Below is my entry into the first Campaigner’s Challenge, some thing going on with a bunch of bloggers and writers that I discovered on Google+. I’ll explain about that later. For now, we’ve been challenged to write a short(!) story of 200 words or less. Mine is exactly 200… and a true story, since I’ve signed up as a nonfiction writer. It is extremely short, hardly long enough for a real story, but here it is, as requested:

Life Begins at 50

The door swung open, and I walked hesitantly into the reception area. Looking around, nervous, uncertain I was in the right place, I approached the desk.

“Hi! I’m meeting Leslie Hughes, my enrollment advisor.” Going back to college at 50, after 25 years removed from formal academia, was both terrifying and exciting at once. “I’ll let her know you’re here,” said the receptionist. “Just have a seat anywhere.”

It was a brightly lit and mostly empty pair of adjoined rooms: one, for casual visitors, offered free coffee and other refreshments; the other contained individual study zones, each with its own Mac. Oh boy, I thought, I’ve never used a Mac before. This will be an education in more ways than one.

Leslie arrived perhaps five minutes later, all bubbly welcomes and how-do-you-dos. After ascertaining that I was serious about enrolling and not there on pure impulse, we discussed the programs that interested me.

“Well, since you no longer offer the E-Commerce Business program, I think Small Business Management and Entrepreneurship is my best option,” I decided after much discussion. We set right to the financial aid application, and then, just like that, I was officially a student.

The adventure begins.

A Google+ friend shared an article on Social Media, Pretend Friends, and the Lie of False Intimacy. This is a topic I’ve written on before, but it’s always interesting to have the point brought home in a new way. The recent suicide of Trey Pennington, whom I did not know, belies the assumed friendship that apparently dozens or even scores of people felt they shared with him on Twitter and other social networks. It begs the question: What is a friend?

I used to get really attached to my online friends, until I learned that the feeling usually wasn’t reciprocated. People find it much too easy, in my opinion, to end online friendships due to minor conflicts that “real” friendships usually survive. In 3D reality, people tend to resolve those conflicts more often, because the loss of a real-life friend is felt much more acutely. I suffered when I lost online friends. I also discovered that people are more prone to using others online than they are in real life, discarding these friends when their usefulness has waned. So I began instead to cultivate acquaintances and networks that would widen my circle of influence and potential influence. It’s kind of a sad development.

When I first began to lose online friends who were important to me, I posted a lot about how easily I was discarded for the most inane reasons imaginable. Taylor Ellwood posted a blog around this time that rather summed up what I was encountering: Online friends are not “real” friends; they’re just acquaintances and, as such, should not be given much emotional investment. It’s an attitude I do not share, but with effort I managed to disentangle myself from a lot of inadvertent drama by forcing myself to … not care. It’s still a work in progress, and a work that I have mixed feelings about. It also affects my day-to-day, offline friendships, as well.

On the one hand, the accumulation of “personal boundaries” is a healthy thing, I tell myself. It’s bad to invest so much in a personal friendship that I suffer enormous emotional pain following an unresolved argument. The internal pressure of such pain makes me speak and act too quickly and erratically, without objectivity. It makes me acquiesce to unreasonable demands in order to salvage things quickly, certain that if I don’t the friendship is doomed and it will be all my fault. So if I deliberately keep my distance, as difficult at that can be, I retain my ability to keep my balance if such a conflict ensues.

On the other hand, cultivating deliberate distance means that far fewer relationships will ever become close and truly meaningful. I feel the lack of that every day. (It always amazed me how on LiveJournal I’d get comments from people who never posted [and, therefore, whom I knew nothing about]; they would comment to me as if they knew me well, often making ridiculous assumptions based upon their reading me and therefore feeling close to me.) I have, count them, two close friends — friends I can call if I’m in a crisis and really need to speak openly to someone without fear of judgment or their taking offense at something they infer from what I say. I really wish it were more.

I suppose it should be no surprise that many people now feel closer to me than I do to them. I have people who tap me on IM, including old “friends” who deserted me back in the early days, who feel they’re close to me but for whom I feel very little affection anymore. I know better than to open to that because I’m not going to go through the same shit again. I also have old friends from back then who’ve reappeared, whom I’d like to get closer to, but I still hesitate. I can’t help it. Efforts to cautiously reestablish closeness to these people are hit and miss, but I have hope… It takes so long now to really get close to someone that it can be frustrating, when I allow myself to admit what I’m feeling. While therapy may have taught me boundaries, it didn’t do much for teaching me how to cope with the despair and disillusionment that accompanies “mature” and “healthy” distance.

