Once Upon A Connection

10/03/2026

10/01/2026

Fall Classes at OUAC - INTUITION, EXHALES, EMPOWERING DRAGONS, CALM.

Check Out What's Coming up -

🪬 YOU WERE BORN WITH A COMPASS - FOUR PART INTUITION DISCOVERY SERIES Starts OCT 6. Price includes the package of classes.
💖 This is one of my favorite collectives to teach. Whether you want to focus on intuition or instinct, get to know yourself better and embrace the signals your body, soul, mind and spirit are sharing with you to guide you, keep you safe, help you live a more balanced, introspective life.

🧘‍♀️ MID-WEEK EXHALE. GENTLE RESTORATIVE BREATH & SOMATIC MEDITATION TO HONOR THE PAUSE. Wed evening OCT 7.
💖 Together, we will reset for the week discovering where your body, mind, spirit and nervous system are begging for the pause. Absolutely no experience necessary - wandering minds are very welcome.

✨ YOUR SOMATIC SIGNATURE. Sat morning OCT 10.
Start your Saturday learning about what YOUR STYLE OF CALM is.
🕊It is useless to subscribe to someone else's calm - together, we will discover your own - whether it's rest, connection, solitude, movement, or stillness. You can leave knowing what your system seeks to reset.

🐉🖌🎨 Art Night - Paint YOUR DRAGON & LEARN YOUR POWER. OCT 16 - 630pm.
🐲Paint Night at the Capitoline Art Center - No templates - Together, we will discover what our own dragons look like and the empowerment behind them. Then we paint them. You leave with a a greater knowing of what fuels your fire and art to remind you of it.

Info and tickets here - all classes are small group so grab your spot! I can't wait to celebrate fall with you in an empowering and fun way. Reach out with any questions. :) - Shannon

Explore transformative events, retreats, and community gatherings focused on somatic wellness, creative expression, and personal growth at Once Upon A Connection.

09/27/2026

Activation isn’t failure. It’s your body doing its job.

Your stress response has purpose: keeping you alive. When it fires, it’s not sabotaging you - it’s protecting you with the best information it has. When we come into relationship with our system made up of our mind, body, nervous system and spirit, we can learn to turn the bells and alarms into information we can make a collective decision with.

The goal of this work was never to become someone who doesn’t activate. It’s to become someone whose body trusts that the moment has passed.

What does early activation feel like in your body — heat, speed, tightness, buzzing?

09/21/2026

Take It Back - A Linguistic Reclamation Night. Slut. Witch. Crazy. Too much. Difficult. Your sexuality as an insult. Your race as a slur. Every woman carries a word that was used to make her smaller.

Friday, September 25, 2026
7:00 PM 9:00 PM

Once Upon A Connection at Buttercup Cottage
Historic Ellicott City, MD

This is small group - a few spots remain.

Through somatic grounding, ritual burning, some healing creative work and embodied reclamation, you'll strip a word of the power someone else gave it - and fill it with the power you choose.

An evening of CONNECTION, CEREMONIAL CLEARING, RECLAIMING, AND MAKING SPACE - AND SOME OF THAT ‘TAKING BACK THE POWER’. 2 HOURS - Utilizing Somatic Practices to signal to your nervous system that you can take ownership of the words others have tried to villainize, use to make you small, use to push back in a shadow of shame.

Book your spot here and reach out with any questions :)

Slut. Witch. Crazy. Too much. Difficult. Your sexuality as an insult. Your race as a slur. Every woman carries a word that was used to make her smaller. Through breathwork, somatic grounding, ritual burning, and embodied reclamation, you'll strip a word of the power someone else gave it — and fill...

09/21/2026

Take It Back - A Linguistic Reclamation Night Slut. Witch. Crazy. Too much. Difficult. Your sexuality as an insult. Your race as a slur. Every woman carries a word that was used to make her smaller.

Friday, September 25, 2026
7:00 PM 9:00 PM

This is small group - a few spots remain.

Once Upon A Connection at Buttercup Cottage
Historic Ellicott City, MD

Through somatic grounding, ritual burning, and embodied reclamation, you'll strip a word of the power someone else gave it and fill it with the power you choose.

This is an evening of CONNECTION, CEREMONIAL CLEARING, RECLAIMING, AND MAKING SPACE - AND SOME OF THAT ‘TAKING BACK THE POWER’. 2 HOURS

Utilizing Somatic Practices to signal to your nervous system that you can take ownership of the words others have tried to villainize, use to make you small, use to push back in a shadow of shame.

