Read over on my new blog here.
A virtual move for the fairy…
10 JanWhat a year 2015 has been. I got a divorce and found new love and family.
I moved from Warm World to Forest World.
I closed my online school of ten years and created creative classes over at my new site instead (love making the Spooky Intuitive class).
I began focusing on books and creating new curriculum that included animated little videos.
I have grappled with change and transition and held on tight to what I should have let go (Facebook biz pages still vex me).
It was a big decision closing the school, but as one dear friend pointed out, I was a pioneer in this work. I was one of the first who started an online school for more woo-woo work (psychic/healing and animal communication classes). When I started, I didn’t care if I looked odd or strange, or they would burn crosses in my front yard. I had some ideas I wanted to share and I went with it. The school grew with interest and I loved designing and writing the curriculum, and especially working with and coaching students directly. I watched them soar with new tools and knowledge, and many, opened up to their creativity like little swans.
Fast forward ten years later and I was getting antsy. I went to school for Education Technology/Design and learned how to create multi-media to add to my lessons. It was the creating lessons and writing that I was digging, since at heart, I am a creator. I think somewhere along the the way, I became more of a counselor then a teacher. Here I was a writer who wanted to share what I have learned being a sensitive to help others, when others were looking to me to provide answers only a therapist could provide. I was frustrated– after all, I’m a creator and a storyteller, not a counselor (yes, I know, INFJs are natural counselors). Also, those ten years later and I was no longer the pioneer. There were now tons of books on being a sensitive, and even more online schools opening, many with fancy webinars (to be honest, I hate fancy webinars. I’m no guru). It made it clear to me I had to make a decision at that point, especially when the business was no longer supporting me. I was helping many others, but I wasn’t getting back what I needed to survive, and I seriously needed to look at this. So I closed the school and focused on my new website.
I started this blog in August 2007 and I wrote about cool psychic experiences I was having hoping to help others. I was opening up to my abilities and senses, and since then, they are all now more integrated within me. With a firm foundation to my spirituality now planted, I could focus back to myself and my original path that was always one big line. I always made things that taught. My first books I illustrated always carried a message (I was heavily influenced by Aesop’s Fables). My path started as an art teacher and an artist, and then illustrating activity and educational books. It continued when I was a college teacher (I loved that!) and of course, creating all the classes for Fairy Online School. When I went for my Grad certificate I fell in love with making videos and transmedia. You could tell a story that helped and teached others on a multi-platform, including phone apps! I will continue to head in that direction, and I am sure I will make many more books!
So, instead of having two sites, I will merge all into one with what I will be focusing on now and has the best to offer all of you. I will be over here and will include Sensitive Tuesdays for the blog there for my Sensitive readers. That’s where I will share the upcoming Turtle Shell book, book 2 in the series, and the other books I will be creating. So be sure to follow the blog over there. And if you are interested in getting in touch with your intuition through your creativity, consider signing up for one of the classes I will be offering there.
With love and appreciation for your support throughout the years,
Ronni
A Sensitive Goes to the Movies: Two Scary Ones
7 Jul
Have you recently gone to the movies (or rented on Netflix) and thought, “Dear Lord, why didn’t you warn me!” Yes, me too. So I thought, why not start a bi-monthly report here at The Designing Fairy, to warn my fellow sensitives and save them a ton of therapy.
This week’s selections: Bates Motel and The Awakening
photo credit: Netflix
- Netflix description: “Everyone knows what happened in Psycho, but this chilling series takes viewers inside Norman Bates‘ world before Marion Crane checked in.”
- Warnings posted: The show is listed under “scary and dark.” My gut should have alerted me since it’s not a happy bunny kind of subject.
