Let's Talk to Animals

How I became a professional animal communicator

June 05, 2024 Shannon Cutts Season 5 Episode 11
How I became a professional animal communicator
Let's Talk to Animals
More Info
Let's Talk to Animals
How I became a professional animal communicator
Jun 05, 2024 Season 5 Episode 11
Shannon Cutts

Share your thoughts & ideas! ✨

It isn't a small thing - making a complete change in career. But that pales in comparison to making a complete change in self-identity. Which is exactly what happened to me when I woke up one morning and realized I was meant to communicate with animals.

In this long-awaited, long-overdue episode, I answer a listener question - how did I become a professional animal communicator? And what had to take place in order for me to find the courage, the trust, the support, the experience, to say yes to this bucket list dream?

Learn exactly what happened step by step as I left one career and began another. Discover the behind the scenes and the temporary chaos it caused in my life and relationships. Begin to try on a dream career of your own for size as you listen to my story of following my heart.

Support the Show.

Leave us a review & share what you like most :-)
Your reviews REALLY help our little podcast get noticed & known. 🙏

Schedule your pet's session (living and in spirit)
Head over to Schedule (pssst Join our Weekly Love Letter & get $25 off) ❤️

Learn animal communication with me!
Enjoy two foundational free mini-classes & join my next live class. https://www.animallovelanguages.com/enroll 🤔

🤩 Let's connect on IG @loveandfeathersandshells
💫 Support Let's Talk to Animals

Let's Talk to Animals +
Love this podcast? Become a supporter!
Starting at $3/month
Support
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Share your thoughts & ideas! ✨

It isn't a small thing - making a complete change in career. But that pales in comparison to making a complete change in self-identity. Which is exactly what happened to me when I woke up one morning and realized I was meant to communicate with animals.

In this long-awaited, long-overdue episode, I answer a listener question - how did I become a professional animal communicator? And what had to take place in order for me to find the courage, the trust, the support, the experience, to say yes to this bucket list dream?

Learn exactly what happened step by step as I left one career and began another. Discover the behind the scenes and the temporary chaos it caused in my life and relationships. Begin to try on a dream career of your own for size as you listen to my story of following my heart.

Support the Show.

Leave us a review & share what you like most :-)
Your reviews REALLY help our little podcast get noticed & known. 🙏

Schedule your pet's session (living and in spirit)
Head over to Schedule (pssst Join our Weekly Love Letter & get $25 off) ❤️

Learn animal communication with me!
Enjoy two foundational free mini-classes & join my next live class. https://www.animallovelanguages.com/enroll 🤔

🤩 Let's connect on IG @loveandfeathersandshells
💫 Support Let's Talk to Animals

Speaker 1:

Hi Shannon here with animallovelanguagescom. I am an animal sensitive and intuitive Reiki master practitioner for pets and their people, an animal communication teacher and, most importantly, for our purposes here today, I am your friendly neighborhood hostess for the let's Talk to Animals podcast. We are now in our fifth season and have covered a wide variety of topics with an incredible array of practitioners, communicators, intuitives, energy workers and guests from all across our small little green and blue planet. But today I come to you with a very special episode that is near and dear to my heart, because I have been asked to share my personal story. How did I become a professional animal communicator? How did that happen?

Speaker 1:

I look back over my five decades of life to date and I think to myself. I have been so many different beings. Perhaps you can relate. Perhaps, when you look back over your life to date, however many years or decades you have logged thus far, you think to yourself man, oh man, I don't recognize myself. 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, maybe even five years ago or a year ago. Years ago, 30 years ago, maybe even five years ago or a year ago. Our evolution here on this planet is moving so fast. We've had so many tumultuous experiences, even over the last handful of years, and our lives are changing rapidly, from loved ones who are transitioning in record numbers to all kinds of natural disasters and wonderful new technological advancements and, of course, ai technology and sometimes it can feel like every day we wake up to a new version of ourselves and I have to share that. That is absolutely accurate. In terms of how I've been feeling over the last few years in particular.

