HERE’S a quick overview of some of my most commonly asked questions. If you don’t find your answer here then by all means drop me a line and ask away. I always do my best to personally reply to every email I receive. Sometimes it’s simply an impossibility due to time constraints, but please know I do the best I can and if you don’t receive a reply it isn’t because I don’t care. It’s simply that I work a LOT and sometimes things get lost in the shuffle. (Remember this is a one woman operation…as are my other ventures, The Haus of Chaos™ and Alli Woods Frederick Photography so to say I’m busy is an understatement.) Just know I adore and appreciate you. You are the bee’s knees, my dear.
FAQ
Q: Who are you?
A: I’m Alli Woods Frederick, creator of Kisses & Chaos. I am a fine art/wedding/portrait/fine art portrait photographer, writer (obviously), reiki master, intuitive medium and zombie survival strategist™. For more information about who I am, what makes me tick, and my artist statement stop by and take a gander at my About page. You’ll find more useless information about yours truly than you probably ever wanted to know.
Q: Are you a natural redhead/is your hair naturally curly?
A: Damn straight I am. Ginger and proud. And yes, my hair is naturally curly. Don’t let my bangs and occasional blowout (which I do out of sheer laziness…you straight-haired people have no idea how easy you have it…curly hair requires a lot of maintenance…a LOT) fool you.
Q: How long have you been blogging?
A: I started blogging around 2004-ish in conjunction with my former art/craft business, Down & Dirty Designs, and have been blogging in one form or another ever since. I decided to take blogging more seriously and move towards becoming a full-time professional blogger and artist in 2010 when I founded Kisses & Chaos, The Haus of Chaos™ and Alli Woods Frederick Photography. Short answer? In October of 2014 I will have been blogging for ten years.
Q: I’m a writer/blogger/artist/crafter and would love to be a guest blogger for Kisses & Chaos. Do you accept guest posts?
A: I absolutely accept guest posts. I love bringing new family members into The Haus of Chaos™. If you have an idea for a post and you think it’s a good fit for Kisses & Chaos then by all means send me an email and pitch your story idea. (hint: I love guest DIY posts. I rarely have time to do as many DIY or DIE posts as I’d like due to my busy schedule so I LOVE clever and badass DIY tutorials. I also love a good true, it-happened-to-me ghost story for my Death Doesn’t Wear Bermuda Shorts series. hint. hint.)
Q: Can I be featured in The Same 7 Interview series? I would love to be interviewed!
A: I carefully hand select my guests for the The Same 7 and am currently not accepting applications/inquiries. If you’re a completely mind-blowing, knock my socks off genius of an artist, musician, author, designer, guru, intuitive, medium, or master of any other form of art, craft, mysticism, or highly unusual skill sets or hobbies (yes, master sword swallower or being the owner of the world’s largest taxidermy collection do constitute unusual skill sets or hobbies) I would love to see your work/collection. By all means send me an email with a little note telling me who you are, what you do and any relevant links to portfolios, etc. This does not mean you will be considered for The Same 7 (I don’t accept applications or inquiries, remember?), but I may consider you for another feature. I love to share brilliantly unique and unusual people with brilliantly unique and unusual lives and skills, so please, give me a holler and let me know you exist. Like I said earlier, I love bringing new family members into The Haus of Chaos™.
Q: I love your photography. Will you take my picture?
A: Yup. Sure will. In fact, I’d love to!…even if you aren’t local to me. I’m more than happy to come to you. In fact, I’m a bit of a travel junkie so to say I’m more than happy is a massive understatement. You can find complete details including my services, packages and pricing at Alli Woods Frederick Photography.
Q: What the hell is reiki? How long have you been a reiki master? Do you offer classes/workshops? How can I book an appointment for a distance reiki session with you?
