Intuitive and Spiritual Consulting, Past Life Regression

Space Clearing, Mediumship, Animal Communication, Personal and Business Intuition, Soul Clearing, Past Life Regression

Talking with Our Homes: The First Principle

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I always start at the beginning when I talk with people about intuitively communicating with anything, especially our homes.

That means we start with the earth paradigm, which acknowledges that all life, whatever its physical form, has a separate and distinct soul and personality, consciousness, equality, rights, responsibility, and free choice to do its work and to contribute to our conscious, self-aware, evolving planet. All life holds the fate of the world in its choice. Including our homes.

Our homes are living beings. The difference is, you live and sometimes work in them, so their needs are as intimate as yours. To you your home is part of your family; to your home, you are its family. Seen from the earth paradigm, this is at once an enormous responsibility and opportunity for people to authentically connect with their most intimate, private settings.

While it is rare for us to consciously consider our homes to be living beings, with their own opinions, we do offer them a level of unconscious understanding in the subtle ways we respond to them. For example, if you walk into a home and just know it’s yours, don’t think it’s all about you. The house is probably trying very hard to get your attention. (Note also that many homes are becoming vividly aware of themselves and are eagerly trying to attract anyone who can hear them—so if you’re willing to engage a home as an equal, you’ll have lots of volunteers!)

The same goes for paint colors and even dishes, furniture, and decorative items (much like feng shui). If you are wondering whether something belongs in your home, simply ask it. You never know what you’ll hear (and you may or may not like it).

House Hunting

Many homes actively search for their families. Ever visit an open house and feel welcomed? Or not? Of course, it’s partly your attitude in searching, but it’s also the house either looking for its family or desperately hanging on to its family and refusing to move on.

I’ve met both kinds of homes. When I first started hearing houses speak to me I thought I was looking for one to buy. I drove my real estate agent crazy going from place to place. She had intuitives in her family, and finally pointed out to me that something else was going on. By that time I could walk into a house and point out all its positives and negatives as I looked around the room, from the house’s aversion to a new family to its eagerness to share itself with a new one, sometimes mine. I also visited a house I was strongly pulled to, where my agent sent me in alone. Once inside, I realized the house was overwhelmed by mold, and had asked me to witness its death.

“Look,” another house shouted when I was in its basement, looking out over a large backyard. “I have a sink to wash the dogs in and a really big back yard.” At another house, on a calm, windless day, my agent walked freely through the front door, but it slammed abruptly in my face. She was ready to leave right then, but I insisted on going in to learn, intrigued to notice that it pointed out every defect. I thanked the house for sharing, told it I would not be buying it, and suggested it work closely with its family, since I had been told they were determined to move on.

I went to one open house, convinced it was mine because it had been calling me, only to walk through the front door and blurt out, “This isn’t my house, it doesn’t even want me. What am I doing here?” I glanced around and spotted a woman staring around her, star-struck. “Oh,” I said to my agent. “It’s her house.” If I had been more confident in what I was learning at the time, I would have walked up to her and told her she was in her house. Later, I realized that was exactly what the house had wanted: it knew I could hear houses speak, and it wanted me to help it find its new family.

Talking with a Home and Clearing It

When I work with a home or a business I usually conduct an intuitive communication session with it and the humans involved. This is a direct conversation between the house and its family, whether it is clearing the space or preparing the house for sale or rental. Sometimes it’s a means of letting go of each other, at others it’s renewal. These direct conversations are often surprising, as homes are rarely given the opportunity to speak directly to us.

Often a space cooperating session is also part of an intuitive communication session. It is not what people normally consider when they consult a feng shui or space clearing expert. It does help people and their homes live and work together comfortably and harmoniously.

In future posts I’ll write more about clearing a home while conducting an intuitive communication session with it, and what is unique about my work. But for now, have you communicated with your house? What was the most important thing you learned about it?

(c) 2011 Robyn M Fritz

Space Clearing or Space Cooperating: The Difference Is Mindset

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Many wonderful, capable, intuitive people offer space clearing.

I don’t. At least not the way I hear it described by others.

Space cooperating is, for now, the most accurate description for what I do together with my partner, the crystal Fallon.

The difference is mindset. I do my best to operate from the earth paradigm, where all life is equal. Many people operate from the human paradigm, which assumes that humans know best. Regardless.

From my intuitive work I know that everything is alive. Everything. Whether we’re human, animal, plant, volcano, hurricane, oil, ocean—whatever we are—we all have this in common: we are alive.

We are not one with all life. But we are all alive together.

And all life, whatever its physical form, has a separate and distinct soul and personality, consciousness, equality, rights, responsibility, and free choice to do its work. Together, all life can collaboratively build a healthy world.

Starting simply, with our homes, our businesses, and the land around us. Cooperatively.

Is It Cleared Space or Cowed Space?

Humans are used to taking charge. We’ve done some wonderful things, but we could improve (including me).

One place where this is obvious is in what a lot of people call space clearing. Yes, we can manipulate energy, but should we? Under what circumstances? And who has a say in what takes place?

I sometimes see spaces that have been ‘cleared’ and in which people claim to feel great. These spaces are often quite dense and heavy. I’m not sure why they feel great, because the space’s vibrancy has been blanketed, essentially cowed into submission, empty. I suspect that’s partly why many people like them: because our lives are so busy and stressful we somehow feel that being in an empty, blank space is a gigantic ‘time out.’

