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A couple months ago, I had my first appointment that didn’t go so well. I’m fortunate that this is really the first time this has happened since I have been doing this work. 

It was all due to a communication issue.  The client was under the impression that because I’m a medium, I would bring mediumship into everything that I do.

She had come in for a 2020 Year Ahead Tarot Session and was disappointed that I wasn’t connecting with her loved ones in spirit.  On my website I keep these offerings separate and I use specific language for each. In tarot I’m reading the clients energy and giving them insight on their life and struggles that come up for them.  (This is not the case for all readers but this is how it works for me).

That was not what this client wanted.  She was very frustrated that I was not giving her a mediumship reading, despite the fact that she did not book a mediumship reading.  About twenty minutes in, she stopped the session and said she really didn’t feel like it was connecting the way she wanted so I asked for some clarification on what she meant.

Did she feel that I wasn’t accurately getting a picture of her situation?  No.  

She said she knew what I told her was what was going on, and it made sense that she knew she needed to work on those things. Everything I had told her was accurate and connected with her current circumstances.  But she was under the impression that because I’m a medium I would be connecting to spirit and bringing through messages because that’s what she experienced when she went to another reader. I reiterated what I always say at the beginning of my sessions that we all read a little bit differently, but that this type of reading is meant to read her energy, not her loved ones in spirit.

So I made what I thought was a good business decision, I stopped the session.  I told her that maybe we just weren’t a good fit, and told her I would refund her payment and I did so as soon as she left.

That is a violation of my no refund policy but I wanted to do right by her, and even though I had already invested my time and energy.  As a new business owner it was more important for me to have someone leave happy even if they didn’t get what they want, than finish a reading that they weren’t receptive to and try to force it.

I think this is one of the hardest things as a reader.  You aren’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea. You have to try not to take it personally.

I wanted to talk about this today to bring up a few things.  

First of all, if you are a reader or any kind or a healer, really try to take your ego out of your work.  When you care so much and love what you do, it can be easy to take things very personally. Sometimes you will have readings that are lights out.  You will feel super connected and super in sync with your client.

Other times clients come in with very real pain that is consuming them and with a desire to hear a specific thing.  They might be disappointed when they don’t get the exact message they wanted out of the session and while this is disappointing for both client and reader, it’s not personal.  It will feel personal, but it’s not.

And then there are clients who won’t be satisfied no matter what you do.  You also have to make peace with that as well.

For example, this same client felt a need, after I had apologized for the misunderstanding about what service she was purchasing and sent her a full refund, to still send me another email insulting my space, my reading style, and my tarot cards and explained how because I was a medium she “would expect to see those skills on display” .  She also implied that because she felt my fees were high, she felt entitled to that.

It was a lesson to me on boundaries.  I let her cross one boundary by giving her the refund, and so she felt entitled to more. You have probably experienced this with boundaries in your own life.  If you give someone an inch, they feel entitled to a mile.

It’s been a huge gift for me to be able to take my ego out of the equation.  I am in charge of providing the reading or healing session, translating what I see and hear, and giving my full attention, compassion, and concentration to my clients.  But I am not responsible for their outcome.

So often with spiritual work, clients come in thinking that a practitioner is required to give them what they want.  They are focused entirely on the outcome they want. But your job as a practitioner is to provide the space for them, to provide a healing environment, to listen to their concerns, and provide them with what insights you have. You have an obligation to give them what they need, which may not be entirely in alignment with what they want.

I think of it like going to the doctor, you can give the client the medicine, but it’s up to them to take it.  Not every client is going to be ready to do what they have to in order to grow. Not every client is going to be ready to hear what you have to say.  Part of being a spiritual practitioner, maybe the hardest part, is learning to be okay with that.  

This whole experience reminded me how important it is as a service provider to have clear service descriptions and a clear cancellation and refund policy.  Setting expectations for clients is paramount.  

It is also the responsibility for the client to do their research and be sure that they know what they are purchasing and that they approach readings with an open mind.

So here are my pointers for finding the right practitioner:

Know Your Goal

Whenever you are seeking a service, you should be sure you know what your ultimate goal is.  You should be sure that the service that you are purchasing fulfills that goal and that you understand what you are buying.  I am always happy to answer questions or direct clients towards the service that is more in line with their goals and almost every reader I know, does this regularly. 

It’s in the readers best interest to make sure that the client is set up for success.  That’s just good business.

