Chiron: Healing from the Heart

© 2014 by Kerry Keegan, Guest Blogger

All Rights Reserved

It’s my pleasure introduce you to our guest blogger, Kerry Keegan. I “met” Kerry when she responded to my call for personal stories related to my Chiron Research. (See Research Update at the end.)  I was so impressed with the dramatic way she has aced Chiron’s challenging, but ultimately healing course in her life, especially at her Chiron Return; I asked if she’d be willing to share her experiences with my readers. Lucky for us, she said yes!

The Radical Virgo has focused on a lot of material about Chiron, but we haven’t had a Chiron article in some time. During this retrograde winter where we’re being asked to review so many things in our lives, what’s left to heal belongs on the top of the list. As a wonderful bonus, Kerry is an astrologer with expertise and tremendous personal experience with Chiron’s archetype. Since I am unable to do readings as I pursue my writing career full-time, Kerry is someone I heartily endorse for referrals. ~ Joyce

Prior to becoming an astrologer myself, in my twenties one of my first astrology teachers remarked that my life would predominantly be about healing. This piece of information seemed to bounce along the surface of my awareness, for I hoped to steer far off that course by sheer will power.

This theme resurfaced again in my forties, when I heard a clear voice in my head, as I shifted out of my body in the moment my car was hit from behind in a motor vehicle accident. From my new vantage point – somewhere above the scene, looking down at my limp body behind the wheel of my car – I became aware that I needed to make a choice. And I had to make this choice in a matter of seconds.

A welcoming omnipresent voice, warm and radiant merged with me. Very clearly I heard, “You have completed what you have set out to do, and you have done it perfectly. You are done with that commitment. We consider this an A+. You are complete.”

As I recall, there were no edges to my consciousness, and my reaction to this information was intensely passionate. The moment seemed timeless, and a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions raced through me in a second. I recall thinking, “I still have a very long To Do List.” In disbelief of the  message I just heard, my heart responded: “How could I possibly be done?” Was it not I who was in control of my life? Was that just an illusion? How could I have been so wrong to think I could decide when it was time to go? “Who would take all of my responsibilities?” I could think of no one.

At that time my life seemed impossible; I was making it through my days by sheer determination. So I became vividly curious in that instant – if I really did deserve an A+ on my life to date, didn't I have to stay alive long enough to feel complete and feel satiated with the experience? At least I should get to feel this A+ feeling!

But I did not feel it. I was a full-time single mom of three very energetic boys aged 9, 11, and 13. I had just dropped them off at the local pool to swim. I was dashing back home for my swimsuit when the accident occurred.

The voice in my head replied to my whirlwind thoughts: “Your boys will be fine, they are well and you have given them everything they need to thrive. What would be your reason for returning - this time?”

I sensed my time for negotiating coming to a close, so I quickly responded, "To witness and share in the joy of my children's lives as they realize their dreams!" Instantly the voice began to diminish, as I had made my choice. Somewhere in the distance I heard, "You will also have to heal your body."

At that moment I didn’t see any blood on my body, so I thought “How hard could it be to heal it?” As I was going to find out, it would not be easy. I will never forget that sensation of returning into my body – as if, like the classic cartoon image of instantly turning into stone, concrete poured down my central nervous system and immediately solidified. The contrast to the previous moment of indescribable calm, bliss and weightlessness is something I will never forget. Thus began a decade of healing.

Click Chart to Enlarge     

Kerry Keegan - Natal
Feb. 23, 1962, Fri - 9:19 AM - Framingham, MA (42N16, 71W25)
Geocentric - Tropical - Placidus - True Node

For those who want to explore the event charts of Kerry's accidents, here are the details:

Car Accident:  27-Jun-2002, 5:00 pm EST, Yarmouth, Maine
T-Chiron Rx was exactly opposite Sun in the event chart. Progressed MC is conjunct Kerry's natal Sun and natal Chiron.
  
Scooter Accident: 23-Jul-2011, 2:45 pm, Yarmouth, Maine
This occurred waxing into Kerry's Chiron Return, which was most exact 11-Mar-12 through 4-January-13. At the time of the accident, T-Chiron was exactly conjunct her Sun.

Quite suddenly my consciousness returned to my body. My first awareness was of intense physical pain, and I heard a piercing scream. The primal sound of the cry was louder than any I had ever heard. It was days later when I realized that the scream I had heard was mine, as my raw vocal chords began to heal.