Speaker 1:

As long as I can remember, I have had a natural enthusiasm for self-development. I've always been very in tune with my emotions. I've been very aware of subtle vibrations, whether intrapersonally within myself or interpersonally in relationships. I remember one event in particular when a girlfriend of mine I was quite young I think I was maybe in middle school at the time and she was slightly younger than I was and she had just started dating a new boy and things were a little rocky and she shared with me what was going on and I said well, this is why this is what's happening and this is what you need to do to fix it. And she came back to me later and she said that is absolutely, totally the thing that I needed to do. How did you know that, and I hadn't even started dating myself yet and I told her I don't know, I just knew knowledge and awareness, life experiences that I brought with me into this incarnation, whether it was something I had observed, just naturally I'm kind of a people watcher, people observer. I've always been very curious about interpersonal connections and so I can look back and I can see elements of myself. I guess is really where I'm going with that. I can see elements of me now in all of those beings, from all of those years that I have spent prior to today.

Speaker 1:

And yet if you had asked any of those me's when I was 12 or 20 or 35 or 42, 12 or 20 or 35 or 42 if you would have asked me if I ever thought I would become a professional animal intuitive, I would have said no, I would have. In fact, for many, many, many years I hired animal communicators because I really thought that that was a special gift, something that you just were born with. It, kind of like the ability to win the Voice or American Idol or whatever big talent contest and reality TV contest is going on right now. I just thought that that was something that you were kind of chosen in advance, and I didn't understand how that happened. I just felt like it wasn't something that I would ever get to do, and so the next best thing, of course, was to hire animal communicators. And so that's exactly what I did, and I spent many years inviting animal communicators to help me communicate with maybe a little less than glowing, or maybe a little bit not meeting their expectations, but I was really lucky. I loved every experience that I had with communicators.

Speaker 1:

I always had trust, and I remember waiting with bated breath and thinking oh, what are my animals going to say to the communicator? Do they like their food? Do they like their enclosure or their bedding or their area in our home together? Are they happy? Do they like me? Do they love me? Do they feel seen and heard and valued? Is there something that they need? Are they feeling okay? Are they healthy? What's going on with them? And I just I remember just anxiously journaling and just having pages and pages of questions and knowing that I had to categorize and pick the best questions and I was so very detail-oriented about just wanting to capture every nuance of their lives.

Speaker 1:

And so you're probably listening to this, wondering, well, how did you get from there to becoming a professional communicator and I'll be honest with you, it really started to unfold right about the time my entire life started to fall apart, or life as I knew it back then, the life that I had created, that I had manifested up until that point, and it just all started to kind of break apart and just crumble. I went through a series of catastrophic losses. The first thing that happened was the partnership. The relationship that I had invested so many years of my life in became completely untenable for me. I just had tried everything I could think of and could make it work, and so I broke up with my longtime partner, and that happened right around Thanksgiving and it was just I couldn't do it anymore.

Speaker 1:

And not long after that I was meditating one morning and I've had a meditation practice since I was 19. It's not anything that's unfamiliar to me. It's a staple of my life, it's my rock, it's where I do my best work and get my brightest insights and do the deep healing that I've needed to do, and we all have our thing, and that's really been one of my big things. Another has been yoga, another has been contemplation, and a huge rock for me has also been my inner species, family animals and nature. And so I was meditating one morning and I don't even remember if I had an agenda that morning or if I was just quieting my mind and tuning in and healing and doing the things that I needed to do to recalibrate after such a big breakup and such a big shift. And all of a sudden it was like those images you see where a single raindrop falls into a stream and you see the little ripples and it's spiraling outwards, and it felt like that, as this gentle, soft, quiet voice that I have come to know really, really well it seems to be the delivery being of choice when we've got big breaking news that I need to receive this still small voice pops in and drops its bomb. And this particular warning the bomb was you are an animal sensitive and intuitive.

Speaker 1:

At that time I was curating a blog called Love and Feathers and Shells that had become mildly popular in my little corner of the world. It was featuring the voices, or the pseudo voices, of my interspecies family my soul bird Pearl, my red-footed tortoise Malty and my rescued box turtle at that time, bruce, and our family's dachshund, flash Gordon, and me and my mom and dad. And it was just this fun little side project that I had cooked up. It had generated a couple of books, but it wasn't anything that I was particularly making a living out of. It was just a joy project. And I say just with air quotes because it really was healing me from burnout career burnout that I had experienced in the field I was in at that time.

