It has been a while. I have been busy in creating the foundations behind the scenes for general honing of the various forms of healing I have offered over the past six years. What started as Celtic and Nordic from a Shamanic perspective, to the beginning of my work in substance abuse as first a Recovery Specialist and later Certified Drug and Alcohol Counselor. 

The central theme of all of it has always been navigating you current condition from another perspective. In time, I never left that perspective as I myself was dealing with terminal liver disease and cancer.

I was in that health condition for three years before this website was created in 2014. That is also a year I remember little of due to the impact of my health. That turned around slowly in 2015 and I volunteered to help lead peer-led recovery groups.

The era of those physically challenges ends this month. It is one year now since transplant and there has never been a singly issue though the residual impact of the physical trauma is still a daily reminder and may be for some time.

But all of that is over and so too is this version of the website.

Faced with many directions I could take this virtual practice, or even the practice at all, I, as usual, opted for the most radical path. Me. I invested more than I could "afford" in a team of individuals who collectively could provide me what I was unable and thus unwilling to try, to do. Things like marketing, finance, design, things that other people are good at because of whatever reason, but things I am not only not interested in at the level needed, but would take too much of my energy when it needed to be fully present in my work.

So, I toss the cash one way and all the energy into me. Over the past two months I have really had to take a hard look at just what it is I do. It is a combination of so many things, and even they would be hard for me to singularly identify other than certifications and other organized teachings. 

It is those other teachings wherein lays the gold. It is what brings that all together and manifests itself in the moment.

"Half the time I did not know what Steve was saying, but it all made perfect sense." That is my first ever review, given to someone who had contracted me to work with a man who then choose to stop drinking.

But that is exactly it. I believe that there is a right and a wrong and not just a best. But we do not look at things in a way to allow us to see it. It is very simple though, and can be sceen. The problem is, we dress everything up with so many conditions that we lose our way to the root cause. 

Just like the ship at sea that gets lost, which is how Dr. Hawkins so perfectly describes this. He said that to think of it as a ship at sea, the start point is the cause and the destination is a point across the sea. If you are just one degree off on your course, it might not matter tomorrow much, or next week, but by the time you get there, years later lets say, you are nowhere near where you started.

In looking around us as to why we are lost, we can look around us and see where we have gone wrong. We can still get to where we want to be, but not using that course any longer.

That team and I are changing a lot about the way I express what I do, and WindAndRaven.com is on a new course, because I have hired a few hands to help with the rowing.

Below is the new image/logo for the site, yes it is a spoiler but I wanted to share it here first since I planned to announce something anyway because this will also be the end of this version of the blog.

This post itself will only live perhaps two weeks.

I will hold off on much more about the future, but it is bright, and I will show it to you soon enough. 

Thanks for reading what I have posted here and on mylifeline.com over the past couple of years, and I will see you on the other side.

​Steve

When I was a leader of SMART Recovery here in Athens a couple of years ago, I always liked how SMART also had virtual groups that used their tools for people who did not have access to a group.
While this is not that, it is a place for people in recovery or otherwise associated with the whole dynamic to compare notes. More a peer-to-peer feel with at least one counselor who just happens to be around.

I am still taking the temperature of the SMART community to see if it is ready for another virtual group just for that, but in the meantime, there is this space for any kind of conversation.
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Also, anyone else who is interested is more than welcome.

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