I keep trying to soothe a feeling I cannot name.

This is grief. It has just changed shape. It no longer arrives as sharp devastation, but as an unnamed ache. A longing for something long gone.

The grief no longer feels like a body being riddled with bullets. Instead it’s more like a low-grade fever. The kind of thing that goes unnoticed because, from the outside, I’m functioning. Answering emails. Showing up. Laughing at the right moments.

But internally, something is off.

I wonder if what I’m really reaching for is my mother.

Not just her, but everything a mother is. Safety. Witnessing. Unconditional familiarity and being known without explanation.

Maybe this new grief is partially the realization that there are certain forms of comfort the world never fully replaces. And maybe that is why the yearning feels impossible to satisfy. Because I am not craving a place or a meal or a distraction.

I am craving a feeling. A person. A version of being held that no longer exists in the same form.

Like reaching for a phantom limb.

She felt everything all at once. Emotions swirling together like multiple cans of paint tipped on their sides. Colors pouring out, mingling, forming something new. Grief, sadness, loneliness, joy, abandonment, hope, fear, guilt. All of it.

She wished for someone to help her understand what this was. But she began to understand that no one else could fully explain what she had created. Was creating.

So she stopped searching outside of herself.

She took a seat.

And began looking inward for the truth.

And right now, it feels like Change is visiting most of us. It’s showing up everywhere. Politics, career, family, finances, friendships, relationships, even the way we’re thinking about ourselves. It’s not being selective.

What’s interesting is how different it feels when it’s gone. When it’s just you and Stability, sitting at a quiet table for two, everything feels safe. You know what your morning looks like. Your day unfolds more or less as expected. Plans hold. Things move the way you imagined them. There’s a sense of control. A sense of knowing.

And then, inevitably, Change shows up to the restaurant, pulls up a chair, and shakes the table. That sense of knowing starts to slip. Control loosens. And in its place comes something else. Fear. Disorientation. A quiet sense of loss.

I had a dream recently that made this all snap into focus.

It’s an apocalyptic time. War, scarcity, that kind of atmosphere. I’m back at my parents’ house, but it’s empty. The whole city feels abandoned. I walk upstairs into my mother’s bedroom. The room is disheveled, things scattered everywhere. And then I start noticing cash on the floor, mixed in with clothes and other belongings.

I pick it up piece by piece. I can feel the bills in my hand. Thin, cool, textured. Fives, tens, twenties. I roll them up and tuck them into my pocket, then pause. Probably safer somewhere else. I lean down, unzip the side of my black military-style boot, and slide the money inside.

Then I hear something downstairs.

I move quickly toward the stairs, and that’s when I see them. Soldiers, entering the house in waves. And just like that, I understand. Someone in charge has decided this house is now theirs. A base of operations. They move past me, carrying things, rearranging, taking over.

I push through them and step outside. The sun hits my face, warm and bright, and I feel it all at once. The sadness. The loss. The quiet realization that something has been taken. I walk to the front of the house and sit on the porch. Still.

After I told my Spiritual Coach the dream, she asked me a simple question. “Who were the soldiers?”

And it was immediately clear. They were working for Change.

In some ways I’m still sitting on that porch, feeling the loss, but also understanding that everything had to be cleared out. That what felt invasive was also making space.

Anyone else remember this old soap opera opening? When I think about Change, this image of the hourglass keeps coming back to me. The sand slipping through, grain by grain. Inevitable. Unstoppable. Uncaring. It’s easy to appreciate when it’s the kind of change we asked for. The kind we chose. The kind we were ready for. But most of the time, it isn’t.

So maybe the shift isn’t in trying to control Change, or time its arrival, or rush it out the door. Maybe it’s in how we receive it. Keeping a seat at the table, not because we enjoy the disruption, but because we understand its role.

Change rarely leaves things the way it found them. And even when it doesn’t feel like it at first, it leaves something behind that wasn’t there before.

This reading is organized by the seasons of the year. For each one, I pulled a three-card spread reflecting the past, present, and future, plus the bottom of the deck, which points to the underlying energy shaping the whole picture. So find the month you were born in and read the collective energy for the month of May.

As always, read these messages with discernment. Take what resonates. Leave what doesn’t. No forcing insight.