But the space isn’t vibrant. Which means the ‘time out’ isn’t helping people—or their homes.

I see it on all levels, from people dabbling in clearing their own space to energy workers with years of experience. They don’t mean to harm a space or hinder its development. They simply do the normal human thing that comes from living in a human paradigm: they act as if only human intention mattered.

Still, these people do wonderful work because they do care and they are acting to make a difference in the world, in their lives and in the lives of the people they do clearing work for. Most of them treat the space and their work with great care and love, and I honor them for it, and the beings they work with. They’ve made great contributions to their communities and the planet with their work, from feng shui to clearing to soul coaching, and we’re all better off because of them.

It’s just not the work that I do. That’s why I use the words space cooperating to describe it.

How My Work Is Different

Accepting that everything is alive also accepts that everything has attitude. Opinions. Concerns. Rights.

We all need to be heard. Especially the beings we attempt to clear without directly and equally involving them in the process. Generally they are quite surprised to be asked their opinion and permission to work with them, and the results are memorable—and productive.

In space cooperating I open a dialogue with the space and its people, giving them the opportunity to express their needs and wants and figure out how to co-exist, if possible. Sometimes a sale or move is necessary, and my job is to ease the transition and help all parties search out a new relationship, to separate, grieve, balance, and heal. Each session is different, presenting its own challenges and opportunities.

We then proceed to clear the space, in cooperation with it, using whatever has stepped forth to work that day: certainly my crystal partner, Fallon, other crystals, incense, bells, my Fallon Lavender-Salt mixture, music. Each session is different.

The key is that it all starts with choosing a mindset that accepts every being as an equal.

What Kinds of Spaces Need Clearing?

All the spaces we live and work in need to be clean. And balanced. Just like we do. Here are some reasons why you’d want a space cooperating session:

  • Create and maintain a harmonious environment to live and work in
  • Establish a new relationship with your space or alter one
  • Seasonal changes
  • Real estate sales, moves
  • Remodeling or rearranging space
  • New business or re-direction
  • Changes in life or business, from illness to new family members to new purpose

So are you interested in space clearing or space cooperating? Which mindset do you choose, and why?

Alchemy West: Our Interview at Working Dog Wednesday

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Robyn: One of the best things at Alchemy West in 2010 was working with Bella the Boxer and her staff, Ellen Galvin and Patrick Galvin, on Bella’s book.

Yes, Bella is a dogpreneur and wrote Secrets of a Working Dog: Unleash Your Potential and Create Success. Bella has upped the ante on the self-help genre, showing humans how they can create successful lives with the vigor, wisdom, and wit that only a working dog like a boxer can provide.

I loved helping Bella shape her book. And we also helped her publish it, teaming up with Robert Lanphear, the artistic director who is the creative and technical expert at Lanphear Design in Seattle.

Bella writes a blog, too, http://blog.bellatheboxer.com/, and has a regular column, Working Dog Wednesday, where she ‘interviews cool working dogs.’ In our case she graciously agreed to include me and Grace the Cat in her interview with Alchemy West’s Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, Murphy and Alki.

Bella is Director of Goodwill (D.O.G.) at Galvin Communications in Portland, Oregon. Ellen Galvin is the company’s chief wordsmith. Patrick Galvin is a professional speaker who galvanizes audiences to achieve greater levels of success in work and life.

Match Bella’s spunkiness with a couple of Cavaliers and a cat and you end up laughing a lot as you chat about working and living in the 21st century. Here’s the complete interview, before editing (not even an intuitive communicator like me can keep three dogs and a cat from goofing off on the job and just gabbing). It also had to be edited for things that might not meet FCC standards, like a cat saying the word ‘naked.’ It would come from a cat, wouldn’t it?

You can also find us at Bella’s blog, Bella the Boxer!

Here’s the complete interview.

Bella: Well, this is a first … I’m interviewing a whole team! Murphy, Alki and Grace the Cat make up the powerful board of directors at Alchemy West Inc., a Seattle-based company led by Robyn M Fritz. Robyn also happens to be the editor of my book, which is one reason that I’m so proud of it! Welcome!

Robyn: Hi, Bella! I’m glad you liked my help with your book. You have wonderful things to tell all of us about leading balanced lives, with the emphasis on fun! And you were fabulous to work with! I can’t wait to see what you write next!

Grace the Cat: What, a dog writing a book? How does that happen?

Murphy and Alki: Bella’s talented. And we helped by keeping the office in order while Robyn worked with her.

Grace the Cat: Well, there was a lot of laughing.

Murphy and Alki: Bella’s funny!

Bella: And smart.

Murphy and Alki: And wise! We have to admit, boxers are cool, especially Bella. But we’re Cavaliers, known for exceptional clarity of thought and devotion to duty, well, okay, cookies and fun times. We could write a book.

Robyn and Grace the Cat: What?

Murphy and Alki (giggling): Well, there is that thing about Bella being a working dog!

Bella: Wait, why are you guys laughing?

Murphy and Alki: We’re toy dogs! We get paid to play and look cute!

