“We Met on the Other Side: A True Love Story,” by Scarlett L. Heinbuch, PhD (Book Review)

I began reading “We Met on the Other Side: A True Love Story” as research for my own writing project, but Scarlett Heinbuch’s storytelling cast a spell. This book tells the true story of a shared near-death experience (NDE) with a stranger who later became her husband. It reads like a Tricia O’Malley Mystic Cove romance novel where each heroine has an intuitive, healing or artistic gift that leads her to find her perfect match–except it’s all true.

Scarlett was a single mom struggling to support two sons with special needs, while finishing her PhD and teaching college classes to make ends meet. On Fall Equinox 2005, she attended a fateful AA recovery meeting where she met the mother of David Schwartz. All her friends seemed to know and love David, but Scarlett had never met him. Listening to his mother’s plea for prayers touched Scarlett’s heart. In addition to her doctoral studies, she’s also a Reiki Master Teacher and uses affirmative prayer with laying on of hands. Scarlett felt compelled to offer her services for David, who lay in an unresponsive coma with all systems shutting down. Doctors expected him to die that night.

He survived until the next day, so Scarlett made her way to the hospital. As anyone who does alternative healing work knows, mainsteam medicine often looks on energy healing with suspicion. Scarlett persevered day after dedicated day, and the miraculous results opened many hearts and minds. In the course of treatment, Scarlett left her body and found herself in a realm of pure love, holding hands with this “stranger,” and realizing she knew and loved him with all her soul.

A review can’t do justice to the beauty and wisdom of this book. Reading it softens the heart and brings the reader along for Scarlett and David’s wild emotional ride. Throughout the text, Scarlett recounts lessons from the class on Marriage and Family that she happened to be teaching during this entire journey. As students discuss her questions and Scarlett ponders her own answers, readers can’t help considering the same issues for themselves. We join her and David in their dance of intimacy–all the longing, recognition and insecurities triggered by such a paranormal connection.

As a Reiki Master Teacher, I know how difficult it can be to explain how Reiki feels and how it flows. From now on I will recommend “We Met on the Other Side” to every Reiki student, because Scarlett offers the best description I’ve found of both giving and receiving Reiki. She receives her own profound Reiki session, and she also demonstrates how a Reiki practitioner changes and heals through the Reiki flowing to someone else. Her narration is so good that it doesn’t even feel like a description. We’re right there with her.

“We Met on the Other Side: A True Love Story” was originally published as “Waking Up to Love,” but this second edition explores Scarlett’s own NDE when she drowned in childhood. In the first edition, she hadn’t yet connected the two experiences. She now realizes that her early childhood brush with death opened her to a lifetime of psychic experiences and healing gifts. In the second edition, David also shares his feelings and memories in an Epilogue. A Foreword by Sharon Hewitt Rawlette, author of “Beyond Death” and “The Supreme Victory of the Heart” offers additional context for such incredible experiences. An Afterword by Dr. Charles H. Webb validates the miraculous nature of David’s recovery.

Scarlett also includes recommended prayers for healing–ones she said during David’s recovery. As synchronicity would have it, today (December 16, 2023) marks David’s eighteenth birthday since Reiki, prayer and true love brought him back from the Other Side. If the crazy state of our world has rocked your faith, this beautiful book will bring you back to love. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Available on Amazon.

August 2021 Specials

As always, I intuit which specials to offer each month. Given the amount of stress I’m hearing from people, I thought it was time to bring back the $77 Reiki Special. Stress suppresses immune function and makes life seem like a long, un-magical slog. Reiki not only eases stress, but it seems to smooth out the rough patches, opening people to living a more magical, synchronous life. Our unusual times offer a huge opportunity to level up. Reiki brings the energetic support to do just that.

The other special this month comes via multiple requests for it.

AUGUST 2021 SPECIALS

$77 Reiki Special

Save $8 off the usual rate for an hour of long distance Reiki, an ancient healing method rediscovered in the 19th century by the Japanese monk Dr. Mikao Usui. The “Rei” in Reiki stands for “universal” or” spiritual,” and the “ki” corresponds to the “life force energy” known as “Chi” or “prana” in other Eastern systems of healing and energy work such as feng shui, Tai Chi, Qigong, or yoga.

