Once Upon A Connection

09/03/2026

OUAC has published it's very first newsletter - long emails are...well, I think a newsletter rings truer to my 1890's healing cottage. Going forward the newsletter lives on its very own page on my website:

I hope you will take a moment and read The Buttercup.
https://www.onceuponaconnection.com/the-buttercup-our-newsletter

A letter from me before you go dig in:

It's spooky season in one of America's most haunted little towns, and I am writing to you from inside a storybook: a cottage built in 1890, on a lane of healers, with a dragon at the door and a fall calendar that is bursting.

New classes. New magic. Technology I've dreamed of bringing you. A season built for exactly what October does to us: turns us inward, makes us braver, and lets us play with the mysterious.

I cannot wait to show you all of it. And IT includes: a season of classes that are intuitive, a little witchy, deeply somatic, and made for healing; magic meeting science through vibroacoustics and biofeedback; Limena and her trademark; and a famous psychic who found me in an airport. YEP. READ ON!

And I'll share the very human part of this story, because it belongs to you too: I did not want this move. Leaving my beloved Tower was beyond my control, and I resisted it with everything in me. But the universe wasted absolutely no time showing me why it had to happen.

The cottage holds the work the way the work always wanted to be held. The neighborhood is a lane of healers and makers who welcomed me like family. There's room now for the small candlelit circles AND the big art-filled nights. Sometimes the cauldron gets hot because something is transforming in it, and like Wren leaving her lighthouse for her cottage on the hill, I came out of that fire more myself than I've ever been. Buttercup Cottage is the full bloom of Once Upon a Connection. And you're invited into every petal of it.

From the cottage,
Shannon

09/02/2026

Would you like to help name two new friends now working at Buttercup? Submit your ideas for names in the comments! When they are named they will get a proper story.

Green Art Glass & An Amethyst Dragon: Two new friends have taken up residence at the grounding altar.

When you enter my studio, I ask that you pause at the Giving Hands bowl with the beautiful stones, set your intentions and leave what is not yours to carry inside.

And before you leave to go home, I ask that you stop at my Ground Table – a little altar to center your energy and set your intentions for walking life after your time of rest and reset.

Until this week, the grounding altar had a piece of paper with words to guide you and an amethyst bell to signify your intentions are set.

The bell - she has company now.

The first is a little amethyst dragon. Of course she is. This cottage is kept by dragons, and amethyst is the old stone of calm, protection, and clear sight, so she has taken her post beside the bell like she was always meant to be there, a tiny deputy of the one who guards our door.

The second came home with me from California. I spent late August in the redwoods at 1440 Multiversity, deep in my doctoral intensive, on a campus named for the 1,440 minutes we are given in every single day. Green art glass is woven into muted stone and wood architecture and through that land on purpose: pieces placed to catch the forest light and teach a quiet skill, the skill of noticing. Here is the part I love: the human eye can distinguish more shades of green than any other color. We are built, at the level of our very cells, to notice green. So the glass isn't decoration. It's an invitation to look again.

They had a few pieces for sale – left over from when 1440 was constructed, and one of them stopped me. It is, by pure accident or by no accident at all, shaped for a resting human hand, with a soft indent exactly where a thumb wants to land – kind of like an ergonomic computer mouse. They had perfect cube-shaped glass but this one, with the price tag labelled “blob art glass” – a tag that had been worn off from clearly sitting on the shelf for years – this one was meant to come to Buttercup.

So this is the altar's new ritual, and it's waiting for you: rest your hand on glass that was made to teach noticing, take one of your 1,440 minutes and spend it entirely on your intention, ring the amethyst bell, and say goodbye to the little dragon on your way back into the world.

And to honor these friends, we will be working on naming our dragon friend and renaming Blob to something more deserving.

One deliberate minute. That's what grounding is. The altar just got very good at asking for it.

So let’s get these girls NAMED!

08/30/2026

The Deepening – Exclusive Couples Intimacy Retreat Fueled By Ancient Sensual Rituals October 2027

LOVER - NOT ROOMATE

You know your partner is your lover, not your roommate.
But life took the fire and handed back a calendar.
The Deepening is where you trade the agenda for each other.