Grace the Cat: Sheesh, dogs. You don’t say that kind of thing around humans!

Robyn: Really. I see a lock on the cookie jar coming.

Murphy, Alki, and Bella: Oh, no!

Grace the Cat: Like I said …

Bella: Tell us a bit about yourselves and Alchemy West, Inc.

Robyn: It’s all about storytelling. I believe that telling stories creates good will, good humor, and great communities, so I tell my stories and help visionary writers tell theirs. I go out and talk with groups about storytelling, especially telling stories about their animals. And because I’m also an intuitive communicator, I help people speak with the beings in their life. It’s all connected because a healthy, balanced world starts with an intuitive, heart-based connection between humans and the beings they most treasure, from their writing projects to their animal companions, homes, businesses, and the land around them.

I love working with writers who are eager to jump into an intuitive, gut-level approach to find and shape their books, whether it’s through individual book development services or group writing seminars.

And it’s inspiring and deeply fulfilling to see how intuitive communication enriches people’s family and business lives by simply helping them talk with the beings who are waiting to talk with them.

Bella: I understand that Robyn wrote a book about you, Bridging Species: Thoughts and Tales About Our Lives with Dogs. The Dog Writers Association of America has nominated it as 2010 Best Book – Humor. It was also nominated for the 2010 Merial Human-Animal Bond Award, given to the work that best highlights the unique relationship between a dog and its owner and best brings to life the concept of the human-animal bond. Very big deal for you guys. So, what does it feel like to be famous?!

Grace the Cat: We’re famous?

Murphy and Alki: Well, we are! We get all the attention at book signings and public events because we’re the cover dogs. People actually stop when they drive by and see us on the street (even when Robyn is outside in her pajamas).

Grace the Cat: I’m the only one here with fashion sense. Those are NOT pajamas. And the dogs—they wear raincoats outside! I’m for the natural look: naked!

Murphy and Alki and Robyn: We noticed.

Robyn: Grace, you just said …

Bella: Robyn, why do you write about the human-animal bond?

I worked in Cavalier rescue for a few years, helping dogs find new homes. I realized that I could help a few dogs that way or help a lot more by writing about how and why we create families with animals, and what that means from a mystical, cultural, practical, and even comic aspect.

Murphy: I’m very funny. And Alki, you can’t help but laugh with him!

Grace: You’re dogs, goes without saying.

Robyn: It’s like that all day around here. The cat and dog wisecracking! I sometimes wonder how we get any work done.

Bella: What other projects do you have in store for Robyn in 2011?

Murphy and Alki and Grace: Robyn is busy writing Murphy’s Tales. It tells how Murphy’s chronic illness as a young dog inspired our family’s journey to wellness and sparked Robyn’s intuitive abilities. And how Murphy taught Robyn street smarts—

Robyn: Sad, but true, and she was only six months old.

Alki and Grace: And saved them both from an earthquake—before it happened!

Robyn: Yes, all things that made me wonder what was going on in animal minds, and how I could find out. This year I’m also doing a lot of writing coaching and teaching events, to help people focus and tell their stories efficiently and well and get them out into the world. And speaking about how we deepen relationships with all life, from animals to the world around us.

Murphy and Alki and Grace: We’re also writing an online magazine, Bridging the Paradigms, full of stories about creating community with all life. And Robyn is doing all kinds of intuitive work with our newest family member: the crystal, Fallon. It’s intense, but we’re never too busy to play, eat, and power nap!

Bella: So, Robyn, are Murphy and Alki and Grace the Cat your creative muses?

Robyn: In many ways, yes. They help me explore a new normal for a family: that multi-species families are families first, and species second, and what matters is that we’ve chosen to live our lives together. When I look at my family I see thinking, intelligent, resourceful, loving, intriguing souls who just happen to be in animal bodies. Their lives are worthwhile, and ours are together. They accept my limitations with far more diplomacy and patience than I do theirs.

Grace: Yes, dogs can be a trial. That’s why I trained mine well.

Murphy and Alki: What?

Robyn: Grace, that’s a secret of a working cat.… Seriously, my family makes me think about what the world can be like if we accept the diversity of all life. If we can create loving relationships within a multi-species family, how hard can it really be for humans to get along?

Murphy and Alki and Grace: We’re the inspiration—and the comic relief! We’re not just pets, we’re family. We help Robyn see what families look like when we don’t take each other for granted, when we don’t set limits on how they should look but explore what they can and do look like when everybody’s equal.

Robyn: That’s right. I pay attention to what bores, entertains, intrigues, annoys, or puzzles them, and I write about how we try to mesh that into a multi-species family, where we all have attitudes.

Grace: What’s an attitude?

Bella and Murphy and Alki: A cat.

Murphy and Alki and Grace: We joke around, but we’re creatives, just like Robyn. We helped her realize that families come in all shapes and sizes and manner of beings, and learning how to adapt to each other is how we come together to make the world a better place.

Bella: What are your roles? How do you avoid stepping on each other’s fuzzy little toes?

Grace: Alki snoozes all day on his dog bed and Murphy holds down the recliner, so I clearly have to supervise them and watch for intruders from my windowsill perch. When I decide the work day is done, I sit by the keyboard, push all the pens off the desk, and, if that doesn’t work, I climb on Robyn’s shoulder and put my tail in her face.