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There are people here helping me. Family, I think. I can feel them more than I can see them. I know my mother is here even if she doesn’t fully appear. Just a presence. Just a knowing.

The apartment feels unfinished, like it hasn’t decided what it is yet. I’m moving furniture around, trying to make things fit. Trying to make it make sense.

There’s a rug on the floor. Threadbare. Worn down to almost nothing. It’s in pieces, like it’s been taken apart and put back together too many times. Someone tells me I should replace it. I don’t. It feels important that it stays.

I keep rearranging things. That’s when I realize the apartment is bigger than I thought.

There are rooms I didn’t see before. A kitchen. Another bathroom. Then another. Three in total. The toilets are old, almost antique. One sits by itself in a corner, exposed, like it was placed there and forgotten. I try to move a desk into the space, but the toilet blocks it. I stop.

Something feels wrong so I keep exploring.

I see a door I hadn’t noticed before. It’s split in two, the top half opening separately from the bottom, like something meant to keep only part of you out.

I open it.

There’s a kitchen inside. Normal enough. Tile. A stove. But when I turn the corner, the space shifts. It stretches further than it should.

And then it becomes something else. A hallway. Long. Narrow. It keeps going. A bathroom too?

The walls are covered in photographs. Old ones. Black and white. Sepia. Faces from another time. It feels less like a bathroom and more like an altar. Like a place meant for remembering.

I walk further in.

At the end, everything gathers. Photos. Objects. Small things that feel like they’ve been kept on purpose. Preserved.

There’s a man in the images.

Over and over again.

He looks like my father.

Not exactly. But enough that I can’t ignore it.

I stand there trying to understand how that could be possible. The photos are too old. Late 1800s, early 1900s. Long before him. And still.

I know.

Or I think I know.

Or I don’t want to know.

To the right, there’s a bathtub. Massive. Deep enough to step down into. It feels less like a bath and more like something ceremonial. Something you enter.

There’s no mirror anywhere.

That detail sticks with me.

I leave the room.

Back in the main space, I grab family by the hand. I need them to see this. I need someone else to confirm I’m not imagining it.

We go back.

But now the hallway is full.

Women line the space. Older women. Dressed like they’re on their way somewhere important. Church, maybe. Or something older than that. They stand patiently, like they’ve been waiting.

There are so many of them.

We try to move through, excusing ourselves, pushing gently past. I keep saying we’re not here to use the bathroom. I just need to show her something.

The closer we get, the tighter the space becomes.

More bodies. More heat. More pressure.

We reach the front.

I show her the images.

She looks. Tilts her head.

“It kind of looks like him,” she says. “But I don’t know.”

I do.

Or I think I do.

Something in me goes cold.

I say it out loud this time. I can’t just move this stuff. I can’t throw it away. Something about this place isn’t right.

I leave again.

The dream shifts.

I’m back in the apartment with someone else now. I show her everything. Tell her not to touch anything. I can feel it more clearly now. This isn’t just a space. It’s holding something.

I’m still planning to move in.

Even now.

That feels important.

The dream shift.

There’s a woman in the apartment. She moves like she belongs there. Like she’s always been there. She knows the space in a way I don’t.

I’m holding something I’ve taken from the room. I’m thinking about putting it outside. Letting someone else take it.

She looks at me.

“Sit it out where?” she asks.

“Outside,” I say.

“For what?”

“So someone can take it.”

She pauses.

“No one’s going to take that.”

Something about the way she says it lands.

I hesitate.

I shouldn’t move anything. I shouldn’t spread whatever this is.

She reaches behind something and pulls out a bottle. Says she’s going to have a drink.

I recognize it.

Someone else had brought it earlier. Offered it to me. Told me I should have some.

I didn’t.

She pours it anyway.

And then it ended in darkness.

I wait a beat as the sound of my heart pounding fills my ears and echoes around me in the dark.

I open my eyes as my bedroom comes into focus, welcoming me back to the waking world.

This is literally how I feel.

Tired. A bit run down. Low energy. Emotionally full in a way that feels heavy, not expressive. Just like this plastic bag with water sitting at the bottom. Not overflowing, not spilling over, just heavy where it collects.

It’s a strange thing, a plastic bag holding water. It wasn’t built for that. But it’s doing it anyway. You can see the strain in how it shape-shifts. The way it stretches itself to hold the weight.

