Do you want to enhance the connection you have with your beloved pet? Many women entrepreneurs find that animals help ease the stress that comes from running a business, and they provide emotional support too. If you’d like to improve your animal communication and deepen the bond with your pet, you’ll want to check out this episode. Our guest Maribeth Decker shares how you can foster a stronger relationship with your pet, allowing for greater understanding and a more profound connection.
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Show Notes | Transcript“I’m just not going to tell you that your dog wants more treats. But we’re going to go into the relationship about it and see what we can fix, maybe through energy healing, medical intuition.” – Maribeth Decker
Maribeth Decker is an intuitive animal communicator, medical intuitive, and energy healer. As the founder of Sacredgrove.com, she is dedicated to helping pet guardians deepen their connection with their animals and address any physical, emotional, or behavioral issues they may face. With her unique ability to communicate with animals, Maribeth offers insights and guidance to pet owners, helping them understand their pets on a deeper level and fostering a stronger bond. Her journey into animal communication began after a Navy career when her own dog started communicating with her. Since then, Maribeth has honed her skills and has become a trusted expert in the field. Her work brings together her love for animals and her passion for healing, providing a valuable and transformative experience for both animals and their human companions.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Discover the power of animal communication and healing to deepen your bond with your furry friends.
- Navigate the end-of-life journey with your pets in a way that brings comfort and peace to both of you.
- Challenge common beliefs about animal communication and open yourself up to a new world of understanding.
- Learn effective techniques for healing animals who have experienced trauma, helping them to find peace and happiness.
- Develop a mindful approach to communication with your pets and gain a deeper understanding of their needs and desires.
Related Live. Love. Engage. episodes you may enjoy:
Bringing Joy to Dogs’ Final Days with Jeff Allen
The Value of Shelter Dogs with Marion Zola
Uncovering Sacred Powers with Nancy Orlen Weber: from RN to Psychic Detective
Resources:
Connect with Maribeth here
Maribeth’s Email: Maribeth (at) sacredgrove.com
Join the Soulful Women’s Network here
Send me a message here
☕ Support the podcast here
❤ Love this episode? Leave us a review and rating here
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TRANSCRIPT
Gloria Grace Rand
Namaste. Oh, and welcome to Live. Love. Engage. I am so delighted to be with you again, and I want to welcome all of you who are regular subscribers to the show or if this is your first time, I especially welcome you. And I just want to introduce myself, especially if this is your first time. I am Gloria Grace, light messenger and spiritual business coach. And women entrepreneurs hire me to help them leverage their intuition to break through revenue ceilings and create sustainable growth in their business. And on this podcast, we love, I love to be able to bring together all sorts of people to help you to live fully, love deeply, engage authentically. So sometimes that means I’ll have someone who’s helping you to grow your business specifically, but maybe sometimes it’s someone who is going to help you live fully, find different ways to be able to help you. Today is in that realm. So I am really excited to bring on in just a moment, Maribeth Decker. She is an intuitive animal communicator, a medical intuitive and energy healer, and she’s the founder of Sacredgrove.com, where people and pets heal and connect. She works with pet guardians who dearly love their animals yet face tough issues. I’ve been there. She uses her intuitive animal communication and energetic healing skills to address animals’ physical, emotional and behavioral issues. And I’m sure many of you out there are pet lovers like I am. So that’s why I wanted her on the show today. So without further ado, I’m going to bring her on and I want to officially welcome you, Maribeth, to live, love, engage.
Maribeth Decker
I am so glad to be here, Gloria, thank you for the introduction and the fact that we can talk about living fully, because animals in my life are part of the reason it’s easier for me to live fully.
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely. Yeah. And I know they say that animals help us, especially as we age and get up in years and especially even like retirees. I think if you’re not working anymore, it’s really good to have a pet companion to help you live longer. And I know I’ve read that somewhere and if anybody. Yeah. So I would love to know, and I’d like to start these episodes getting to know our guests a little bit more and especially on their journey. And what brought you here today. So, how did you get interested specifically in becoming this animal communicator?
Maribeth Decker
I never tire of answering that question because I have so many lovely stories attached to it. I did not know that animal communication was a thing. So what happened is I finished a Navy career, Navy officer, was in an association, and at some point I said, I think I’m going to start some energy healing. Learn that. And when I started to learn energy healing, my dog started communicating with me. Holy cow. What the heck? So the first time was my dog, Timmy, who had passed away. So this is a dead dog coming back. I’m making dinner in the kitchen, and out of the corner of my eye, I see him sitting in the dining room. And what’s so lovely is his. I mean, we’ve heard a lot of ghost stories. If you’re like me, I love ghost stories, but he’s a full body. It looks like my guy is back, in the flesh. So, Timmy, I’m like, whoa, man. Because it’s one ear up, one ear down, if you know my dog. And then he disappeared. But I knew I’m a pets. Pets survived death. They’re still intact. And the guy came back to tell me he loved me. So can he get any better than that? And then that started the journey. Wow.