Murphy and Alki: We taught Grace how to shut the laptop.

Robyn: That trick I could do without.

Murphy and Alki: Plus we take Robyn for walks, fetch sticks, lobby for cookie breaks, make people laugh at our cute grins, run errands, greet visiting writers, take Grace for car rides, and feed Robyn one-liners. We’re on duty all day unless a sunspot shows up or we need to snoop on the neighborhood.

Bella: Any advice for other working dogs (er, cats, too!)?

Murphy and Alki and Grace: We like being part of the new families people are creating with us. Teach your humans how to laugh, take breaks, and play and exercise with us, and keep imagining new ways for all of us to be together in one big community. Take your jobs as family members and office mates seriously. The pay is great.

Robyn: The pay? Well… thanks, Bella, for chatting with us. And keep writing!

(c) 2011 Robyn M Fritz

What Do Animal Communicators Really Do?

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There are so many people doing animal communication that they’ve begun to specialize. I don’t do animal communication exclusively. I communicate with all life, from animals to businesses, homes, and nature, including wild/domestic land and weather systems.

Essentially, animal communicators help us telepathically connect with animals, by hearing or seeing them, experiencing their feelings, or knowing intuitively through a felt, ‘gut’ sense.

I utilize whatever telepathic line works for a particular family or animal, including intuition.

Working with Families

I work with families to deepen their relationships with animals by creating multi-species families with them. And I work with wild animals as well, because two of the beings who work with me at Alchemy West are deceased wild animals. Family conversations cover the gamut, from fun and inspiring family harmony sessions to easing transitions.

Looking at Medical and Behavior Issues

I’ve certainly learned a lot about animal health and behavioral issues over the years. I can intuitively help people look at these issues and give them some ideas to take to your vet for further exploration. I also recommend reading a lot and working closely with a trusted vet and animal behaviorist. I listen closely to both animals and people. Because we don’t always hear our animals as clearly as we would like, I tend to address what the animal would like its family to know.

For example, if you think your cat is peeing in the house, clean it up and consider things like cleanliness and medical issues that require veterinary care. You might want me to ask the cat about why it’s peeing, but your cat may really want to discuss something else. I will focus on what the cat has to say. Why? Because I can hear it, and that’s really why you came to me in the first place. Or to anyone who works as an animal communicator.

Helping Lost Animals Find Home

I also help find lost animals, which does not always mean they come home like we would wish. Sometimes they move on to other families, by choice or by accident. Sometimes they die. Sometimes we never find out.

One time it took me six days to get a lost dog to decide whether she was going to submit to animal control and come home. She had bitten an animal control officer and had run off. It was the officer’s fault, not hers, and it took me a long time to get her to understand, and believe, that she was not in trouble. But we had another complication: she was lost in deep snow and her life was at stake.

She wouldn’t talk with me but I knew she could hear me. So I told her how to stay safe while she decided whether to come home. I could also see and describe the place she was hiding, so I also told her I was telling the searchers where to look, because she was loved, wanted, and literally too upset to think straight. I don’t generally interfere in an animal’s choice like that; in this case, I knew she was listening and wanted to come home but wasn’t sure if she could, or would. So I pushed the issue a bit. I told her what I was doing, and assured her that if she really did not want to go back to her home I would still help her, but unless she clearly objected, I was helping people narrow the search for her. What I always got back from her in those sessions was that she was listening—and waiting.

The searchers did find her hiding spot exactly as I saw it, but she ran when they saw her, even though she listened to me when I told her to show herself, and where.

By this time I had no doubts that we had a frightened dog who wanted to come home but was too afraid to go to the people who were trying to help her. What else could I do?

The weather made up my mind for me. Another snowstorm moved into the area, one I knew she had little chance of surviving. Even though it had been six days and she had not spoken to me, I told her it was “do or die,” she simply had to choose. Come home or die.

Her response? “I want chicken,” she declared. “Chicken McNuggets.”

When you hear something bizarre like that, you have to know you actually did hear it. What a unique idea for a McDonald’s’ ad!

“I don’t bargain,” I said, trying not to laugh. “But I will tell your people that you want Chicken McNuggets.”

Shortly after that she quietly surrendered to animal control. And, sure enough, there was a McDonald’s nearby. The lost dog was happily reunited with her family. And on the way home they loaded up on Chicken McNuggets.

The thing I take away from this is that we all need to be patient and persistent. And to listen to what our animals have to say. We compromise to be in families. That’s just how it is. In working with families and lost animals, the discussion of what is going on and why is often a part of it.

Whether you’re convinced that animal communication is real or not, what one question would you ask a favorite animal? And what do you think it would say?

What’s Up with Our Gardens: Intuitively Connecting with Nature

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All of nature is willing to talk and work with us. The question is: are humans?

I, for one, talk with nature, with the beings most people don’t consider to be alive like we are, let alone able to speak with us. Including our gardens.

Some years ago I decided to take over the neglected gardens at my condo, which included wild space on a steep hillside out back and dying or badly overgrown plants in our public, street-side face. I spent a lot of time researching garden design, appropriate plants for our area (Seattle is considered rainy, but the microclimate I live in is windswept, salty, and dry), and finding a gardening company to do all the work.