A: In short, reiki is a form of ancillary health care (which means it is to be used in conjunction with traditional medical health care, NOT replace it) that involves the redirecting/channeling/removing blockages of energy within the human body to promote both physical, emotional and energetic well-being and balance. Be sure to check out my Reiki FAQ for answers to the most common reiki questions. If you have one that isn’t covered then by all means contact me. If you want to schedule a reiki session you can schedule your reiki appointment here.
Q: So you’re a psychic medium…do you see dead people? Seriously. How does that work? What’s it like?
A: It’s a little hard to explain. First of all let’s start with some basic understanding. All mediums are psychic but not all psychics are mediums. Think of it this way, everyone who plays the clarinet plays a woodwind instrument, but not everyone who plays a woodwind instrument plays the clarinet. We all have different abilities and every ability is expressed differently. Some people see spirit the same way they see living people walking around. This does happen to me on occasion but it is infrequent. I’m more clairsentient which means I just know things. It’s like they communicate directly with my brain and I just know information about them, details. It’s a knowing. The knowledge is just there, the details just appear – what the person looks like, their name, etc.
I am also an intuitive. I often receive messages informing me of upcoming, current or past events of friends, family and reiki clients. (I have known the exact dates of several important events in my family such as deaths, people and pets in need of immediate medical attention even though they are dozens if not hundreds of miles away and were, to the best of my conscious knowledge, in perfect health, past health conditions of friends of which I knew nothing, you get the idea). Again, it often comes as a knowing or, in the case of serious emergencies, a man’s voice inside my head (a voice which I believe to be that of my great-great-grandfather Joseph…how I came to believe this is a long story and one I’ll share some other time) telling me what the emergency is and what to do. The exception to this being during an actual reiki or intuitive session where I’m intentionally seeking information with the consent of the client, in which case it is a visual process. Close your eyes and with your minds eye visualize a memory. Picture it with your mind. That’s how I “see” although when I see is like it’s projected onto my eyelids with a black background with the people and objects all in an orange-red silhouette with the exact details (like hair colors, dirty fingernails, etc) again simply being “known.”
How this works, where this all comes from, I have no idea and I certainly won’t pretend to have the answers. I am also acutely aware that all this sounds completely bonkers and that some of you will think I’m either a liar, possessed by a demon or insane (or all of the above) and will stop reading Kisses & Chaos right now…acutely aware…but I believe in being honest about who I am and if it weren’t for all the validation I’ve received with these experiences throughout my life then I’d have checked myself into a mental health facility a long time ago.
Believe me when I tell you this gift makes you question your sanity until you start to realize what is going on. The first time I heard someone else’s voice (called clairaudience) with my ears but inside my head at the same time (it’s hard to explain until you experience it) I was absolutely sure I was schizophrenic…until I realized it was only Robert, the dead man I shared my home with, who was talking to me. The fact of the matter is that I’m perfectly sane and I have the paperwork from a psychiatrist to prove it. *wink* To this day I’m surprised by this gift and still find it completely dumbfounding and mind-blowing. More often than not I think “this is just too crazy…how weird.”
I will likely address this subject in more depth in an upcoming post.
Q: Bullsh*t. I knew you in elementary/jr. high/high school/college and you NEVER said a damn thing about this psychic crap. You’re a liar and a fraud and you should be ashamed of yourself.
A: Though I have been a reiki master for many, many years, I only recently came out of the psychic medium closet and I work on developing my ability so that I can continue to help my clients. Though I sometimes receive messages from those who have passed during a reiki session, I currently do not offer medium readings/sessions because I want to have more control over my abilities. At this time the only intuitive work I offer is distance reiki and tarot readings both of which I perform “cold” (which means I require that no personal information about the client’s life, health or circumstances be revealed to me apart from their name. The less I know the more effectively I can work…a complete lack of personal client information eliminates any subconscious bias from me during the session or foreknowledge which could be used to accuse me of fraud.)