Gloria Grace Rand
So tell me a little bit more about that. So what did you do next? I mean, you’re discovering now that you’re able to be able to kind of communicate with even pets that are no longer here.
Maribeth Decker
So I hope people will laugh because my kids are younger at the time. And what I did next was I finished cooking dinner. Yeah, well, got to feed the kids, but I had a couple more wonderful experiences. And I finally said to a friend, Mary, what was going on? And she says, that’s animal communication, Maribeth. I said, really? And I got training in it, so it’s great when it happens to you, but I was at the point where, wow, I want to know how to do this. And at that point, when I started working with people and their animals, as an animal communicator, I still had my energy healing skills and I still use them. But the hearts of the human beings who come to me are so open. So it’s like a double goodness. I have these human beings who love their pets so much, they’re there. And I have these pets that I get to, animals that I get to talk to and communicate with and see if I can help get them and their people back on track or help provide information about their physical issues. And I just fell in love with the whole scene. I got to say, it’s just a great place to be.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, you just sort of alluded to something that I was going to ask you about. So why would someone come to an animal communicator? What are they, what are they hoping that you can help them with?
Maribeth Decker
There is a lot of things that people come to me for. There are the basics for me. There’s like, why is my cat not using a litter box? This is really annoying. Or my dogs really pull on the leash. Now, I’m not a cat behaviorist, I’m not a dog trainer, but I come from the inside to find out what the emotion or the belief behind it, and then see if we can ask them to make changes, rather without telling them. So there’s some basic physical stuff. Some people come to find out how they’re feeling physically, and I pick that stuff up pretty well. So something as simple as is the pain medication working or where do you feel it? And things like that and providing information in that area. Then there’s also behavioral problems. I worked with a woman this week and her horse, and she felt that they were disconnected and she really loved this horse. So we went through what was going through, his emotion, his minds on the subject, and we came up with a way of communicating to him how they could reconnect heart to heart and have a good life together. So there’s all sorts of things like that end of life. That’s the other thing is I wrote a book, Peace and Passing comfort for loving humans during animal transitions, to help folks through their journey when their animal starts to go on the decline. But I help them through that again, maybe the physical, maybe the emotional. What do they need? How to help? Even I help through the transition, and we sometimes even connect afterwards to find out how they’re doing or say some things that didn’t get to be said before the animal passed.
Gloria Grace Rand
That’s a wonderful service to have because I know I had a cat pass on probably over ten years ago now. And it was so sudden that I was really surprised and was just all of a sudden she just got ill and left. And we had had to put, I’m thinking now I’m trying to remember because we had a dog as well, and it was like we lost both of these pets within about a year of each other. And they were both fairly young, too, and it was very disappointing. But we got new pets now. But, yeah, it would have been nice to maybe be able to, number one, even find out what was going on with her and to be able to help her or just to help her through the. Help her through the transition, or help me through the transition. I’m not sure which. But yeah, I’m going to ask two questions. So the first one is going to be what’s been perhaps the biggest challenge you faced in this type of work or even in having this as a business, as a type of business.
Maribeth Decker
My biggest challenge has been trusting my intuition. I’m laughing because how hard it is for us to shift over from that logical side of facts and figures and this and that and what just happened in the physical world to listening to something that comes through in a different way. Trusting that what I was getting was correct, that it was helpful, it was useful figuring out how to speak it to people in a way that they could hear. And that has been a process. And I have luckily worked with some very good mentors who have helped me. And I do get. Thank you, thank you. Lots of loving clients who come back and say, wow, that really helped. So evidence is always useful, too. That has probably been the biggest. The second… I want to go to the number two for me that I think about is making sure that people know what when they come to an animal communicator, they come to me being clear about what my skills are. I’m just not going to tell you that your dog wants more treats. Will you tell them you’re not yourself? But we’re going to go into the relationship about it and see what we can fix, maybe through energy healing, medical intuition. But how do we bring you guys back? So you’re enjoying each other more, your company more. That’s where we’re going.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, the second question I was going to ask you is, I appreciate you sharing that. Number one is what has been the most gratifying thing about the work you do?