Speaker 1:

That's a whole other story, but let's just say I was super surprised when I heard this small still voice announce you are an animal sensitive and intuitive, and I did not know what that meant. It sounded intriguing. I knew the voice well so I knew this was important breaking news. If the voice would have used the words animal communicator, I think I would have understood right away. But they didn't choose those words and the word choice felt very deliberate animal, sensitive and intuitive. And I thought, well, I am sensitive to animals, I love animals.

Speaker 1:

I have been working with an intuitive teacher, had started working with my teacher, sonia Shoket, and was studying with her very intensively, taking courses, participating in her monthly membership, reading all of her books and if you're familiar, you know she's got a lot of books taking her online courses as well as her live course. At that time I was working in a small group with other students, so I was very intentional about developing my intuition, but I did not know what animal-sensitive, intuitive meant. So for my 50th birthday, my folks asked me what I wanted for my big 5-0. And I said I want a session with my teacher, sonia, and that was a bit of an investment financially. And so they said absolutely.

Speaker 1:

And so during my session with Sonia, I mentioned that I had received this information and I didn't know what it meant and I wasn't sure what I needed to do with it. But I just felt like it was significant and she just was so delighted and so delightful to talk with about this because immediately she clapped her hands together and she said, oh, what a beautiful way to put that. That is even more lovely than the words I would have chosen Animal, sensitive and intuitive. I love that. You're an animal communicator. You need to get yourself into a class. Have you been studying with anyone?

Speaker 1:

And I said, oh, no, but strangely enough, my friend from your small group and I have just been chatting about our shared love of animals and how we would love to maybe take a course together, and she was so funny Sonia is just so to the point. And she said, thinking about it, the animals are waiting to talk with you. You should be doing this already. You should be in a class already. That's your assignment is to go, get, pick a teacher and go and get in class. And I said well, how should I pick a teacher? How will I know who to study with? And she said it doesn't matter who you study with, your animals are your teachers. The animals will teach you. Just get in a class, just pick a teacher and go. And that turned out to be better guidance than I could ever have dreamed.

Speaker 1:

It was because my path through the quote-unquote formal education process to learn animal communication was not a smooth one, and looking back now, I realize that Sonia was absolutely a hundred percent accurate, that the animals have been my biggest teachers and guides. There have been some things that I have needed to know about directuring a session, working with other humans, dealing with folks at different levels of openness to the intuitive arts, so to speak, navigating difficult questions and speaking with animals that are at different stages of their own growth and evolution, and holding space for human clients who are feeling frustration or strong emotions like sadness and grief that comes after a beloved animal passes. So there were some fundamentals that any teacher could have taught, fundamentals that any teacher could have taught, and I received everything that I needed to receive from the training that I consumed with the teachers that I've chosen. What ended up unfolding, however, was that animal, sensitive, intuitive, does have its own flavor into, in in terms of what my contributions to the field of animal communication, of an animal intuition, of interspecies conversation, and the way in which the teachers that I have chosen to study, with the way in which the teachers that I have chosen to study with were teaching and the structure that they wanted me to follow, didn't necessarily vibe with the inner guidance the animals were giving me, and I've always been somebody who's functioned really well in situations of opposition, function really well in situations of opposition.

Speaker 1:

So it's almost like, if I don't know which next step to take, I can make a choice in two ways, and maybe you'll relate to this either by someone showing me the way and me thinking or feeling like, oh yes, that absolutely resonates and I'm going to go that way. Or someone showing me the way and everything in me going, no, that's not for me. So that's what I mean by opposition. It's like, well, you could do it that way, yes or no? And so I'm feeling for my inner yes or my inner no, and so I was able to kind of chart my course forward, based both on what did work for me and also what really didn't work for me. And that is how I guide, really, for each of us who are invited, called, introduced to intuitive animal communication, to developing and working with our intuition, we each are going to have our own way. There are no carbon copies, there are no duplicates.