Hard to ignore but not broken. Not leaking. Not even overwhelming in a dramatic way. Just accumulated. Effort that has nowhere to go…yet.

And the thing about carrying something like this. You have to keep it upright. You can’t relax your grip. You can’t set it down without consequence. So you hold it. Carefully.

So the next time you ask, “How are you?” make sure you actually want the answer.

And then make space for what comes. Because sometimes the answer isn’t simple or even that deep.

It’s just heavy.

There was a pup named Pi.

I am he and he is I.

He was small, soft, and covered in hair

That flopped in the wind whenever it stirred.

My human would say I was the apple of her eye

But mischief was the glint in mine.

For I am an explorer, you see

Traveling for the first time to this place of earthlings.

Excited to be here, always searching for more

But bound and unable to do it on my own.

My human was often sad, you see

Not always willing to wander with me.

And so I would cry, tug, and beg

Pleading to go and be one with the land

But she would hang her head and cry

Unable, it seemed, to be my guide.

I tried in all the ways I can

To help her somehow understand.

I pulled tarot to tell my tale

The World reversed, the Two of Swords unveiled.

She would laugh and giggle at me

Then drift away, distractedly.

And so I sit and hang my head

Hoping tomorrow we wander instead.

This reading is organized by astrological modalities. For each one, I pulled a three-card spread reflecting the past, present, and future, plus the bottom of the deck, which points to the underlying energy shaping the whole picture.

As always, read these messages with discernment. Take what resonates. Leave what doesn’t. No forcing insight.

Today’s reading is using the Uusi Pagan Otherworld Deck. You can find shop here.

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Are you familiar with the story of Orpheus and Eurydice? It’s a Greek mythology, part parable, part warning wrapped in tragedy. I’ve heard it told various ways, often showing up in other works like Shakespeare, tv shows like Netflix’s The Sandman, or movies like Hamnet, but it’s almost always framed the same way: as a love story. But what struck me recently is how it feels like a love story of a different kind. Or maybe that’s just where I am right now, because life is the hardest it’s ever been for me these days, and stories have a way of shifting when you’re inside something like that.

The tale most people know is one of a love ripped apart by death. Orpheus was a musician with a supernatural talent. When he played, the world stopped to listen. In some stories he is the son of a muse, so of course he would be more than just a human musician. He was married to Eurydice. Not much is written about her, which feels predictable given how often women were treated as background in these kinds of stories. But it is established that they had a great love. The story goes that shortly after they were wed, she is walking through a field and is startled by a man named Aristaeus. In her haste to get away, she steps on a snake and dies.

Orpheus is devastated. He cannot go on without her, so he does the unthinkable and goes beyond the veil to find her. He plays his music as he walks into the underworld, and the sound is so heartbreakingly beautiful it bends the rules of that place. Even Hades softens and offers him a deal. Eurydice can return to the land of the living, but there is one condition. Orpheus must walk ahead of her and not look back until they reach the surface.

No checking. No reassurances. No asking if she is still there. Just trust. Just faith.

He agrees, and they begin the climb. It is dark, long, and silent in the way only certain kinds of waiting can be. It doesn’t take long before doubt starts to creep in. Anyone who has ever waited in silence knows how quickly your mind fills the space. Maybe she is not there. Maybe the deal was never real. Maybe he has been walking alone this entire time, carrying hope like a weight he can’t quite set down.

Right as they reach the surface, he turns around, and she vanishes. Gone for good.

But what if it’s a love story of a different kind?

The story is so centered on Orpheus, so if I flip this around and look at it from Eurydice’s perspective, I start to wonder if she even wanted to return. What was her actual choice in any of this? Let’s imagine she is down there in the land of the dead, not suffering, but expanded. Reconnecting with ancestors. Living in a way that is no longer limited by her body, her womanhood, or the smallness of a single human life. In death, she has access to memory, understanding, and a kind of wholeness that feels less like an ending and more like a return.

Maybe in her version of the story, she did make a choice. On that walk to the surface, maybe she slowed down. Maybe she let the distance stretch between them. Enough space to plant doubt. Enough distance to make him turn around. Knowing the risk, but also shaping the outcome. Creating the exact conditions that would allow her to drift back to where she truly wanted to be.

