Holly Hamel Life Coach

What is Sacred Darkness: The Art of Lovingly Disarming Shadows?

A 3 month odyssey on excavating, naming, and serenading our shadows. Included are: 6 penetrating group coaching calls, 6 inspiring webinars with coordinating activities, and 6 enriching coven assignments, in an intimate soul community.

The goal is deeper appreciation and integration of what we unearth- diving into the year with our consciousness expanded and radical acceptance of our Wholeness.

Typical results may include: increased capacity to hold abundance, developing self love, improved relationships, more opportunities illuminated, observing & creating more magick/synchronicities, removal of internal blocks, and integration of inner saboteur.

Overall, you may achieve more peace, happiness, and personal power to get out of your own way.

It's a 1-3 hour per week commitment and we are asking for an agreement to fully and vulnerably show up during this life changing experience.

January 25th - April 21st, 2025
Link in Bio/Comments

Asheville:

Resources for food, water, gas, and Wi-Fi. Can you please help me get this out to those who need it? Link in comments

HEALING PARTNERSHIPS (written by Aumdoc Clofine)

Developing a healthy relationship with therapeutic caregivers brings good things into your life. Finding care that suits you, and your resources, is not always an easy task. Once accomplished, the benefits are many. I encourage people to develop multiple layers of healing support. As a holistic physician, I always liked to expanding options for supporting their individually unique growth and health.

For the purpose of this article I am going to discuss ‘professional therapeutic relationships’. Professional implying that there is a monetary, or other (e.g. barter or trade), exchange for the services provided. So I am including all interactions with physicians (Medical, Chiropractic, Naturopathic, Osteopathic; Homeopathic, etc) therapists, counselors, bodyworkers, nutritionists, reflexologists, energy healers (and all other healers, of any variety, that I certainly don’t want to leave out.). These relationships may or may not be sanctioned by the state (through licensing, etc.). They may be for a single visit, though I am addressing here more long term relationships.

Often times patients and I have discussed their satisfaction with the caregivers they see. When I hear people express particular satisfaction, I have found that the relationship they have developed contains certain qualities that, in my mind, define it as a “Healing Partnership”. The criteria that define a Healing Partnership are not about the specialty of the practitioner. It is an archetype that crosses boundaries of specialty, culture and politics. While influenced by consensus reality, it really is about the relationship between two individuals. Many people have written about healthy healing partnerships in the past, so these are not new ideas.

I’d like to define some of the qualities that I repeatedly see in these Healing Partnerships. If these qualities are recognized in the relationship, then I feel fruitful healing work will come out of it. Probably most healing relationship will not fill all of these criteria. This is not a checklist; rather it is more about relationships.

Here are some qualities that I often find present in fruitful Healing Partnerships:

HORIZONTAL RELATIONSHIP
Healing partnerships are just that, a partnership between two people working together toward a common goal, in this case creating health. Traditional medicine used to be a very vertical relationships with the paternalistic physician above dictating orders to the childlike patient below. Healing Partnership are about working together and sharing power. The decisions should be shared but the final choice is ALWAYS YOURS.

REVOLVES AROUND YOUR STORY
The work is focused on your personal story. It is not a cookbook method; you could read the cookbook yourself! It is not the same thing for each person. Your evaluation, and the intervention chosen. are designed around the unique story and circumstances that are you. Utilizing the benefit of consensus common knowledge (e.g. common medical knowledge) does help guide what is done.

YOUR LIFESTYLE CREATES HEALTH
Care that fits this archetype continually focuses attention to our day-to-day lifestyle: how we eat, sleep, exercise and experience emotions for example. The daily baseline circumstances of our physical, emotional and spiritual worlds have the greatest impact on health over a lifetime. Healing Partnerships seek to empower US to transform dysfunctional aspects of lifestyle and self.

THE PRACTITIONER IS LISTENING
If your story is not being heard then care cannot revolve around your individual and personal needs. If you feel that the practitioner is not hearing you, they probably aren’t.

PROPER EXPECTATIONS
The practitioner provides you with some framework of what to expect from your work together. If instituting a new therapy, it is helpful to understand what is a reasonable trial period before expecting results. If something takes a month to work and you are expecting results in 2 days, you will be very dissatisfied and probably discontinue the therapy. Also clear expectations of approximate financial, commitments are very reasonable expectations. These issues are about clear communication.

SERVICE, NOT PRODUCT, ORIENTED
Tests and products (such as dietary supplements) can be extremely helpful when integrated into a healing program. Most importantly, any program should be about empowering you make positive changes in your life. Beware of any practice that seems to revolve around selling products or procedures. Practitioners providing products through their office (such as supplements) can be a great benefit to their clients saving time shopping, money and confusion about what to use. But if it seems more about selling the product then something is wrong.

AYNI (SACRED RECIPROCITY)
“Today for me, tomorrow for you”; Quechua speaking Andean peoples understand the sacred relationship between people and between people and the natural world. Giving and receiving allows flow of energy to occur. Giving without receiving causes emptiness. You can receive more if you are giving because you are just making more room to be filled up. So expect there to be exchange of money, trade or barter for the services rendered.

ACKNOWLEDGES OPTIONS AND AVOIDS DOGMA
Optimizing your healing journey includes expanding options for care. Having more tools to work with is a good thing. This needs to be balanced with focus so that the work isn’t too scattered. Any time something is presented dogmatically as “the only way” options are immediately limited. This leads to a path of resistance to what is being offered. Respectful approaches to care are receptive to options and choices. This expands healing opportunities.

ENCOURAGES THE DEVELOPMENT OF OTHER HEALING PARTNERSHIPS
Most individuals benefit from many layers of support and should actively cultivate this in their lives. Friends and family can do things for you that a therapist can never do. And a therapist cam help you in ways friends and families are unable to. Develop a webwork of support in your life nurturing you on many levels; body, mind and spirit.

