Once Upon A Connection

09/16/2026

Somatic Reminder 08- Your shoulders are answering a question no one asked out loud.

The body braces for a load whether its a heavy box or a heavy week - the shoulders are often the first to volunteer. They carry the tension of every "I'm fine" we've ever said.

A simple body scan to ask your shoulders to drop followed by a noticing of how tight you held them can start to give them some rest.

09/12/2026

For my 50th birthday, I got myself a gift. And the gift arrived today.

I strolled into that studio over the summer and put on the dress that I designed - the dress that was hand sewn by a collective of stunning women in the Ukraine - Dress Art Mystery.

DO THE PHOTOSHOOT - LOVE THE YOU THAT GETS TO BE HERE - document who you are in all the stages. I thank God and the universe and The Ancient Mother Cailleach of my ancestors and all that got me here to have the privilege to breathe air at 50 years.

I just wrote a book that details the slaughter of women of my blood back to the 1400s - one of these is going in that book and you can bet I will be shouting their stories.

Get bold Ladies.

Unapologetically. Grateful. Shouting. Sage. Sophia. Thankful.

Big shout out to Stacey Bee of Atomic Cheesecake Studios. This is beyond beyond.

09/12/2026

For my 50th birthday, I got myself a gift. And the gift arrived today.

I strolled into that studio over the summer and put on the dress that I designed - the dress that was hand sewn by a collective of stunning women in the Ukraine - Dress Art Mystery.

DO THE PHOTOSHOOT - LOVE THE YOU THAT GETS TO BE HERE - document who you are in all the stages. I thank God and the universe and The Ancient Mother Cailleach of my ancestors and all that got me here to have the privilege to breath air at 50 years.

I just wrote a book that details the slaughter of women of my blood back to the 1400s - one of these is going in that book and you can bet I will be shouting their stories.

Get bold Ladies.

Unapologetically. Grateful. Shouting. Sage. Sophia. Thankful.

Big shout out to Stacey Bee of Atomic Cheesecake Studios. This is beyond beyond. I just wrote a book and one of these is going to grace those pages.

09/12/2026

You may have seen I moved...I did and a world opened up for you and for me.

Whether we've met or not - I'm reintroducing myself - I'm Shannon. I'm a mom of six, a veteran, and a risk analyst who has spent years finding the signals in the noise. I took that skill and turned it toward helping women and couples find their own signals and beacons in the noise of life: demands, overstimulation, exhaustion, trauma impacts (and by the way nobody gets to define your trauma other than you).

I'm a certified somatic healer, certified in trauma-focused nervous system regulation, a certified meditation instructor, and an intuitive Reiki practitioner.

I combine somatic healing with energy work and art to help my clients come back to themselves, and then to others, as they are ready.

I work 1:1 and in small group classes with women and couples who are holding everything together and paying for it in their bodies: the racing mind, the tight chest, the writing it off to "I'm fine."

Through somatic sensing, guided meditation, Reiki, and art and sound as healing tools, I help you learn what your own nervous system has been trying to tell you. I also create bespoke illuminated intimate portraiture celebrating the mind, body, and aura.

This fall the cottage doors are open with a full lineup of small group classes and evenings, from a word-reclamation ritual to intuition training to a paint night with a healing twist.

The lineup and dates are in the graphics; details and booking at www.onceuponaconnection.com/events.

My work is complementary to and never a replacement for medical and mental health care. Many services HSA/FSA eligible. If your body has been asking you to slow down and listen, come let it be heard. I always welcome an email and a conversation to answer your questions.

09/05/2026

A couple of days ago I promised to share a story about a psychic at the airport.

Promise delivered. And wherever you are at right now, there might be a little something in this for you.

A little dose of 😱 sprinkled with some🧙‍♀️🪄 A dash of wisdom and a whole lot of empowerment for the woman entering her SAGE ERA and doubting her worth.

Here it is:

After my very vanilla and minimalist response and my zillionth inquiry as to why she asked me that, she nodded like I had confirmed something she already knew. Because she had. She responded to me: “Because I am a psychic and I do similar work. I wanted to ask you when we had a little privacy – ...

09/05/2026

If you've ever been told your s*x life has an expiration date, watch this.

Dr. Angela Wright is speaking at Kiss & Tell Magazine's Menopause Redefined conference (Oct 1–2) on hormones, burnout, and s*x in midlife — and her intro is worth a minute of your day 👇
youtu.be/953UAaOIz6U

As someone who writes about pleasure in all facets and stages of adult life - recently on navigating cl****al atrophy - https://www.kissandtellmagazine.com/cl****al-atrophy-menopause/ - I can tell you this is exactly the honest, shame-free conversation we need more of.

Come join us — early-bird ends Sept 17: kissandtellmagazine.com/menopause-live-talk-conference/

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

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 s*xy 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 s*xual 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.