Back to the article above… I have on many occasions toyed with the idea of suicide; even more often, I find myself having to consciously discard feelings of despair in favor of getting through the day. This is not in my nature. I have always been a person who confronted her emotions head on, in order to work through them and get past them. I believe that repressing emotions, particularly negative ones, is unhealthy and has detrimental long term effects. But the world is a superficial place, and it only grows more superficial as we spread ourselves ever more thinly. I still hope to find a balance between openness and distance — finding more closeness with people I care about, and keeping a healthy distance from those who’ve not shown me the same regard I try to extend to them. If I start out distant and grow closer slowly, it’s easier to realize who is an inappropriate choice for a close friend.

I don’t know how to get from Point A (distance) to Point B (closeness) without it taking a really long time (as I’ve discovered it does). It beats the alternative, beginning at Point B and backpeddling to Point A out of self-preservation. But I need more closeness in my life, and it’s really hard to come by. You’d think that someone with as many “followers” (for lack of a better word, I use the Twitterism, though most of my “followers” are on Facebook) would have an easier time making friends. And the irony there is really what that article is all about — even those with lots of online friends can feel very, very alone.

I think the Internet is making it easier for people to not really care about anything. And that is the biggest tragedy of all.

When this trust breaks down, someone inevitably gets hurt. In such a monetary based system as ours, this hurt is most often felt in the bank account. In the news we hear stories from all over about professionals bilking clients for huge sums of money. Overcharging for common services, “milking the clock” on time based fees, promising results that will happen with just a little more money… We’ve heard it all. But it happens on the other side too. If you have ever worked in a service based business, you have probably come across a customer that is playing your companies refund policies to their advantage or scamming for free stuff.

So who is the victim? It can be the professional or the client, it just depends on who got scammed. The real question is at what point do they become a victim and is that status ever un-warranted?

Let’s take a look at that… Let’s say you come to me as a psychic advisor and are given great advice. It all hits home for you and you can tell that I have a gift. Then the bomb drops and I tell you that there is a curse on your family, your land, your dog, your hat, whatever… For an additional fee, this curse can be removed but it will take money and personal goods. You reluctantly fork over the fee and the “spell” is cast. Nothing changes in your life except the balance of your bank account. Have you been vicitmized? Yep!

You now have a few options, you can walk away and chalk it up to a life lesson. You can report me for suspected fraud. You can go back and seek a refund. Or, you can go back to find out that the money wasn’t enough and the curse is stronger than originally thought and it will take even more to lift it and probabaly regular sessions over a great length of time. All of these options are products of your free will, yet the last one starts to blur the line between victim and willing participant. Yes, there are vulnerable people out there that are being taken advantage of. But, how many times does the same scenario have to play out in the media before the dots are connected for people. The scams we hear about are all using the same basic techniques that have been used for ages. Yet there are still those that buy into it. If I willingly give you huge sums of cash repeatedly for a service that doesn’t yield results, I forfiet my victim status.

Now let’s look at it from the professional’s side: I am a psychic reader that just gave you a consultation that you scheduled with me. Our price was agreed upon and throughout the session you confirmed the messages that were coming through. Upon coompletion of the appointment, you deamnd a refund saying that you did not feel it was worth your time or money and that you were just “playing along”. Though I have provided my services to the best of my ability and tried to work it out with you, I give you your refund and you leave. Was I vicitimized? Yep!

Once again, there are options. I can note your name and politely refuse to book future appointments with you. I can notify other readers of my experience with you and see if they are aware of your tactics. Or, I can take your next call and try to do better this time only to have a refund demanded again. Once again with the last option, the line between victim and willing participant becomes blurred.

Just as every customer has the right to not work a specific professional, every professional has the right to refuse service to specifc individuals as well. A simple “I can see that my services are not to your needs. Rather than continue to have these concerns, I recommend that you find another professional who can better serve you. I apologize for any inconvinence.” will quickly and efficiently send difficult clients out your door and let you get back to your business.

There will be times in all of our lives when we feel like we have been vicitimized. It is at those times when we must choose whether we wish to stay in that feeling or shift our perspecitve and take our power back.