I’ve grown house plants for years. In the 10 years I lived in Michigan I had a hundred house plants, from miniature roses to an 8-foot plumeria tree that I grew from a cutting I bought in a garden shop in Hawaii. Today we live with a 50-year-old jade tree called Raymond, for my father, who started him from a small cutting. Raymond is so big I built a stone floor to support him. He acts like he’s an oak tree, spreading his peaceful aura over my dogs and cat, who sleep under him. He’s even patient with the cat, who climbs up his sturdy branches to pose like the lion king as she surveys the street outside.

We all notice and appreciate gardens, even if we’re just watching our dogs pee on them (not allowed at our house). It wasn’t until I decided to manage our condo gardens that I took a really good look at what I was seeing.

I was astonished. The pesticides, the brutal shearing, the simple destruction of a plant ‘that isn’t working anymore,’ or a rush for the newest plant made me conclude that gardeners might just possibly be the people most hostile toward nature. Why is that?

I’ll explore it in future posts.

Here’s a story about a great gardener, someone both intuitively and practically tuned into her garden, which includes a small creek and mature fir trees. She asked me to look at a newly planted tree that was not thriving. As I stood considering it I heard a deep voice say, “Turn around.”

I turned: the voice belonged to a large Douglas fir tree across the street in a neighbor’s yard, in a direct line from where I stood.

“And again,” the tree said.

I turned back and saw another fir tree, possibly a quarter mile away. I was standing directly in their energetic path. The trees wanted the struggling tree moved into a direct line with them, several feet from where it was planted. They were creating a large protective space to shield the gardener as she developed her garden and, as it turned out, her own intuitive abilities and an interest in herbalism.

The gardener didn’t agree with the move, so the tree stayed where it was: the gardener had chosen it for a wet spot, and insisted it stay there. The tree has done well, showing nature and people can compromise and work together.

But we learned something more that day. I noticed that, despite being planted in a wet area, the tree was drought-stricken. I looked closer. The gardener had done what most people do: planted the tree and kept the area around it bare. To keep the weeds down she’d tucked a weed mat on top. The weed mat was suffocating the plant.

I yanked it off. The owner objected, but the ground beneath it was bone dry.

I’m an intuitive, right? So nature itself told me what that meant. Black plastic and weed mats block the energy that comes from wind and rain, and so the plants and the land they’re on suffocate. They don’t get the energy that comes from the rain that falls on them and the sun that shines, which is different from the soil they may be growing in, and groundwater. Honest. Simple. Stunning.

The gardener and I both did double-takes on that. The tree got watered and the weed mat was banned. Today the tree is healthy.

The lesson? Anxious to be great gardeners and still have a life we resort to time-saving measures, like pesticides and herbicides, black plastic and weed mats. But nature has a different perspective.

Pesticides and herbicides we know about: a lot of damage to the plants, to the land, and to us from indiscriminate use of chemicals. But the simple time-savers like weed mats will also kill our plants and, by extension, possibly us.

Really, our environment is everything. So what do we do about it? How do we respond to nature? Can we start taking small steps that will get us all to the same place at the right time—to a healthy, balanced planet? What does that look like? What do the guardians of nature have to say?

These are some of the issues I’ll be exploring in this column. But for right now, what one step can you take in your garden that will allow the energy of nature itself into it?

(c) 2011 Robyn M Fritz

We Mean Dog Business at The Cantankerous Dog Lover

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I’ve fired a lot of vets in the 12-1/2 years since I welcomed animals back into my life. Sometimes I think there isn’t a vet left in Seattle that I’ll talk to, let alone pay to take care of my kids.

That makes me The Cantankerous Dog Lover, standing up for better, more common sense relationships between vets, professional animal services providers, our multi-species families, and our culture. What works, what doesn’t, and why? How can we come together and create a compassionate, interdisciplinary multi-species community in our fast-paced, complex world?

Okay, clarification for those who think I’m cantankerous just to be … cantankery. We have some great vets in Seattle, and I use them. But our favorite is in Port Hadlock (on a good day it’s a 5-1/2 hour round trip via ferry and car), with backup from an emergency clinic and an acupuncturist/herbalist each 30 minutes away.

But that’s beside the point. For now.

The point is that my vets are my partners, not my bosses.

This, surprisingly, rules out a lot of them, just like that. Past time for that to stop.

I think vets trying to be in charge is cultural, affected by the exclusivity of specialty training (like most professions) and larger societal preconceptions. I think veterinary medicine is donkey years behind human medicine in how it treats its clients (but human medicine is only an ooch better, a real concern for all of us). Like specialists, vets are locked into a patriarchal structure where ‘father knows best.’ Surprisingly, the vets I’ve seen who are the worst about this have been female. Shocking, isn’t it? Shouldn’t women who have risen to the think about their cultural preconceptions? Or do the barriers they face create more?

This is a topic that covers a huge territory, which we’ll be doing here.

But for now, this is what I know.

I’m a pharmacist’s daughter. I worked with my dad in his store from age 12 through college. We were in a small farming community, so the first thing my dad taught me was that the farmers wouldn’t come in from their fields to go to the doctor. They’d come to my dad at the end of the day for supplies, and my job was to calmly look at a gaping wound and efficiently gather the things they needed to clean, treat, and bandage themselves until they could get to the doctor.