Thus, Reiki refers to “universal life force energy,” “divinely directed healing energy,” or “life energy of a spiritual nature,” with an emphasis on subtle energy fields rather than the physical body. By working on all the different levels, Reiki helps the body to relax into a state that allows optimal self-healing. Reiki can clear negative energies, as well as empower and support intentions and events.

This session can be scheduled for a specific time delivery while you meditate or relax, or I can set the session for delivery while you’re in deep, receptive sleep. Depending on your needs, the hour can also get delivered during an important meeting, travel or other event.

Please contact me to sign up, and share (briefly) what you’d like to support, empower or heal. If you have specific timing in mind, please share that as well. $77 (instead of the usual $85) if prepaid on or before August 31, 2021.

One-Hour Astrology Special

This special comes via client request. It can cover anything from a natal chart reading, to life path, planetary impact on health conditions and relationships, putting past or present challenges in context, and planning for the future. One hour for $177 instead of the usual $222. Offer valid if prepaid on or by August 31, 2021. Please contact me to sign up.

July 2021 Specials

As always, I intuit the month’s specials based on energies I sense. The first one’s new, second one returns by multiple requests.

JULY 2021 SPECIALS

Reiki for Release

This is a brand new special that just came to me last night as I drifted off to sleep. It’s a two-part special. The first involves a 20-minute Intuitive Coaching session, where we discuss whatever you feel it’s time for you to release. The second part is a Reiki Healing Attunement (scheduled for a later time), which adds a blast of energetic support to your release.

Reiki Healing Attunements are powerful, so this July Special is for people who have done significant work around their issue(s), feel ready to release them, but just need a little more confidence, clarity and energetic oomph. If you prefer a more gradual release process or don’t know what needs to go, then a regular Reiki treatment session and/or an intuitive or astrology reading would better serve you.

All Reiki moves wherever it needs to go, on whatever level. Many physical symptoms have mental, emotional or spiritual roots. A Reiki treatment is very gentle and sends energy to the entire body and energy field. A Reiki Healing Attunement packs much more wallop. It can empower goals, clear energies, and whoosh away whatever stands in the way of the Highest Good of All. This is why I specified which clients this special can most help.

Each of us holds onto certain people or things, even when we know we need to let them go. The anticipated pain of losing them paralyzes us from taking necessary action. There comes a time when holding onto the old someone or something creates much more pain than letting go would. Prolonging the inevitable exponentially increases the pain and grief all around. We’ve tried everything, we know what we need to do, we kind of want to do it, but we need a little extra validation and energetic oomph. If that describes you, then you’re someone these services would help.

$121 if prepaid on or before July 31, 2021. (Save $24 off the separate cost of these services.) Please contact me to sign up.

Three For Two

So many requests for a repeat of this special! Here you go:

Three hours for the price of two: save $222. This package can be used in whatever increments you choose — hour, 40-minute, half-hour, or 20-minute sessions — and for whatever services you’d like — Medical Intuition, Life Coaching, Astrology, Relationship Clarity, Soul Readings, or any other related service. $444 if prepaid on or before July 31, 2021. Please contact me to sign up.

March 2021 Specials

As always, I intuit which specials to offer each month. Given the amount of stress I’m hearing from people, I thought it was time to bring back the $77 Reiki Special. Stress suppresses immune function and makes life seem like a long, un-magical slog. Reiki not only eases stress, but it seems to smooth out the rough patches, opening people to living a more magical, synchronous life. Our unusual times offer a huge opportunity to level up. Reiki brings the energetic support to do just that.

The other special this month comes via multiple requests for it.

MARCH 2021 SPECIALS

$77 Reiki Special

Save $8 off the usual rate for an hour of long distance Reiki, an ancient healing method rediscovered in the 19th century by the Japanese monk Dr. Mikao Usui. The “Rei” in Reiki stands for “universal” or” spiritual,” and the “ki” corresponds to the “life force energy” known as “Chi” or “prana” in other Eastern systems of healing and energy work such as feng shui, Tai Chi, Qigong, or yoga.

Thus, Reiki refers to “universal life force energy,” “divinely directed healing energy,” or “life energy of a spiritual nature,” with an emphasis on subtle energy fields rather than the physical body. By working on all the different levels, Reiki helps the body to relax into a state that allows optimal self-healing. Reiki can clear negative energies, as well as empower and support intentions and events.