Book your spot here - reach out with any questions :)

Slut. Witch. Crazy. Too much. Difficult. Your sexuality as an insult. Your race as a slur. Every woman carries a word that was used to make her smaller. Through breathwork, somatic grounding, ritual burning, and embodied reclamation, you'll strip a word of the power someone else gave it — and fill...

09/16/2026

Somatic Reminder 08- Your shoulders are answering a question no one asked out loud.

The body braces for a load whether its a heavy box or a heavy week - the shoulders are often the first to volunteer. They carry the tension of every "I'm fine" we've ever said.

A simple body scan to ask your shoulders to drop followed by a noticing of how tight you held them can start to give them some rest.

09/12/2026

For my 50th birthday, I got myself a gift. And the gift arrived today.

I strolled into that studio over the summer and put on the dress that I designed - the dress that was hand sewn by a collective of stunning women in the Ukraine - Dress Art Mystery.

DO THE PHOTOSHOOT - LOVE THE YOU THAT GETS TO BE HERE - document who you are in all the stages. I thank God and the universe and The Ancient Mother Cailleach of my ancestors and all that got me here to have the privilege to breathe air at 50 years.

I just wrote a book that details the slaughter of women of my blood back to the 1400s - one of these is going in that book and you can bet I will be shouting their stories.

Get bold Ladies.

Unapologetically. Grateful. Shouting. Sage. Sophia. Thankful.

Big shout out to Stacey Bee of Atomic Cheesecake Studios. This is beyond beyond.

09/12/2026

For my 50th birthday, I got myself a gift. And the gift arrived today.

I strolled into that studio over the summer and put on the dress that I designed - the dress that was hand sewn by a collective of stunning women in the Ukraine - Dress Art Mystery.

DO THE PHOTOSHOOT - LOVE THE YOU THAT GETS TO BE HERE - document who you are in all the stages. I thank God and the universe and The Ancient Mother Cailleach of my ancestors and all that got me here to have the privilege to breath air at 50 years.

I just wrote a book that details the slaughter of women of my blood back to the 1400s - one of these is going in that book and you can bet I will be shouting their stories.

Get bold Ladies.

Unapologetically. Grateful. Shouting. Sage. Sophia. Thankful.

Big shout out to Stacey Bee of Atomic Cheesecake Studios. This is beyond beyond. I just wrote a book and one of these is going to grace those pages.

09/12/2026

You may have seen I moved...I did and a world opened up for you and for me.

Whether we've met or not - I'm reintroducing myself - I'm Shannon. I'm a mom of six, a veteran, and a risk analyst who has spent years finding the signals in the noise. I took that skill and turned it toward helping women and couples find their own signals and beacons in the noise of life: demands, overstimulation, exhaustion, trauma impacts (and by the way nobody gets to define your trauma other than you).

I'm a certified somatic healer, certified in trauma-focused nervous system regulation, a certified meditation instructor, and an intuitive Reiki practitioner.

I combine somatic healing with energy work and art to help my clients come back to themselves, and then to others, as they are ready.

I work 1:1 and in small group classes with women and couples who are holding everything together and paying for it in their bodies: the racing mind, the tight chest, the writing it off to "I'm fine."

Through somatic sensing, guided meditation, Reiki, and art and sound as healing tools, I help you learn what your own nervous system has been trying to tell you. I also create bespoke illuminated intimate portraiture celebrating the mind, body, and aura.

This fall the cottage doors are open with a full lineup of small group classes and evenings, from a word-reclamation ritual to intuition training to a paint night with a healing twist.

The lineup and dates are in the graphics; details and booking at www.onceuponaconnection.com/events.

My work is complementary to and never a replacement for medical and mental health care. Many services HSA/FSA eligible. If your body has been asking you to slow down and listen, come let it be heard. I always welcome an email and a conversation to answer your questions.

09/05/2026

A couple of days ago I promised to share a story about a psychic at the airport.

Promise delivered. And wherever you are at right now, there might be a little something in this for you.

A little dose of 😱 sprinkled with some🧙‍♀️🪄 A dash of wisdom and a whole lot of empowerment for the woman entering her SAGE ERA and doubting her worth.

Here it is:

After my very vanilla and minimalist response and my zillionth inquiry as to why she asked me that, she nodded like I had confirmed something she already knew. Because she had. She responded to me: “Because I am a psychic and I do similar work. I wanted to ask you when we had a little privacy – ...