I learned the common sense things we sometimes don’t get when we treat our animals, because emotions and money and balance and species and what’s just plain right get confused. I learned the simple first aid things we can also use on our dogs, and I have (from upset tummies to cuts).

My dad believed in drugs, in Western medicine. But he also believed in vitamins and healthy eating. Today he’d be a compounding pharmacist with an herbalist’s bent.

I believe in drugs, too, when necessary, and at our house we use a combination of prescription, over-the-counter, herbal, and homeopathic remedies. I’m also a professional intuitive, so I can (sometimes) look at things and see how they work. I will always be grateful that, on a Sunday afternoon when my eldest dog was suddenly contorted in pain, I spread everything I had out on the counter, closed my eyes, asked for the best help, and picked a bottle of leftover Rimadyl. And no, I don’t do this for other people.

We keep Traumeel at our house, and it works, too. And we do massage, and chiropractic, and PT, and energy work, and anything else that makes sense and that experimentation proves works.

I believe in what works, and I keep finding out what does. And doesn’t.

I believe in science. When I was 9 my 14-year-old brother, Randy, was dying of leukemia. There was no hope for him, and my parents, shocked and grieving, agreed to one thing that proved both how brave and humane they were. They allowed the use of an experimental drug, hoping that some day it would help other people.

We buried Randy a few weeks later.

Fifteen or more years later, a friend developed leukemia, and lived. Years later, my dad developed rheumatoid arthritis, and they had a drug that helped him. Today that drug is helping a close friend with rhuematoid.

The drug is methotrexate. It was the drug they experimented with on Randy.

There are consequences to our actions. Methotrexate is one of them. I am proud of my family’s contribution to that research, and grateful that it has helped people I care about. And thousands, perhaps millions, more I will never know.

I am also a DES baby. My mother took diethylstilbestrol when she was pregnant with me and my brother, to help with morning sickness. Years later they learned the horrible things that DES could do to babies, something my mother felt guilty about until she died. My brother is fine. I had rare congenital reproductive health issues traced directly to DES, and had multiple surgeries, not children. Those DES babies like me who are still alive have uncertain futures, which everyone has, but ours are complicated by a bad drug. Period.

And, finally, I’ve been physically handicapped for over 20 years, after failed foot surgery. What happened then, and next, changed my life.

So did a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel who came to live with me in 1998. Murphy had so many issues that people told me to ‘get rid of her and get a real dog.’ When she was 2. I didn’t. I researched, I gave her opportunities, I experimented, and together we both got well, in ways I never expected. Today, Murphy is healthy, happy, a bit arthritis, and heart clear at 12-1/2. And there’s another healthy, heart clear Cavalier, my tri boy, Alki, who’s 9. And Grace the Cat, healthy and goofy at 7-1/2.

My multi-species family is thriving because I took charge of their care, and because I listened to professionals who knew what they were talking (or writing) about, from vets to holistic care providers. And because I resisted recommendations that didn’t make sense to me. But the things I have to keep learning to save us are astounding. The average person can’t learn that much about caring for a dog, and shouldn’t have to. It seems that all our amazing technological achievements have simply made life more complex, more difficult to live. Why is that?

I hope we can change that by talking about what we want and what it looks like in community. With our vets and all the other providers who really do care and want to be part of a team. Our team as families.

So here’s a long way of explaining how I became The Cantankerous Dog Lover. Really, so you don’t have to. Here are some of the things we’ll explore through the best medium out there: storytelling.

  • What happens in our multi-species families, what do we do, what we think
  • Common sense in veterinary care
  • How high tech helps—and hinders
  • Alternative care: supplements, holistic care, energy work, animal communication
  • What makes sense when, and why
  • How we establish a great partnership with our vets
  • How we explore alternatives
  • How we establish boundaries
  • How culture affects care, and what we can do
  • How we live with uncertainty
  • How we help our dogs live graceful old ages

So, to start. Our vets matter. What is your single best experience with a vet? Keep it short. What happened, and what do you think now?

(c) 2011 Robyn M Fritz

Storytelling: Two Approaches to Characters

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Our stories are living beings, equal partners in our passionate, purposeful, plain fun lives.

Our stories matter.

The process of telling them matters.

How do you learn to write?

You write. You think. You read.

Here are two novels to think about.

What do they share?

Christopher Moore. Fluke, Or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings.

Harper Collins (paperback), 2004.

Moore shines in this goofy novel featuring marine biologist Nathan Quinn as he and his team investigate why humpback whales sing, only to have one literally ‘phone home.’ My book club members swore this is the strangest book they ever read, yet are still recommending it years later. Why? Moore’s skilled writing makes every sentence sing. Coleridge’s ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ is required here, making this a great example of accepting the author’s premise, then seeing if you buy it. But I accepted his premise, and where he took his story. Others didn’t buy the sunken city scenario. I think Moore’s world and his characters come alive. What else is there?

What I would have done: Honestly? I wish I’d written it. I’d consider it a life achievement. And Moore’s impassioned, educated plea to save the world’s whales? Icing on the cake—here’s a writer who believes he can make a difference, simply by making a story, and a species, live for us. In one brilliant novel, he did both.