Speaker 1:

If you are listening to this right now and you're feeling the pull or the call or the curiosity to learn more and take that next step, you have something unique that only you can contribute and it's so very, very important to understand that, which means that anyone that you choose to study with will have all kinds of valuable things to contribute to their journey and will also give you that opportunity to experience opposition, to chart your own path forward, because there will be some things that will not resonate and you'll have to find your own way and in that way you will find the thing or things that only you can contribute that are so needed as we evolve in our understanding of the magical, wonderful beings we share this planet with. We discover how, underneath all of these cool, interesting, very different looking costumes that we wear, we truly are more alike and different, or more similar than dissimilar. We have so much wiring within us that is shared in common, and interspecies communication is one avenue for us to and I would say, connect, but I, I have to say it's more like reconnect, because modern homo sapiens, our species today, has become so disconnected from all of the other species that we share planet earth with. We have forgotten so much of what we're capable of, we have cut ourselves off from so much information that we still have access to, and we have convinced ourselves that we're so very much more isolated than we truly are. We have almost even replaced companion animals with these little smart devices that we carry with us everywhere that are truly our little pets, our little sidekicks, and so when we answer the call or RSVP yes to the invitation to learn animal communication, it's really more like we're saying yes to relearning who we truly are, and for that reason it feels like it is no accident that I got that little download in that meditation, right in the moment, right in the cracks in between the moments when my whole life was about to absolutely fall apart.

Speaker 1:

Whole life was about to absolutely fall apart and it really feels like, looking back, at that little voice had been waiting to deliver the payload and it couldn't because I was in a partnership, in a relationship with another human being who was not able or willing to see where I was headed and who I was really shaping up to and really wanting to be, in fact, one of the big. I look back. This is super personal, so forgive me if it's a little too much information, but maybe you can relate. Maybe there's something in your life that is kind of keeping your foot on the brakes as far as something, an experience you really want to have or an evolution you really want to experience in your life.

Speaker 1:

One of his big complaints about me was that I was always talking about my animals and that was the big news that I would have when we would have our quality time together. That was the big news that I would have when we would have our quality time together and I wanted to talk about my animals and how they were feeling and what they were eating, what they were doing and what I noticed about them. That was new and he did not find that conversation interesting or valuable. And so it really doesn't feel like, looking back now, that it's any surprise that it was only a few weeks after I said goodbye to that relationship that this information came flowing in. And so maybe for you, if you feel like I feel this call, I feel this pull, but it's not quite making sense, maybe just be patient, just be a little patient with yourself but just recognize that it's there and just invite your light team, invite your guardian angels, invite your spirit guides to just guide you step by step.

Speaker 1:

Because I look back now and remember feeling so frustrated and feeling kind of trapped, but not really recognizing it, because I'd gotten to the point where being mildly uncomfortable had become oddly comfortable, because it had become normal, and so I don't want it to sound as I'm sharing my story with you. I don't want it to sound as if I was so super on board with all of this and I was so comfortable and I was just flowing in and through all of these revelations and new experiences and these requirements of having to let go of certain things and certain people and certain frameworks through which I viewed myself and my life. It was all quite uncomfortable. What happened next was that my dearest soul, heart, best friend passed away unexpectedly, and it was so poignant, it was so catastrophic. She was the one person that had helped me to stick it out with my partner for as long as I did, because I shared so much of my life with her that there was a part of me that didn't notice how much was going missing in my so-called partnership. So I lost really two of the most significant people in my whole life within weeks of one another and I just felt like my whole, everything that had formed the foundation and my sense of self and my place in this world, and my spirit, family. It just fell apart within the space of a few weeks and not long after that, of course.

Speaker 1:

In the meantime, I'm still studying with Sonia and I am picking my animal communication teacher and I'm getting enrolled in classes and I'm making the investments and I am starting to practice with my fellow students. We're starting to practice with one another's animals and I'm just learning exponentially at the same time trying to keep up my career at that time as a full-time freelance writer. So here I am multitasking, and I'm sure you're probably quite familiar with that concept. We do tend to be these days. Right, we get really good at juggling all these different hats that we wear and I was getting increasingly frustrated and burned out in that career and really hopeful that perhaps I could make a shift.