This session can be scheduled for a specific time delivery while you meditate or relax, or I can set the session for delivery while you’re in deep, receptive sleep. Depending on your needs, the hour can also get delivered during an important meeting, travel or other event.

Please contact me to sign up, and share (briefly) what you’d like to support, empower or heal. If you have specific timing in mind, please share that as well. $77 (instead of the usual $85) if prepaid on or before March 31, 2021. Please contact me to sign up.

Three For Two

So many requests for a repeat of this special! Here you go… Three hours for the price of two: save $222. This package can be used in whatever increments you choose — hour, 40-minute, half-hour, or 20-minute sessions — and for whatever services you’d like — Medical Intuition, Life Coaching, Astrology, Relationship Clarity, Soul Readings, or any other related service. $444 if prepaid on or before March 31, 2021. Please contact me to sign up.

Old Friends and New Eyes

This week brought dear friends to visit whom I’ve known since 2001, back in my Seattle days. We took our Reiki Master Teacher training together in 2002, and they are among a very small set of people I still know from my brain injury days. When we met, we soon realized we had lived on the same block in Evanston, IL … but two years apart. Unbeknownst to us at the time, Wendy also lived in New York City back in my pre-TBI days when I traveled there every other week for work. Our lives have mixed and almost matched all over the country for decades.

The Hess family moved outside Charlottesville, VA about 17 years ago, and David and I saw artist and engineer, Bill Hess, a few years ago when we still lived in Goshen, IN, while taking care of David’s parents. Bill passed through en route to a glass installation in Michiana, but I hadn’t seen Wendy Vigdor-Hess for 14 years! Bill and a newly pregnant Wendy drove up to PA on one my trips to Bethlehem when I still lived in Tahoe. It was so great to meet their children — Sol and Thea — in person.

We had a whirlwind two-day visit on their way to a long weekend in Chicago. Above, you can see us all in Muskegon, Michigan, where Bill and Wendy got engaged so many years ago. We actually got to see the very spot. I’ve talked with Wendy on the phone during those 14 years apart, but it’s always so much fun when in-person visits just pick right up as though no time at all has passed.

April 2018 Specials

Given how many people are going through profound healing shifts right now, I feel led to continue the March 40-Minute Medical Intuitive Special through April 2018. Today and tomorrow mark the last days to purchase the “Grace in the Workplace Special,” details of which you can find here. April seems primarily focused on healing, with a Reiki Special, too:

40-Minute Medical Intuitive Special

Save 25% ($44) off the usual rate for a 40-Minute Medical Intuitive Reading.

Medical Intuition is the ability to access information about physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health through “reading” the energy field around the body. A Medical Intuitive session decodes the message(s) from soul to body into language your conscious mind can understand and begin to address. It is not meant to replace traditional medical or psychological treatment, and it is not any form of medical or psychological treatment.

Instead, Medical Intuitive readings look for the root cause of continuing symptoms or conditions. Without addressing the root cause, even the “right” treatments or treatment providers fail to find a cure … or … a person continues to experience one new issue after another. By locating the root cause, a Medical Intuitive reading allows the individual to understand what the soul wants, so that healing can move through all the levels, including physical.

$133 (instead of the usual $177) for 40 minutes, if purchased on or before 4/30/18. Please contact me to sign up.

 

$77 Reiki Special

Save $8 off the usual rate for an hour of long distance Reiki, an ancient healing method rediscovered in the 19th century by the Japanese monk Dr. Mikao Usui. The “Rei” in Reiki stands for “universal” or” spiritual,” and the “ki” corresponds to the “life force energy” known as “Chi” or “prana” in other Eastern systems of healing and energy work such as feng shui, Tai Chi, Qigong, or yoga.

Thus, Reiki refers to “universal life force energy,” “divinely directed healing energy,” or “life energy of a spiritual nature,” with an emphasis on subtle energy fields rather than the physical body. By working on all the different levels, Reiki helps the body to relax into a state that allows optimal self-healing. Reiki can also empower and support intentions and events.

This session can be scheduled for a specific time delivery while you meditate or relax, or I can set the session for delivery while you’re in deep, receptive sleep. Depending on your needs, the hour can also get delivered during an important meeting, travel or other event.