Make Sure You Understand that Practitioners Philosophy and Limitations

I have very specific language on my page about what service is good for which type of issue.  I also have a breakdown of my philosophy towards reading and healing in my “About Me” section.  I list what I will and won’t read on because there are a lot of legalities, especially in Pennsylvania, about what you can and can’t give advice on.  I state clearly that I am not legal, financial, or medical council and this type of work is not included in any of my services.

I also have specific language in my terms and conditions of my services about how I don’t provide refunds, and that while I will give guidance on topics ultimately, my clients have free will. 

You should be wary of any reader who acts as though they have all the answers, rather than empowering you to get your own answers or validating what you already intuitively know.  Do not give your power away to someone else.

Get a Personal Referral

I am also a big believer in getting and giving personal referrals for any spiritual work.  My business is almost exclusively personal referrals, and I love it because it sets clients up for success and I know that the people coming in know exactly what to expect.

I also only see other practitioners that I know personally, have been referred to, or that I have seen how they provide their readings to other people via their website or a podcast.

This will give you a clear expectation of how the reading works, if they have the type of style that you would find helpful, and what kind of questions or prep work you might need to do ahead of time.

I hope that sets all of you up for your best experience with your next intuitive or healing session. 

If you are a practitioner, I hope it validates your experience and inspires you to stay firm with your boundaries.  Healthy boundaries help you to feel safe as a practitioner, and to build your business without feeling burned out or resentful of the work that you love so much.  

If you haven’t taken the time to set clear boundaries, don’t beat yourself up, make the time this week to do it.  It doesn’t take very long and it only requires a bit of clarifying language on your website or in your literature.  Take the time now to invest in yourself and your business. It only takes a few minutes to do the research and set yourself up for success.

© Sheila Masterson 2020 All Rights Reserved

There’s this idea out there that if you listen to your intuition, it will never lead you wrong.

While I do think that is true, I also think that sometimes we can get a little confused by our own perception and our own fear.  So the filter that we put the intuitive messages through is the real problem.

In my own practice, I’ll find myself waiting to ask a question until I’m sure I’m ready to hear the answer, even if it’s not what I want to hear.  If we approach these questions we pose to our intuition expecting a specific outcome, or with fear about hearing what we don’t want to hear, we can cloud our comprehension of the message.

Intuition is approached best when you try to make yourself as neutral as possible.  For me, the messages come through clearest when I have no buy in, either way, and I just want to hear an answer.  This is why it’s much easier for me to read for other people than it is to read for myself. When I sit down for a reading with a client, even if I have a strong personal relationship with them, it’s much easier for me to just be a neutral vessel passing the information along. 

When I read for myself, I run into all my own worries and fears and I have to do a lot more work to stay clear as I’m reading.  For daily check ins, or just random curiosity questions, it’s no problem. However, if I come to my cards or sit in meditation with something that is really bothering me and heavily weighing on my heart, I really struggle to get clarity.

If this happens multiple times on the same topic, that’s when I might turn to a fellow reader friend and ask for some insight.  Sometimes the heaviest topics that carry the most fear are the ones we just can’t tackle on our own. That’s why we have friends, therapists, and other readers to give us perspective and guidance when we are too anxious to get a clear answer.

So often when people tell me that their intuition led them wrong, and they start to explain how, I can hear the moment in the story where they got the message, and applied it to their own expectations.

There is nothing wrong with this, it happens to all of us.  There are some things it is just hard to be neutral about.  

The problem arises when we don’t take responsibility for those expectations, and instead start to assume our intuition is broken, or our intuition led us wrong, or worst of all, assume that means we aren’t intuitive at all.  Because intuition is an intangible thing, and very hard to measure, the moment that we feel like it isn’t working for us, we have a tendency to completely write it off and say that it doesn’t work.

I can’t tell you how many times I started pulling cards for myself and would just keep pulling until I got something I liked as an answer.  Yes, I teach tarot and yes. I still do this. I am human.

The point is to be aware of your expectations when you go into meditation or when you sit down with your cards.  Pay attention to how you are feeling. You don’t have to empty yourself completely or be some kind of robot in order to get the answer but it’s good to be aware of the filter you are putting the answer through.

So how can you become more aware of that and bring more clarity to your intuition?

I recommend a quick writing exercise to help make you aware of what might be coming up for you in a given moment.  Sit down with a notebook or journal and take a few deep breaths. Place your left hand palm face up on your left leg and your right hand on your heart and take ten deep slow breaths.  Then open your eyes and write answers to these questions.

What fear is coming up for me right now?

What happens if that fear is confirmed?

What do I hope will come through when I tune into my intuition?

