunning photos of fog banks hovering over the canal or within patches of woods beside the road. You could literally see the moisture just waiting to be wrung out of the air.
Alas, even though I sent those photos from my iPhone to my email about four hours ago, they still have not arrived. (Funny how that works. Or rather, doesn’t. The devices aren’t even a foot apart from each other, but something sent from one to the other is taking hours and hours to arrive. Go figure.) Indeed – I just tried to add some photos to this post from ones I already have here on my computer, and they won’t upload either. I guess that means no photos.
I’m going to call it a night. I’ve been wrestling with a headache most of the evening, which I thought would go away when I ate dinner. It has not.
Let’s hope for a little more inspiration tomorrow night.
Man, the light of tonight’s full moon is brilliant and powerful. It’s shining in my living room window at the moment, casting blue shadows on the trees and grass across the road.
Tonight I happened to be driving around the countryside at around 9:30 p.m. and I was astonished to see how huge and obvious Jupiter was in the night sky. It’s in the southern sky, and when I caught sight of it this evening, I knew immediately what it was, as it was the only object within a great swath of the sky.
Sky Guide Pointed Me In the Right Direction
To be honest, when I first started reading last week about how close Jupiter would be over the next several days, I ‘cheated’ and enlisted the aid of my favorite astronomy app, Sky Guide. Karl and I were taking a walk and I was describing how Jupiter was going to be so close to us that its four moons would be visible to us with only the use of a set of binoculars.
For some reason, I thought the planet would be hanging out more in the western sky. So I was surprised when I located it just under the horizon to our south. That stood me in good stead, though, because I knew where to look tonight, when the sky became surprisingly clear – at least for a moment.
I was headed south as I was driving home, so it wasn’t as if I had to crane my neck or even hardly take my eyes off the road, particularly when I got within about two miles of our home. I was driving on a stretch of road that is elevated and provides a remarkably unobstructed view of the sky. And I saw it immediately – it almost looked like a plane coming toward me, it was so bright. But in spite of the illusion of ‘twinkling’ that the atmosphere causes, the object did not move; that’s how I knew for sure it was Jupiter.
Caught Without My Binoculars
Unfortunately, I didn’t have binoculars in the car or I would have pulled over right then and there to see if I could focus in on its moons.
Our moon was not yet up (or it was so low on the horizon that it was obscured by trees and I couldn’t see it), so its brilliant, reflected light was not detracting from the brightness of Jupiter.
Obviously, the main photo I’m using tonight was not taken tonight, since the moon in the photo is not full. It was actually taken on January 22, 2013. But it’s such a cool photo, and the four moons of Jupiter are so clear, I thought I would include it. This only reinforces my resolve to put a pair of binocs in my car so I have them when I need them – perhaps even tomorrow night!
Everyone Seemed to Be Tucked Into Their Homes, Unaware…
As an aside, I took particular notice of how few cars were out and about on this Monday evening after the sun had set. It made me realize just how much of our population rolls up their sidewalks and puts themselves to bed every night, remarkably oblivious to the amazing phenomena that occur above our heads all the time. But this made me all the more certain that I would write about this tonight and urge you all to get yourselves outside tomorrow night to take a look!
Check that Jupiter out – and if you have binoculars, look for its moons. What a cool opportunity to expand our horizons.
Perhaps tomorrow night I’ll give you a taste of the astrological aspects that this Jupiter, transiting Sagittarius, is bringing to our lives.
In the meantime – again – I urge you to get the Sky Guide app! You won’t regret it!
I’m sitting here on my couch, alone in my living room. The front door is open, and that usually means I can hear the nighttime sounds of ‘outside,’ which for the most part at this time of the year consists of bullfrogs. In a month or two, crickets and katydids will join the boisterous, gravel-voiced amphibian chorus. But for a split minute, there are no bullfrogs, no sounds at all filtering through the mesh-screen door that separates me from the wilds of the darkness outside.
Even Sheila is failing to provide her usual contribution of deeply resonant snoring.
As many of you who’ve been reading my posts for a while know, I savor silence. Every single time I give myself the opportunity to bask in it, I’m better for it.
And so it was a surprise when I closed my eyes and just sat for a few moments, pondering what I would write about tonight, that I recognized a comforting, lulling sound far in the background of my consciousness. Don’t get me wrong: it’s a real sound alright. But it is such a deep part of me and what makes me feel ‘at home’ that I rarely think about it consciously.
