Jeri Ryan left her physical form on Earth and took off for more expansive realms on March 25, 2022. After studying animal communication with me in the late 1970s/early 80s, she became the first professional animal communicator who had trained with me.
I have fond memories of Jeri. I visited her home in Oakland, California, where I did consultations with her cat and dog and taught basic animal communication courses that she sponsored. We were both from the Midwest, had a lot in common, and became friends. I remember how Jeri was very active in animal rights organizations and had a pile of literature and unopened mail stacked in teetering piles on her dining table. I still have a heavy paw print paperweight on my desk that she gave me many years ago. Jeri had one like it that she carried with her in her teaching travels. Her suitcases were filled with mementos from home. I was more spartan in my traveling gear and wondered why she carted so much with her. She mentioned how these belongings carried personal feelings that supported her work.
We shared an astrological sun sign in Scorpio. Jeri’s birthday on October 29 was just a day after mine. Jeri laughed while attributing her often disorganized state and packrat-like collections to her quixotic Gemini rising. She had no problem making a lighthearted joke about her habits.
With her background as a psychotherapist, Jeri brought to her animal communicator profession her great skill in counseling people and their animal friends. Her bountiful kindness toward all beings made it very easy to talk with her and have problems vanish through her attentive listening and empathetic acknowledgment.
When my number of animal communication clients was getting too much for me to handle alone, I remember talking with her about my situation. I admitted that I found it hard to refer clients to other people I had trained. I felt protective like a mother hen with her chicks toward my clients and students. My dear clients were accustomed to me and my service, and I wasn’t sure they’d be happy about going to other people. It was my first taste of “letting go” of the “flock” I had tended to be taken care of by others I had trained. Jeri understood. Her competence and compassion helped me have confidence in her ability to handle my clients well.
After learning how to teach my Animal Communication Basic Course and gaining much experience as an animal communication counselor and teacher, Jeri expanded her offerings. Drawing on her academic background, she founded the Assisi International Animal Institute in 1995 with an animal communication certification program, including other teachers in specialized fields.
Through the years, we kept in touch, although our schedules didn’t allow for many in-person visits, despite living less than a two-hour drive from each other. Before I moved from California to Arizona in 2006, we tried to arrange to get together, but I never got an answer from her about a proposed time till after I had gone. She was busy with her work, and I was busy moving.
Our last phone call was a few years ago when she hadn’t responded to my emails about renewing her animal communicator directory listing on my website. She explained that she had a hard time navigating PayPal and hadn’t gotten around to paying the listing fee though she intended to do so. She mentioned having difficulty keeping track of things, saying, “You know I’m over 80 now!” Honor her decades of service and our friendship, I continued her directory listing without bothering her with renewal notices.
I had hoped to see her again when I visited California in my travels. I thought of her after I coasted through the San Francisco Bay Area in March, heading north on a pilgrimage to visit many redwood groves. I arrived home on March 22, just a few days before her passing. I found out about her death on April 8 from a former student who had been trying to reach Jeri.
Another dear friend has now sailed onward to the spiritual realm. A moment of herstory in time has transpired. My heart feels tender and full.
Our telepathic connection is strong, and I am communicating with Jeri in her spiritual home, just a glimpse away from the physical realm. She is glad to be without the burdens of an aging body and is enjoying her natural meditative, loving, glowing state of being, flowing with the great allness. She shines her light and loving warmth on us all. Tune in with her, and you can feel it. We are one life.