Work with your healing partner will generally take place over long periods of time, months to years. They are relationships that often, though not always, develop into friendships as well. The intensity of the work often wax’s and wanes depending on the flow of life circumstances. At first it may be useful to do more frequent and intensive work. As issues resolve and transform, the work may lighten; only to once again naturally intensify at a later date, as needed. This ebb and flow usually is a reflection of inner and outer circumstances of the individual’s life. When there is more turmoil, the work is more frequent and fruitful. When things are more stable, the work together is less. Occasional maintenance is a good thing, regardless of circumstances. That’s called preventative medicine and is an opportunity to utilize intuition. Then you can be proactive in creating health, rather than just reactive.

Safe and Fruitful Healing Journey to you!

What does the inside of your head look like? GIFs only!

Country singer Dolly Parton wrote the songs "I Will Always Love You" and "Jolene" on the same night.

When the first song was at the top of the charts in 1974, Elvis wanted to record his own version of the song. Dolly was interested until Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis' manager, said that it was standard procedure that when the king of rock and roll covered a song - half of the rights to that song would go to him in the future. She refused it.

"I said, 'I'm really, really sorry' and cried all night. It was terrible for me, on the one hand, it's Elvis. People told me: "You are crazy." It's Elvis Presley...' but I just couldn't do it. Something told me in my heart not to do it and I didn't. I know he would rock with that song. But I couldn't.

And then Whitney Houston came along with her version and I made enough money from the rights to buy Dollywood."

She grew up in severe poverty and no one famous has done more for the education of the poor than her.

In 1990, the percentage of students who did not graduate from high school in her hometown was over 30%. She introduced the "Buddy Program", where all high school graduates received a nice sum when they graduated. It wasn't just a waste of money, she personally came and explained the concept to them - everyone should find a buddy, and whoever doesn't succeed she will find one for them. Everyone had to sign that they will graduate and do everything in their power to ensure that their buddy also graduates.

She taught young people about friendship and helping. The number of school dropouts dropped to below 6% and has remained so until today.

When 900 families lost their homes in the 2016 fires, she paid each family $1,000 for the next five months. When she came to the bank to finish the paperwork, she gave each family another $5,000 to find. A total of nine million dollars.

Also, her work - Imagination Library from 1995, was inspired by her realization that young people in rural areas and poor families already fall behind when they start school and that this prevents them from pursuing higher education.

The goal of her program was for every child in her district to receive one book, once a month, from birth to school, completely free of charge, without any conditions. It started as an initiative in her hometown and has spread to a huge number of countries around the world. By 2018, over 100 million books were distributed in this way.

She is also known for her witty statements, at the beginning of her career she said-"I'm not offended by jokes about stupid blondes because I know I'm not stupid... and I'm not really blonde either."

"Leonard Cohen said his teacher once told him that the older you get the lonelier you become, and the deeper the love you need. This is because, as we go through life, we tend to over-identify with being the hero of our stories.


This hero isn’t exactly having fun: he’s getting kicked around, humiliated, and disgraced. But if we can let go of identifying with him, we can find our rightful place in the universe, and a love more satisfying than any we’ve ever known.


People constantly throw around the term 'Hero’s Journey' without having any idea what it really means. Everyone from CEOs to wellness-influencers thinks the Hero’s Journey means facing your fears, slaying a dragon, and gaining 25k followers on Instagram. But that’s not the real hero’s journey.


In the real hero’s journey, the dragon slays YOU. Much to your surprise, you couldn’t make that marriage work. Much to your surprise, you turned forty with no kids, no house, and no prospects. Much to your surprise, the world didn’t want the gifts you proudly offered it.


If you are foolish, this is where you will abort the journey and start another, and another, abusing your heart over and over for the brief illusion of winning.


But if you are wise, you will let yourself be shattered, and return to the village, humbled, but with a newfound sense that you don’t have to identify with the part of you that needs to win, needs to be recognized, needs to know. This is where your transcendent life begins.


So embrace humility in everything. Life isn’t out to get you, nor are your struggles your fault.


Every defeat is just an angel, tugging at your sleeve, telling you that you don’t have to keep banging your head against the wall.
Leave that striver there, trapped in his lonely ambitions. Just walk away, and life in its vastness will embrace you.


- Paul Weinfield

Artwork: Dan Groover

Thank you Denise Wamsley :)

YOU'RE INVITED TO A PARTY!

Dance party, meets family reunion, meets healing online retreat, meets play therapy,

meets best friend introduction, meets comedy, meets entertainment, meets date with destiny, meets priceless life changing opportunity....

The Little Volcano: Get Your Self Together Challenge is all of this and more!

WHO THE GYST CHALLENGE IS FOR-

people that are sick and tire of being sick and tired

those ready to do the work in a FUN and PLAYFUL way

seekers of RELIEF from self sabotage and limiting habits

folks WILLING TO SHOW UP for themselves and have their LIFE CHANGED in a REVOLUTIONARY WAY.


WHO THE GYST CHALLENGE IS *NOT* FOR-

temporary changers that won't take the next steps to invest in themselves

magic pill seekers that want someone ELSE to fix them

people that refuse to help themselves even though they are not happy where they are

folks that enjoy staying in victim mode.

So what do you think? Which one are you?


The GYST Challenge changed my life back in 2020 and I keep coming back to it because I get something new each time!

It gave me so much confidence to pursue a life of my dreams! I met so many friends, had huge personal breakthroughs, became a coach and now I get paid WELL to HELP people.

I've never been happier and I WANT THAT JOY FOR YOU!

Please see my link in comments and message me for any questions. Let me know when you sign up!