Over the last few months, Spirit has led me on an unexpected path of deciding the next steps for our store, Stones Throw. This journey is ending with the store moving to 8278 Old Redwood Highway on August 15. The story of Songbird and Stones Throw has been unusual from the beginning, and this latest twist has been a lesson from Spirit in interpreting signs.
I wrote a couple years ago about opening up the store unexpectedly after dropping off my son in San Diego for college. In June of this year, it was time to make a final decision whether to renew our lease. I had been considering closing the store, but that didn’t feel like the right choice. The store has already started to become a valuable part of both Songbird and the broader community. The crystals have been very popular. We have a beautiful new selection from The Uncarved Block that closed in Sebastopol.
Soon after bringing in the new crystals, I started getting confused about which ideas were coming from Spirit and which ideas were coming from my mind. Even though I have done of a lot of work on myself, I still have to be careful or I can get caught off guard. It has gotten easier over time to distinguish the two voices, but I still have to pay attention in order to properly tell where I am being drawn.
I thought I was being called to downsize the store and partition off 1/4 of Songbird’s main room for the store. There were many good reasons to do it. They seemed to easily outweigh the reasons not to. I figured out exactly how I could make it work successfully… However, that was my mind speaking. Whenever you hear a bunch of voices like that It is your mind. Spirit speaks in silent knowing. It was hiding out and laughing at me. It was waiting for me to realize that I was being given a lesson in trust.
Right when I made the decision to move the store to Songbird, everything shifted! The store got busier. Songbird starting getting more rentals. Our events started getting busier. I was no longer sure that we could fit both our store and our classes in the main room. While most of the people I had talked to previously thought it was a good idea to combine them, now I was hearing from other people I trusted that they didn’t feel the energy of the two would mix well. All of a sudden the decision no longer felt right, but it also no longer felt right to stay in the same place as-is. I didn’t know what to do.
It was time to open up to the world of infinite possibilities. When we do this, anything is possible. Corrina Koepplin, our newest Songbird Intuitive, asked me if there was any other smaller place to rent. I had been negotiating with our landlord to downsize, but it still wasn’t feeling right. And then I remembered that there was an available storefront to rent across the street from Songbird, right next door to where Songbird got its start. Corrina did a reading for me, and everything clearly moved into alignment for the move. It is usually easier to tell when I am on my path, then when I am off of it. Now I knew for sure that I was the making the right decision.
Moving the store next door to where Songbird used to be feels like the completion of a cycle. While the location didn’t well work for Songbird, it feels much better for the store. We should have much better visibility, more traffic, and a better layout. And again, that is my mind speaking. Spirit simply helps me know without words that it is the right decision.
Come check out our new location in a couple weeks! And if you are confused about the difference between what Spirit is telling you and what your mind is telling is you, come check out one of many of our offerings at Songbird. One if these is the upcoming talk from Marillyn Schlitz on Living Deeply. Invite your friends! We still have a long way to go to reach the financial place we want to be in, but we are on our way.