It is still unclear now why ambulance paramedics did not take me to the hospital. I could stand and walk, but my head would not move in any direction. I drove myself to my nearby chiropractor's office and weakly asked for help. She surmised I was in shock. Having confidence in my self-awareness as a yoga teacher and healer, she sent me home, trusting I would know what to do next.

For two weeks, I was in a state of extreme shock. I knew, on some level, that most people in my condition would be in a hospital. I was very glad I wasn’t. I had no health insurance, so I needed to be careful with my limited resources. I was a gifted intuitive and had always relied on my inner guidance to steer me in the right direction. I was glad to have some time to assimilate the accident on my own terms and to determine an appropriate course of healing.

Interestingly, the accident happened exactly two years after the day that my former husband came home from work and announced he was leaving our family. Interpreting events from the soul’s perspective is my vocation as an astrologer. I could not ignore the profound spiritual message of this anniversary. It was time to move on and release the resentment I was carrying for my husband’s decision to leave. After all, I was a sought-after astrologer, often delivering spot-on assessments about the spiritual conflicts that resulted in physical illness and disease – think of this as the equivalent of a Master’s degree in medical astrology. I couldn’t help thinking to myself, “I have come through other serious traumas. Could this be so different?”

It was time to admit my daily life was off-the-charts stressful. In addition to full-time single parenting three boys, I was teaching five classes of yoga each week in my basement studio, operating my own accounting business and working as a professional astrologer. Running on the  adrenaline of the trauma, I attempted to continue all of these activities as I assimilated the near-death experience. 

Gradually, over the next three weeks, my body began to lose life force. My energy waned and my immense fortitude was gone. Slowly, but surely, I began to lose functioning. Upon waking, my wrists were curled in tight ball. I had to peel my fingers open and massage my arms to stop the tingling. I woke up in the night unable to move my head in any direction. I would roll off my bed onto the floor and make my way on hands and knees then straighten my body to lift my head. Slowly, very slowly, I could loosen the clenched muscles enough to move, inch by painful inch. Some days, upon waking, I couldn’t walk. I would crawl to the bathroom and wait until blood flow returned to the affected areas, allowing me to move but also revitalizing the pain. Movement did return little by little. 

The message of that omnipresent voice rang often through my mind, “You will have to heal your body.” Yeah, okay, I thought, my yoga classes should do it. So I continued teaching, even though it was very painful and grew more painful by the day. Six months later, I was down to teaching just one class of yoga a week. My spine felt bruised all the way down.

I began taking pain relief medication, which interfered with my intuitive abilities, so I decided to stop seeing astrological clients. Where had my clarity gone? I was unsure if it was due to the pain relief medication or to my herniated C6/C7 disc. Or was it the misaligned cervical spine to which I was now adjusting? None of my symptoms were consistent for more than a few days. This was very challenging; as soon as I began focusing on addressing a symptom, another one screamed out to steal my focus. 

Through it all, my intuitive guidance was clear: “Do absolutely nothing. Breathe with your heart.” My brain, however, replied “That’s absurd!” I searched out healing practitioners as if I was contracting with subcontractors to fix different parts of my body. How much history did each practitioner really need? Was it really necessary to share all of the “woo woo” aspects of the accident and its aftereffects, or just the presenting symptoms?

I went to over 17 doctors, healers, massage therapists, neuromuscular therapists, Reiki practitioners, channelers, chiropractors, and one of the top-rated back surgeons at Harvard Medical Center. It was my training and educational approach to view the events from a metaphysical perspective. Receiving very little effective results from either the allopathic medical community or from alternative healers, I knew I needed to stay positive and affirm that my body was healing. So, I smiled through all of my doctors’ appointments, assuring them I could handle this. 

They all were amazed that I appeared to be managing so well. “Wow,” they would say. “You are doing everything right!” Most decided to cheer me on, rather than prescribe a course of treatment in their own discipline. However, I was living with so much pain that, inside, I secretly believed I was a failure. I struggled with admitting that I was in pain. I felt as if I had lost my way, and I felt no love from any direction. 

Recalling that my intuition had advised me to do nothing, I silently cried out “Oh, I would love to do absolutely nothing for a while!” But I couldn’t see how I could manage to do that.