What do I think will actually come through?

At this point, I will often ask any guides or angels to help me get clarity and answers that are for my highest good.  This can be very helpful to do if you want to start to develop a relationship with your guides or if you are just still feeling very emotional.

Then, take a few moments to sit in meditation or pull some cards.  However you like to tune into your intuition, take some time to do that.  When you are finished and feel like you have received some guidance, write it down.  Then take a look at how the information you got compares to your fears and expectations going in.

When I do this exercise I can normally see where I might have given into fear by how much what I wrote matches up with the question about fear.  I can also see if I was able to stay neutral.

You can do this several days in a row and just see if your perception changes.  You can also look back over time and notice if you see a pattern.

Having a written log of what fears come up can serve as a great way for you to start to acknowledge your own patterns.  Sometimes we are so unaware of our default setting but when we see the same message written down over and over we can start to learn that pattern and over time we might not need to write things down at all.

I hope this helps you become more confident in listening to your own intuition and more compassion for yourself when you are struggling to get a clear answer.  You don’t have to be neutral all the time. You can use this exercise to start to work through emotion without it clouding your comprehension of intuitive messages.  

Finally, If you are looking for help honing your intuitive gifts, The High Priestess Embodiment Digital Workshop is still open for enrollment.  There are only a few spots left in this first time offering and it will only be available until Wednesday, February 19th at 11:59 PM ET. If you enroll in this course you will have access for the lifetime of the course as well as access to all future course updates.

This course is an introduction to connecting with your intuition.  It is an entirely self-paced workshop. I firmly believe that intuition is for everyone. In modern society, we are so overstimulated that it can be easy to think we have no access to intuition at all.  We start to doubt ourselves and our instincts. This course will provide you with practical tools to connect with your intuition and make decisions with confidence.

If you are tired of giving your power away to self-doubt and have always wanted the tools to start to explore your own intuitive gifts, this is a great place to start.  Invest in yourself!  If you want to join the workshop you can sign up here.

If you have any questions or feedback on the course or on today’s post please feel free to reach out to me via email sheila at starsagespirit dot com.

© Sheila Masterson 2020 All Rights Reserved

Over the past year I have been working on a series of classes all about embodying the energy of certain tarot cards.  This has brought about a lot of questions, like how do you do that, and what does embodiment even mean.

Today let’s talk about tarot, how to embody a certain card and bring its energy into your life, and why this is helpful.

Starting off, I wanted to talk a little bit about why tarot.  Tarot cards are a tool for divination and reflection. Traditional decks contain 78 cards, each one representing experiences we all go through as humans.

My perspective on reading tarot, which is different than a lot of other readers, is that the cards provide a valuable reflection of our internal landscape.  I see the cards as an intuitive tool for guidance. Reading for me becomes less about the cards themselves and more about what they bring up when you reflect on them. 

Personally, I can read people without the cards. A fellow reader looked at me during a reading a few months ago and remarked, “you don’t need the cards.”

I know this but i also know that it helps people to see a visual representation of what they are going through or struggling with.  The cards provide that touchpoint for people. (I also find it freaks people out less when the cards tell me something. People need a reason why or how a reader knows things.)

The cards can give a glance at what is in store as well but that information is usually less relevant than the reflection.

So what about embodiment?  

Embodiment of a card is a way for us to bring that energy into our life in a more tangible fashion.  When we think about a certain card we can come up with some ideas of how to get inspired by the energy or feeling of that card, but it can be hard to actually make it feel real to us.

In the embodiment classes I have been teaching, we use discussion to get familiar with the energy of the card.  Then we talk about how that applies to everyday life. Then to really embody the card, we do a yoga flow inspired by the energy of that card, we take some time for meditation on some questions around this card and how we can bring it into our everyday life in a more present way.

And why would we want to do this?  

There are a whole myriad of reasons.

I will use the High Priestess card as an example. The High Priestess card represents our ability to tap into our own inner knowing and guidance. The card teaches us about our connection to our intuition and how to trust that what we are hearing is right for us.  

Talking about the card is great and can be so helpful to bring new ideas to mind, but the embodiment piece is where it really starts to shift from just an idea into a practice.  When we start to look at moving intuitively, we start to feel our own internal guidance system switch on. When we meditate on where in our body we feel it when we feel aligned and guided by our intuition versus where we might feel our ego trying to lead us astray, we start to physically recognize the signals our body provides.

The whole experience helps bring the energy of each card to life. Instead of just hearing an idea, it gives you ways to bring it into your daily life.