Deep Thrum of a Different Silence
I’m speaking of the comforting deep thrum of our whole house fan. This contraption, comprised of a small motor, a belt and a couple pulleys that turn the blades of the fan, and a slatted vent that opens in the ceiling of the hallway of our second floor, sucks air into the house from outside through our screened windows and doors. It pulls the air in from outside, creating a cool breeze, and circulates that air right up into our attic.
Most of the time, except when the weather is extremely muggy or relentlessly hot (such that it barely cools off at night at all outside), our whole house fan is a wonderful way to keep us cool. We have a couple room air conditioners perched in a smattering of rooms throughout the house, but we try to minimize our use of them.
Part of our desire to rely primarily on our whole house fan is environmental. It uses a lot less electricity. And it also just feels more natural, less of a subtle stress on our constitutions by jerking our bodies from cold to hot, muggy to dry.
It’s the Memories
Trust me, though, this is not a crusade. It’s not some holier-than-thou passive aggressive attempt to shame others who use air conditioning as soon as it gets a little warm or elevate myself because I don’t. Not in the least. I’m simply realizing that I love the whole house fan because of the memories, not least being the aforementioned deep thrum.
Yes.
I grew up in a stone farmhouse that was built in 1770. For a long time in my childhood, I remember the only means of staying cool in our home was via our whole house fan. That fan, too, was mounted in the hallway ceiling of the second floor of our home and sucked all the air up into the attic. It was situated right outside my bedroom, so I grew up with that deep thrum front and center in my consciousness.
Nearly every summer night I’d be told to ‘run upstairs and put the fan on,’ and it was always sweet relief to feel the coolness of the evening cascading into our rooms and throughout the house as soon as I turned it on. Not only did I fall asleep to its rhythm, I also realized I couldn’t hear anything from downstairs (like the tv or my parents having a conversation). This could feel disconcerting. I could either be afraid something would happen to them and I wouldn’t hear it, or I could let myself feel wrapped in a cocoon of cool, quiet thrum.
Always a Choice: Fear – or Surrender and Trust
I remember consciously making that choice a bunch of times. Was I going to give in to that fear? Or was I going to surrender to the comfort of the deep thrum.
I think I was in high school before my parents bought the first couple of window air conditioners for the house. One in the kitchen and one in their bedroom were the first to arrive. Eventually one in the ‘den’ where we would watch tv. But my parents still used ‘the fan’ most of the time. Just like we do now.
It’s a peculiar comfort, I suppose. And yet installing our whole house fan was one of the very first things Karl and I did when we bought our home (which is also old – not 1770 old – but more like 1840 old). Installing central air has never even crossed our minds.
All of which brings me back to an awareness of what I sense at this very moment. I hear (and feel in my very bones) the deep thrum. The thrum that’s both a visceral reminder of my childhood and a present-day comfort, calling me to come to bed so I may savor the stream of night air being drawn in to dance across our summer sheets and keep us cool.
Good night; sleep well. And don’t forget to whisper your sweet dreams to the full moon tomorrow night.
It’s a dial tone; a metaphor I’m using for the whistling between my ears that indicates I’m not making any connections at the moment. I’m trying to think of something to write about and coming up empty.
Hmm. I just realized that making a reference to a dial tone (be it heard solely in my head or otherwise) could actually be a mysterious reference to a lot of people at this point. Unless they have a ‘land line’ in their home, which many no longer maintain, they may not have a clue as to what I’m talking about when I refer to a ‘dial tone.’
That is so weird to me.
And come to think of it, even the phrase itself explains why it could lead to blank stares if you used it in mixed company (you know – in front of people who were born after 1990 or so): the phrase is ‘dial’ tone, after all. Rotary phones have been gone from everyday use for decades now.
Cultural Shifts
What’s really weird is to think that even my own kids have experienced this cultural and technological shift from when they were little. For instance, I remember realizing that we could rent a VCR from the video store near Doylestown and actually bring home relatively current movies to watch at home.
variety.com
Seriously. The first few times we experienced a VCR, we rented it from our local video store. It was encased in a hard, bright orange, protective plastic shell. And I distinctly remember Karl hooking it up to our tv and the three of us, Karl, Karl, and I (M was so little he probably doesn’t even remember it) sitting mesmerized in front of the tv, marveling at the clarity of the picture and how amazing it was that we didn’t have to ‘go’ to the movies anymore.