- My warning: Don’t watch the Pilot. If you are a sensitive, you will need years of therapy to process the senseless violence you just witnessed for the sake of entertainment. *Spoiler alert* there’s a rape scene halfway through that can’t be stomached, and I do understand the writer’s motive including it to show the breakdown of the psychological state of Norman’s mom, but c’mon! The character committing the act was cartoonish, one-sided aggression/craziness and the act portrayed and showed in the movie, just out and out horrible. I can’t tell you if the rest of the Pilot was worse or better as I pretty much stop watching at that point and had to fill my mind up with happy things like dancing bunnies and happy wagging tails. (Several episodes of Adventureland seemed to help)
- Sensitive consensus: I talked to my friends on FB who all agreed that they also stopped watching after the senseless violence.
photo credit: Netflix
- Netflix description: “A haunted boarding school calls on Florence Cathcart, who disproves hoaxes for a living. But the strange place leads Cathcart to question rationality.”
- Warnings posted: It is listed as a horror movie and categorized as “chilling and suspenseful.”
- My warning: This was a really interesting plot for a ghost story and very clever. Many, in the reviews I read, compared it to The Others, which haunted you psychologically way after watching it. The scary element isn’t too bad more like lots of “boo” moments. No visions that will stick in your mind until more toward the climax of the movie is a scene of sexual violence that matched Bates Motel. The character culprit was useless to the plot, the moment contradicted the story as the main character was rather powerful and strong, and viewers did not enjoy watching her helpless, at least I sure didn’t. I did enjoy the movie up until that point, and it was so distasteful it was like hearing someone write on a chalkboard with their nails.
What’s with it, Hollywood? A movie nowadays isn’t complete without violence to women? Rethink your writing. Then we all wonder why politics takes our rights away out from under us. As for you my fellow sensitives, stay away from these two and for scary, stick to old episodes of Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Until next time, Fairy blessings,
I’m Published in Somerset Studio!
1 JanI got the best birthday present the other day. A precopy of Somerset Studio magazine.
What’s this? I had just submitted an essay a month or two ago and hadn’t heard a thing.
Holy cows! What a fabulous and important gift from the Universe/God/Angels. I am beyond thrilled and a great way to start the new year.
It’s available now – January 1st – at most Barnes and Noble’s and Michael’s shops. And yup, national magazine and one of my favorites! Hope you like it and especially, hope you like the message in the essay.
Leotards vs. Tutus: rebuilding me
8 Feb
Leotards vs. Tutus: rebuilding me
I recently took a ballet class. Now it’s been years since I’ve been near a ballet bar. Dancing was one of my first loves growing up. I have fond memories of my Mom driving my sister and I to the Robin Hood School of Dance from the age of five way into the self-conscious teenage time of existence.
Listening to the melodic piano music for the first time the other day, I almost burst into tears but I held them back. My body wanted to move and stretch and my legs remembered how to point and hold long balance positions. And it hurt, a lot, because I was out of practice, but it felt good at the same time. And on my way out, I caught a quick look at the mirror and I felt years of disordered-thinking flood back to me, and I was knocked out of my perfect balance hold.
School has a dress code so I reluctantly ordered two standard issue black leotards and I grumbled and thought again about the reflection I caught of my hips that had spread out from sitting on my butt for months and eating on the go working to earn my Graduate certification. I was eye to eye with that teenage me.
I was a good dancer then which gave me pride. But I did not have a dancer’s body by a long shot. I am tiny and curvy not long and lean. And what was curves felt like fat then. My dance teacher did something stupid. He actually had a talk with my mom telling her to “work on my weight.” Ugh. What ensued after that was a lot of eating disorder thinking–I took it as a challenge to see how thin and tiny I could get. Luckily, a wiser part of me finally intervened and I was able to stop the madness. Many girls are not so lucky.
That’s what flooded into my face when I saw that dance mirror, and the anger came out at those f$#^ing leotards. The next dance class I slept through it. Inner teen was pissed and rebelling and making itself loudly known. You see, I’m a 40-something woman now, and I like my curves and my juicy pieces. I like being “woman-like.” I saw a photo of me taken a few years back when my life sucked and fell apart and my face was gaunt, and I remember then, I couldn’t get thin enough for my taste. When that line of thinking shows up it’s not health, it’s moving away from me.