There are lots of ways to embody the energy of a card. Maybe you’re feeling unstable while moving or starting a new job; you can work with the strength and fortitude of the Emperor card. Perhaps you’re trying to cultivate more patience and understanding your family; you could work with the Temperance card. You could even use The Star Card to help you move through trauma and start to heal.

You can meditate on each of these cards and start to feel in your body.  So with the Emperor card,you would bring to mind moments where you felt confident and strong, and then bring that feeling into your body.  How did you feel physically when you felt confident and strong? Where do you notice that feeling in your body? How long can you sit with that feeling?  Maybe over time you can hold on to that feeling longer.

You can even combine cards and say something like, “I really want to cultivate patience with the Temperance card but I also want to put people in their place when they need it”; maybe by using the Strength card.

The possibilities are endless.

I am very pleased to say that next week, I will be releasing my High Priestess Tarot Embodiment class as an online workshop that you can take at your own pace, in the comfort of your own home. This class offers the opportunity to learn all about intuition. We cover how to embody the High Priestess card, how to notice the physical cues that intuition brings up in our bodies, and how to strengthen intuition with practical exercises.

This class has been one of my passion projects over the past year and I am overjoyed to be bringing it to life in a new format. All the exercises and lessons in this workshop are tools I use in my own practice and development and my goal is to give everyone a playbook for working with their own intuitive talents.

I am very excited to add this option to my offerings after a lot of requests to bring back  this offering for people who missed them the first time around.  

You can join my email list here to be the first to get the deets about the release. Keep an eye on social media over the next week for a sneak peek.

© Sheila Masterson 2020 All Rights Reserved

I’m fresh off a trip to Florida to visit some family and ready to tackle 2020.  This time of year when we launch into Capricorn season we tend to have a lot of energy and ambitious, no-nonsense goals.  

That’s why so many people head into the year with super aggressive New Year’s resolutions.  I watch year after year in my yoga classes how January will have classes packed to the gills only to slowly diminish towards the end of the month, and balance back out to the usual in February.

So why is it so hard for us to set manageable goals?

I’ve been reading a lot about this over the past few weeks with trying to manage my own resolutions and set goals that make sense to me.  I think a big part of it is that we have a limited amount of motivation and it’s easy to burn out when you use so much motivation all at once.

Another reason is that a lot of people don’t know the “why” of their goal.  

So let’s look at the typical New Year’s resolution, I want to make healthier and more conscious meal choices.  

While this is a great goal, what is the actual motivation for doing it?  Are you just trying to lose weight? Does it sound good to you? Is it something you’re hoping you will get around to eventually?

When we focus on things that sound good to us, that we haven’t been able to find the motivation for yet, it’s important to ask yourself why it hasn’t been a priority until now.

A few years back I wanted to try to get into running.  I absolutely did not enjoy it, but it sounded good to me.  I wanted to learn and I thought that was enough and for a few weeks it was.  But, after about a month I was running out of steam.  

I really took some time to ask myself why I was doing this and why it was important to me. Then, I reflected back on a study I read about how just 30 minutes of cardio exercise three times per week was enough to significantly reduce cancer-risk.

That was it for me. I set a small goal and my running grew from there.  After about three months, it was normal for me to run three hour long runs a week.  I maintained that for several years and I really learned to enjoy it. It was a commitment I made for myself and my health.

I’m not telling you all this to toot my own horn, it’s really about finding your own motivation.

We tend to set some ambitious spiritual expectations for ourselves as well.  My advice is to start small and figure out your why.

Spiritual practice doesn’t have to look like meditation every single day.  Maybe that’s not feasible with your schedule. Maybe you say you won’t go more than 3 days without making at least five minutes of meditation.  Maybe you vary your types of meditation so you stay motivated and find your favorite type.

You can also find ways to include this in your everyday schedule.  

I wanted to bring a journaling practice into my life but I could never find the motivation to be consistent.  About three months ago I committed to just five minutes every morning and five minutes every night. That’s ten minutes a day and because it is such a short amount of time, and it’s built into my schedule as soon as a wake up and right before I go to sleep, it’s easy for me to stay with this habit I’ve built.

Give yourself some time this week to really focus on your “why” for your resolutions or goals.  Really break down why each one is important to you so that when your motivation wavers, you can come back to your practice with renewed vigor and excitement.  

This doesn’t mean you need to sit down for an hour and do breathing exercises or deep meditation.  Just give yourself the gift of twenty minutes of quiet and ask yourself a couple of questions. Maybe even write it down so you remember.