Four years later, I waited three months to see a highly recommend back  surgeon known for his work on herniated discs. I was sure he could help me end the complicated and painful symptoms throughout my body. He informed me that no one would perform disc surgery on this particular area of the spine, since it was so “nerve rich.” The chance of complications was just too high.

His next suggestion was icing on the cake of my frustration, “Perhaps you could fly to Europe and investigate where someone is experimenting with surgeries on this particular region of the spine?” This seemed highly unlikely, as my income was nearing poverty level due to my lack of work and impossibly low energy level. And, who would care for my three teenage sons? Then came the question that began to change everything.

He asked, “When are you not in pain?” To my surprise, what quickly leaped out of my mouth was, “When I am loving.”

At my response, he abruptly closed his medical chart and cheerfully said, “I cannot help you, you know what to do, and I wish all of my patients knew this.” And he left the room, leaving me with my jaw hanging open. But I did not fully understand the message then. I was confused, and this was not at all what I had wanted to hear.

Over the next several years, I reluctantly withdrew from much of my work – as a healer and yoga teacher – to come to my own yoga mat and to listen to my body’s teaching. I needed to listen to my body’s wisdom and learn to move according to a very different rhythm.

I truly wish that my experience of this healing odyssey had ended at this point. Much of my life did change. I now rose each morning, challenging myself to find – and to fully feel – the highest vibration of joy and compassion that I could imagine, both for myself and for others. I flowed with the river of life with greater ease, and began to experience life from the new perspective of a joyful heart. What was utterly fascinating to discover was that when I had a negative thought pain would shoot down my spine.

Even the slightest whine or complaint about the weather, the messy house, or the piling dishes caused pain. Whenever I wanted things to be different I experienced pain. I got the point. So, I surrendered. I cultivated acceptance and loving thoughts. This mindful practice was demanding. It required me to govern my thoughts.

I learned to reduce my pain to nervous tension. And by choosing a higher vibrational thought I could calm the nervous system. Ah, hah! I was making headway now.

Then I learned an easier way to access this loving vibration in body. It came from another part of my body, my heart. Emanating love from the heart became my healing practice. I learned how self- or heart-centered I needed to become. Yet I had more to learn about healing.

In 2011, nine years after that fateful car accident, I was riding to the store on a motor scooter when the throttle cable snapped, instantly accelerating the scooter and sending me rocketing down the dirt road at a tremendous velocity. A large pothole in the road was unavoidable, which rendered both the scooter and me airborne. I blacked out in midair but, this time, no voice spoke. My body slammed hard upon the earth. The scooter followed, landing on my leg. 

This time I embraced the ambulance driver and did not let go. I was so grateful to be looking into the young paramedic's eyes. I asked pleadingly with all the force I could muster, “Please look into my eyes and breathe with me." I bless this man to this day, as he did what I asked and allowed me to squeeze his hand with all my might. He directed his partner to give me the maximum medication allowed and then called the hospital for clearance for more.

I had sustained a tibial plateau fracture, broken ribs, and “inconclusive injuries” to my head, neck, and shoulders. The next six months while I slowly progressed in a wheelchair and on crutches provided me ample time to “do nothing” – as my intuition had previously ordered me to do – and I used the time to reflect upon my life.

I am still yielding, even as I write this, to the discomfort in my spine. I have moved into my heart, and I am still focusing on loving myself with every breath that I take. Sometimes, when I am successful at maintaining this vibration, I am utterly happy. Other days are a practice in patience, self loving, and humility.

I breathe in a new rhythm. On challenging days, I surrender even more to my breath. In my prayers, I ask to align with Gaia, our great mother Earth. I have moved to a home where I can hear the sound of the waves, reminding me, in each moment, that the earth is supporting me. I do not have to fix the earth. We can thrive in unison.

Today, I know that I am whole, even when I cannot point to a long To Do List of completed tasks as “proof” of my worthiness. I know that there is nothing wrong with me. I am invited to celebrate this, in each moment. I know I can have all that I desire.

Paradoxically, I can choose to be both free and supported. I can suspend any of my beliefs, and then choose never to pick them up again. I practice feeling the A+ that was granted me after my previous accident. I do not need permission from anyone, save my soul to feel the A+. I can choose. I am well, and I am love. I breathe and I cherish the breath.