Maribeth Decker
The feed… Well, I think you, I think you heard that when I was talking about why I shifted to animal communication. First off, being in contact with wonderful animals and people who love them enough to come to an animal communicator, those open hearts, that is so gratifying. And hearing the feedback about maybe behavioral changes or people that after they passed, their animals passed, saying, Maribeth, you’re right. My dog did show up this way. I guess I say this, but behavioral changes, emotional changes, and I hear back from people, it’s not 100% who’s 100%, but I get enough of that, that it keeps me moving forward, it fuels me.
Gloria Grace Rand
And I wonder sometimes if perhaps where maybe the results weren’t as, let’s say, positive as expected. Maybe it’s still partly, I think, the owner’s maybe intention or their outlook and maybe their disbelief, really, because I think what you focus on expands. And if you are focusing in on doubt and disbelief, then oftentimes that’s what’s going to show up for you. Whereas if you have an open mind and set the intention that something is positive is going to turn about from this, I would think you had, you’re already heading in the right direction. What do you think about that?
Maribeth Decker
You are correct. I actually love working with people who are already on board. They understand that there’s a spiritual side to our relationship with our animals. You might call it heart to heart. It’s no surprise or it’s no accident that we’re together. It’s one of my beliefs. And how do I say it? I’m not the kind of person who’s going to try to convince you that what I do is real. And if you come to me with that sort of a feeling, you’re right. There’s a barrier right there to allowing the good stuff to happen. I do work with people who are a little skeptical. We all got to be skeptical in this world. But having it’s enough of being in the place of, well, what if this could work? What if? So, yeah. People’s attitudes coming in can make a difference, for better or for worse. Yeah.
Gloria Grace Rand
Now you said something, and I just want to follow up on that because I’m curious about this. I think you said something about it, like, it’s no accident. So do our pets choose us, or do we choose them? I’m just curious about that.
Maribeth Decker
I love that. This is my belief. I think we made some kind of an agreement to find each other and live with each other. I don’t think there’s any accident. Oh, and so my most. This is the best story for me personally, Gloria. I lost two dogs and one of my cats last fall within five weeks of each other. And it was devastating. I don’t care how much you do this stuff, if you love them, there’s never a good time to go. I wrote a book on it. It doesn’t matter. Lots of grief. But the point is, what happened afterwards? We started to look for. We had no dogs in the house. My two remaining cats still are like, where did the dogs go? So the night before my dog, Tibor died, I had this amazing dream that he was running with two dogs that had already passed. Stella and Mitsubishi. Kids named him. Okay. And they were running around with a bunch of dogs all over the place, just running around. And it felt like a medical facility. And finally they hooked up with this little guy that was kind of a beagle, dachshund looking face; got long body, big ears, and they’re like, wow, what the heck? True story. Like, a week before Christmas, we found somebody. Who is that guy? They found him for me and the people at the Rescue Society said we didn’t think he was going to find a home. This guy, he’s got issues. Okay. That was so clear to me. So I know we don’t all have those lovely things, but I do believe that we make. Somehow it happens. Either the guys that left find the next one, or we already agree it’s time for us to get together and all this cool stuff.
Gloria Grace Rand
Wow, that’s so cool. I think there’s some truth to that as well, because just to share a quick anecdote about the cat that I have now, one of the cats that I have now, when I first found her, I was walking our dogs down the sidewalk outside of our community where we’d live, and I kept hearing this strange sound and was like, what the heck was that? And then I walked down to the end of the block, turned around, came back again, and I heard it again. And I don’t know if it was that first day, but then the next day, I heard it again. And then I finally went to investigate, and I saw this tiny, tiny little kitten underneath some bushes. And I was like, oh, my goodness. But I was with the dogs. And so then by the time I came back, she was gone. Well, on Friday, she was still there. And I said, okay, that’s it. You were coming with me. We went and got her that night. I found her, went out with the flashlight and scooped her up and took her to the vet. And he says she was probably no more than five weeks old, and maybe somebody had just dumped her or something and she was just fending for herself out there. And so I think she was hopefully waiting for someone. Now, of course, she wasn’t too happy when I introduced a Siamese into the family, but she still loves me in her own way.
Maribeth Decker
I love that because I have seen where… Here’s the way I like to think of it. So I’ve met dogs who’ve been rehomed, and I think sometimes they’re just like, maybe not even on a conscious level, right? But this isn’t the family for me. And finally, they get to the right family and they’re done. The little cat that’s out there waiting somewhere in the ether, there’s a thing, like, I have to be with Gloria. Yeah, here I am.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, exactly. Now, you mentioned a couple of times that you have written a book. Tell us a little bit more about that.