Speaker 1:

And right about that time my dad unexpectedly began his final transition and went into hospice within a period of a couple months. It was a very, very quick unfoldment for him and when he first fell really ill, when I would come over to visit them and I, I felt very lucky because I lived about 20 minutes away and so I was able to be there for them and help my mom and help my dad and be a support. And as he was first becoming seriously ill, my best friend who had passed had been a Reiki master and I had kind of forgotten that I had been Reiki attuned. Back in my 20s I had gotten to Reiki level two and if you're not familiar, reiki is a process of attunement, an energetic awakening that's passed from master to student, from mentor to mentee, and there is a head knowledge component. There are manuals and guidelines and all kinds of wonderful things to keep the left brain mind busy and happy and productive and supportive of the endeavor, but the bulk of the reiki journey is via the right brain, mind, via intuition and attunement, so it's working with energy.

Speaker 1:

And I kind of forgotten that I had been attuned to Reiki level two, and Reiki attunements typically happen in three levels, sometimes four depending on the student's path that there's one, two and three and then there's a teacher-focused attunement that's used in some traditions and not in others. And so I had this experience one day when I was visiting my dad. He walked by me and my hands just floated. They just floated of their own accord up into the air and they started to try to follow him. And because my friend had talked so much about her experiences learning Reiki and offering Reiki as a hospice volunteer, I spontaneously remembered that I had been attuned and I realized I recognized what was going on because of all the stories she shared and I thought to myself I need to get reattuned because I might be able to help my dad if I can work with the Reiki energy. And it just so happened that one of my friends in my small group, with Sonia Choquette in her intuitive program, had a Reiki master and she had been attuned to Reiki master level and so I was able to receive attunement and I had become attuned to Reiki level two when my father entered his final transition and I knew very little. I was still working my way through the manual. I just didn't have a lot of time to study or practice because I was so involved in my father's transition and in my practicum for my animal communication studies, where I was working with clients almost every day as a volunteer, learning and growing and receiving feedback and unfolding my intuitive abilities with animals, and so I really just didn't have a lot of time at that moment in time to read the manuals and to learn about the different ways that Reiki energy can work through me to be supportive of people and animals and meet them where their need is greatest. And so it was very surprising to me to experience Reiki's spontaneous wisdom here and there when my dad really needed it.

Speaker 1:

And there was this one night where I had been caring for dad and my mom and I were taking shifts along with the care workers and I went to bed and I was really, really tired. But I woke up in the middle of the night and got out of bed and my dad's door was closed and that was very unusual. Normally all of our bedroom, all of our bedrooms are really close together and all of the doors were always open. And I noticed that the door was closed and I was so tired and I thought, well, maybe I should just leave it closed. Maybe there's a reason. But something just moved me and I went and I opened the door and the scene that I witnessed was nothing short of hellish and I saw with my inner eye what looked like flames surrounding my dad's bed and all of the people and my mom and the care workers were in a frenzy and my dad was convulsed on the bed and he was in agony and he was in a coma, so he could not speak, he could not communicate, but clearly there was something very, very wrong.

Speaker 1:

And my body just moved me over to my dad's bed and my hands again stretched out and hovered over him and all of a sudden this wave of nausea hit me and it flattened me and I sank to the ground and I said to my mom I think I'm going to vomit. And she said should I go and get a bucket? And all of a sudden I thought to myself wait, and I got a download and I said to mom it's, I'm feeling what is going on with him and I started to receive information from him and as the information came through, I said to my mom and the care workers I said stop, be quiet. He's telling me what to do. And I don't remember much of what happened next, but I do remember that over the course of time, a period of time, I went from being in this vomitous little huddled ball by the side of my dad's hospital bed to being quietly on the floor and I went from being it just felt like it was 100 degrees inside my body to being cool and calm and comfortable and giving the care worker and giving my mom and, when the nurses arrived, giving them instruction for what to do, when to help my dad through what turned out to be a severe medication interaction that was exacerbated by dehydration and just him being in a coma for 17 days, and it felt like the blink of an eye to me.

Speaker 1:

But when I was done and dad was finally calm and comfortable again, I asked my mom how long did that take? And I thought she was going to say 15 or 20 minutes and she said it was three and a half hours. I had no idea and she said it was the strangest thing. You spoke in a very calm, robotic voice. It didn't sound like yourself. She said it was the strangest thing.

Speaker 1:

You spoke in a very calm, robotic voice, it didn't sound like yourself, and it was such a powerful experience for me of how the willing, open heart can make us movable. And we can have these abilities, these gifts that are lying dormant within us, almost we may not even know that they're there. But if we're willing, because we love, because we care, because we're aware, because our empathy what I call now our empathy channel is open and activated, we can work miracles just through our willingness to be of service, to show up, and that night changed everything for me. It was my sensitivity, my intuition of what was needed. It overcame any lack or gap in my knowledge or even life experience.