FOUR DAYS DEDICATED TO EACH OTHER

- Breathe each other's desires.
- Touch that relearns how to listen.
- Rituals older than the shame that tried to bury them.
- Sensual Auras mapped and clairvoyant connection.
- Four days. One mountain. The two of you, unmanaged.

WHAT I BRING: The Human Me

- I have lived this work, not just studied it.
- I have been too tired, stretched too thin, and found my way back to love anyway.
- I will not promise you a lifetime of daily romance.
- I will hand you the tools to bring your intimacy out to play, for good.

THE CREDS

- Certified somatic healer. Trauma-focused nervous system practitioner.
- Doctoral student in Somatic Psychology.
- Training with the Somatica Institute, the method behind the award-winning series Virgin Island, on the path to Certified Somatic S*xologist.
- Contributing writer for Kiss & Tell Magazine, where the unspoken gets spoken.
- Clairvoyant Reiki practitioner. All of it, woven into four days for you.

THE CONTAINER: The Castle

- A historic stone castle, held privately on a mountaintop.
- A private chef. A saltwater pool. A spa on the bluff open to the stars.
- But the Castle is the container, not the product.
- The product is the two of you, different, on the drive home.

IT STARTS BEFORE THE MOUNTAIN

- An engine runs optimum when it's primed.
- Three months of sparks arriving in your inbox before you ever drive up.
- Sealed letters that only open at certain moments on the mountain.
- A sexy weekend is great. We make sure you don't leave it there.

YOUR INVESTMENT

- You are not buying a weekend away.
- You are investing in the relationship that exists on the other side of this work.
- Embodied work means you live it, feel it, keep it.
- My greatest honor is when clients graduate from needing me.

WHERE YOU ARE AT

- Not for couples in crisis. Not therapy.
- For couples who are already good and ready to stop performing intimacy and start living it.
- Intimacy is a soul connection, not a body performing to a mythical standard.
- Your love is your love. Always LGBTQIA+ affirming.

THE APPLICATION

The room is small on purpose, so the work can be rich.
The couples who apply earliest shape it.
Ten minutes to apply, and the application is where the connection work begins.
onceuponaconnection.com/the-deepening

**ra

08/30/2026

I am INCREDIBLY proud to share that I am now a regular contributor to Kiss & Tell Magazine - a platform that covers sexual health, mental wellbeing and physical health honestly and without shame.

At 49, something happened to my body - to a body part that sounds a lot like a dinosaur named Clint. I'm also reclaiming words made ugly by others - so the real word is proudly shared below, in the article title, and all over the article.

When it happened, I could not find it written about anywhere. I searched at 2 a.m. like so many women do, and I found fetishes, products, and silence.

This is about a real woman's health issue that doesn't stop at the physical - it seeps through your mental health, and societal messaging makes it stick to your nerve roots.

Today, my first article was published - if I can help at least one woman who is rocked by her meno transition with little to no answers, then I can know I made a difference. Keep talking ladies. It is critical.

Menopause hit in a way very few talk about and it left me rocked. Frankly, it left me broken. And the narratives Google searches returned sent me into a literal tailspin.

So I wrote it myself. And today, Kiss & Tell Magazine published it.

This story is raw, funny, honest, and it ends with a dragon (I mean it's me writing it so yes - a dragon). It is for every woman moving through the menopause transition who has ever wondered if she was the only one. You are not. You never were.

And if your dinosaur named Clint gets kidnapped when meno hits, you now have this article - instead of a 2am desperate search of despair.

Read "The Day I Lost My C**t" at the link. Then send it to a woman who needs it.

Her cl****is vanished in her 49th year. A somatic healer's unfiltered account of cl****al atrophy, hysterectomy, menopause, and how the stories we absorb shape our bodies.

08/28/2026

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🌕🐉 Last night, under the eclipsed Sturgeon Moon, I published a fairytale. MAGIC, SOMATICS, and the hint of some SPECIAL SOULS WITHOUT BONES you might find MENDING at the cottage..

The sky did something rare while I did it. It hung a giant moon over the redwoods, dragged it 96% into shadow, and let the glow hold at the edge — a moon named for a creature with ancient roots, refusing to go dark. And the story I released beneath it? A story about a mender who was hidden away, but still had a glow.