Maribeth Decker
Well, it’s… Here’s my book. My friend John actually painted a watercolor painting for the book cover. Lucky woman, I am. I did a rewrite of it to start to talk to people about how to navigate for themselves as much as for their animals, how to navigate that last leg of life. Because the first edition that I wrote was just like end of life, getting ready for transition, transition after transition. But what I noticed, which seems really obvious if I say it to you now, is our grief starts as soon as we get that terrible diagnosis or we start to see our animals decline physically or mentally. And then if you’re like me and every other person I’ve talked to, you start thinking about how long you’ve got, what’s going to happen, how can we fix them? How do we make this okay? Or how do I keep them comfortable? So this book goes from all of that ways, mindsets and things like that to help us shift as our animals decline. Even lots of ideas through the transition and even beyond afterlife, what they might be doing, how you might notice that they’re still saying hello, like my Timmy did, maybe in smaller ways. And there’s a lot of what I really love is a lot of my clients will let me put stories in there. So it’s not just facts and beliefs, there’s stories, and it’s been very local to people. Thank you for letting us more about that.
Gloria Grace Rand
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, and I want to ask you one other follow up to that. Let’s say someone listening out there today is going through this. Maybe they have had, you know cancer is so prevalent, not only in people, but in animals as well, and dogs in particular. And that’s what our first dog died of. What advice would you have for them to be able to manage this and to get ready for what may be the inevitable if they’re not able to treat it?
Maribeth Decker
So I’m not being a smart aleck when I say this. I was a monk. For what it’s worth, I loved Monty Python. And there was a skit in there where one of the characters says, I’m not dead yet. Now, I don’t recommend the skit for the story that I’m going to talk about, but if you remember that your animal did not get the diagnosis, you did, and what they’re doing is they’re living in how they’re feeling and how their life is going. So I use that phrase, I’m not dead yet for you and me. I used it for myself, for my animals last fall to look at. Okay, what can I do now? How do I shift to still make this a great time for my animal? And remember, I’m so happy to have them with us. I mean, I even made up a song that I would sing to my dog, Stella. Every day with Stella is a good day. I’m going to cry. But it just reminded me as she lost her hearing and her sight and got less mobile, I still had her around and I was willing to shift. Maybe the walks didn’t go as long as I would have hoped. Or maybe they’re not so interested in getting one more treatment at this point. They just want to be hanging around and get in love. Whatever your answer is to the I’m not dead yet. I’m still here. Enjoy my company. See what I want to do with you, what I can do with you.
Gloria Grace Rand
I love that you said not only that I’m not dead yet, but the fact that you’re the one who got the diagnosis, not them, because they don’t know necessarily. I mean, they do understand some English words, but not necessarily when a vet is talking to you about something like that. So I think that’s so important and that to keep that in mind and just enjoy the time that you’ve got with them, because all you’ve got right now is right now. So make the most of it. So I love that.
Gloria Grace Rand
Is there any commonly held belief regarding animal communication or even just the relationship between people and their pets that you disagree with?
Maribeth Decker
Okay, I got to think for a second, so don’t go anywhere. I think that with what I do, people think that all I’m going to do is give them some information with animal communication, and it should be more than that. There should be an ability to have a two-way communication to do some healing to help you and your animal feel better about this stuff. Well, the other thing I think that seems to be pretty prevalent is that we kind of limit our animals’ abilities to imagine and think and have full inner lives. I believe there’s more there than just what shows up physically. There’s thoughts. I mean, if you start to read stuff about the research they’ve done with dogs, because dogs are willing to be researched, cats are not. That’s just the way it is. But there’s a lot of stuff going on out there about even the intelligence of Octopus, octopi. So I think that we limit ourselves as humans to think. We’re the only ones that are fully immersed in being smart and intelligent and not seeing that there might be a different way of being the world, but it’s still pretty smart and intelligent and there’s still a lot going on there.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, I agree. And they are doing research with cats because I have seen some documentaries on, and especially the cats are a lot smarter or able to do tricks because they always make a big deal about dogs doing tricks. Well, I’ve seen enough cat acts on America’s Got Talent or Britain’s Got Talent. But also I’ve seen a documentary where they were really working with cats and really discovering how much that they really do know, so yeah.
Maribeth Decker
That’s so good. Yeah, I’m going to be looking for those because. Yeah, absolutely. Additional sense of being and smartness and emotions and all that.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah. Because I know people like to put cats down as they’re so aloof and all of that. But I’m sorry, I’m here to tell you, I had cats first. So maybe growing up it’s so maybe I’m biased, but cats love to play. Some cats, I will say this. Some cats love to play, some don’t. But some cats love to play. Some cats are very affectionate. Now, often it is on their terms. But I’ve got one just for the two extremes. I’ve got one cat who is more aloof, but does love to play and will sit on my lap when she wants to. But the other one, I swear, he’s part dog because he really loves to play and he loves to have his belly rubbed. And he’s the Siamese, too. I mean, he’s just Mr. Lovey Dovey. So it just goes to show you, they’re all unique. They all have their own personalities, just like people do.