Or maybe it is even simpler than that. What if Eurydice and Orpheus are the same? A split consciousness where Orpheus is the human self and Eurydice is the deeper soul.

In that version of the story, the descent into the underworld becomes incarnation. Density, time, grief, survival. The instruction not to look back becomes something else entirely. A quiet warning not to try to grasp the spiritual through force, control, or effort. And the turning back, the doubt, becomes the moment the human self tries to verify what can only be trusted.

Lately I feel tangled in my body, my emotions, bills, financial insecurity, survival. And at the same time, I am aware of something else running alongside all of it. Ancestry. Spirit. Meaning. A creative current that flickers in and out of reach. When the human part of me gets anxious, it feels like I have lost that tether. So I look back. I reach for reassurance. And every time I do, it feels like I create more distance instead of less, like trying to hold water tighter only makes it slip through faster.

To be human is to be fully immersed in the physical. Body, senses, emotions, personality. Without those familiar cues, it becomes hard to hold onto something less tangible. The knowing. The faith. That thin but steady thread that connects us to something beyond what we can see. And the more we try to find it through physical means, the more it recedes, just out of grasp.

The image that keeps coming to mind is Pisces. Two fish swimming, one behind the other, connected by a cord. Moving in different directions, but never fully separate. That tension between them feels like the same tension I have been trying to name.

And after sitting with this for a while, something simple came to me. Our anxiety is not evidence that we have lost our spiritual tether. It is evidence that our nervous system is overloaded.

Spirit does not disappear when cortisol rises, but our access to it can blur, like a signal still present but harder to tune into.

For me, meditation has been the way back. A way to move out of the noise of my nervous system and settle into something quieter, something steadier. When I get there, I can feel that cord again, subtle but undeniable.

So whichever way you want to interpret this story, the truth is that there is always more to it than what we are first told. And perhaps the version we need is the one that meets us where we are.

She moved steadily through the foliage, brushing past clusters of blue iris and low-spilling creeping jenny that curled along the earth like it had nowhere else to be. The narrow leaves noticed her and whispered against her skin as a branch here and there grazed the thin fabric of her white nightgown. The damp ground still held the day’s warmth beneath her bare feet, even as the evening air began to cool.

Finally, she came upon the clearing. The one she had been searching for.

The pond sat quietly at its center, ringed by soft chaos. Cardinal flowers burned low and red near the water’s edge, and patches of water lettuce drifted lazily along the surface, breaking and reforming with the slightest movement.

She stepped forward and lowered herself to her knees at the edge of the pond. The greenery gathered close here, dense and unbothered, brushing against her arms as she leaned in. Small leaves and soft stems tickled her skin as her palms met the warm earth and caught her weight. She moved on all fours, inching closer.

There, she saw herself. Her reflection waited for her, still and unblinking. She closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, the surface of the water began to shift. A slow, quiet swirl. The image softened, then changed.

Another face looked back at her. Lined with time, but unmistakable. Familiar in a way that made her heart stretch and ache. The girl’s breath caught as the face held her, steady and patient.

Tears gathered before she noticed them. Small ripples spread across the surface as they fell, distorting the image, pulling it apart and stitching it back together again. For a moment, it felt like they were becoming the same.

The Face in the Pond lips parted, just slightly, as if forming the beginning of a word.

The girl leaned closer.

The Face in the Pond’s mouth opened a bit wider.

The girl reached out, her fingers trembling as they touched the surface of the water. The contact sent a soft shiver through the pond.

The mouth opened again. Wider.

The girl moved forward, drawn by something she did not question. She only followed. She shifted her weight and tipped herself headfirst into the pond, disappearing into her mothers mouth.

The water stilled.

Above it, the sun finally gave in to its descent, its last light stretching across the surface in a quiet, fractured rainbow.

The Story Behind: The Face in the Pond

But I’m aware that there is a small group of folks who are living life like everything is normal, routine…just another day. If that’s you please kindly hit the back button at the top left of this screen and quietly take your leave.

This story is for all the dreamers, manifestors, lo…

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The night sky stretches wide in front of her, framed within the tall arched window pane. A deep velvet blue stitched with stars. They blink slowly, patiently, as if they’ve been waiting for her to notice them.

Time loosens its grip in the quiet.