Speaker 1:

Luckily, one of the hospice nurses who turned out to be our head nurse was regiotuned to level two as well, and she, unlike myself, had had quite a lot of practice and experience, and so I ended up being able to share with her what was going on, and I ended up being able to receive guidance and mentoring from her during my dad's hospice journey and receive reassurance from her and encouragement and even some guidance on what to do and I began using reiki to help my dad every time he had to take the pain medication to help his body assimilate, and he never had another one of those reactions. And it was just so beautiful and I began to feel a newfound inner confidence in what I can only describe as my willingness to be movable, to be of service, and how that could overcome the bare bones truth that I was still really a beginner in my field, at least in terms of the number of clients that I'd worked with, the number of experiences that I'd had. That didn't in any way take away from the profound positive impact I could have in the lives of people, animals, just through my willingness to trust, to open and to let my benevolent vibration of love energy flow through me. Me and what happened was, as my dad was transitioning to spirit, he became one of my greatest teachers and I've really struggled to grieve my dad because every time I feel sad that he's not there, he shows up and I can feel him immediately. In fact, right now, as I said that, I'm thinking oh dad, I really miss you.

Speaker 1:

I mean, the truth is is I'm broadcasting this podcast. What you see behind me used to be my dad's music room and office, and after dad died just a little side after dad died, mom had a really bad fall and she broke her femur and her wrist and then she had to have a hip replacement and so she hasn't been able to manage the old homestead by herself and asked if I would come and move in, and so we've kind of converted my old childhood bedroom and my this used to be my brother's bedroom and it turned into my my dad's music room and his office, and so I repainted and kind of redecorated and it's become my animal communication suite and it's just wonderful. So of course his energy is very, very strong in this room because this was his music room and he loved playing guitar more than just about anything else in this world. But he's with me everywhere all the time and in fact when I look in the camera now I see his face shining out through mine. So it's been a really interesting journey of realizing that if I'm just trusting and open and willing to be movable, all of what I bring to the table will always be enough, because spirit, my light team, the wisdom and guidance of the animals will make up any difference. That really is the journey, journey. That has been the journey for me.

Speaker 1:

I look back over the past few years and I realized that, even though I have only been formally hanging out a shingle animal love languages hasn't been around that long I've been preparing for this. My whole life I've been working to awaken my intuition, to tune into the subtle vibrations going on around me, to make connections at a deeper level, to receive meaning and guidance from all kinds of places and remaining open to being movable, to being useful, to being of service in a variety of different fields, many different career paths. I mean, my resume is a disaster, but somehow it all adds up to much more than the sum of its parts. In fact, if you've ever had that experience of looking back over your life and thinking, oh good Lord, I don't know why I'm doing this job or why I'm in this relationship or why I live in this city or whatever it is, that doesn't add up in the moment, just understand that it's probably part of a bigger picture and you just can't see the whole picture yet and later, when you look back, when you look back, you'll start to see the value of experiences that may feel random or arbitrary or even unwelcome. I look back now and none of the gratitude that I feel for all of these experiences take away from the agony that I felt when they were happening. I will miss my dear friend Marcy until the day I see her again in the spirit dimension.

Speaker 1:

I will miss my dad in body. He was wonderful. In his physical body it was. We had this joke he would call me his favorite daughter and his only daughter and I would call him my favorite dad, and so many little things like that that they're wonderful, suspect. They're part of why we choose to incarnate in physical bodies, with all of the challenges that often come along with it, though there too are the joys, transitions. I would not be doing the wonderful heart life work that I'm doing today. I had to allow for what felt incomprehensible and deeply, deeply, excruciatingly painful at the time, in order to pave the path and open up to a deeper level of experience of what it means to be a human animal here on planet earth. And the the more and more I have walked this path and the more steps I've taken forward, and I don't want you to miss here and think that it's been some kind of nirvana. It's been very challenging. There have been sessions that I've done where I've just left me shaking my head going. I don't know if I'm going to look for this and other sessions have been absolutely magical, full of synchronicities and deep insights and wild happiness, and it's just the evolution, the uncovering of what it means to be alive, and I just I kind of am at a loss for words.