It makes me laugh to think about how exciting an innovation this was. It really did change our perception of culture. We never would have gone to as many movies as we ended up watching on the VCR.
So I guess this post is ending up being a nostalgia piece.
What’s Next?
I feel like we’re on the verge of some additional drastic shifts in our lifestyles. The ones I sense coming now have to do more with what we eat and how we plan to sustain life here on Earth – meaning learning how to live far more sustainably and dramatically less wastefully and destructive on our planet.
I wonder what things that exist today, that we use every day and barely think twice about, will become completely anomalous to the babies being born right now.
Norah Claire Guerke – my great niece; Photo: A. Guerke
Moments and Memories
I know there are certain members of my family who, right this moment, are ever so slowly, achingly, marking the minutes and hours of their lives now – tonight and into tomorrow, in particular – as they remember and relive those same moments that unfolded exactly a year ago.
This marking of seminal moments in our lives, this remembering each second and minute as precisely as we can (even though our experience of them may have been blurred by the impossibility and horror of what was unfolding as it was happening) is inevitable. It is, I suspect, a sacred ritual that happens universally. It is an honoring; a witnessing of what was. A ritual of remembrance and cherishing.
As I think about my eldest nephew and his wife, my niece, I know they are remembering the last hours they had with their little girl, their daughter who was only 110 days old. They are remembering, as best as they can, the way that last evening they spent with her unfolded. The feel of her hand gripping their fingers as they held her on their laps, laughing, their family watching tv and just being together on a Friday night. Remembering her almond shaped eyes and wise little smile; her baby smell. They’re recalling the irreplaceable feeling of cradling her in their arms as they took her upstairs. How they placed her gently in her crib that night and tiptoed out of her room, never imagining – at that moment –what lay ahead.
We do this. As humans, we replay those moments. We both savor them and allow them to torture us in the exquisite way love does.
I know they’ve been dreading this ‘anniversary’ for weeks. It seems impossible, in some ways, that a year has passed. The pain of their loss is so deep, so take-your-breath-away awful, that it often feels like it happened only yesterday. And yet, a year has passed. There is a difference to the pain.
A Testament to Our Love
We think it won’t change. There’s a part of us that vows it won’t. Somehow, even the thought of our searing pain becoming anything less than that driven-to-the-edge-of-madness-and-despair that’s engulfed us feels like a betrayal. We tell ourselves that we will never forget. We will honor and carry that pain as a testament to our love.
But then we realize, yes; the pain does shift. It must. It takes on a different color, a different hue.
As they are noting each peaceful series of ‘lasts’ tonight, and then tomorrow, marking each excruciating step in the process of losing their precious Norah, they are honoring her. They are honoring their journey, as well. And through this ritual of marking the moments and honoring the memories, they will feel an almost imperceptible sense of relief.
As this weekend passes, and they tick off each moment, each memory, they will begin to sense an almost intangible – yet undeniable – lifting of the overwhelming heaviness that has been the cloak of grief weighing down every step they’ve taken over the past year. Perhaps only the weight of a feather will be removed; but if they pay attention, they will feel it.
Rituals of Remembrance
And that is Norah’s gift. It is the gift that each of our loved ones gives us when they’ve left us behind, wondering how we’ll cope without them, how we’ll manage to make it through even one more minute, one more hour, one more day without them.
They witness our rituals of remembrance and cherishing, and their love and our love somehow meet and merge and cause a slight breeze to wash over us, like the breath of a kiss, swirling away a little bit of that stone cold heaviness that threatened our own will to live.
We think we’re dishonoring their memory to allow the searing pain to shift into a different expression. There’s a part of us that swore we’d never let them down; never lose that edge. But they want us to. They want us to live on, remembering them – and celebrating that we had that time together in this lifetime.
Karl and I attended a delightful talk this evening at the Philadelphia Jung Institute. We were there to listen to Sharon Blackie, author of the deliciously inspiring book, If Women Rose Rooted.
Time is growing short this evening, so I don’t have a lot of it to spend on this post.
But let me suggest you give this book a read if you are at all interested in the intricate connection of women with the land on which they stand and live, and the reclaiming of their power as a result of that reconnection.