I hope 2020 brings you and yours a lot of joy and good fortune.  I have a lot of exciting offerings coming up over the next three months so make sure you are paying attention to my weekly emails (you can get on my email list here) and keep an eye on social media.

Quick and easy ways to clear your tarot deck.

Last week I got a new tarot deck and a friend asked me what you do to clear it.  She had heard a lot of the weird rules that seem to have made their way all over the internet.

I wanted to write about it and clear the air. 

So many resources say things like your first deck needs to be gifted to you (it doesn’t). People need to touch the cards in order for you to read them (they don’t). Or that you need to sleep with a new deck under your pillow when you first buy it (you don’t…unless you love it so much that you really want to).

This is a question I get a lot from newer readers and it brings up a good topic for today’s blog.  

How do you clear a new tarot deck?

You can start just by taking the deck out and separating the cards a bit and looking at each one.  This is a great way to get acquainted with a new deck. It’s rare that you get to see every card before owning the deck so this is a wonderful way to see if any of the art trips you up or if there’s any card depictions you really love.  

Once you feel confident that the cards are not too stuck together and that you’re pretty comfortable with the art,  you can break out whatever type of clearing items you use. If you like to burn cedar, or sage (I like mugwort, or lavender, but you can use whatever is in your lineage).  If smoke clearing is not your thing, you can use Selenite to charge your deck or a Selenite wand to clear all sides of the deck.

Then, you can hold the deck to your heart and set an intention for it.  So for example, if you are just planning to read for yourself you can say something like “May this deck bring guidance and clarity for my highest and best good”. If you are planning to read a lot for other people, you can set the intention of clarity for the highest and best good of yourself and others.

Then, you are good to go. Just give the deck a very good shuffle to get started.

If you want to take things one step further, you can interview the deck to get an idea of what kind of work it might be good for.  

For example, some people find that one deck works better for reading for other people than it does for reading for yourself.  You may also find that certain decks are great for light, joyful readings but not as good with handling heavy emotional energy.

So how do you go about interviewing your deck?

Meditate with the deck in hand and focus on some good questions to ask.  Ask your guides and angels to send through the clearest messages to trigger your intuition.

Then write out three to five questions to ask your deck.

Some questions I have used are:

What are the strengths of reading with this deck?

What are the limitations of this deck?

What can I learn from this deck?

What is the best way to work with this deck?

What best represents the energy of this deck?

What card defines our collaboration?

These types of questions will give you a good idea of what strengths and limitations a certain deck might have for you.

I do actually have a standard Smith-Rider Waite Deck that I only use to read for myself or teach people. It doesn’t work as well when I use it to read for others.  It works best if I just use it for myself, so I do. (You will notice I post pictures of this deck but never for card pick days).

In between uses you can keep the cards in your bag or somewhere you will have easy access to them. There are a lot of rules written up about storage, too.  I think it’s nice to store them in a safe place if you can but if you are going through a lot or you travel with your deck, it’s not as practical. When I’m not using my cards I usually keep them on a shelf in my reading room with a crystal of some kind sitting on top.

Everything I have given here is just a suggestion of what to do. Ultimately you can follow your own intuition as to how to best break in a deck for yourself.

I hope this post helps bring some inspiration and direction to your practice and I would love to hear about it in the comments.  Please feel free to share your experience or what methods work best for you.

We are finishing out 2019 with a bang with a new moon solar eclipse in Capricorn. This got me into a big discussion a few days back with a friend about what we can expect out of the end of the year. It’s sure to be an exciting and lucky new moon and also a great time to set intentions for not just the new moon but the new year. You can expect to feel more connected to your intuition and feel very creative and inspired.

This conversation about the new moon solar eclipse got me thinking about how working with the cycles of the moon is a great way to bring intuitive awareness into your life. One of my goals for 2020 is to be more aware of how the moon affects me as an intuitive person. I really want to notice how I feel with each phase and what sign it’s in.

You may have heard before that in general the new moon is a good time to think about the kind of energy you want to bring into your life. It’s a time of intention setting and manifestation.  

The full moon on the other hand is a great time to release.  To let go of what is no longer serving you and to reflect on what you were working to manifest.

I had the good fortune to do a Full Moon Circle with a bunch of rad ladies back in October. It was amazing. We drank warm apple cider, braided hair, did makeup, read cards, ran around a fire cackling and threw into the fire what no longer served each of us. It was a beautiful experience.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that there are so many ways to work with the moon and you might feel more aware or more productive at certain moon phases.  Your birth moon phase indicates your approach to life and integral parts of your personality. (If you want to find yours you can get it here https://www.moongiant.com/birthday-moon/)

I thought it would be fun to talk a little bit about what personality traits each moon phase has.