Speaker 1:

It's not the easiest thing in the world to podcast your own deeply personal story. I'm sure that you can relate if you're listening to this and I encourage you to use it as a template to get comfortable with imperfection, to make friends with life in progress, if you're struggling with that. Or perhaps you're listening to a podcast about animal communication and there's this part of you that relates to what I was sharing about. Oh, if only, or oh, I wish, or oh, I'm not intuitive. I have students say that to me sometimes or clients oh, I'm not intuitive and I can see so clearly that you are. Oh, I'm not intuitive and I can see so clearly that you are, but this person, for whatever reason, just doesn't yet perceive that in themselves. I just encourage you to recognize that you are and that you don't have to have a logical 3D left-brained reason for why you want to take the next step forward into this world. The only reason you need is an inner pull, an inner call, a curiosity, a sense of wonder, noticing there's something for me here.

Speaker 1:

The litmus test I often use is when I think about myself on my deathbed. That used to be a scary thought and now it's just a centering thought. I think of myself as if I was St Francis, not because I think that I'm St Francis, but because one of my guiding quotes if you have some quotes that you really love that are kind of guiding lights for you one of mine is the vignette about someone asking St Francis of Assisi, who was the patron saint of animals if this was your last day on earth, what would you do with it? And St Francis supposedly looked around and he said well, I'd probably weed the vegetable garden, because that's what needs doing today. That's my definition of a life well-lived. There's no long bucket list with unchecked items on it. There's no unresolved issues or broken relationships. There's only the vegetable garden and the weeds that are choking out the young plants. He's caught up. He said yes when it was the right moment to say yes. He said no when it was the right moment to say no. He's deeply tuned in with and congruent with his own inner highest expression of who he is, his soul, his embodied spirit, his intuition, his inner teacher, and he's at peace, and it gives us a different framework through which to see the evolution of our life path. If it's a yes today and it's a yes tomorrow, today and it's a yes tomorrow and it's still a yes, it's probably a yes, and you're not making a commitment towards anything other than your own curiosity, the inner tug or pull to open up, to experience yourself through a new lens, in a new light. If you're watching the video version, I love how suddenly the little bird decals on my window are refracting the light and creating a beautiful rainbow behind me. I think that is where it feels right to end today's episode.

Speaker 1:

That is the story of how I became a professional animal communicator and as a PS. If you're wondering, where did the name animal love languages come from? Where did that come from? How did I cook that up? Where did that come from? How did I cook that up? Well, you're probably going to figure it out before I even say it. I didn't. The animals gave it to me. They said you will call your program, your practice, your business, animal love languages. And I am still unpacking everything that that means.

Speaker 1:

And as a PPS, this podcast came to me the exact same way. Pps, this podcast came to me the exact same way. I had a background in the precursor to podcasting, which was teleconferences, and I had run a popular teleconference in a different iteration of me, in a different career path, and they said the podcast will be called let's Talk to Animals and we're now in our fifth season. So it's just really remarkable the wonderful, wonderful creations that can come through us when we partner with the animals to live our shared highest and best life. So I hope this episode has inspired you to accept yourself wherever you find yourself on your life's path right now, to open up, to saying yes to things you're curious about animal communication or otherwise to self-acceptance when things fall away, when new things roll in, to generate an inner acceptance of flexibility, being willing to be movable, be willing to be of service, being willing to surprise yourself with the wonderful, wonderful ways that you can contribute to this world, and I'd love to hear about them.

Speaker 1:

So if you have found this episode supportive, inspiring, helpful, please drop me a comment and let me know. It helps me keep creating content that will hopefully be of service to you in some small way. If you have ideas or questions that you'd like to see me address in a future episode, let me know that too. And if you have someone in your life who loves animals and is animal communication interested or curious, please do share this episode with them. Perhaps it will help them take that next step forward on the path, and I will see you back here in two weeks for a fresh new episode of let's Talk to Animals. I'm sending you and your inner species family all my love. Bye for now, thank you.

Animal Sensitive - My Story
Journey to Animal Communication and Intuition
Discovering Reiki and Inner Wisdom
Navigating Grief and Animal Communication