I’ve learned relatively late in life to look beyond mainstream institutions – organized religion, medicine, conventional notions about animals – to find truth and connection and a meaningful way to exist in a world I am in many ways disconnecting from.

I see a naturopath I can talk to honestly and comfortably about my health. I see myself becoming healthier through the care of a chiropractor, massage therapist, and a spiritual counselor.  I am learning from all of them, even though most exist outside of mainstream notions of health care, media, conventional wisdom,  insurance and science.

I notice that these disciplines are not corrupted by money, suffocated by regulation, dependent on the political system, overwhelmed by systems that force too many people to see them too often, force them to make unhealthy decisions, and treat them in ways that are often influenced by profit. Since they don’t make a lot of money, they are not corrupted by it. Since they can’t afford big and antiseptic offices with lots of technology, they exist on second-floors, the refurbished corners of old factories. Their offices are quiet. They have time to talk to me, to listen to me. They believe in my body, in giving it a chance to heal and be healthy, and they permit me to live in dignity, free of fear, and in ways that have greatly enhanced my health and understanding of health. I’ve long been afraid to talk to medical doctors, because their response has always been the same – take some pills, get some tests. That will not be my life. I am never afraid to talk to my health care providers and so we talk about my body in ways not imaginable to me before.

. How much is that worth?

The people worth listening to are rarely on TV, never hired as commentators, analysts or tenured professors. They live, like me, on the fringes of life. Our culture teaches orthodoxy in all things. To get on TV, you have to be left or right, and being angry and declarative helps. The people I love to see, the most thoughtful and interesting people,  will never be on TV.

In this context, I’ve been talking to Animal Communicator Jeannie Lindheim for more than a month. She is, like all of the others, outside any conventional system of health care or veterinary care. She charges little or nothing, and no insurance pays for her. Many people roll their eyes at the very mention of her. She exists on the fringes of common understanding and many people ask me if I believe in her, trust her.

The answer is yes, I do. She is not into dazzling me with revelation about my animals, rather she helps me understand them. She is a telepath, and communicates with animals in ways I don’t understand, which does not mean they are false. It just means I can’t do it, and don’t understand it. She is plain-speaking, warm and direct, easy for me to talk to. In the four sessions we have had, she has helped me understand my animals. To see Frieda as the wild and free spirit of a dog she is; to accept the stage of life Rose is in, rather than trying to medicate her out of it; to understand better the nature of Izzy’s hospice work, and on a lighter note, to name my contemplative hen Toots, the Zen Hen. She taps into a perspective, rather than looking for circus tricks. Does she know things she should not know? I think she knows things she should know and that are helpful for me to know.

Jeannie, I sense, does not take herself as seriously as others take her. She often quotes the animals as saying things humans get excited about “are no big deal.” That is the way I feel about animal communicating. It is  a good deal, not that big of a deal. I would recommend her comfortably to anyone.

And in the larger context of my life, I understand better every day that wisdom, like health, often comes out on the edges of life, not the center. I am beginning to learn who to listen to, who to go to. And if it is often a lonely and frightening process – there is little support for it – it is rewarding beyond imagination.