Ms. Blackie was, as many of us are or were or have been, swept up in the somewhat sense-deadening chaos of early 21stcentury life. In short, she was disconnected from her home place, from the source of her power, from the stories and myths that could teach her where her power sources and is held.
She described for us how she’d grown up on what she called ‘faerie stories.’ She was captivated by these tales and then devastated when she went to school and was told they were not real. They were ‘only’ stories. Indeed – they weren’t even proper myths, because it was quite obvious that the only myths worth even being called myths were of Greek or Roman origin.
Our Myths Need to Spring From Our Land
But these myths, those not at all related to her home place, held no true resonance for her. They didn’t feel applicable to her life or her sense of place or experience whatsoever because they were not grounded in the land on which she was born and raised.
I’d like to interject here that I found this part of Blackie’s discussion, in particular, fascinating, in that it echoed precisely something I’d just read last night in a book I’m currently reading. (I read Blackie’s book about a year ago and am still digesting how I can implement and widely share the inspiration I took from it at that time.)
I was surprised this evening when I heard Sharon Blackie describe the profound effect it had on her to have the Celtic myths of her people, of her land, dismissed as somehow inferior (‘just faerie stories’) and the tales of heroic adventures that had olive groves as settings and protagonists with whom she could not relate be deemed the culturally sanctioned myths that serve us all.
Disempowering Tactics
Jenkinson had just posited the same disempowering tactic had been employed, first by the Romans and then emulated later by the Christians, when they sought to effectively usurp the nature-based spirituality of the people of the conquered lands.
The bottom line of that part of the discussion, obviously, was that we must reclaim the myths of the lands of our ancestors, yet take it far deeper than that: we must connect, then, to the land itself and, as I put it when I do my work, the ‘spirits of this land.’
There is more great stuff to discuss as a result of what I’m learning and gleaning from both of these books. Suffice it to say for the moment: we have work to do and connections to make, with ourselves and with our lands.
Clouds parting and bringing clarity – Photo: L. Weikel
Raising the Roof on My Comfort Zone
As I mentioned last night, my decision to raise my rates has been a long time coming. It wasn’t a decision I made lightly, by any means.
Many factors played into my decision, as you might expect.
But yesterday, as I contemplated making my announcement public by writing about it here, I felt all my worries and doubts lining up for one last swipe at my decision.
The wind yesterday was brisk and it was chilly on our porch. I picked up the deck of Medicine Cards and walked, barefoot, onto our lawn, shuffling all the while. I looked up into the sky and watched the clouds, which had blanketed the sky only moments earlier, open up to reveal brilliant azure clarity above my head. I felt myself connecting with the cool green grass beneath my feet as I opened my heart to receiving one last oomph of GUIDANCE.
As I meandered, I said out loud to anyone who would hear (but really, I was addressing Spirit), that increasing my rates was really pushing me out of my comfort zone, that I was really feeling anxious and conflicted over it.
The Wind Steps In
At that, the wind whipped in, picked a card off the deck as I shuffled the cards in my hands and swept that card face down into the birdbath, which was full of fresh, clear rain water from the storms of the night before.
Miraculously, the card landed on the surface of the water gently and without a sound. I snatched the card up, refusing to allow the card to get ruined by plunging into a birdbath, gently wiping it to ensure no permanent damage was done.
The card that Spirit had chosen ‘for’ me was Ant. The keyword for Ant is Patience. Glancing at the rest of the deck, which I continued to clutch in my left hand, I saw that Black Panther was stalking my pick, informing me on how I should interpret that “Spirit-assisted” pick. Black Panther’s keyword are ‘Embracing the Unknown.”
Wow. OK. I felt totally OK with having PATIENCE, which was interesting, because years and years ago, that was the single-word response I received when I took one of my first journeys and asked for guidance. I simply saw the word PATIENCE – in all caps – right in front of my closed eyelids. That frustrated me to no end.
Patience/Embracing the Unknown
But this time? It felt good. It felt OK. I felt that Spirit was telling me to FOLLOW THROUGH with this shift (of which raising my rates is a part) and to have patience. Yes, it may cause me to ‘lose’ potential clients that would have come to me had I left my rates where they’ve been for 15 years. But if I have patience (and accept that this IS a leap from my comfort zone – “into the VOID OF THE UNKNOWN”) things may work out in ways I cannot even fathom right now.