A small handful of people from my past will vouch that they had experiences with me that were unusual. Like the time I was on the phone with friend Jenn (who was a contestant on Double Dare – which has nothing to do with the story, just a weird bit of random information about her). We were both in 7th grade in Pennsylvania. She lived several miles away from me…I was in Chester Springs, she was in Exton (if I recall correctly…if you read this, Jenn, please feel free to correct me on the township you lived in…maybe it was Lionville?). I was in my kitchen and she was in her bedroom…and I was overwhelmed with the scent of baked apple pie. “Oh, Jenn. The apple pie your mom is baking smells soooo good.” “Um. How do you know she’s backing apple pie?” “I can smell it.” “No you can’t. There’s no way you can smell that.” “I totally can smell it. Isn’t she baking apple pie?” “Yeaaaaah. That is so weird.”
So while I wasn’t open about it I did hint at it here and there. I’ve been having these experiences since I can recall, the earliest being when I was about one or one and a half years old. Yes. One year old and it involved my uncle’s haunted trailer in Kansas. Yes trailers can be haunted too. I also have a freakishly, mutant-like memory. If I had a dollar for every time my mom said “how do you remember that” I’d be rich. So yeah. Just because I didn’t talk about it doesn’t mean I’m lying. It just means I kept most of it to myself.
And for the record, I have no interest in convincing non-believers, proving myself or defending myself. If you don’t believe me that’s fine. I know what I know and I know it’s true. Many, many other people have bore witness and they know it’s true (even if some of them now believe I am possessed by a demon and now fear me, but whatever). It is what it is, I am who I am and you are who you are and I don’t desire to change any of those things.
Q: I still think you’re full of sh*t.
A: That’s sweet of you. You are free to believe what you like. I have no interest in arguing or changing your mind. You don’t have to believe in gravity either, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Q: What are your religious/political beliefs?
A: Those are two very specific subjects that I do not discuss publicly, nor on Kisses & Chaos. It’s really not anyone’s business and all those discussions do is create hostility and division…which is the opposite of what both I and Kisses & Chaos are about.
Q: What are your hobbies?
A: yoga, knitting, spinning yarn (both literally and idiomatically), painting, drawing, reading, acting, singing, dancing, belly dancing, spending time in nature, traveling, learning, developing my intuition, collecting bones, antique photographs and anything strange, unusual and old, and sewing/embroidering odds and ends.
Q: What’s up with you and zombies? Do you honestly believe in the zombie apocalypse?
A: Hell. Yes. I. Do. Viruses mutate all the time. There is precedent in the natural world of zombiism. There are fungi and parasites that essentially take over and control their host creating a zombie-esque dynamic. Does this make me crazy? Nope. My craziness predates my zombie obsession by decades. *wink* But I think a more likely scenario would be a government engineered virus as a means to create an army that could literally never die short of the necessary head shot which could be thwarted by the proper head gear. Imagine if soldiers were inoculated with a zombie virus which activated upon death resulting in the reanimation of the downed soldier’s body. Enemy combatants would defeat one army only for a new undead one to arise. (Can you tell I don’t trust our government? And no I’m not a libertarian…*wink*) So, yes, I do believe that it is a possibility, even though extremely remote and highly unlikely. Stranger things have happened.
Q: Why did you get divorced?
A: I addressed this subject in this post, and I am currently not discussing the details of my divorce with the public. Whether I will shine more light on the subject in the future remains to be seen, but as for now the subject has been addressed and is currently closed for further discussion.
Q: Why don’t you share more details of your private life? Other bloggers do, so why don’t you?
A: There is a fine line between sharing and over-sharing. I find that lots of bloggers over-share when it comes to the details of their private lives…especially when there is drama going on. I discuss this very topic in the Summer 2014 issue of Artful Blogging magazine in my article Foreign Waters which is available online and in bookstores May 1st, 2014. I do try to share portions of my private life with you. I consider you all friends. But I also recognize a need for professional and personal boundaries and that not everything is for public consumption, even if you’re living a public life. I hope you’ll grab a copy of the magazine as it will help you understand why I share what I share and why I choose to keep many private things private.