Robin Oliveira. My Name is Mary Sutter. Viking. 2010.

A debut novel by a Seattle writer, it’s historical fiction about a young midwife who yearns to be a physician, and ends up a nurse and battlefield surgeon at the beginning of the Civil War. Mary perseveres through incredible hardship and opposition to women in medicine. Oliveira’s research revealed the hardship, filth (I kept yelling, “for crying out loud, wash your hands!”) and her passion is for the faceless women who nursed the wounded, and the few who later became surgeons. And that’s where I felt she lost her narrative thread, writing instead an emotional elegy to people who suffered through that terrible time without quite understanding what they were doing, or why. I loved this book. It was compelling and well written, but in the end I didn’t really know any of the characters, even Mary, and that was disappointing. Still, I keep thinking about them.

What I would have done: I would have shown us the characters as they struggled to make sense of their world and their choices, instead of making them stand-ins for national grief over painful, senseless loss of any war, especially one that divided America. Still, well done, and I’ll watch for her next book. ‘Show don’t tell.’

Two good writers. Two novels. They share a love of storytelling.

  • What worked for you?
  • Were the characters real?
  • Did you believe the story?
  • Where did it lose you?
  • Why?
  • What would you have done differently?
  • And, most important: how does the comparison help sharpen your own writing?

(c) 2011 Robyn M Fritz

Starbucks—Good Enough to Pee At

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I used to be proud to say that I was one of Starbucks’ earliest clients, back when they opened their first store in Seattle. Even though I didn’t know what they were talking about until I acquired a taste for espresso in Spain, and brought home a stovetop espresso pot for my parents.

Starbucks was different in those days, at least I think so (but the coffee is just as bad). I was more idealistic and naïve, then, a lot less cynical. Or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.

But now I’m officially done with Starbucks. It’s not the coffee or the people. It’s the $15 million.

This is Howard Schultz’s fault. I have no problem with people creating a good company and making a decent profit if they take care of their employees and their customers and their community. That’s how you build a healthy, balanced world. As long as we’re using money to drive it (another story).

I don’t think Starbucks does that any more.

Howard Schultz took home what, a $15 million bonus, the same year they closed stores and laid off employees? Really?

The second shocker: why do people put up with it? I’ve heard: ‘not interested, ‘it’s okay because they needed to cut stores, they needed to cut employees, and some of our neighbors and friends still have jobs,’ or ‘the economy is bad.’ Come on!

If any of that is true, why didn’t Schultz turn back his bonus to keep people in their jobs? That would be giving back to the community.

Yes, I admit that I’ve been to Starbucks once since I declared I’d never go back again. The dogs and I were on a road trip and we had to pee.

I say no to Starbucks, and I’m voting with my latte dollars. What do you think?

(c) 2011 Robyn M Fritz

Fallon: The Citrine Lemurian Quartz

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Fallon is a citrine Lemurian quartz sphere.

He is one of the amazing beings who has come back into the world at a time of growth and change.

He says he is a gift from the earth to its people. And, I am proud and honored to say that he is my partner.

Robyn’s Story

I am an MBA with a crystal ball.

Go ahead, laugh. I do.

I spent most of my life being the analytical, skeptical woman, book smart and street dumb. I’m still kinda that way. I’m constantly falling over myself trying to find the good in people.

I have also been disabled for over 20 years. That means I have to carefully manage my activities. There were years I couldn’t work at all, which has permanently skewed how I see the world (usually in a good way).

Somehow, through all of that, I maintained a sense of humor and an often grim optimism, a determination to get well even when I didn’t know how. One day I bought a dog, a Cavalier King Charles puppy who became Murphy Brown. When she developed health problems, some of which looked disturbingly like mine, I decided that we would get well together. Somehow. When she saved both our lives by alerting me to an earthquake several minutes before it happened, I knew there was more going on in the world than most of us realized, including me. I decided to turn my analytical, skeptical side loose to explore those things.

It’s made all the difference.

In the last 10 years Murphy and I journeyed to wellness, accompanied by her rambunctious Cavalier brother, Alki, and Grace the Cat.

In the last 10 years I learned that there was more to the analytical skeptic than I had thought, because I learned how to talk with animals, and then with hurricanes and volcanoes, and then with businesses and homes. Cars. Spiritual guides. Plants. Lots of things I didn’t even know could talk with us, let alone existed. And, come on, neither did you.

I learned to clear and keep space clear by cooperating with it and the beings who live and work in it. I learned various modalities of energy work, including Reiki (level III practitioner). I learned a new form of energy work, which I call universal or dimensional energy, which I am getting ready to introduce to the world.

And I discovered new partners in my work, from animals to volcanoes. And crystals.

One day, I think in 2005, I was driving home from Portland when I started talking with a group of beings who felt somehow different than the many beings I’ve talked with. They showed me past lives and the people I’d known throughout them. Many lives, the progression of mistakes and misadventures and, yes, triumphs that had seen me through multiple lifetimes, many harsh. They showed me what I saw as a tool or talisman that I had worked with for many lifetimes. They said I’d put this tool away until I was ready again to work with it. And that the time had come, and it was now coming back to work with me. I could see it: it was a bright white light that I was holding up.