I don’t know about you, but I’m all about keeping my own power.

I’ve been posting a lot of my more trivial stuff on Google+, but this post definitely doesn’t belong there. One thing I’ve noticed about social networks — they promote superficiality of a sort. Not that the posts are meaningless or pointless (well, some are), but there’s not a lot of sharing of the self in ways that people have traditionally done in their blogs or journals. I myself can only handle so much superficiality, though it’s getting easier (and I’m not sure that’s a 100% good thing). They even say blogging is dead. I disagree. When I want to express things that really affect me, I am always going to come back to my blog. Unless, of course, that’s not an option anymore. These days, nothing surprises me.

I was chatting with my friend and colleague Xanquela just a bit ago. Back in the 1980s, we shared a similar idealism, when New Age was the “gateway spirituality” and seemed to permeate alternative spirituality in general (with some exceptions in well-established religions, like Buddhism). He still retains much of that, while I have a more jaded viewpoint. I am not sure if I’ll ever reach actual cynicism (I certainly hope not), but carrying a sense of hope is not an easy thing anymore.

I have, despite my tendency to bipolar depression, always been a person who bounces back quickly and regains her general sense of optimism. Today will be a better day; I will make it better. And so forth. But in the past decade (make your own connections), my ability to do that has gradually eroded. In the past five years, I’ve almost reinvented myself in terms of emotional involvement with those I consider my friends, because to be emotionally involved always risks hurt. I’m sick of hurt. So I’ve learned to temper that involvement. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t still notice the way people treat each other, along with their utter lack of awareness of how they are poisoning their relationships. I keep saying that everyone should be required to actively participate in two years of therapy, because not only are they not aware of how they affect others, they don’t want to be aware.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the political antics of the past few years. And don’t even get me started with that, because I could bitch and moan for a long time, and doing so would only make the dread more palpable. Dread? Yes, indeed. I have to fight every single day not to drown in it. I can see no hope for the future, at least not in the big picture. Sure, little things might get better, for a while. But it’s all going to shit at a rapid pace, and pretty soon there won’t be any ignoring it anymore. Hell, even the weather is just beyond ridiculous.

So anyway, I was chatting with Xanquela and he was telling me how he still feels somehow that we’re all going to experience some New Agey awakening and that when this all comes down, which I guess is part “end of the world” and part “glory hallelujah,” we’ll all instinctively know what to do and everything we need will be provided. Just like “Eywa has heard you!” in Avatar, I guess. I wish there was a Toruk around… I could stand to do something crazy if I knew what the fuck it was. Problem is, I don’t. And even if I did, I can’t even pay my phone bill. It would have to be something free or really cheap.

I don’t mean at all to belittle his instincts because he is my oldest friend and I respect his views. I am just having a really hard time buying into that, anymore. He says he’s seen signs, though subtle enough he can’t name one specifically, that all is proceeding “according to plan.” I hope to receive more feedback on that after he returns from a retreat he’s going on. I could definitely use some hope. And yeah. I muscle through anyway. But even if I don’t have to worry about myself or whether or not I end up dead in the next decade, my daughter is not equipped to survive alone (even in the terms of, say, 1990 easy street), and I am overcome with the fear that she will see far more struggle than I would ever want for her.

So my dread is twofold: my fate, and hers. I don’t know what to do. Forcing things accomplishes nothing. But everything seems to either be impossible to accomplish (in spite of ongoing efforts) or going to hell in a handbasket. I’m so tired of the ache of this. I just want it to stop.

I keep plugging, keep trying to build something out of my life. I just don’t think it’s going to make any difference, in the long run. Chat log below, behind cut for those on LJ.

Xanquela: Btw, the list of positive things I have to say about you is ridiculously long. Having known you for a long as I have, it’s hard to even begin to know where to start.

Shetakaey: lol that sounds fun to read.

Xanquela: You are my oldest friend, my confidant, my biggest source of support. You don’t take shit from anyone (well, except me and Meridjet), but try to learn from the criticism that others have.

Shetakaey: aww

Xanquela: You set your mind on something and damned be anyone or anything that stands in your way.

Shetakaey: really?

Xanquela: Really. You have your setbacks, but that’s just a consequence of being human.

Xanquela: Which I’m getting really tired of lately.