And with this experience, I realize I am rebuilding my relationship to myself. The mirror-critic chatter in my head started in those crucial years in that leotard. I was being taught from that dance teacher how to compare, contrast, and rip apart. This was education aimed the wrong way. How many of us have had this training in the classroom, at home, in the school playground? Who does it serve? The dance teacher? I was taught to incorporate a running stream of dialogue in my head that needs to be overhauled and reprogrammed to “woman-like.”
I’m sending the leotards back and ordering a tutu. My inner teen wants one. Not to hide behind, but because Tutus fit around your hips and celebrate them.
photo credit: State Library of New South Wales collection
Traditional Values I Don’t Want to Go Back to
28 NovI don’t usually venture into politics, or anything near that loaded area, but I had to speak up on this topic…
There’s lots of talk about traditional values surrounding the past election. I have a different view about traditional values. If those values are about caring about each other, being honest, respectful, loving, and hearing others, I am all for them! And we do need to maintain those. But there are “traditional values” that I do not want to go back to. And these are my thoughts and values, that may or may not reflect what you believe.
- If traditional values are going back to wearing aprons and high heels in the kitchen and my role as a woman is to stay in the kitchen, I do not believe in them or whoever created them. Who is that pleasing? Especially the high heels that really hurt and I’m still probably a lousy cook, so I’m not pleasing anyone. I’d rather nurture in a different way, thank you very much and now I can. As a woman, I have many skills and intelligence to share. I can nurture through what I teach, what I create, and how I love. And if my sole and only purpose was to have children, well, whoops, I failed at that one, so there are many ways to birth life into this world.
- If traditional values mean a world where women are secondary to men, of course, I disagree. How is that helpful to anyone?! I have no desire to go back to having no voice and being second to the man in a household. Healthy relationships and marriages are equal partners who respect and hear each other. One is no greater or wiser than the other.
- If traditional values mean my body doesn’t matter in any way, or I’m considered a slut if I use birth control, I want no part of them. How backwards in thinking is that? Oh, but if a man has sex with different partners he’s virile. Uh huh. Why would I want to be thrown back into a cage from the 1950s if I long been out of a cage. A cage that men, not women, built.
- If traditional values mean a world where if you are a man and you love a man, or a woman who loves a woman, you are considered an outcast and something deeply wrong with you, I don’t live in a world like that. God made everyone and loves everyone just as they are. That’s God–the ultimate model of love, who I want to aspire to be like one day.
- If traditional values mean stifling my voice and not being able to have a say when it comes to authority, I want no part of that. I am seeing real change happen when the average person speaks up and says No, especially in regards to laws about animals and other areas I care deeply about.
Perhaps, I am not understanding the perspective or thinking from those who champion these kind of traditional values. As a woman in my 40s, I have a very different perspective and experience than a middle-aged or older male. I haven’t lived that life. But I can’t understand how any values would be helpful or healthy that exclude or ignore the needs of a huge portion of the population.
Are you a popper-outer?
3 AprAs a sensitive, do you have the habit of popping out? I mean, do you find yourself leaving your body a great deal when either under attack or on overwhelm? Many of us developed this “skill” as child empaths either from an abuse situation, or in my case, from having an illness. As a child, to avoid feeling pain, I’d often find myself “sitting on the ceiling” looking down. I do believe today, this trick allows me to communicate with spirit so easily, or even talk to animals that are halfway across the world. But how do you control this gift? It’s not conducive to many conversations if one moment you are there and the next you are blurry-eyed and vacant, right? (Although with some threatening or clueless people, they don’t even notice you leave.)
I look to Tool #38 from Help! I’m Sensitive.
Problem 38: Leaving your body
Sensitive tool: Grounding
Lisa Campion has a great article on her blog about grounding and shielding for Empaths. She says that empaths, when overloaded, leave their bodies. I can attest to that!