I send my gratitude to all of the healers and loved ones who played roles in the story I am writing of my life, and send blessings to you, for reading and sharing in my experience.

~~~

Kerry Keegan, an astrologer, spiritual visionary and metaphysician, grew up in a small village on the coast of Maine. Her intuitive abilities began at a young age. Kerry cultivated and maintained friends in all forms to assist in her conscious evolution. As her passion for metaphysics grew, she easily absorbed the teachings of astrology, shamanism, yoga, medical astrology, meditation, and other internal energy practices. After graduating from Bard College and raising a family, Kerry began her career as a professional astrologer and yoga instructor. She draws upon this eclectic melding of wisdom and personal experience in her work with clients and students.  Her current passion is sharing her conversations within the multi-dimensional realms on her new blog and with her astrological clients. Kerry currently resides in Seattle, Washington. Please visit the website Messages with Anna to learn more or schedule a private session. Please email her at kerry@kerrykeegan.com.

Kerry will respond to your comments for this post. 

Photo Credit: Open-Hearted Yoga © Dirima - Fotolia.com; Kerry’s photo © Kerry Keegan 2014

NOTE:  Chiron Research Status Update

I am no longer actively seeking input into my Chiron Research pool because I am focused on other projects. However, if you have a Chiron story and don’t mind its being in the pool until I am able to use it in various future writings, I will be happy to have your submission: joyce [at] joycemason.com.

Neptune, Uranus and Pluto Cross the IC

“Of Cerberus and Blackest Midnight Born"  

Article © 2009-13 by Anne Whitaker, Guest Blogger

All Rights Reserved

The Underworld - Ancient Egypt

In my Horoscope the IC is conjunct the South Node at 28 degrees of Scorpio. Pluto, its ruler, is placed in the 12th House conjunct Mercury, Saturn, Venus, Moon and Sun in Leo. As a child I would lie in bed watching the roses on the wallpaper turn into malevolent faces as daylight faded; I had to make bargains with them before they would let me sleep.

I read voraciously, and particularly recall the works of Victorian novelist H. Rider Haggard whose myth-steeped descriptions of his characters’ adventures in Africa last century fascinated me. But da Silva, the Dutch explorer whose frozen body was found centuries after his death in a cave high up Mt. Kilimanjaro, transferred himself from “King Solomon’s Mines” to the wardrobe in my bedroom, on and off, for a couple of years. Getting to sleep was no mean feat with an imagination like mine!

My ‘real’ life in Scotland—eating, sleeping, going to school—was incidental to my inner life which was full of what I felt were the really interesting questions: Why are we alive, where do we go after death, do we live on several planes of existence at once, what is happening in other galaxies, if there are x million Catholics and even more Buddhists and Hindus, how come they are all Wrong and Damned and a few thousand members of the Free Church of Scotland are Right and Saved? 

And what would happen if you unwrapped an Egyptian mummy and I wonder if I could make a shrunken head like the Jivaro Indians and why did people paint pictures on cave walls thousands of years ago? 

These were the issues which preoccupied me for years. No-one knew about them except my maternal grandfather. He had spent time taming wild horses alone in the middle of Argentina before World War I, and in later life was the only Church of Scotland missionary to visit ill or injured foreign sailors of all religions in the local island hospital, despite the disapproval of the Free Church. “We are all God’s children,” he would say firmly to his critics—and to me. He died when I was eleven, after which I spoke to no-one until I grew up and left home about anything which really mattered to me.

As Pluto squared 12th House Venus, Moon and Sun, then crossed the IC conjunct South Node from ‘93-95, what was left of my family of origin fell apart in a particularly painful and tragic way. I had to make choices in order to protect myself from the destructive urges of other family members which involved separation from loved ones which is probably permanent.

The major decision I made during those years was that the blood tie does not give others the right to destroy your life.

I was indeed fortunate in having an astrological framework, which helped to provide a meaningful context for the pain.

As part of trying to process what was happening, I decided to compile a family history, and went back to my native island to collect some oral material from old people who knew my family back a couple of generations. The day I sat down to write it up, transiting Pluto was exactly conjunct the South Node, within half a degree of the IC.  During the same week, I looked back through some old writings of my own, and found two unpublished pieces.

      

The first was written in July 1970, six months after the start of Neptune transiting the IC. I had no knowledge of astrology then...