I thought this tool was nonphysical, that it was something like a metaphor for the work I’d done to get well, and, like spiritual guides, would be there helping me in my journey.

Well, yes. And no.

Fallon’s Story

Fallon is a citrine Lemurian quartz sphere. A crystal ball. The combination of citrine and Lemurian quartz is rare. The combination that makes him Fallon is rarer still. Unique. As in one of a kind.

Here’s what I know of his recent history.

Fallon bounced around the world for a long time, perhaps years. Nobody would buy him. Not in Japan, where people like the unique large crystals. Or anywhere else. No one could understand his energy, which is a multi-dimensional planetary energy that is just now coming back into the world. It was ‘too fast’ or ‘too cold’ or too different for them. Finally he ended up in Brazil. Where he stayed I don’t know how long, while they figured out what to do with him.

My understanding is that Fallon was then a double-terminated quartz, but that’s not how I first knew him. Because ages ago I carved him out of a crystal cave, with his direction and guidance. Using something like a laser. Which we don’t think existed until recently. He had two points on one end and three on the other. We spent lifetimes together, and then things changed.

About 7 or 8 years ago the sculptor in Brazil decided to carve him into a crystal ball. That was quite an achievement, as a close personal observation of Fallon reveals. In the end, Fallon was an 8-pound crystal ball. The rest of him is gone.

He was promptly taken to a show in the United States, where crystal expert Deidre Berg saw him. She immediately recognized how unique he was, and bought him. Although she sells crystals, she put Fallon into her personal collection and worked with him privately for 6 years.

One day, Deidre decided to teach a class on crystals in Seattle. At that point I’d purchased several crystals from Deidre, and was intrigued enough by her reverence for and knowledge of crystals that I decided to take her class.

Our Story

My sometimes snotty analytical skeptical side teamed up with my usually curious, open-minded side and went with me to Deidre’s class that day. The attendees did all kinds of interesting things. At one point, Deidre invited all of us to spend a few moments with the crystal she’d brought along.

A crystal ball that had never been taken out of her personal collection, even to a class, until that day.

Oh for crying out loud, I thought, she brought a crystal ball. Still, I decided to play along. When it was my turn, I picked up the ball, sat down with it, and did what everyone else had been doing. I looked into it.

And off I went to the place above the planet that I’d been working in and never consciously visited. All the beings I’d been talking with the last few years, including those who had told me about the tool that was coming back to work with me, were in the crystal smiling back at me. All of them. And by that time I knew that many of them were multi-dimensional beings that aren’t here on this planet.

Yes, I know what that sounds like.

In those moments I knew that I was holding the tool I’d been promised. A crystal ball.

I asked him if he was ready to come to me. He was. But was Deidre ready to let him go?

At the end of the class, I asked for private time to talk with her. It was a sacred moment to me. Here was a crystal that was a conscious, living presence, that was my partner, and I was asking her to sell it. But he was also her partner, and she wasn’t ready.

I waited. I prepared for him to come to me when Deidre was ready. Finally, months later, she was. By that time I had been talking with him and knew his name was Fallon.

Even then, holding him in my hands, I hesitated. Here again was a sacred moment, an ending of one partnership and the beginning of another. A choice made by all of us. But I wanted Deidre to be sure. To look at me and the crystal together. And decide. We both cried as she agreed.

Fallon came home with me that day. It was December 2009.

He spent the next 4 months sitting in a tray of Brazilian dirt topped with Himalayan sea salt. Clearing. Preparing. Nagging me until I did so much clutter clearing in the house that I was exhausted and made him quit.

I spent a lot of time worrying that he wasn’t in the same shape as I’d first met him, centuries ago when he told me how to carve him out of a crystal cave. Would he be the same?

Yes, he was the same, just in a different body. And, as he pointed out, so was I. That of course made us both laugh.

Our Work Together

Most of my work is with the planet. Nobody pays me for it, and very few people believe in it. Nevertheless.

Fallon and I do this work together. He is no longer a tool, if he ever was one. He is my partner. He is a crystal, yes, but he is an equal partner in our work. He has a say in what we do together. And no hesitation in saying it. And I listen. Not because he’s always right, but because we’re partners, and that’s what partners do.

I never expected that Fallon and I would publicly go out in the world. That changed in early summer 2010.

By that time friends had been stopping by to visit and meeting Fallon at home. I noticed that they would come in and immediately notice a change in our house, and walk around until they saw him. They were clearly feeling his energy. Fallon started asking to work with them. He would tell me about conversations he was having with them until I realized he was conducting healing sessions. I have no interest in being a healer, so I asked him to keep those sessions private unless I was needed, and I promised him that I would make him available to people for healing sessions.

At other times people had fun seeing things in him: he is, after all, a crystal ball, and with him their traditionally recognized ‘scrying’ ability is easily accessed. You don’t need to be anything more than curious to see things in Fallon. Really.

Fallon and I offer group events to experience his energy and the world of crystals and how we bridge paradigms. We also offer private sessions and have a few products to sell.

And right here you’ll find stories about our work together. Questions?

(c) 2008-2025 Robyn M Fritz

Email or Phone Robyn

Contact Robyn

206.937.0233 PST Seattle WA USA
Email: robyn@robynfritz.com