The room breathes with her.

Short inhale.

Long exhale.

For a moment, the whole world moves at the pace of her breath.

Then the door creaks.

She turns her head slowly toward the doorway. The lamp beside her bed casts a soft pool of light across the floor, but the hallway beyond it is shadow. Something moves there.

A small figure stands just inside the dark.

One hop.

Another.

He hops forward slowly, carefully, until he enters the light.

Henry.

Her face softens immediately.

“Hiiii,” she whispers.

Henry hops closer in reply. One hop. Two hop. Three hop. Four. With a gentle thump he lands beside her on the bed, the mattress dipping slightly beneath his small weight.

He peers into her face, his whiskers twitching.

“You sweet little girl,” Henry says warmly. “I’m sorry it took me so long to come visit.”

“Has it been long?” she whispers. Her voice is soft and dreamy. “I feel like it was just a little while.”

She tilts her head.

“Did you bring me a gift? You usually do.”

Henry smiles.

Slowly, he pulls his paw from behind his back and stretches his closed fist toward her. For a moment he lets it hover there, teasing the surprise.

Then he lifts his paw above her head.

“Ready?” he asks softly.

Before she can answer, he opens his fist and dumps a shower of glitter over her curls.

Pink, lavender, teal. The colors tumble through her hair, catching the lamplight as they fall.

The girl squeals softly with laughter, shaking her head as the glitter spins around her like tiny stars breaking loose from the sky.

“I love glitter,” she whispers.

The room glows for a moment with their quiet delight.

“Henry,” she asks after a while, her voice drifting through the sparkles still floating in the air, “how long do you think you were gone?”

Henry reaches into his vest pocket and lifts a silver chain. A pocket watch slides into his paw with a soft metallic clink.

He considers it carefully.

“Two scores and five stones,” he says with great authority.

Then he leans close and presses his whiskered lips to her ear.

“But you,” he whispers, “look exactly the same as the day I left.”

The girl smiles, relieved.

“Oh good.”

He looks at her for a moment, then nods decisively.

“Are you ready for our adventure?” Henry asks.

Her hands clap together with excitement.

“Oh my goodness, yes!” she laughs. “Finally!”

Then her face falls slightly.

“Oh,” she pouts.

Henry tilts his head.

“What is it?”

“My family,” she says quietly, glancing toward the dark doorway beyond. “I don’t want them to worry that I’m gone.”

Henry chuckles softly.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “They’ll be looked after.”

Satisfied, she slips her hand into his.

Henry helps her sit up.

And something strange happens.

The heaviness she didn’t realize she was carrying disappears. The room brightens. The air feels lighter somehow, as if the world itself has taken a deep breath.

Together they step down from the bed.

Hand in paw, they walk toward the arched window.

Beyond it the night opens wide.

Fields of green stretch endlessly beneath a silver moon. Flowers burst in colors so bright they almost hum. The flowers glow faintly in the moonlight, as if the color is coming from inside them. The air smells like spring rain and fresh grass and something else—something ancient and familiar.

The girl laughs.

“Come on!” she shouts.

They begin to hop and skip together through the tall grass.

One hop.

Two skip.

Three hop.

Four.

Their silhouettes bounce lightly against the horizon.

For a long time the room remains quiet.

Then the door opens.

A young woman steps inside carrying a glass of water. She pauses when she sees the glitter scattered across the pillow.

“Mom?” she says softly.

There is no answer.

She moves closer to the bed and gently lifts the stuffed rabbit that has slipped sideways beside the old woman’s shoulder. She props it upright again, smoothing the blanket with careful hands.

Then she reaches for the woman’s wrist.

Her fingers rest there for a moment.

Still.

The young woman lets out a soft sob.

She leans down and kisses her mother’s forehead.

“I love you,” she whispers.

Outside the window, the stars continue blinking patiently in the dark.

This reading is organized by birth order. For each one, I pulled a three-card spread reflecting the past, present, and future, plus the bottom of the deck, which points to the underlying energy shaping the whole picture.

As always, read these messages with discernment. Take what resonates. Leave what doesn’t. No forcing insight.

Today’s reading features The Infinite Door tarot deck. You can shop it here.

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She was fae, although not the delicate creature the human tales had turned her into. She was a true warrior, forged of elder magic, a sentinel of clarity, a keeper of the unseen.