Please contact me to sign up, and share (briefly) what you’d like to support, empower or heal. If you have specific timing in mind, please share that as well. $77 (instead of the usual $85) if prepaid on or before 4/30/18.

Rune Soup ~ Talking the Power of Eight with Lynne McTaggert

I finally had a chance to listen to what my friend Mitch describes as “one of Gordon [White]’s best podcasts ever,” and I agree. This one’s truly excellent.

Lynne McTaggert talks about her book, “The Power of Eight,” and their fascinating discussion touches upon scientific studies of prayer, intentions, Reiki, chanting, meditation and healing on all levels. I love how Lynne’s research backs up something I tell people all the time in sessions and Reiki classes: that offering healing energy and prayers for others has profound healing effects on the sender, as well as the receiver. According to Lynne’s research, the sender receives exponentially more benefits than the receiver!

This podcast runs an hour. Given that the powerful techniques described take mere minutes, you’ll likely find it an hour well spent.

8-Day Wheel of the Year Special

Here we are at 1/8/18, and I feel led to open this opportunity for the next eight days. Over the years, many clients, friends, and blog readers have inquired about my own personal holidays — or, rather, Holy Days — intrigued by the way that big events in David’s and my life seem to unfold in a cyclical order of richly layered meaning and inspired action. In private sessions, clients ask about opportune times for various tasks or intentions, as well as ways to deepen and enrich their journey.  So many times, Turns of the Wheel of the Year present themselves as powerful openings for conscious alignment.

Many cultures recognize some version of the Wheel of the Year. Just look at crossovers among holidays: Candlemas, Imbolc/Oimelc, Groundhog’s Day, and St. Bridget’s Day, around the beginning of February (in the Northern Hemisphere); Halloween, All Hallow’s Eve, Samhain, Dia de los Muertos, All Saint’s Day in late October/early November; all the festivals of light around Winter Solstice — Christmas, Hanukkah, Mother Night, Yule, Pancha Ganapati, Soyal, and Midwinter Christmas/Christmas in July and Inti Raymi in late June/early July in the Southern Hemisphere.

Honoring and celebrating the Wheel of the Year reclaims secular or religious holidays and seasonal shifts as eight windows of “time out of time,” when the veils grow very thin. Whether we use such times as a reflective pause or to align ourselves with natural cycles, the Wheel of the Year invites us to partner with the Dance of Life.

This $888 8-Day Special will run from 1/8/18 through 1/15/18 and includes eight 40-minute sessions (one scheduled before each Turn of the Wheel, beginning in late January 2018), plus a Reiki Healing Attunement at each Turn. These private sessions will be intuitively tailored to you (and your hemisphere), helping you to recognize synchronicities and supportive energies, as well as to clarify focus, intentions, meditations of your heart, rituals, Earth healing, personal healing, and/or discernment about how to make the most of these openings.

If you’ve felt called to embrace a deeper connection with the Land and a more soulful experience of time, the 8-Day Wheel of the Year Special offers a discounted bundle of eight sessions and eight Reiki Healing Attunements in order to support and deepen your quest. This $888 bundle saves $968 off an individual investment of $1,856 and also represents my commitment to fit you in for a session prior to each Turn of the Wheel. Please contact me to sign up. Offer expires 1/15/18, because we will need time to schedule before our first Turn in late January/early February.

August 2016 Specials and September Reiki 1 Class

Due to multiple requests and my own intuitive leading, I’ve decided to extend the July 2016 Specials another month. Many people feel the need for ongoing support as they make huge shifts during this intense time period. I’ve also noticed an uptick in bizarre brushes with death and reminders of the very thin skin between what Starhawk calls El Mundo Bueno and El Mundo Malo. Most people I know have managed to embrace intuition and turn the life or death scenarios into something positive and strengthening; however, the frequency of these events even among people “on path” has convinced me that now remains an excellent time for Intuitive Preparedness.

Please also note the September 10, 2016 date for Reiki 1 Certification in Goshen, IN. There is currently a wait list for overnight housing at Haus Am See, but we do still have plenty of room for students in this class. Reiki offers a wonderful, nurturing way to relieve stress and pain, as well as empower goals and deeper healing.