New Moon – Enthusiastic excited ready to hit the ground running. New moon babies tend to be a bit more impulsive and are all about new beginnings but may struggle a bit with follow through and finishing what they start.

Waxing Crescent – Owning the same energy and enthusiasm as those babes born under the new moon, waxing crescents tend to have a little bit more consideration for the outcome. They tend to be open to exploring but with a more cautious approach.

First Quarter – These people tend to be very confident, passionate, and don’t mind taking risks. They have a tendency towards striving and may feel like they are always trying to prove something to themselves and to the people around them. They tend to be good leaders because they can easily rise to and overcome challenges.

Waxing Gibbous – Waxing Gibbous people tend to be very organized and prepared and always on a journey of learning. They are into personal development and exploring what makes them tick. They are much more into planning and creativity and are also working to perfect their work, their relationships, and themselves.

Full Moon – These individuals tend to feel most at peace when they are in a relationship. In fact, most of their lives are spent finding and growing relationships because that is where they tend to cultivate the most learning and growth. Much of their experience is about learning to live in the tension of finding harmony between opposing forces and ideas.

Waning Gibbous – Those born during this phase tend to be messengers and teachers whether through writing, researching, or speaking. They tend to break with tradition and forge their own paths forward and their legacy is to spread the word of their message. They also tend to enjoy travel and may struggle to stay in one place for a long period of time.

Third Quarter – These individuals are always striving to find their purpose. Often they may find themselves in mid-life making a drastic career or lifestyle change that baffles those around them. They may abruptly change course driven by instinct and urgency to find new forms of expression and new belief systems.

Balsamic – Finally our balsamic moon babes tend to be good at leaving. They come into this life as those who are ready to complete major cycles and tie up karma from past incarnations.  These people are usually loners and selective about the company they keep. A few close friends are plenty for these individuals. Success tends to come later in life after a lot of reflection and they tend to pass on wisdom of experience combined with a clear vision of the future.

So that’s the basics. With astrology it gets much more complex based on what sign your moon is in and what house but, I think it’s so fascinating that you can see personality traits just from the moon phase that you were born in.

I was born under a waxing crescent moon and I would say that description fits me very closely. To say that I’m a cautious explorer is just about as accurate as you can get. Leaving the career I’ve been in for the past twelve years was very out of character for me and has been an adventure in learning to be patient and not knowing what is coming next.  

Since this is my first year in business, I don’t really have a blueprint and it’s been challenging to try to allow things to ebb and flow until I figure it out. That said, I am nothing if not enthusiastic about all of my work and about having the privilege to be able to take this time to build my business; to best refine, express and share my gifts and purpose.

If you have been here the whole time or just found the blog, had a reading or a reiki session with me, liked or shared a post, been a cheerleader or a listening ear for me to talk out new ideas, or just a happy blog reader along for the ride, I just want to say a profound thank you. I am so grateful that you are here.

Also a very big thank you to my dear friend, J, without whom, you would be reading many more typos and errors in these posts.  She generously edits this blog every week and has been there rooting me on every step of the way.  

Wishing all of you a very happy holiday season and a healthy and safe new year.  Keep your eyes peeled later this week for a bonus email post to prepare for the new year. This is an exclusive for those on my email list so if you haven’t joined yet, you can below.

I just noticed a blindspot.

A real theme of my journey has been setting boundaries in all areas of my life. I really make it a point to take good care of mine. I meditate. I do clearing and visualizations. I do my Empath’s sorting meditation to clarify my energy and establish what is me and what is not.

Especially since May when I started doing my energy work and tarot full-time, I made a real point about setting my boundaries at the beginning of the day. I cleared myself between clients. Even on admin days I made a point to ground and clear myself a few times a day.

So when a few weeks ago I started having this crazy back spasm that would not let up, I was baffled. 

I went to my acupuncturist. I got needled, cupped, and guashaed.  But to no avail. I was having a major spasm in my left mid-back. When I twisted I could barely breathe.

We tried for a couple weeks to clear it out but I was still struggling to get my full range of motion back.

I was chatting with another medium friend the other day and telling her about my struggle and she said “It looks like you have attachments stuck there. It’s like you have these people carefully stored away.”

“I have been so good about it clearing myself between sessions and keeping my energy in check. I teach people about this!”

