The Spiritual Coach, the Receipts, and the Politics of Selective Compassion: A Palimpsest of Erasure in She'lburne Balls
By John F. Sendelbach · Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts · May 2026
In fact, I am noting it here at the outset. Her publication, What I Wish: 100 love notes to help you survive, come alive, and thrive after abortion, is available for public purchase. The paradox of this situation is clear: an individual who participated in an effort to restrict my livelihood and remove my public art receives an objective mention from the very artisan she sought to cancel. Rather than reciprocating those methods, I will simply present the documented record, the primary sources, and the physical timeline, allowing the contradictions to speak for themselves.
I am standing in 2026 on the Iron Bridge in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts—adjacent to the walkway where the campaign to remove my work was launched. I have a 99,118-byte digital archive containing the public Facebook threads from June 2020. This is not merely a personal grievance; it is a case study in the mechanics of small-town cancel culture: the deployment of weaponized compassion, the application of economic pressure under the banner of social justice, and the professional branding of empathy by individuals who actively participated in the social exclusion of their neighbors.
The Layers of the Valley
The Bridge of Flowers has always carried historical layers. Built in 1908 as a concrete trolley span for the Shelburne Falls and Colrain Street Railway, it hauled passengers and freight until the line was discontinued in 1927. Left to weeds, it was repurposed in 1929 by the local Women’s Club, transforming an abandoned industrial structure into a community garden walkway. Hundreds of varieties bloom seasonally above the Deerfield River—a monument to civic volunteerism and aesthetic renewal.
But the valley has a complex local history. In 1924, during the period of regional expansion by the second Ku Klux Klan into New England, five crosses were burned in Shelburne Falls—one on the Buckland side of the river, and another rafted downstream past the iron bridge itself. The Klan’s migration north during the 1920s targeted not only racial minorities but focused heavily on enforcing a definition of "100% Americanism" against Catholic, Jewish, and immigrant workers filling the local mills and quarries. Fraternal orders and local clubs in Franklin County often overlapped with these regional movements, as documented in contemporary reports in the North Adams Transcript detailing a "substantial membership" across the county.
The historical efforts to cultivate civic beauty occurred alongside these periods of social stratification. Today, the Bridge of Flowers continues its seasonal blooms, and my physical installations—including the Pothole Fountain featuring the Black Stones of Africa—remain in place. The material regional record outlasts temporary social alignments and selective civic memory.
The Mechanics of 2020
The civic friction of 2020 mirrored these historical impulses for community purification, albeit under a different ideological framework. In the wake of George Floyd’s death, adherence to specific organizational narratives became a strict standard within progressive communities. To raise questions regarding the tactics, funding streams, or political lineage of the mainstream movement was frequently categorized not as a debate, but as an act of harm.
This period marked a high-water mark for decentralized accountability: private citizens, utilizing social media, could initiate boycotts, draft petitions, and demand the reputational removal of individuals without the requirements of formal evidence or administrative due process. While the First Amendment protects the right to advocate for economic pressure, the social enforcement mechanism relied on a strict purity test, often carried out by individuals insulated from the economic consequences they sought to impose on local tradespeople.
This is the context in which Amanda Kingsley—now operating professionally as Amanda Star Kingsley, Certified Life Coach™—participated in the local thread.
On June 6, 2020, I walked onto the bridge to document an unannounced pandemic street closure near my welding studio. A verbal dispute ensued with a group on the walkway. Amanda Kingsley did not witness the encounter; she was on the opposite side of the Deerfield River. Yet, she immediately joined the public Facebook thread initiated by Alouette Batteau, stating on the public record:
"I was on the other side and had no idea this was happening."
Photos below shows Catherine Hennessey and Sonny Walters
stalking me while accusing me of racism in front of the children.
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| Hennessey's psycho letters to my landlord!!! |
Despite her stated absence from the event, Kingsley immediately validated the proposed economic sanctions, commenting "never going there again," and initiated an effort to institutionalize the boycott: "Which makes me want to create a list of businesses that support anti-racist policy so we know where to shop locally." Over the following weeks, she actively corresponded with the Shelburne Falls Business Association, attempting to integrate an ideological screening mechanism into the local chamber of commerce. Her participation across the dispute comprised multiple detailed comments aimed at sustaining economic pressure.
The accompanying online petition gathered over 700 signatures before it was removed by Change.org for violating policies regarding bullying and defamation. The petition explicitly demanded the removal of my permanent public art installations from the Bridge of Flowers. Within the unmoderated comment threads, participants advocated for physical violence and total commercial boycotts. Kingsley remained an active participant in these threads, organizing the logistics of the commercial blacklist and publicly characterizing attempts at neutral dialogue as mature or immature based entirely on ideological alignment.