 

AUGUST 2016 SPECIALS

Intuitive Preparedness Check-In

This is a return of a popular 2014 special, which I feel called to highlight again now due to so many people asking me about Brexit, potential US election chaos, gardening questions, and especially with so many people suddenly (since July 1) sensing new openings and opportunities that once seemed very far away. People want to know how to maintain an positive, proactive vibration and how to thrive while also shoring up any weak spots. This special responds to many comments, questions and private emails requesting my take on the question “What can I do right now?” — for specific individuals, rather than general guidelines and suggestions.

This hour session gives you access to my own intuitive scan of what areas of focus will provide you the greatest payback and sense of abundance, peace and security, with the least amount of resistance. Those looking to make larger lifestyle shifts can ask me to scan various lifestyle, location and/or community options to see which ones fit best with your vibration and heart’s desires. You can also use our time together to discuss energetic/magickal protection and manifestation tools and techniques, along with troubleshooting your most pressing concerns in various areas of life, including finances, food security, faith/spirituality/soul nurturing, relationships and/or land, including “garden guidance.”

I feel so strongly about helping people take steps from fear, denial and overwhelm into abundance, joy and freedom, that I’m keeping this pricing a simple $123. As Tolkien said, “Little by little, one travels far.”

Please contact me if you’d like to sign up for this special. Offer valid if prepaid on or before August 31, 2016.

$333 Intuitive Coaching Three-Pack

With regular intuitive or life coaching sessions running $175/hour, this special offers major savings at $333/three hours. I’ve found that even people who normally process things on their own feel challenged by the increased intensity and “sorting” of the Universe these days. As we continue with Earth changes, internal and galactic shifts, I feel called to offer a short burst of support to those in need. These sessions can be used close together or saved for a future need. You can use them in hour or half-hour segments. The entire package can be gifted to someone else, but (for simplicity of paperwork) these three-packs cannot be divided and shared among multiple individuals. Offer valid if prepaid on or before August 31, 2016. To schedule your first session or purchase the package, please contact me here.

REIKI TRAINING

Reiki Level 1 Certification Class in Goshen, Indiana

Saturday, September 10, 2016 from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. (East Coast time) in Goshen, Indiana.

For reference, Goshen is about 40 minutes East of South Bend, 8 miles from the Michigan border, and 2-3 hours from the Chicago area, depending on your exact location. A limited number of rooms are available for students who need to spend the night.

Students will learn and/or receive:

• History, nature, and science of Reiki.
• Experiencing Reiki energy.
• Using Reiki with other healing arts.
• Discussion of 21-day cleanse.
• Treating animals and plants.
• Essence scanning process.
• Establishing a Reiki practice.
• Practice self-treatment hand positions.
• Handouts and resource list.
• Reiki Circles.
• What a Reiki lineage represents.
• Giving a Reiki treatment with hand positions.
• Ethics and Legal Responsibilities as a Reiki Practitioner.
• Reiki Level 1 Attunement.

Certification: At the end of the training, each student will receive a certificate acknowledging completion of Reiki Level 1, as well as recognition as a Reiki Level 1 Practitioner. Taking any Reiki training with me also qualifies each student to audit (at no cost) any additional Reiki classes taught by me, up to and including the level completed with her (space permitting).

Fee: $175 ($150 if prepaid by 8/31/2016)

Please contact me to reserve your spot.

Status Update on my Dad and Sessions

Hi, and thanks to everyone for your continued prayers, love and energy healing. My family and I do appreciate them and can feel them working in our lives. So many little synchronicities and loving encounters continue to fill our lives. Thank you.

I’m writing primarily so that I have a quick link I can send in response to so many emails, especially emails inquiring about scheduling sessions right now. Since people don’t seem to be reading all the way to the bottom of updates, I’m posting the session announcement first, with my dad’s status update below. For some reason, I’ve been receiving an unusually high influx of new session requests from people who’ve been reading my blog or have known about me for years but decided this is the time they want to jump in for our work together. I encourage jumping in, but my pool is shifting right now, so anyone wanting time with me needs to have patience.

As I’ve mentioned, I need extreme flexibility in scheduling for the foreseeable future, but especially for the next few weeks. I’m not shutting down my business, but the kind of work I do requires total presence, focus, expansive consciousness, a private room, and deep emotional reserves, as many of those I help are going through major transitions in their lives. Right now, my family and I are going through that sort of transition. I’m prioritizing sessions that need to be rescheduled, but at this point I cannot offer anything new before the week of March 21st, and even that might get pushed back pending new developments.