“... My sister and I decided to take the dog and walk from our house, just outside the town, to the Braighe, a beach very exposed to the sea well beyond the harbour. It would be a long walk but it was a beautiful briskly windy sunny day—snatched from the usual bleak incessant rains of a Hebridean July.

We took a curving route through the town, via the district of Sandwick overlooking the Beacon, which had winked reassuringly at the mouth of the harbour for as long as I could remember. We approached Sandwick cemetery; my sister walked on by, but I slowed down. The inevitability of Sandwick had been with me throughout my childhood, constant as the Beacon, but  I had never passed through its gates. Only men attend funerals on the Isle of Lewis.

"The sun is shining on the dead today!" I called to my sister. "Let's go and pay our respects." She wasn’t too keen. “Have you ever visited Granddad and Granny's grave?" I asked. "No," she said." I suppose we could do that."

We pushed open the heavy creaking gate. The graveyard, beautifully tended, sloped gently down to within a few hundred yards of the sea. I realised that I did not know where my father's parents lay.

"I remember Daddy saying that the grave was down at the bottom end to the left hand side,” my sister said. “With our English name, it shouldn't be difficult to find."

Our paternal grandfather had been posted to Lewis before the First World War and met our grandmother on his first trip ashore. English gentlemen were a great rarity in these parts, and very desirable "catches" to aspiring island girls like Granny, who had by all accounts been a strong and willful young woman. He was well and truly caught; apart from his period of war service he remained in Lewis for the rest of his long life.

My grandmother was devastated when he died; they had been married for 52 years. I remember sitting with her in her bedroom, she who had always turned herself out so elegantly propped up in bed, an old singlet of my grandfather's failing to conceal her droopy, withered breasts from my young eyes. Up to then I had never known the desolation of not being able to console another human being—or that old people ever cried. She wept and wailed and moaned, repeating:

"I don't want to live any more. What's the use, what's the use now he's away?"

Live on she did, doggedly, for nine years, lightened only by a late addition to the family. I was 15 when my brother was born. Granny was 82 and half way senile. The child was called Frederick, after Granddad; as the novelty wore off Granny slipped into senility, a querulous fractious husk, and finally just a husk, and a medical miracle, carried off at 86 with her fourth bout of pneumonia.

I was at university when she died, having become so distant from her by then that I felt nothing but a vague sense of relief ....

"I've found it!"

I had fallen behind my sister in my reverie. She was standing about twenty yards away; I hurried to the spot.

It was a plain, simple grave. A low railing ran round it. The headstone was in grey granite, with only the facts of their births and deaths etched on it in gold lettering. Noting with satisfaction, which my grandmother would have shared, the absence of 'fancy versification', I stood and looked at the grave.

Without any warning, for I had felt quiet and composed, there was a rush and a roar in a deep silent centre of my being; a torrent of desolation and grief swept through me. I wept and wept and wept, quite uncontrolled.

There they were, half my being. Where had it all gone: the passion of their early love; the conception of their children; her sweat and blood and pain as she thrust my father into the world; their quarrels, silences, love, laughter, loneliness and grief; their shared and separate lives? And this was it. On a hot beautiful day with the sea lapping on the shore and the seabirds wheeling and diving, a few bits of cloth and bone under the earth, an iron railing and a stone above. 

I was not weeping just for them. I was overwhelmed by a total awareness of my own mortality and that of all human beings before and after me. I had never felt so stricken, so vunerable, so alone.

      

The second piece, however, written in the autumn of 1971, at the end of the Neptune transit to the IC, whilst Neptune was 0 Sagittarius, shows that something else was now emerging from the underworld which would offer me inspiration and support:

(The ‘pibroch’ referred to is the music of lament played on the Scottish bagpipes.)

“It was a lovely autumn evening. D. came round for me after seven; he was going out to practice some pibroch. Would I like to come along? It was a time of perfect balance—in the weather, in the satisfaction of work which was still new enough to be stimulating, in the fact that D. and I were beginning to fall in love.

We went out into the clear air; it would soon grow dark. D. drove several miles out of town along deserted country roads to a hill above a small village. Taking out the pipes he began to blow them up, and after much tinkering, began to play. It was the first night I had accompanied D. on a practice; to avoid distracting him I strolled off down the road. D. was standing on a bank of grass at the top of the hill; beside him on one side was a little wood. On the other side of the road there was a ditch with whin bushes growing in it.