The digital archive demonstrates a sustained, collective pattern of action aimed at dismantling a local artisan's livelihood over protected speech. I welcome any legal challenge regarding these assertions; the process of judicial discovery would bring every preserved screenshot, email exchange, and internal communication regarding this campaign into the public record.
The Rebranding of Trauma
Six years later, Amanda Star Kingsley operates Speaking Light Into Abortion, a podcast and coaching practice focused on post-abortion experiences. Her professional platform centers on a specific spiritual narrative regarding reproductive procedures, stating on her platform:
"I believe that some things in life pick us… That’s exactly how I feel about my abortion. I don’t just think abortion picked me to teach me a lesson. I believe that my baby picked me so that I could do this work, so that I could help other women find the inner peace and strength I was able to access before, during, and after my procedure."
Her marketing utilizes natural metaphors, referencing poppy buds "pregnant with floral dreams," and offers clients a structured "GPS system" to navigate emotional grief toward personal peace, operating from a strictly pro-choice perspective.
However, the legal framework undergirding this spiritual branding includes an explicit liability disclaimer on her professional website:
"Amanda expressly disclaims responsibility, and shall have no liability, for any damages, loss, injury."
Kingsley holds no medical or mental health licensure; the service is explicitly designated as non-clinical coaching.
Alongside this narrative, medical literature describes the physical realities of the procedure as standardized and clinical. A second-trimester Dilation and Evacuation (D&E) procedure—the standard surgical intervention for mid-pregnancy terminations—involves the mechanical dilation of the cervix followed by surgical extraction. Clinical data from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and standard embryological texts confirm that a fetal heartbeat is detectable within 21 days of conception, and the physiological structures required for nociception and pain responses develop progressively between 12 and 20 weeks.
The contradiction lies in the selective application of this grace. The same individual who markets "inner peace" and cosmic reconciliation regarding the termination of developing life applied a standard of total social exclusion to a living neighbor who uttered an unapproved slogan on a public walkway. In 2020, there was no documented attempt at dialogue, no offer of a spiritual contract, and no recorded baseline of empathy extended to a local craftsman. The response was strictly structural: the list, the boycott, resulting in organized economic exclusion.
The Ongoing Legal Record
The campaign initiated in 2020 did not conclude with the initial online threads. Specific participants, including Katherine Hennessey and Brook Batteau, maintained a pattern of personal confrontation over the ensuing years.
On November 30, 2025, on a public sidewalk in Buckland, an escalation occurred. Brook Batteau physically assaulted me, striking me multiple times from behind while a bystander obstructed my movement. Katherine Hennessey joined the physical altercation, delivering additional strikes that dislodged my eyeglasses. I maintained a policy of non-retaliation. Hennessey then seized my recording smartphone, walked approximately seventy-five feet to the edge of the Iron Bridge, and threw the device into the Deerfield River.
A neutral eyewitness observed the encounter and provided a formal, sworn statement to law enforcement. The following morning, prior to my acquisition of a replacement communication device, Hennessey sought a harassment prevention order against me in an attempt to establish a preemptive legal defense. Following a review of the physical and eyewitness evidence, Judge Mazanec denied the order with prejudice, marking the third independent judicial credibility finding against her assertions.
On April 7, 2026, Katherine Hennessey and Brook Batteau were formally arraigned in Franklin County District Court. Hennessey stands charged with two counts of Assault and Battery and one count of Malicious Destruction of Property. Batteau stands charged with one count of Assault and Battery. Both defendants entered pleas of not guilty. The legal proceedings remain active.
Conclusion
The permanent stone installations remain on the Bridge of Flowers. The sculptures and public plazas throughout Franklin County continue to serve their civic functions. The digital blacklists of 2020 were dismantled by their hosting platforms for policy violations, and the local historical record has outlasted the social alignments of that summer.
The durable response to sustained social pressure is to continue producing work that resists erasure.
"Amanda expressly disclaims responsibility, and shall have no liability, for any damages, loss, injury."
By what logic does an individual confess on the public record to having no physical sight or presence at a civic dispute, yet instantly validate a total commercial boycott against a local business based on that dispute?
How does a professional platform grounded in the language of unconditional compassion, healing, and absolute grace reconcile its marketing with a documented history of organizing local economic blacklists against its neighbors?
When an unverified online consensus replaces objective investigation, does it protect vulnerable communities, or does it simply hand a tool of standardless social punishment to anyone willing to type a comment?
Should a community examine whether the professional commodification of empathy—divorced from any requirement for clinical licensure, objective evidence, or consistent civic behavior—ultimately erodes the very public trust and shared humanity it claims to restore?