Yesterday morning, my dad received news that his cancer has now filled his bone marrow. Normally, this would mean he has only weeks, if that, to live, but I can actually see all the life force energy pouring into the crown of his head. It’s a tremendous flow, and it seems to be keeping the cancer contained at this time. Although my dad’s platelet counts remain dangerously low, his other blood work indicates no spread of the cancer. That could change at any moment, but for now, his unusual state keeps baffling everyone at the hospital. He knows he’s receiving so much prayer and healing, though, that he credits this (and his attitude) with keeping him alive long enough to accomplish as many of his remaining to-do’s as possible.

My dad, his doctor, and our family have decided to transition my dad to “palliative” care, and my dad strongly prefers to return home. Given the extent of his non-cancer symptoms, this would require round the clock care, so today we are interviewing not only  hospice providers who can work in the home, but also visiting nurse organizations, since he needs 24 hour care in order to make this time as pain free and lucid as possible. Ironically, the non-cancer quality of life issues make it likely that my dad will be able to continue receiving treatments that can prolong his life in a positive way, since he needs platelet infusions in order to tolerate other “quality of life” options not normally considered part of hospice.

My brother spoke with my dad’s oncologist, who says my dad is one of his all time favorite patients, and this doctor wants to go above and beyond to ensure my dad can extend his time since my dad continues to touch so many people’s lives. We have received so much feedback from people all around town about my dad’s speech about the power of prayer in his life. At first, my dad felt disappointed he didn’t have strength to read it himself, but the power of having my sister read it at five church services has created a flood of impact on so many people. Wherever we go, people seem to have heard the speech and mention how deeply and powerfully it affected them. My dad’s doctor (and we) would like to make as many of my dad’s dying wishes come true, particularly since most of them are very service oriented. He seems to have developed a powerful intuitive ability to know just who needs to hear what right now, and this brings him tremendous joy.

He’s completely at peace with his situation, but he would love to spend some time in my parents’ new house. This means we are pushing up the original move date, and I will remain in PA to help coordinate a sooner rather than later move. As “official decorator” of their new home, I will also stay long enough to get them settled. My brother and I got to tour the 55+ community my 70+ year old parents are moving to, and we’re both so relieved my mom will have such friendly, warm and involved people around her. The new house has huge windows and a gas fireplace — both things my mom loves and finds deeply nurturing. The fingerprints of the Divine cover this entire process, and more so than sadness (although that’s there, too), I feel overwhelmed with tears of gratitude. It’s seriously enough to burst my heart multiple times per day.

We have all three of my dad’s brothers and their wives arriving tonight/this weekend, David arriving Saturday or Sunday (pending weather), and many, many, many meetings this week in order to arrange both my dad’s transition into the old home with proper care, as well as all the logistics about purchasing this new house. Signing occurs on the 9th, and then I will need to arrange movers to pack and unpack belongings, plus, assuming my dad’s still with us, how to get him from one place to the other. As the child with the most flexibility of schedule, responsibility for most of this next phase falls to me.

My brother and sister have both been amazing in their own efforts, but we need to protect them from burnout. I know all about burnout from watching what David has gone through caring for his own parents, and I will not put my siblings through that. We are each taking turns, selecting our own special skill sets to determine who does what. With me having moved … ohhhh, 42 times … I’m the mover/decorator. With me having helped so many people transition to the Otherside, I’m also the walker between worlds and the appropriate one to shoulder much of this time for people. My sister’s local, and my brother will return again as his job permits. He’s already almost out of vacation days!

In terms of timing, my dad has anywhere between weeks to up to six months. I have him reading Dr. Bruce Lipton’s “The Biology of Belief,” which he finds very interesting. My dad has an extremely powerful mind and is very, very receptive to miracles. He reminds everyone how open he is to “Miracle Number 13,” but he also knows he has led a full life and feels the full extent of our love for him.

I’m off to the first of three meetings and many phone calls today. Those of you awaiting reschedules, thanks for your patience. I should have a much better idea next week. We just need to get these logistics in place for my dad to be able to come home.

Much love and gratitude,

Laura