Shetakaey: I wish it paid better to be determined. lol

Shetakaey: yeah

Xanquela: It does. The payoff just seems like it takes longer than we’d like. I’ve been getting subtle messages from the universe that everything is happening exactly as it should happen.

Shetakaey: such as?

Xanquela: Our trials, the world seeming to go to shit, all of it. We’re all being prepared on levels we may not even be aware of.

Xanquela: If the world is to come to an end, then so be it. It was meant to happen.

Shetakaey: For what? I really, really don’t want to live through some sort of upheaval with my future even more precarious than it is now.

Shetakaey: Lovely.

Xanquela: That may sound fatalistic, but we are never given anything to bear that we don’t ultimately have the strength to deal with.

Shetakaey: Yeah, tell that to my dread.

Shetakaey: Just kill me now, kthx.

Xanquela: Personally, I have faith that our puny minds can’t even begin to conceive of the miracles that lie ahead of us. But when they happen, we’ll know precisely what to do and when to do it. And everything we need will be made available to us.

Shetakaey: That sounds a little unrealistic, based on the fatalism above. Give me a for-instance. Clearly you’ve thought about it.

Xanquela: Well, I have this theory that the human race is going through a time of preparation, but that many of us only feel it on an instinctual level. We can’t identify the unease, so we are reacting out of fear, lashing out at the world because we don’t know where else to look.

Xanquela: We is not we as in you and me, necessarily.

Shetakaey: mmk. go on

Xanquela: But these people that lash out are only responding to the unknown. I know it’s really awful, but when you feel fear and you don’t know where it’s coming from, what do you do? You react to those you can see. Some of us control our fear better than others. Many of us don’t really know what to do with the fear. It can overwhelm us. But, I believe that there is an awakening that is coming our way that will open new spiritual and mental pathways for a large percentage of the human race. This awakening will be, by its very nature, miraculous.

Shetakaey: What are you basing this on? faith?

Xanquela: It’s hard to explain. I guess it’s faith, but it’s also what I feel.

Shetakaey: I mean, your reaction to fear is to go to bed, hide from it. No offense. I’m just saying. so is this awakening going to awaken you or are you already awakened and people are gonna rise to your level?

Xanquela: Or maybe I’m just overly optimistic.

Xanquela: I think I’m in a crysalis type of situation right now. As are many people I know.

Xanquela: I’ve been trying to come to peace with that.

Shetakaey: ok. I mean, I’ve had a lot of my idealism battered out of me in the past five years.

Xanquela: I know. And that’s sad, because it used to be you had these ideas and would talk to me about them.

Shetakaey: I still have ideas. I just don’t have a lot of faith in them anymore.

Shetakaey: Hell, I can’t even get Meridjet to talk to me.

Xanquela: Well, I’m wondering if that’s not part of the process. The chrysalis type state I was referring to.

Shetakaey: I’m doing everything I can to make my one-time vision a reality, it’s just online. I can’t get the time of day. If it were meant to be, shouldn’t it be happening better?

Xanquela: Well, maybe our vision of what and when things should be happening is off. I mean, if everything happens when and how it should, who are we to say the timing is off?

Shetakaey: I’d rather not starve, in the meanwhile.

Xanquela: I hear you.

Shetakaey: I’d love to hear more about these signs you’ve seen, sometime.

Shetakaey: I’d like to have something to hope for.

Shetakaey: Hope is damn hard to come by.

Xanquela: I need to start cataloging them. I’ll try to write some down over the next 4 days.

Xanquela: They always take me by surprise, they come on so subtle.

Shetakaey: ok

Xanquela: Well, I know you haven’t lost ALL hope.

Shetakaey: Just 90%. lol

Shetakaey: I manage to carry on.

Xanquela: lol. As do I.

Xanquela: We’ll survive this. We always do.

Shetakaey: I used to be a person who snapped back to optimism easily. now I have to fight to just not care. The dread is daily.

Shetakaey: I feel like I’m on a runaway train headed for a cliff, and there’s nothing I can do about it but wait for the crash.

Xanquela: I send good thoughts your way all the time.

Shetakaey: I appreciate that.

I’ve watched these guys and kept an eye on their site, regularly, since the first Paradise Lost (See all Crime & Conspiracy Documentaries), though I had heard of their case previously through the occult grapevine.