Yes, I must leap (Black Panther), but first and foremost, I MUST EXERCISE PATIENCE. Which means yeah, I’m probably going to encounter some backlash and some scary times. Yeah, it’s not necessarily going to be easy or a walk in the park. But it is the right thing to do.
I’ll admit that this was my first true ‘hit’ on what the Ant/Black Panther combo was telling me.
Doubt Rears Its Head
But then, of course, my freaking nemesis, doubt – that Spirit could actually, truly, be encouraging me to think bigger, dream bigger, to believe that I am here to help deliver a message, in service, that people will benefit from hearing and incorporating into their lives – kicked in.
I chastised myself: Maybe the Ant card landing in the birdbath meant, “Yeah, you need to just settle down. Don’t act in haste by raising your rates so dramatically. Settle the $#%@ down. Be patient.”
And that thought just felt awful. I felt every cell in my body droop. It deflated me and made me feel sad – as if I were letting myself down in the worst way.
Realizing how profoundly my old habits of indulging my doubt and second-guessing the message I’d intuited with such crystal clarity in those first moments made me feel utterly defeated, I chose, then and there, to honor my knowing.
I’m revealing these thoughts and the process through which I butted heads with my doubts to show that I understand how tough it can be to honor our knowing. When I ask clients to do hard things, it’s not as if I’m asking you to do anything I wouldn’t demand of my own self.
For months, I’ve been receiving messages that it was time for me to make some changes to my “work” in the world.
Some of the pushes have centered on what and where I should be focusing most of my attention, at least in the ‘now.’ Many of the shoves have been to increase my hourly rate for the healing work I facilitate. And a fairly significant number of nudges have come for me to expand opportunities for others to work with me.
On the one hand, I’ve done my best to listen to at least most of these messages.
For instance, I’ve expanded my legal expertise by training to serve as a “Parenting Coordinator,” which is a new role established by local rules in Courts in Pennsylvania. I’ll explain about that another day.
I’ve also been spending more time than I was (which, admittedly, wasn’t any at all) on my next manuscript. The drumbeat on that score continues to grow louder, for I’m still barely devoting any significant time to this task. You might wonder, “What’s the big deal? Just sit down and write it.” And I would agree with you. What is the darn deal?
Immersion
The ‘deal,’ I suppose, is my need for immersion. The books I write are memoir. They require me not only to write about a time and set of circumstances I’ve lived, but also require me – if I’m going to capture those times and circumstances as accurately as possible – to immerse myself in the totality of that time of my life.
I’m not good at skimming the surface. I don’t ‘do’ superficiality well, no matter where it might try to intrude in my life. I’m not one for small talk. I’m not a good pretender. I’m either ‘all in’ or I’m not in. And that goes for my writing, and my writing process, as well.
So when I’m working on my manuscript and basically writing from a place of ‘where my head was’ and ‘how I felt’ back then, it is like riding an old fashioned tilt-a-whirl to go back and forth from ‘that’ life to ‘this’ one. I get jerked back and forth from one reality to another. Karl can probably attest to this best, as he can tell when I’ve been working on my manuscript. Out of the blue, sometimes, I’ll snap at him and dredge up something that’s long been over. He’ll look at me with astonishment and, having been in it and reliving it all day, writing about it and remembering our conversations, I’ll be like, “What? Don’t you remember? Did you really do that?”
Ha – great fun. Not.
It’s fresh for me, when I’m writing about it. It’s long gone down Karl’s memory hole, for him, though. So going back and forth is hard. And I resist it. Which leads to procrastination. For years. Hence, I need to give myself permission to just be in it, and with it, and give it the chunk of time I need.
I’m hearing that message. Really.
But on the other hand, there’s the elephant in the room: my hourly rate.
Photo: audubon.org
Elephant = Time + Intensity + Hourly Rate
I’ve been offering shamanic work to the public for 15 years. In that time, I’ve not raised my hourly rate even once (once I started charging at all). For the first two years, I offered my work for free. Then I started charging my current rate: $110/hour.
Because my sessions are unique, they often last an average of 4 to 6 hours – and because that’s an average, yes, some sessions go even longer.
