Category — People

My house sale recorded last Friday.  Hooray!  It had sat empty for nearly two years.

TWO YEARS!

Yeah, I know that’s pretty ridiculous.  I tried to sell it myself for about 6 months, maybe more, but for over a year, I did nothing to sell it, nothing to rent it, and very little to maintain it.

When I finally decided that I wanted to sell, I wasn’t able to.  I put new carpet in, made from recycled pop bottles; my parents came and helped tile the counters in the kitchen.  We cleaned, spruced up the yard and I even hired a Realtor.  Still, the house wasn’t moving.  Yes, I know it’s not a great real estate climate right now.  Thanks.

I am one of those people who believes that you make your life what it is.  I believe that when I’m ready for something to happen, the universe will align things so that it can happen.  And I was ready to sell my house – well, mostly.

I’ve done enough work on myself to know that, if the house wasn’t selling, it wasn’t just because of the market.  I knew that there was something inside me that was keeping me from moving forward.  The house was the last piece of the life I had chosen for myself – my white picket fence – and I hadn’t let it go.

At the point that I learned about Diana Reinig, I had already reduced the price of my house, and I was considering reducing again, to a point where I’d be a little less than comfortable.  Walking out of work one day, a friend who works in the same building asked how the house sale was going.  We chatted a bit, and, after confirming that I am in fact “woo woo“, she offered up the name of a woman who does energy work on houses.  That is, she cleans negative energy out of houses.

I checked out her website, and found that she did more than house clearings.  She also did work on people’s energy fields, energy healing.  Fabulous!  I had done work with other woo woo types, and especially enjoyed sessions with Sally Baldwin a woman who channels.  I got a lot of good information and gained perspective from her channeling sessions, but I felt that, with the house, I needed a little more help breaking out of the place where I found myself hung-up.

So I contacted Diana.  We talked a little over email about what type of session I was looking for and found a time to talk over the phone.  I wanted a house clearing, but I also wanted to work through any energy blockages I had within myself.  For the one-hour fee of $150 she could likely do both.  That seemed like a deal to me!  I was considering lowering the price of my house a lot more than $150, so I thought I’d give it a try.  The woman who gave me Diana’s name had used Diana for a house she was having a hard time selling, and it had sold in less than a week.

So I scheduled a telephone reading, told my Realtor not to lower the price of the house and waited.

I shared my plans with a few friends.  The biggest question I got was “how can she do that over the phone?”  I don’t really know, but here’s how I understand it: when you’re working with energy, it’s not like you’re working on a car, or on someone’s yard.  You’re not working in the dimension where touch and sight live.  You’re working in the dimension where the energy lines up.  Kind of like the way I can jump on a computer anywhere and change my website.  I don’t need to be in the same room with the server.  Once you’re working with energy, time and space don’t so much matter.  That’s easy enough for me to believe, so the idea of a phone session was no problem for me.

My session with Diana was excellent.  It was like working with the most direct, up-front and knowledgable help-desk person you’ve ever experienced.  She asked a few questions, but it seemed only to confirm that she was on the right track.  She began by working through the layers of my energy.  She was able to identify specific blockages I knew were there, blockages I had already worked through on my own and others about which I had no clue.

Not only did she identify blockages, but she was able to release them – well, the ones I was ready to release anyway.  And she was able to give me insight into and suggestions for how to handle specific blockages (specifically relationships with certain people) that weren’t ready to go.

Fortunately, the house was ready to go.

I laughed out loud when she told me that Leigh had some energy stuck in the yard.  Really, really funny, as that was the last thing Leigh was connected to at the house.  She was coordinating its upkeep and had been quite resentful of the yard for a good long while.  There were a lot of other things that were actually keeping it from selling (Leigh’s energy was just causing her some discomfort), and Diana was able to release my energy from the house and align the energy of the house with the energy of some new buyers she saw coming my way.

Aside from the house issues, we talked about my upcoming trip, my writing, leaving Libby with Leigh, and even acne.  I left the session (it ended up going an hour and a half, but I was happy to have gone over) feeling lighter.  I had immediate response to some of the work that was done (I no longer felt tied to the house or the life I had wanted to live, and I no longer felt the unnerving sense that I was just barely surviving), while effects of some of the work took longer to feel.  Diana told me it would probably take a little while for the house to move, and to wait a couple of weeks before reducing the price again.

And I waited.  On the 13th day, my Realtor called to see if I wanted to reduce.  It was a Friday.  Confident that I was on a new path and that the house would find its new owners, I told her I wanted to wait until Monday.  Against her nudging, we left the price the same.  The next day – two weeks after the reading – I got my first offer.

Hooray!

That offer was the one that would stick.  It wasn’t full price, but it was close, and I had always considered any reduction in price an investment in myself and the new path I was choosing.  Sure I could have waited longer, but there are still 4-6 other houses for sale within 2 blocks of the house, and I was ready to move on.

