Today we’d like to introduce you to Cynthia Moe.
Hi Cynthia, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I moved to St Cloud in January 2022 after a divorce, and Mind, Body & Spirit was one of the first businesses I visited. MBS features crystals and stones that can help support spiritual and emotional growth, and it’s a wonderful resource for people who are interested in spirituality that is outside the mainstream as well as those searching for truly unique gifts and decor. I had been experiencing a lot of changes in my own spirituality and in the way I saw myself and the world around me, but I had no idea that 18 months later, I would co-own the shop.
I met my current partner, Eric, and we started dating a few months later. I’d taught on the university level for over 20 years, but I wasn’t eager to return to that–I felt like there was something new, something more vital, that I should be doing. I would spend a good deal of time at MBS, chatting with the owners and choosing crystals and stones that helped me along my spiritual journey.–then I would lament to Eric that the shop would close soon if no one bought it. When Eric asked if we should consider buying MBS, I thought he was nuts. But the idea wouldn’t leave me alone. Soon we were discussing the possibilities with the shop’s original owners and in June of 2023 we purchased the shop.
We offer a variety of events, classes and workshops that cover a wide variety of interests– past life regression, shamanic journeying, learning to use intuition and psychic gifts, mediumship, energy work, drum-making, tarot classes. We offer readings for tarot and oracle cards, intuitive and mediumship and astrology. All of these modalities help people find their way.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I’ve spent a lot of time healing from the failure of a 32-year marriage, and trying to help my family recon with the changes that brought. There was a lot of internal healing I needed to walk through. And I must say, since I’ve been here life is feeling easier and easer!
All of my education was oriented toward working in academia–I’ve never run a shop. EVERYTHING was new to me, from connecting with vendors, managing inventory, figuring out advertising and social media, and working with customers with a wide variety of backgrounds and interests. My learning curve the first year was incredibly steep! Eric handles the finances, thank goddess, because that is not my gift at all.
But our customers are incredible. Just incredible. They share so much of themselves with us. I love hearing their stories and helping them resolve issues they are facing.
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Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a teacher and writer by training. I’ve written two books–Hunger Pains (2004) is about spiritual fasting and is a journal about 40-day fasts I completed in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Fool’s Lake (2023) is a novel based on the flooding of the Milford Mine in 1924 and a fictional portrayal of how that event affected the next few generations of survivors. I love local history. I won an Independent Lens (PBS) grant to make a documentary about the Ojibwe Chief Hole-in-the-Day in the late 90’s. You can still find it on YouTube although I have no idea how it ended up on there!
I write poetry as well, although I haven’t completed enough for publication. We are making some changes in the shop’s schedule that should allow me to write more. Eric and I are also starting a podcast that will discuss the spiritual journeys we have both taken and to support people in our area who are on similar journeys.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I don’t think of myself as a big risk-taker although I was an avid scuba diver, was on a dive recovery team in Crow Wing county, and I have ridden and handled a lot of horses with questionable personalities. I practiced Tae Kwon Do for years and was a 2nd degree black belt. My ex-husband and I lived in Ely for most of a decade and saved a failing summer camp from closure. But by far the most risky thing I have ever done was to pack up my aptly-named Escape will some clothes, a few art supplies and some books and leave my marriage and come to St Cloud with not one idea of what the hell I was going to do. I didn’t know a single soul here. I didn’t know if I would find a job. Hell, I wasn’t sure I could take care of myself at all, to be honest, I just knew that staying in the environment I was in wasn’t healthy for me and wasn’t going to change. So I left.
At 53 years old, I was living alone, completely on my own for the first time in my life.
And it paid off! I am so much happier, more free, living a life way more aligned to who I really am. And that’s another thing–taking a risk to find out who I am, why I believe what I believe–that, too, has really paid off.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://mindbodyspiritstcloud.com
- Instagram: mbs915
- Facebook: Mind Body & Spirit Books and Gifts