By the same token, because my sessions are unique, when a person comes to me with an issue (or mainly, just a ‘knowing’ that something is awry and needs to be addressed) we stick with it until we get to the root of it. I listen – and help my client listen to their own self – until we get a sense of how their life has woven together the unique picture, circumstances, and – often – wounds that brought them to my door. And then we – but mostly Spirit and their own soul – work together to heal what we’ve discovered.
A Session Is Usually a One-Time Deal
It is rare that a client comes back with the same issue. This work is profound and very often life changing. Almost always, clients feel as though they’re starting an entirely new chapter in their life after a session.
After the session, I write a comprehensive follow-up email that describes what happened during the shamanic/energetic portion of the session. (That’s the part during which the client simply lays down, sets their intention, and let’s the good stuff happen.) It usually takes me 2.5 hours to write it all down, because – as I mentioned above – I don’t ‘do’ superficial. Yes, I’ve managed to take notes while doing the shamanic work. But often I have to get myself back into the ‘place’ I went in order to fully flesh out the notes I took. I need to once again immerse myself in the energy of the session.
Follow-Up Emails are Precious
I’ve found, especially lately (perhaps because I’ve seen and heard from some people recently who were my earlier clients), that those follow up emails hold more information in them than I could’ve realized at the time I wrote them. That’s because things that might not have made total sense (or even a little sense) at the time – to either me or my client – have come to have startling significance upon being re-read years later. So these emails are precious.
And I never charge for the hours I spend the next day, writing them.
My Rates are Going Up
And so it is that I am finally heeding the pokes and prods I’ve received for well over a year, with increasing frequency lately. I am increasing my hourly rate to $350/hour, effective June 30th, 2019.
I realize that this is significant. I realize it may feel daunting. But I also know the shifts I’ve seen in people’s lives; the transformations people have chosen to embrace. And I know the toll it takes on me to provide this work in the deep, precise, and loving manner I do.
Out of My Comfort Zone
Raising my rates drags me out of my comfort zone. So don’t be fooled – this is not a decision I’ve made lightly. In fact, there’s a whole story that goes with how I was doubting myself right up until this morning when Spirit literally plucked a card from my Medicine Card deck as I was shuffling (and asking for guidance one last time on whether I really should follow through with this rate increase) and plopped it into the birdbath I was standing beside.
I’ll write about that tomorrow, though.
(Oh – and remind me to tell you about the new opportunity to work with me one-on-one!)
Since moving to Tinicum Township in March of 1985, there’s been a ‘place’ in nature, a central geological feature, that has coursed through my life and been the backdrop to some of my most cherished memories: the Tohickon Creek.
I’ve written about the Tohickon in my book, Owl Medicine. I’ve written about the Tohickon in a number of posts here in Ruffled Feathers (and as part of my 1111 Devotion).
My sons grew up playing in this creek, wading in it, skipping stones across it, discovering snakes and tadpoles and watching ducks and trout swim on and in it.
I’ve written more journal entries and sorted out more existential, marital, and familial dilemmas along its banks than anywhere else in the world.
In the course of my somewhat unique work as a shamanic practitioner, I’ve even journeyed to meet the spirit of the Tohickon and enlisted her assistance in some unique and specific circumstances.
I’ve also led Listening Retreats and other, even more in-depth, programs along her banks, encouraging all participants to open themselves to her ways and her wisdom.
Blue Heron on Tohickon – Photo: L. Weikel
A Brief History
I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’ve been under the misimpression that the Tohickon already enjoyed designation as an Exceptional Value (EV) stream under Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) guidelines. Sadly, it does not.
Rather, there has a been a Petition filed with the Environmental Quality Board of the DEP by residents Marion and Neil Kyde on behalf of the Tinicum Conservancy requesting that the creek be upgraded to this designation that has been pending since September 19, 1995.
This pristine waterway, which flows into the Delaware River (which itself has fought hard to come back from near death), is now not only close to having its status upgrade petition denied, but even worse, is in peril of having its current status (as Cold Water Fishes, Migratory Fishes) downgraded.
I’d like to ask everyone reading this to please take action and weigh in on this monumental decision. Here is a link to an amazing organization, Delaware Riverkeeper, with easy links to making your voice and opinion known. There’s also a MUCH better explanation than I’ve just provided of what is at stake.
Our freshwater streams and aquifers must be protected. There is so much to lose – both tangible and intangible – if we don’t stand up for our environment NOW.