Beyond the ditch was a rusty, sagging fence; beyond the fence smooth, mossy moorland dotted with whins, their vivid yellow colour fading into shadows in the gathering dusk. Opposite the moorland, below the wood, there was a field of long reedy grass; beyond the field, the darkening Perthshire hills.

Venus Rising

I looked from the skyline right up above me; a myriad of stars, taking their lead from Venus, were growing bright with increasing intensity as the dusk deepened. A mellow harvest moon was rising, casting a glow on the hills. The air held a hint of cold. The clear notes of the pibroch in such a setting, blending with the rare state of harmony which I felt in my own life, created in me an emotional intensity which was impossible to contain; I could feel the melancholy music of the pipes flowing through me like a magical current.

By this time I had reached the foot of the hill. I was overcome with a desire to surrender myself completely to the moment. Lying down in the middle of the road, I spread out my arms, and gazed up at the stars.

I could just feel a gentle breeze blowing over my body; could hear it soughing through the reedy grass. Drifting with the music through the night sky, slipping away from awareness of myself or the present, I was a timeless spirit of the air, travelling the vastness of space on the notes of the pibroch. An unobtrusive rhythm, a pulse, began to beat: growing more and more steady, it became a whispering message in my mind:

”There is nothing to fear,” it said.  “There is nothing to fear.”

An image of my lying dead, under the earth, came to me. Such images, occurring at other times, had filled me with panic and disgust. Now, there was none of that. I could gladly have died at that moment; my flesh would return to the earth and nourish it, my spirit would soar to infinity. The pulse continued, flooding me with its light:

”There is nothing to fear,” it said.  “There is nothing to fear.”

At that point of spiritual ecstasy I felt the absolute reality of my soul. Such a moment might have lasted a second, an hour, or a hundred thousand years; but the music ceased, and the chill which was gradually taking over my body drew me back gently into the present....

The knowledge that connection was possible, glimpsed during the above experience, kept me going through the struggle to believe that life had an overall meaning, and to find my own way of making a creative contribution.

This difficult, slow process was at the core of the rest of my twenties and much of my thirties.

When Uranus crossed the South Node/IC in 1980/81, I began to study astrology, thereby fulfilling a prediction made by an astrologer I had casually encountered in a laundrette in Bath in England in the early 1970s. I also met, moved in with and later married my partner—his Scorpio Moon is conjunct my IC and South Node, and he has an Aquarian Sun and Venus. All very appropriate symbolism for the timing of the Uranus IC transit!

His steadfast support, combined with the deep awareness of teleology which many years’ practice of astrology brings, have been vital for my personal and professional growth and development from the time Uranus crossed the IC until now, as Pluto moves off that point. 

When Pluto was still transiting the IC, but from Sagittarius, I applied and was accepted for a major astrological study course. The very day that Pluto was exactly on the South Node and about to cross the IC for the last time saw me beginning the first year of study. I felt a powerful sense of standing on firm inner ground after the turbulence and trauma of the last few years—of being in the right place at the right time, of having done what I could, for now, with my family inheritance —of being ready to move on to the next growth cycle. 

Now that the outer planets have crossed the IC and moved into the Western hemisphere of my Horoscope, I feel liberated from much of the pathology of the past, and more able to use directly in the world the undoubted creativity inherited with it. Nor do I need any longer to make bargains with the shadowy figures who emerge when the light of day is dimming....

~~~

Photo Credits: The Underworld - Ancient Eqypt; King Solomon's Mines; Venus Rising

Notes:  

This article is reprinted in its entirety from Writing from the 12th House with the author's permission.    

“Of Cerberus and Blackest Midnight Born” is a quote from L’Allegro by the English poet John Milton.

Anne Whitaker lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland, UK. With a long background in adult education, generic and psychiatric social work, and private practice as a trainer, counsellor, counselling supervisor and mentor,  Anne has also been a practising astrologer, teacher and writer since 1983. She has kept a blog “Writing from the Twelfth House” since 2008, where there is now an extensive archive of in-depth astrology articles in the Not the Astrology Column section. Anne returned to her astrology practice in 2012 following a very long sabbatical. Find her blog at www.anne-whitaker.com. Contact her at info@anne-whitaker.com.