I have taken an Ambien so no doubt I’ll say all sorts of inappropriate shit, but I guess that’s entertainment. Anyway, yeah. No more than a month or so back, I wrote a rather banal letter to Damien Echols in prison. He probably never got to read it; I gather he gets a lot of mail and it wasn’t that long ago. I’m betting he’ll be getting even more now. I wonder if the prison will forward it.

In the letter, I expressed the usual outrage and concern regarding his unfortunate situation, but I told him I had a feeling he would be out soon. I have to admit I didn’t expect it to be quite this soon. It’s wonderful, I’m sure, as well as stressful and very public. They’re going to get a crash course in morbid fame now that they’re much more accessible to reporters and fanlike supporters.

I spent the last week reading as much as I could find, from both sides of the issues — there are those who believe these guys were scapegoats from day one, with the police not even considering other possible suspects. West Memphis reminds me on my home town in Ohio. The attitudes in place tend to victimize anyone different; there have been a lot of school age killing for these reasons. It’s a reality. And it’s a risk for everyone who lives in a conservative area while practicing magick or any form of esoteric woo-woo shit. The woo woo shit scares the Average Joe. Trust me. I know some Average Joes who know me well, since our school days…. who are now afraid of me since they found out what I’m into. It’s tragic.

I don’t see how Damien, Jason, and Jessie are going to be able to stay in their home towns and have comfortable lives. If they do, this situation will never leave them alone. And hell, at this rate they could just move in with Eddie Vedder and start a new band. Point is, the community’s not going to welcome them. They need to go somewhere where they can assimilate at their own pace, with support systems in place.

There was one “they’re guilty” site I was reading called WM3truth (google it) that (while the website owner is obviously biased and refusing to identify herself) stated opinion as fact a lot, so I was ready with the salt. But there was one piece on that site that disturbed me, and that was Damien Echols’ psychological profile. Well, that and the information which alleged that Jessie Miskelley never changed his story, even after the trial and in private with his lawyers. He said, allegedly, that they did commit these crimes. Makes you wonder. But if they did do them, I certainly hope they have no interest in continuing that hobby.

This case deeply intrigues me and I’m thrilled that the guys got to walk free, even if they did have to accept an uncomfortable deal in the end. Freedom is its own reward. My heart goes out to Damien, Jason, and Jessie yet again, but this time in joy.

Good morning, everyone, and I hope your day is off to a great start! I thought I might take this opportunity to tell you about the new site and what it means, why I elected to do it, and what you can get out of it. I apologize for not getting to this sooner, but you know me and my scattered absent-mindedness. This requires a bit of backstory, so bear with me.

I first began working with Meridjet online back in 1999. Initially, it was mostly a process of discovery as I learned how to use the computer and my online friends to not only allow Meridjet to interact with people, but to actually strengthen our connection. I found that talking about him, even if he wasn’t participating in the discussion, increased the feeling of presence and my awareness of him. This is part of the whole “attention is energy” theory in magick, and it works.

That same year, I met (online) Donald Tyson. He was the first person besides myself that I connected with, who also had an intimate relationship with a spirit companion. We started emailing each other and after a while, he referred two other women to me who were in similar relationships. I realized that most people experiencing spontaneous discovery of spirit companions were going through it alone and without support. Since the same thing had happened to me, I knew the difficulties involved and I strongly felt that people needed a place to go where they could receive support and understanding to help them get through the doubt and other challenges intrinsic to relating to a spirit on a daily basis. So I created my Spirit Companion Yahoo Group. It took a couple of years to get really active, by which time I’d also created the LiveJournal Spirit Companion Community. A lot of the people on LJ (which I joined in 2002) crossed over to the Yahoo Group and for a while there were similar members in each place. (That is no longer true, though there are still some who belong to both groups.)

Things started to take off, and I began to counsel people more and more regarding their relationships with their spirit companions. By 2003, I was counseling people every evening for 7 or 8 hours at a time. I found the work very satisfying and I certainly had a knack for it. However, there were unexpected side effects. I would meet someone who sought me out for help, and we’d become close friends as I worked with them over time. Eventually, either I’d seek reciprocation of support and they’d balk or they’d just learn all they wanted to and drift away. I realized that most of the people I was investing in emotionally weren’t thinking of me in the same way, or else they’d be offended when I asked for support in return. (Granted, I had boundary issues that made me try too hard to please people, then I’d throw up walls when I started to feel taken for granted.) I lost friends.