It turned out that, through the twists and turns of the 30-day close (during which, Mercury was in retrograde almost THE ENTIRE TIME), the buyers were so in love with the house, that they were willing to hold tight as all manner of insanity ensued.  Several things came up that would have allowed them to walk away, but they didn’t.  In fact, the insanity pushed the closing just outside September, which is exactly what Susan Miller (and my mom) had been telling me to do.  Last Friday, we recorded, and ownership passed from me to the new owners.

My mom laughs every so often and says “who sells their house in two months in this market?”  Good question.  Answer:  someone who believes they can.

I have been waiting to post about my experience with Diana until the house was sold.  I wanted to see how it all played out.  I’ve recommended Diana (and also Sally) to a number of my friends and co-workers.  Some have already contacted her and had lovely experiences.  Some of them are people I would never have expected to be open to energy work.  I’ve put links in my sidebar to their websites.  I’m starting to think of sessions with them the same way I think of doctor’s appointments:  I can go to them when I’m really hurting, but if I check in every so often for routine maintenance, maybe I won’t find myself really hurting as much.

My friend Michele is a champion of creating the life she wants.  A little over a year ago, she created a project to help her focus on the joy in life.  ISpyJoy.com is a beautiful website where people share pictures of the joy they see in their everyday lives.

As I said, Michele is a champion.  Just about a year after creating the website, she got an email from Toni Childs, a famous recording artist who has put together the Cause: You’re Beautiful project that focuses on the beauty within all women.  She wanted Michele to contribute to the project as a featured author, telling her story of beauty.  Let me say that again:  one year after developing a project to help her through a rough time, Michele was calling a famous recording artist on her cell phone to talk about collaborating.  How wonderful!

Take a look.  Here’s Michele’s page.  Right now it tells the inspiring story of how she walked through a very challenging part of her life to find joy.  It will be updated monthly, and I can’t wait to see what she and the other authors have to share.

I love these projects.  It’s wonderful to know that there are people in the world following their dreams, and finding their joy.  It helps me remember that everyday is a gift, and every step I take a choice.  I can choose to live in joy and in beauty, and when I do, I’m in wonderful company.

I got to go hiking today with my mom and her good friend Karla.  We walked the White Cloud trail that winds through the hills around Sun Valley.  The views are really great.  I grew up here, and the hills and mountains make me feel alive and at home all at once.

The wildflowers were still out a little bit, the mullen was everywhere, we saw two little chipmunks, and the morning rain made the hills smell like sagebrush.  The best part, however, was spending time with Mom and Karla.

The two women have known each other for probably 20 years and have been good friends for the last 10.  I like spending time with them.  They enjoy each other immensely and ask nothing in return.  Do you know how rare that is?  How lovely?  There’s no pretense, no performing.  Just being.

When I measure my friendship – how good a friend I am to others – this is the measure I use.  Can I just love the other person?  Can I let them be themselves and give myself permission to do the same?  That’s what I see when I spend time with Mom and Karla.  It’s beautiful.

Thank you, ladies!  You are beautiful.  Your friendship is something bright and wonderful in this world.

When is the last time you ran into someone, and knew almost immediately, that you would get along famously?

It happened to me last night.  A woman across the table from me at the dinner before a volunteer gig said, “are you Kristin Flickinger from Sun Valley, Idaho?”  I am, in fact.  Turns out she grew up in the same small town in Idaho that I did (it’s Ketchum, actually), and although we had friends in common, we never knew each other.  She asked me this while playing with my cell phone, which I’d left at an empty place setting, and abandoned once I saw that there was space next to my co-workers.  I wedged myself between two people I knew, because I wasn’t feeling particularly social.  And, now here was some random woman with my cell phone in her hand asking about where I’d grown up.

Oddly enough, she knew who I was, not because she recognized me from Idaho, but because she’d been working a volunteer fair a couple of days earlier with someone who did know me, but wasn’t sure it was me when I walked by (probably because I was totally scowling that whole day).  Too funny that, two days later, we were volunteering at the same event – and sitting at the same table.

I reclaimed my phone, and we started chatting – and laughing.  After a few hours of volunteering and making each other laugh, she decided to sign up to volunteer again the next morning – today – so we could hang out a bit more.  We swapped-out our volunteer partners, and ended up monitoring a hole-in-one prize (it was a golf tournament).  We spent five straight hours laughing, talking about growing up in the Wood River valley, and giving each other a raft of crap.

I think it’s pretty awesome to be able to meet someone Monday night, and by Tuesday afternoon have inside jokes that made us both laugh uncontrollably.  It was a nice reminder that I don’t know how I’ll get along with a person when I meet them.  (I know.  I sound like Forrest Gump.  It’s still true.)  Everyone has the potential to be a fast-friend -or even someone I grew up next to and never knew!  The only way to find out is to take the opportunity.  Next time I’ll try to sit next to the person I don’t know – even when I’m feeling antisocial.