Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi everybody, it's Rosa McAllister and this is Network's Healing Circle, season seven of the recorded ones. And I think we're episode, I don't know, 6, 7, 8, I'm not sure. But the important thing is this is the last of the newly recorded healing circle calls we will be doing kind of bittersweet. So we started this many years ago, as best as I can tell, I think about 13 years ago, 14 years ago when a friend had emailed me and a bunch of others and asked if we would say a prayer or light a candle or meditate or just hold in our heart and our thoughts, A family member who was very ill and was going to be undergoing surgery and she knew that all of us were spiritual, whatever. And I remember her almost apologizing and saying, oh, if you don't mind doing this, and please if you just would, I just am counting on others who believe in the power, the power of togetherness, if we could all just hold them in our thoughts together.

(01:25):
And so that simple request turned into a whole lot more and it turned into a monthly email that we would send out to one another, sometimes more often than that, where we would ask each other to hold somebody that we knew in our thoughts, our prayers, our meditations, our candle lightings, whatever we did, and hold that person in our thoughts. And now that I'm thinking about it, it was much longer ago than that 18 years ago, I think it was 19 years ago. And that evolved into a monthly call that we would do and just kind of set up anonymously, put it out to friends and others who might be interested. Just as a way to remember that we're not alone. We're not walking alone in this earth that we are together, that we're holding onto each other. We got each other's back, however you want to think about it.

(02:30):
And that for just 20 minutes, once a month, if not more often than that, at 8:00 PM Eastern time, we would just do a call to one another and whoever wanted to tune in could do so. And because I had a free conference call account, I just put it out there and said, here's this phone number, an 800 number, just call in first Monday of the month, 8:00 PM and let's take turns and let's just do this. 20 minutes. That's all. Whether it's a song, a poem, a meditation, a Tai Chi, some kind of a meditation that we would do whatever it might be. And then seven years ago, eight years ago, we decided to start recording these at networks. And we have seven, eight years worth of these once a month healing circle calls. And sometimes we never knew exactly who was calling in. It was anonymous, you didn't have to sign up.

(03:41):
It was if the spirit moves you kind of idea. And sometimes we'd have two or three people, five people, six people. Sometimes we'd have as many as 20 or 30 people listening in. And how, I have no idea how many would tune in to the recordings once we started doing that too. So these have been available. These healing circle calls have been podcasts available through networks for these seven, eight years recordings. And previous to that for several years before that, a couple of years, I'm not sure, three, four years previous to that, they were not recorded, but we just did it and people would call in. And previous to that, they were even more occasional. And previous to that, they were emails. And actually sometimes still are. I get a request from a friend sent out to a group, Hey, if you wouldn't mind holding this person in your heart and in your thoughts or as part of a Facebook group, then I'm a part of.

(04:51):
And we realized here at Networks over the last couple of years that there are many other ways that this is happening now. And we have many of these recorded. And so we decided that at the end of this fiscal year in June of 2025, it would be our last new healing circle call. And I asked if I could lead this one because I did the first, and I've done many in between and I'd really like to do the last. So times are a little bit different now. My life is different. I'm sure your life is different than it was seven years ago, eight years ago, 12 years ago, 15 years ago, 18 years ago. Just remember who you were back then, what life was about. So I'm not sure if you can hear it, but there's a plane flying overhead. You might've heard birds earlier and you might continue to hear birds chirping. You might've even heard my sweet little rescue cat Luna come up meowing to me.

(06:10):
It's actually a helicopter. And here I am, no longer in Pennsylvania, but here in the jungle of Maui actually lying in my hammock with my sweet little Luna cat who just jumped up on my lap and my hammock. I'm not the rosa, I was back in Pennsylvania. I'm not the rosa that I was when I first moved here to Maui and lived on the west side right on the ocean and lived there for well up until just a little over a year ago. I'm a different rose in many different ways. My hair is longer and a little wilder. It's the color that it wants to be, which is kind of a gray, blonde, white something or other. My usual outfit is like my current one, shorts and a tank top. I wear slippers as we call 'em, or flip-flops more than anything else as shoes. I have two rescue kitties I told you about Luna, and the other is Maui. We rescued them from the fires that hit lion burned down our town on the west side of Maui almost two years ago. And I'm now living with my sweet love partner, another Michael. Yes, another Michael in my life.

(07:43):
And life is quite different. We live on a macadamia nut farm in the jungle, as we call it, on the side of the mountain, feeling the breeze as it's swaying me in my hammock. The Magnus trees are just forming Magnus again and a whole new season, a whole new crop is coming in. There is a whole lot of birds and we even have wild pigs here. We have flowers and vegetables growing and quiet, lots and lots of beautiful, beautiful quiet, giant trees. Breezes. My orchids are happy here, I'm happy here. And life is quite different. And in some ways life is also very much the same. I'm still at heart, the same spiritual person, the same person that is probably a little too emotional sometimes, a little too sensitive. I'm a person who probably gives more than I should and doesn't take as much I could. And that's really okay.

(09:00):
I think the birds are agreeing deep sigh. So who are you? What is different about you than say seven, eight years ago, 12 years ago? What's the same about you? Take a minute or two and listen to the birds and imagine the breeze. And while you're doing that, I want you to think back on the chapters and the changes that have happened for you, say over the past decade, the last 10 years, who were you? What did you believe in? How did you wear your hair? What did you feel like? What did you think? What did you do for work and fun?

(09:57):
Who is your partners? Your partners in crime, your partners in fun? And who are you today? And how has that changed? How have you changed and why? So if you have a piece of paper handy or you're good old trusty telephone that you can jot down some thoughts or maybe you just want to think for a couple of minutes. Think who are you? Who were you? Who are you today? What has changed? What has maybe stayed the same? What has deepened for you in you? I'm just going to allow the peace and the quiet to be in your background as you think for a couple of minutes.

(12:06):
I remember a few years ago, an old friend who I knew back in my Pennsylvania days. I had known her for a long time and I remember her contacting me and saying, who are you now? Who are you? Rosa? You just seem so different. To which I remember replying. Really, I'm still me. In fact, I feel a little bit more of me than I've ever felt before. And it's not like I was afraid to be me in the past that I was a hiding rosa. But I guess I've just embraced myself and deepened my belief in myself and the expression of myself more and more.

(13:04):
It's not that I don't care now and I did care before or vice versa, it's just time has evolved and life has evolved. And as I've been known to say, somehow life goes on even after terrible, terrible trauma and sadness and joy and good things and terrible things, life sometimes just seems to go on. And within that, I think we have an opportunity to really dig deep and find more of who we are and maybe embrace it and maybe try it on for size a little bit more and maybe not give a crap maybe. So whoever you are, and whoever you've been, and whoever you will continue to be, I hope that it's in full color. I hope that it's living large and living fully. Laughing really so loud and obnoxiously that you snort as I've been known to do.

(14:32):
And cry openly and hug openly and be yourself openly because that's a beautiful thing. And that's what we need more than anything in this world. We need you to be you because everybody else is taken. So please open your heart, open your mind, open your mouth, open your arms, and embrace this incredible life that we have. And I wish you have many birds singing and many breezes blowing, and maybe even a nap and a hammock on a gorgeous afternoon. Please continue to listen in to all our other healing circle calls that we've recorded for you and with you over the last seven or eight years, however long it's been. Feel free to share them with friends and family and the others who might enjoy And thank you. Signing off from my hammock in Upper Ya Who Maui in early June of 2025. Blessings to y'all. A little high.