At the same time, I was struggling with the mentality that Taylor Ellwood dubbed “the Poor Pagan,” which basically dictates that charging people for any kind of spiritual aid is wrong. It was an attitude I bought into back in the 1980s when I got more involved with formal magical and spiritual practices. I think the whole concept is flawed, because regardless of what someone’s calling is (be they a plumber, a doctor, or a spiritual practitioner), they deserve to make a decent living at it. So I first broached the idea of charging and presented it to a few of the people I’d been working with. They did not take kindly to it, at all, and I dropped the idea in favor of not losing more friends.

A little over a year ago, an acquaintance sent me my first official client. Since I did not know her and she was being referred to me for specific help with a spirit, I set a price immediately. I still serve that client today, and in fact we had a session yesterday. I learned that people will accept a paid service if you haven’t been doing the same thing for them for free. And I pondered.

Meanwhile, I played with ways to monetize the blog. I tried paid posts (yuck), advertising (not as yucky, but still), affiliate programs (eh) and similar passive income solutions, but they all left me feeling like I needed to bathe. So I tossed the usual online income solutions out the window, and pondered some more.

I thought about what I truly wanted to do, and why. What I truly wanted was to offer people solutions with their spirit guides or companions that would allow these people to gain stronger and more satisfying contact, and would give them the tools to turn that relationship into a growth-accelerating, working partnership. But there was more: Back in the 90s, when I first met Meridjet and was working exclusively with Xanquela, Henry (my guide), and Meridjet on the board, I had visions of a business that involved a number of different types of metaphysical practitioners working in one location. I saw an older, three-story house, and each room had a different type of practitioner, from massage to Reiki to tarot to whatever. It was a sort of metaphysical spa, where someone could come, spend the afternoon, and see each practitioner in turn for the full spa effect.

I’ve never had the capital to actually open a physical business, and where I live now is not the most conducive atmosphere for something like that. (I live in conservative Texas, and you don’t have to tell me how bad that is, cuz I am well aware. ) But there was no reason I couldn’t do almost the same thing, online. I thought about bringing in different practitioners, each of whom had developed their own practices into something uniquely theirs, who definitely could provide newer practitioners with sound advice and assistance. At first, while this idea was coalescing, I invited a few unique psychic practitioners. My thinking is that people, especially other metaphysical people, would appreciate a place to select a reader without having to resort to somewhere like Keen, where they overcharge and, even if they’re good readers, don’t have the perspective of a metaphysical peer. I feel that sites like Keen are used more by laymen, and frankly those sites make me feel nasty, rather like I felt about putting paid posts on my site.

Then I opened the way for other practitioners to mentor. Now, in mentoring, the idea is for an experienced and accomplished practitioner to chat with a newer one and provide feedback on their practice, showing them how to delve into areas that aren’t available in the Magick 101 books. (And we all know that there are far more Magick 101 books than there are advanced books, and that there are almost no intermediate books on the market at all.) This would help the newer practitioner to advance their practice beyond Magick 101, and would bridge the gap between starter books and more advanced material. The mentors could provide advice, guidance, and feedback.

This is something I’ve never seen offered and I think there is a real place for it. I’m still gathering people (for instance, I’m dying to get Lupa’s mentoring page up, because people really value her point of view) to act as mentors, and if you’re interested you can get a Reader or Mentor Application here. I truly hope that this business takes off. Right now we do not have an advertising budget so the awareness factor is low, but I’m working on that.

I want this business to reflect integrity and real value. I’m starting college on September 1 and will be studying for a Bachelor’s degree in Small Business Management and Entrepreneurship. My main issue right now is that I have so much to do and so little time, and I am terrible at organizing my time. (I’m working on it.) I want to start doing better content here, and I have two newsletters that are on hold because of so much disorganization on my part. I need an assistant. I’m working on a business plan with a friend when time permits, and I want it to be very well developed. I realize I started the business without more than a general idea where to go from here, but I learned a long time ago that new online ventures tend to take a long time to catch on, but then look out.

Your feedback is always appreciated and valued, and if you have any suggestions or ideas, by all means comment or email me at sheta@spiritcompanion.com. I’m open to hearing anything you have to say.

I hope you will find the site useful and worth telling people about, even if it’s a rocky, amateur start. I intend to stay with this, and while I expect changes and unexpected challenges, I think I can hold out. I’ve done it before, after all.