Maribeth Decker
Thank you for saying that. I mean, I’ve heard so much. It’s like, what’s wrong with my cat? It’s not a dog. You just said it. But I am also, my cat Buddy, she sleeps over at my head. And my cat Mac, he would chase balls when the dogs wouldn’t do it. We had tons of.
Gloria Grace Rand
And I swear, I mean, that Jackson, he’s a retriever, as would my daughter used to… She would take, after she finishes chewing gum, she’d wrap it up in that little silver foil, and then she would throw that and he would go chase it and then bring it back to her, and they would do this over and over again. So it’s amazing. They’re amazing. I want to ask you one other question before we start wrapping things up today, because I’d love to see the different answers that my guests give. So what are you curious about right now?
Maribeth Decker
Oh, okay, got to think again. What are you curious about? I’m going to focus on what I do. I’m curious about how far we can use some of the different techniques that I have learned in helping, particularly animals who’ve had a rough start, something traumatic happen to bring them relief from that past experience. So they’re fully engaged and having a lovely time here in the now, I think that I would say is like, I would like to get it through to them without pounding. You can’t just do it intellectually. But the truth is, like, to say, you just won the jackpot. Here you are with this lovely family, lots of food, lots of love. How can we release you from that past? And I’ve been exploring medical intuition, different kinds of medical intuition, modalities and techniques to clear out that past experience and see if we can change, how much we can change the behavior in the now. So it doesn’t affect the past, the past doesn’t affect their quality of life now. So that’s what I’ve been thinking about lately.
Gloria Grace Rand
Very good. And I just realized that I should have asked you a very important question right when we started talking about all of this because there may be people out there wondering about it because I know, I just thought of this. So because it’s going to lead into my next question. How does someone work with you? Do you work with people in person or can you work with them, like online? I didn’t even ask you that.
Maribeth Decker
Most of my sessions are online via Zoom or phone. I live in Alexandria, Virginia. I do have office hours at the Veterinary Holistic Center in Springfield in Virginia if you’re in the DC area, but most of them are via Zoom. I think people have to get over the fact that it doesn’t have to be a physical connection. It never was. It’s telepathic. It does not matter location. It doesn’t matter whether they’re sitting staring at me intently. They can be cleaning themselves. I don’t care, sleeping. So when people got over that, especially with the last few years, they’re ready to try it out, see that it worked.
Gloria Grace Rand
All right, good. That’s what I thought. But I wanted to make sure I could clear that up for anyone listening who might be a little confused. So if someone is listening now and says, oh, I need some help and I want to contact Maribeth, what’s the best place for people to do that?
Maribeth Decker
Really the best place is to go to my website, sacredgrove.com. Dot com. I really worked hard to give you a sense of who I am, and you can see how you can work with me. And you can always email me Maribeth@sacredgrove.com you can see how my name is spelled, and so check with me that way, too. So, I do lots of virtual sessions, as we just talked about. I do have packages, we do have packages. I teach people how to connect with their animals, too. So, I have a class, if you’re ever interested in learning about that and other stuff. So that’s the best way to do it. And I just love working with people and their animals.
Gloria Grace Rand
All right. And just for those of you who are listening, she spells her name with an I. So it’s M-A-R-I-B-E-T-H. But the website is sacredgrove.com, and I will have that in the show notes. So in case you are listening somewhere where you don’t have a pen handy, go to Liveloveengagepodcast.com and you’ll get all of the information. You’ll be able to find this episode as well as all of our past episodes. So this has been a wonderful conversation. I enjoyed it and I feel you shared and a lot of information to help our audience out today to connect better with their pets. So thank you so much, Maribeth.
Maribeth Decker
Gloria, thank you so much for this time. It is, to be able to enthuse and share some great information that I gleaned. It’s certainly a privilege. Thank you.
Gloria Grace Rand
And I do also want to thank all of you for watching and for listening on your favorite podcast platform. And if you aren’t subscribed yet, I hope you will. You can also subscribe to me on I almost said LinkedIn. Well, you can follow me on LinkedIn, but you can subscribe to the video on YouTube at GloriaGraceRand. And yeah. So until next time, as always, I encourage you to go out and live fully, love deeply and engage authentically.