But my protest didn’t matter. She saw what she saw and I was back to trying to figure out what was wedged in there.

You ever have that feeling when you get a little too big for your britches and think you couldn’t possibly have missed something?

What my friend said bothered me all day.

So a few nights ago when I was meditating before bed, I settled in and focused on the pain.

“WHAT ARE YOU! What is going on?!”

I asked my guides what was happening and why I couldn’t seem to shake this no matter how hard I tried and that’s when I heard one of my guides say, it’s not you picking it up, it’s your partner.

I had a blind spot.

I have really strong boundaries with just about everyone else in my life.  When it comes to my boyfriend of five years, I have a bit of energy exchange going on that I wasn’t fully aware of.

I realized that in my sleep, I was taking on stuff he was worried about or things that he was holding on to.  

I should have realized because I tend to get a back spasm in the same area when we have had bad fights in the past.  It should have rung a bell, but I suppose we all have blind spots.

Cyndi Dale talks about this in her book Energetic Boundaries: How to Stay Protected and Connected in Work, Love, and Life. She speaks about how difficult it can be to maintain healthy energetic boundaries in our closest relationships. She speaks about how empaths and energetically sensitive people have a tendency to do a bit of energetic labor for the people they love.  We take things on so that our friends, families, and partners feel better.

Of course I could not figure out why I couldn’t shake this issue. I made such a serious self-care commitment to boundaries and healthy client relationships. It’s taken a lot of work to get to a point where I feel like I am not taking on too much for other people. This revelation really woke me up to some of the places where I have been falling back into old patterns.

It’s hard in relationships because we want to be open and vulnerable and allow the other person to be as well. I think as energetically sensitive people and empaths we really need to be mindful of maintaining our boundaries.  Not to keep everything out but to keep us from taking on too much for our partners. That type of exchange can lead to unexplained resentment and body pain.

You can have healthy boundaries and still allow love in and out. You can still be supportive without taking on their frustration, grief, and anger for them.

I’m not telling you this to scare you. I’m telling you because you might have a blind spot of your own.  This is why energy work is so important. Having someone else to be a point of reference when you’re feeling confused or struggling to get perspective.

There are so many ways we exchange energy with the people we love.  Even when you have seemingly healthy boundaries, we can miss the ways we take things on and do some of the energetic labor for the people we are closest to.

I’ve been able to clear that energy out and establish a better exchange between myself and my boyfriend and I will continue to evaluate the way in which I might be taking stuff on for him.  It takes a lot of checking in and evaluating daily, when I go to bed at night and when I wake up in the morning, to make sure I didn’t do it in my sleep.

It might feel uncomfortable at first to hold yourself back from doing the energetic labor that you usually do for the people around you. You might feel like you’re being cruel or robotic. This is the work.  Instead of focusing on what you can take on, focus on just listening to them. It is a powerful thing, just to bear witness to another person’s experience. Being there, staying present, and seeing them as they are is just as powerful and it won’t leave you feeling drained or emotionally exhausted.

I hope you are all thriving this holiday season. I encourage all of you to use the free Empath’s Sorting Meditation after overwhelming events with family, friends or coworkers. I cannot stress enough the importance of clearing your energy this way after stressful interactions.

Also, If you are anxious about the year ahead, there are still some openings for 2020 Year Ahead Tarot Readings as well as New Year’s Release and Initiation Reiki and Tarot Combo packages to launch you into the new year with balanced energy and focused attention.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the whole love and light movement. This is so much a part of the yoga world and the communities of healers that I work among..

I think it’s great to encourage people to focus on the positive and be grateful and I fully believe that your mindset has a huge impact on your life.  But I get really concerned with the amount of spiritual bypassing that goes on in this community because it alienates people who are suffering and continues to victimize people who are marginalized.

If you’re not familiar with the term, spiritual bypassing refers to using spiritual ideas (like manifestation) to sidestep the heavier emotional issues and psychological wounds that exist in our lives. Basically it’s using spiritual practices like gratitude to just power through uncomfortable things.  

Love and light messages are prolific in the social media age.

 It sounds good. It looks lovely.  It’s very Instagram-able.

Let’s be honest though, it’s not real life.

Real life can be heavy and messy; It’s rife with injustice, grief, racism, and white-supremacy.  The real work isn’t just in being positive and celebrating the good stuff, it’s also in the dark.

Shamanism isn’t in my lineage, so I don’t use the term for myself, but I love  that the word shaman translates to “one who can see in the dark”.  