She was tired from battle, her wings heavy after the long fight, but the effort had been worth it. She had won again, even though this foe had been clever. It had watched her face its kin, studied her, pressed against her blind spots. Yet knowing her weaknesses was never enough to undo her. She endured. She outlasted. She remained.

Her home appeared in the distance, and the sight filled her with quiet joy.

The fae forest unfurled like a dream: ancient trees arched overhead, their bark etched with silver glyphs that glowed faintly as she passed. Pools of still water reflected not the sky but the inner truth of anyone who gazed into them. Soft lantern-moss lit the ground in shades of blue and green, and gold motes drifted through the air like floating embers.

This was the Veilwood, the realm between waking and sleeping.

A song rose with the wind as she crossed into her land. It was part welcome, part invocation, and it always stirred her body into a subtle dance. She responded automatically, letting her wings shift and sweep in gentle arcs. It was the call of the Lightkeeper, the name most often used for her. Others knew her as the Record Keeper or the Weaver of Revealing. Each title pointed to the same truth: she amplified what was hidden and saw the core of a soul with perfect clarity. Through her, all illusions dissolved.

She angled her wings to the left and let a warm current carry her toward her doorstep. She touched down softly and the door opened on its own, greeting her like an old friend. She stepped inside and paused, taking in her home with the same gratitude she felt every time she returned.

Her copper-colored hair fell in long waves down her back, her soft bangs brushing her lashes as she exhaled. The light in the room caught it gently, turning the strands into something that seemed to hold their own quiet glow.

She lifted her sword from its sheath and set it upon the obsidian altar. Its blade glowed faintly. She cleansed it with slow, practiced movements: passing it through moon-herb smoke, feeding it a touch of her own energy through her palm, then placing it beneath the narrow column of light that shone from the skylight above. The blade hummed in response. This weapon was a truth-forger. It cut through glamours, disguises, delusions, and harm. In her hand, all intentions were revealed.

Before she could move further into the room, a knock sounded at the door. Soft. Uncertain.

She turned and opened it.

A young woman stood there, her hand still lifted as if caught mid-knock. Her brown skin glowed softly, and her long braids shifted as she tilted her head, offering a shy smile.

“Oh… hi,” she said. “I wasn’t sure you’d answer.”

“You caught me just in time,” the Lightkeeper replied. “What brings you?”

Chiari hesitated, searching for words.

“I’m not sure. I went to sleep like normal and somehow ended up here. I think I’m looking for myself. That sounds silly,” she added with a quiet laugh. “I dunno… when I saw your door, I felt like I should knock. Now that you’ve opened it, I guess maybe you can help me… find me?”

Courtney’s smile softened into something warm and knowing. She stepped aside to let her visitor in.

“That’s not silly at all,” she said gently. “That’s why I’m here. Come in. Let’s begin the remembering.”

A dense, old forest surrounds us, where the trees lean in like elders who’ve heard everything. And in the center sits a woman.

She is perched on a tree stump that has shape-shifted itself into a chair just for her…because of course it would. The forest knows her. The moss knows her. Even the smoke from her cig curls upward like it wants to stay near her a little longer. Everything is still and quiet, as if someone had pressed pause. The only movement is the smoke unfurling from her lips and a small dragonfly, wings humming in an unheard rhythm, resting on the left crest of her wooden throne.

She has that old-song energy about her — blues and tambourine, earth and incense — the kind of presence that makes young souls wander out of their chaos and sit at her feet without knowing why. I am no different.

I walk toward her, unsure whether I am arriving or returning.

When I reach her I sit at her feet, and the forest quiets even deeper, the way it does when something true is happening. She flicks the ash from her cigarette, and I watch it fall in slow motion.

Above our heads, the sky shifts like a living mural. The zodiac reveals itself, painted across the indigo sky like ancestral graffiti. Across the backdrop of silver-blue light, stars softly reposition themselves, constellations blooming open as if we had summoned them by name. Years of friendship stretch across the night as easily as us tracing the planets with our fingers, pointing out where Mercury danced in reverse, Aquarius pouring its wisdom back into the dark.