I could not have planned it. That's rather the point.

It's the story of a healer, a lighthouse, a bell that rings in the chest, a dragon who learned to pause before breathing fire, and a stone wall that turned out to be something else entirely.

It's fiction swirled with the science and lived experience of Somatics. And like all the best fairytales, it's also the truest thing I've written.

If you are standing at the start of a big, hard change right now — if the bell in your chest is ringing so loudly you can't hear anything underneath it — this one is for you, especially.

Read "The Wall Outside the Window: A Story of Wren, Her Dragon and the Soma" on the She Writes page at https://www.onceuponaconnection.com/she-writes/the-wall-outside-the-window-a-story-of-wren-her-dragon-and-the-soma

And if you look real hard, you might just catch a glimpse of Wren and her friends mending with a touch of salt water around the yellow cottage.

Your nervous system is a faithful student, and it remembers shapes: a name, a dynamic, a view from a window. It will ring its bell at every echo, trying to keep you safe. The bell will call your dragon. The bell is not the problem. The dragon is not the problem. The bell and the dragon without the p

08/27/2026

🌼✨ Some collaborations just feel like exhales.

I'm so happy to finally share this one: Once Upon a Connection is collaborating with Bloom. Mind.Body.Soul in Gambrills! 🧘‍♀️

While our storybook cottage in Historic Ellicott City is now home base, my Anne Arundel community has been with me from the very beginning - and you deserve somatic wellness close to home.

Bloom is such a peaceful, intentional space and Roxy has clearly poured her heart into that intention: truly zen, beautifully held, and run by people who understand what it means to create room for a nervous system to rest.

Starting this fall, select circles, classes, and gatherings will alternate between the Buttercup Cottage and Bloom - including our Trauma In My Bones Somatic Book Circle, which has just a couple of spots left. 📖

Two beautiful spaces. One intention: helping you come home to yourself.

Go show Bloom some love - and stay tuned, more to come. 💛

📍 Buttercup Cottage · 8361 Court Avenue, Historic Ellicott City
📍 Bloom. Mind.Body.Soul · Gambrills

08/25/2026

🩷

08/24/2026

Some news I have been holding until the ink dried: Once Upon a Connection has a new permanent home and a second collaborative space. 🗝️

For years I described a dream in dream words. A Wellness Way. A Healers Hall. An Artists Avenue. A street where the acupuncturist knows the painter who knows the somatic healer, and a woman can walk one lane and touch every kind of care. This month, an unforeseen opportunity I had long hoped for opened up, and it turns out that street is real. It is called Court Avenue, in Historic Ellicott City's Arts and Culture District, on the lane once known as Lawyers Row that is quietly becoming a row of healers and artists.

Our new home is a century-old yellow cottage the family who has loved her for decades calls Buttercup. Parking at the front door with a reserved space for my 1:1 clients. A garden path down to a patio for healing outside on soft evenings. A gathering room for our circles and art, a treatment room where the amethyst mat already waits, and for the first time, everything on one level. No more stairs. That has been on my heart for years.

Bigger classes, workshops, and events will happen at the Capitoline Center, the historic 1843 courthouse turned arts and culture hub, thirty steps from our door. The studio got a little smaller. Our resources just got much bigger.

Every scheduled session and event continues as planned at the new address: 8361 Court Avenue, Ellicott City, MD 21043.

And for my Anne Arundel friends: I have you, and now I can tell you exactly how. I will be seeing AA clients by appointment at Bloom Mind. Body. Soul. Roxy's beautiful, peaceful new studio just minutes from where we started. The moment I stepped inside I understood the space completely, and Roxy's heart for collaboration matches everything this community is about. Closer to home for you, held with the same care.

Come make an afternoon of it. Latte on Main Street, ghost tour at dusk, tea on at the cottage. September, we step into a city made for our work. 💙

And a special teammate joining us - right now, a craftsman in Italy is creating a special historic style sign to adorn the front of our building - complete with a dimensional dragon head - she will keep the watch as you step over the threshold to healing.

onceuponaconnection.com