Last week, I happily welcomed 5 new hens into my flock of bantam chickens, and I am delighted to introduce them to you!
Meet, Phoebe, a 2 year old bantam Phoenix:
and Ella, Bella, Stella, and Zella, 5-month old D’Uccles:
This month marks the 2-year anniversary of my move to Santa Fe, New Mexico. After over a decade in northern Arizona, where I loved living in both the ponderosa pine forest and the desert riparian ecosystem of the Verde Valley, I am loving exploring the high desert and alpine ecosystems of my northern New Mexico home.
I live at about 7200 feet elevation, with the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, the southernmost subrange of the Rocky Mountains, overlooking the city. The mountains are a primary habitat for the Quaking Aspen forest–or, as I call them, The Aspen People.
As a teacher of interspecies communication and Reiki, I find that a significant percentage of my clients and students resonate with what I share about the blessings and challenges of living as an empath & highly sensitive person. Although I emphasize that identifying as an empath or as a highly sensitive person is NOT necessary in order to become a skilled and proficient animal and interspecies communicator, I do find that this field seems to attract a perhaps greater-than-in-the-general-population percentage of folks who share these traits.
I continue to compile and share resources and tools that I’ve found helpful in my own life and practice. I’ve shared some of these in my previous posts:
Resources for Empaths and Highly Sensitive People
In this post, I’m going to share some practical, physical tools that I use on a regular basis that have become staples of my self-care as an empath and highly sensitive person.
I have been a Reiki practitioner and Reiki teacher for over a decade. When I first began my journey with Reiki, I had no idea what a practical, simple, and profound gift it would be. I can honestly say that I use Reiki on a daily basis in my life… in ways that are simple, easy, and deeply nourishing and healing. (more…)
It is with sadness and and deep gratitude for the gifts of our relationship that I share with you that my sweet Afghan Hound-Golden Retriever mix, Leah Grace, passed into the spirit world on July 7.
Leah’s death was sudden and without much warning, from a silent and aggressive cancer that she showed no symptoms of until her last few days. She passed peacefully in my arms in our home, surrounded by our animal family and many angels. There was a powerful portal in her transition between the two eclipses, offering her an energetic support for gracefully leaving this life.
Like 
many people who live in a multi-animal household, it’s often a struggle for me to give each of my animals all of the one on one time that they, and I, would like. I do my best to create opportunities for solo time with each of the dogs and cats (and the chickens who enjoy it) when I can. (more…)
I’m just back from teaching my program on Animal and Interspecies Communication at The Monroe Institute in beautiful, lush western Virginia this week. Our international group of participants shared a beautiful week together, learning the foundational principles of telepathic communication with animals and all life…including trees, minerals, plants, mountains, and the elementals (often known as nature spirits, fairies, devas…) (more…)
This year, 2019, marks my 10-year anniversary of having chickens in my animal family. I wanted to have chickens for many, many years…when I moved to the southwest, I finally lived in an area where I could have them. I began with a small flock of 4 bantam chickens, one of whom, Daphne, is still with me, holding the current record for my oldest hen.
I am now living in my 4th home where I’ve had my chickens (yes, I’ve moved them every time I’ve moved), and I continue to find such delight and joy in sharing my life with them.
Photo Credit: Beluga Whales, Copyright GREMM
I am honored to be one of the writers whose work is included in Dark Matter, Women Witnessing Journal, Issue 8, April, 2019: What Does it Mean, to Heal? Part III, edited by Lise Weil.
Dark Matter publishes writing and artwork created in response to an age of massive species loss and ecological collapse. The journal is a home for dreams, visions, and communications with the nonhuman world, especially those that seek to heal our broken relationship to the earth.
In this issue, I write about my time with the endangered population of beluga whales who live in the St. Lawrence Estuary and Saguenay Fjord, Quebec, Canada. In this article, I share the wisdom, teaching, and experience offered by the belugas for our species and the Earth in this time of great change and loss, responding to the question of the journal for this issue: What Does It Mean, to Heal?
It’s f
inally spring! My animal family and I are loving the warmer weather and longer days, and being able to spend more time outside in the yard together. Here in Santa Fe, my dogs and I enjoy our nightly ritual of sitting in the backyard and watching the sunset.
As a teacher of interspecies communication, I find that many empathic and highly sensitive people are drawn to my classes and training programs, and we often talk about these characteristics and the particular ways they impact our lives in our class meetings and online conversations.
I’ve written about the blessings and challenges of being both an empath and a highly sensitive person, and some of the tools that I’ve found helpful in learning to live in a world that I am often overwhelmed and baffled by. (See Tools for Empaths Part 1 and Tools for Empaths Part 2).
In late January, I had the great privilege and joy of returning to the Silver Bank, a protected sanctuary for wild marine mammals 90 miles offshore of the Dominican Republic. Each winter, thousands of Atlantic humpback whales make the migration to these waters to mate, calve, and raise their young. It is one of the only places in the world where it’s possible to swim with these wise, gentle, beautiful beings.
For many people, opening to interspecies telepathic communication begins with a desire to better understand the non-human animals who share our lives, our homes, and our world.
We learn about and begin to practice telepathic animal communication, and a surprising thing happens: we begin to open up to telepathic and intuitive communication and communion with all life…plants, trees, rocks, non-physical beings such as nature spirits, devas, angels, spirit guides, beings who reside in other dimensions and worlds…the possibilities are limitless.
But what about things that we typically think of as “objects” or “things”? It may surprise you to learn that these, too, have consciousness, spirit, a life force or intelligence that can be felt, sensed, and communicated with. We know through quantum physics that there is intelligence, consciousness, and awareness in and through everything…that the entire manifest world is made of the fire of creativity and life.
I received a wonderful email this week from a woman who was a student in my Deepening Animal Communication Retreat in Arizona in 2014.
In the retreat (as well as in the Deepening Animal Communication Online class), we work with an animal or other being who we are unfamiliar with, afraid of, repulsed by, or dislike. This exercise, along with the practice of becoming one with or merging with an animal, allows us to see, feel, experience the world through another being’s perspective, and often opens people to new worlds of wisdom and understanding.
Photo by Ken Balcomb, Center for Whale Research
I was deep in the Saguenay Fjord and the St. Lawrence River of northern Quebec, on retreat with some of my beloved cetacean friends, when the news came: an orca whale mother, Tahlequah, also known as J35, a member of the critically endangered southern resident orca population of the Pacific Northwest, had given birth to a female calf…who lived for only 30 minutes. The calf was emaciated, and didn’t have enough blubber to stay afloat.