In her presence I begin to change, not into someone new but into more of myself. Younger me folds into older me, like layers of a story finding their order again. The girl I had been stays seated inside the woman I am becoming, both held in the space carved out by her steady, ancient knowing.

She remains exactly as she is, ageless and newly born, old as a hymn, constant as a flickering flame. Never young, never old. Always herself. She looks like wisdom wrapped in wool and cotton. A blues song made human. A root system that learned how to breathe air.

We talk.

Not loudly. Not eagerly. But in that soft way of people who have survived their parents, survived themselves, survived enough seasons to know when to whisper. Our words don’t fill the clearing; they lift and fall like embers.

We lean toward each other. Laughter rises — hers low, throaty, familiar — and the moment it escapes, the forest catches it. The sound carries like wind through leaves long after our mouths close.

We trade stories.

Mothers and shadows.

Fathers and love.

The strange tenderness of abandonment.

The way grief grows like moss over time.

And above us, the sky continues its slow shift.

We point upward like children again, naming planets and transits, arguing softly about retrogrades, laughing at the sky’s old games.

The fire between us crackles, throwing gold onto her face. She looks beautiful, the kind of beautiful that has nothing to do with youth and everything to do with presence. She looks like someone who never belonged to a clock.

When the wind brushes through the clearing, I realize a truth:

Some people aren’t from here, not really.

They’re bridges.

I think it started early.

Needing to eat our veggies but choosing French fries.

Sitting in the salon chair thinking bangs are a good idea.

Dating the guy everyone warns you about instead of the nice one who actually calls when he says.

There’s a pattern here.

Right now, the good medicine I can’t seem to take is meditation.

My first swing at being a meditative girlie was around 2017 or 2018. I downloaded Headspace like everyone else and sat criss-cross applesauce in my living room. Eyes closed. Fighting that inner voice that wouldn’t shut the hell up.

I stuck with it for a record-breaking 4–5 weeks.

(Consistency is not my strong suit.)

And in that time, life really began to fall on my head—to quote one of my spiritual teachers.

After months of trying to leave my job and getting no interviews, I was suddenly booking meetings. The head of marketing at BET. A festival agency. It felt unreal because for so long, my life had been Groundhog's Day.

And then I let it go.

Maybe I thought things were happening, so I could stop.

Maybe the fact that things were happening scared me.

I don’t know.

But I do know this:

I seem to be allergic to the things that actually help me.

There’s a bottle of magnesium and vitamin D on my bathroom counter. I stopped taking them after weeks of habit. They were making a difference. And as I write this, the bottle still sits there. Unopened.

Is this self-sabotage?

Do I secretly hate myself?

I don’t have answers.

But I see the pattern.

And I'm trying to break it - with a different kind of meditation this time.

Not the mindful meditation I did before, where I was just trying to quiet my mind. This time it's heart-based. A real conversation with Life.

Because I can feel the shift. Things are changing.

I got a new oracle deck called Animal Apothecary.

One of the cards shows an armadillo.

Across the top, it says: You are about to shine.

I didn’t even know what an armadillo was and honestly, still don’t.

But this card's description stuck with me.

This is clearly talking about meditation. About the way it sets off a chain reaction of literal magic.

I’m sharing the armadillo here with you in case it lights your fire the way it did mine.

Valentine’s Day, as we currently know it, started taking shape in the 14th and 15th centuries as a day for couples to express their love. Its true origin is theorized to be much darker (which is a delicious rabbit hole if you’re so inclined).

But we won’t get into that now.

What I will say is this: Examining the shadow of things has been fruitful work for…

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Each month, these readings will move through a different lens. We’ll rotate between:

• Astrological Elements (Air, WaterFire, Earth, Air, Water)

• Birth Order (Oldest, Middle, Youngest, Only)

• The Wheel of the Year (Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall)

• Astrological Modalities (Cardinal, Fixed, Mutable)

This is one of the things paid subscribers make possible.

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How do you know when it’s the end?

Does an inner alarm go off?

Does God whisper in your ear?

How do you know when it’s time to move on?

Is there a sign?

A symbol in the distance that shows the way?

How do you know when a chapter has closed?

Do the words stop chasing each other across the page?

Does the absence of thought signal the end?

Or is it something qui…

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And yet, there is something.

For me, it was realizing I’d spent years living neck-up: my mind and emotions riding in the front seat, whi…

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