During a period of time, whenever I felt emotionally attacked I’d find myself seeing a symbol and leaving my body to some astral place. From some detective work, I realized that this was a skill I learned in childhood when I had bad stomach problems and I didn’t want to be in my body in pain. So, I’d find myself sitting next to the ceiling looking down.
This skill helps me in my work locate a lost animal or talk to someone who has passed, but doesn’t need to be there in my everyday life. The tool needed here is grounding. I am stronger when I stand tall and firm in my space. Once I felt less vulnerable and stronger and was able to speak my feelings, I left less and less.
Feeling your legs and reaffirming that you are safe is the tool to use here. Carry a tourmaline rock in your pocket. Its healing qualities will pull you right back in and keep you on the earth.
It’s also important to notice, where and with whom you feel this urge to leave. Why are you feeling unsafe? Can you speak your mind or your fears to that person? Perhaps, empathically you are registering that this person is unsafe for you. Honor this as best you can, limit your exposure, and then always make sure there is extra protections for you put in place whenever you have to deal with this person.
A Book to Avoid that got me going
19 NovAs I hung out in the waiting area of the third auto mechanic I had visited for my car issues, (story comes later), I happened upon a delightful read that I know will appeal to all of my readers, students and clients. This is THE book to read if you want to put your head in the sand, hide under the bed and pretend that only organized religion can heal all your woes. Don’t go to a therapist if you have any mental illness or issues, definitely don’t use any kind of alternative medicine in any way to heal yourself, and don’t think positively or think your thoughts create your experience in any way. No, it’s best to grab this book, get under that bed, surround yourself with guard dogs and firearms and live in the 1950s all over again.
The book is THE SEDUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY.
The back of the book reads, and I kid you not, “What are the dangers of the growing acceptance and practice of:
- positive and possibility thinking
- healing of memories
- self help philosophies
- holistic medicine”
I have images in my head of when electricity was invented. Did folks run in fear and claim it was from the devil? Did some still cling to the candle?
THIS is dangerous stuff and goes against everything I believe God is all about. This book got me going and upset for hours just flipping through it! What if you are mentally ill and need help? Of course we need to heal our memories. Better to walk around in trauma and pain? For me, God IS knowledge coming through to help me. That’s what is so beautiful.
I guess many of us are finally awakening and some of us prefer to just go back to sleep.
Lightworkers, are we becoming too sensitive?
16 MayI am noticing with my friends, clients and myself, that we are becoming more sensitive and more psychic in our abilities. Are we evolving?
Have you noticed that you can pick up more now what others are feeling or even thinking? I haven’t been able to watch tv shows lately that are dark at all. I rented a copy of Supernatural. It’s a tv series I used to watch and enjoy. I physically hurt through most of it; there was that much violence and cruelty. This wasn’t entertainment. Maybe I am not the too sensitive one. Maybe it’s the world who is getting so numb they can stand this level of darkness assaulting our eyes. I can’t do that anymore.
After having that happen, feeling so sensitive, I first thought, “Do I need to live in a box then, away from the world?” Many of my clients come to me wondering the same things.
And the answer I heard this morning was No. You don’t need to isolate. I think we’ve always been this sensitive, some of us. We came in wired this way. But then we accumulated a great deal of mud and fog to numb over our sensitivity. What we’ve been doing is clearing out the mud and being who we really are under all that crap. So, then, the darkness doesn’t feel right when you’ve just gotten rid of a ton of our own darkness. You no longer resonate. Why would you want a part of what you just got rid of?
Our light is coming back. We aren’t turning into light. We were light to start with! And then we got involved in earth school and layers of mud kept getting added until we didn’t recognize we were light at all. We thought we were dirt. And probably listening to voices growing up telling us we were flawed in some way for being sensitive, we really did believe we were dirt.
So, no. You aren’t too sensitive. You never were. We’ve had to adjust to being here. But now you have no choice as you work on your healing to be anyone but who you really are. One big shining light. Perhaps we are all just lightning bugs.
I think that is kinda cool.