That phrase really blew my mind when I heard it because it spoke to the part of me that has always seen the dark in things. I’ve seen the way people breeze over difficult topics and try to grin a bear it. I’ve seen the way that grief or anger attaches to people and becomes the filter through which they see the world, even as they show a brave face and well filters photos.

When I was young I had a tendency to get bogged down by the heaviness of other people’s lives.  I didn’t know I was an empath. I don’t think I was even conscious of my own existence until I was six.  I walked around reading people most of the time. Noticing things about other people. Seeing bits and pieces of their stories.  I only recently recalled how out of body I felt for much of my childhood. 

I vividly remember looking at the little girl in the car next to us at a red light and seeing bits and pieces of her story.  Then a voice in my head said “what about you?”. And then I was back in myself. 

I thought that was normal.  That everyone knew and saw and heard the stuff that I did.

I now know that isn’t true.

The reason I wanted to talk about all of this love and light bullshit now is because the holidays are really challenging for people.  It’s not all presents and eggnog and singing together.

The holidays can bring with them grief and darkness and heaviness and comparison.  Over the past few weeks we’ve talked about the challenges that empaths face at the holidays, but you don’t have to be an empath to feel the intense pressure of expectation and the crushing weight of grief.

Last month I did a special death card tarot embodiment workshop. I was so excited to do it and I really felt I was being guided to share it but, I was hesitant because I know this card strikes fear into so many people.

What was interesting is that when we think about grief, we think that physical death is the only thing that we grieve. I hear echoes of this same idea every time I pull this card for someone.  But, grief is much bigger than just an emotion that accompanies this type of loss.

Grief comes with all loss.  We grieve friendships we no longer have. We grieve relationships. We grieve careers that aren’t in line with our values.  We grieve the loss of parts of ourselves that no longer serve us. And we grieve our inner child who is wounded and just wants to do everything right so they can get the validation they yearn for.

I’ve noticed that people have a resistance to labeling all of these things as grief but that is exactly what they are. The heaviness, the crying, the inability to take a deep breath, or to look directly at the thing that hurts. It can come out in anger and rage, or in despair and sobbing.   It can sneak up on us just from the sheer volume of exposure to triggering situations. There is no clear cut process and no neat way to tie it all up.

It is heavy and messy and as humans we don’t like anything we can’t easily classify and put a bow on.

In any given moment when you are around your family you might find yourself grieving your younger self, relatives who have drifted away from the family, or the fact that your parents or partner can’t be who you wish they would be.

You might also suffer from depression or anxiety and struggle with putting on a good face for your family and friends.

I am right there walking beside you, my friend.  I see you and I relate so deeply to your struggle and I know that it might take all you have to be around everyone else and feel pressure to look, act, feel better than you do underneath.  

I am doing very well now, but I suffered with severe depression, insomnia, and anxiety for years. I took medications, switched medicines a bunch of times until I found the right combo, rebalanced, went to therapy.  I faked it with family and friends and sometimes I raged out, screamed, and felt ashamed. I have sat in a stew of my own grief and loneliness while everyone around me seemed great.  

I honor you and what you are going through and the heaviness of the expectation that you are probably putting on yourself to be well or to appear to be well.

I am telling you that you don’t have to do that anymore if you don’t want to. 

Struggling and feeling the heavier, darker things does not mean that you aren’t walking your own spiritual path, or that you are doing anything wrong. It also means that you don’t have to be consumed by those feelings and that you can prepare by arming yourself with more coping tools.

It takes tremendous bravery to feel your way through the darkness and to sit with the heaviness in your heart and honor it.  Look at where you’ve been and where you are now. You would not be who you are without the journey and you don’t need to be a happy-go-lucky, light and love type of healer, reader, teacher, parent or partner.

You can just be yourself.  You can just come to the table with the real things you have been though and offer them up.

This isn’t to romanticize suffering, but instead to say that it is okay to not be the instagram-ready, perfectly put together, happy-go-lucky version of yourself.  It’s okay to come to the table as you are and not just how you’re expected to be.

You don’t have to be all love and light to be walking your own healing path.

You aren’t weird and you aren’t broken if you feel sad when it seems like you should be happy.

I’ve been alone in the dark, too.  I’ve felt the grief, the imposter syndrome, the money anxiety, the deep desire for parental approval, and the grief of knowing I won’t be met with the things that I need, even during the holidays.

Sitting in this dark.  Processing and acknowledging these feelings, gives us depth and a complex understanding of ourselves as well as compassion for ourselves and for others.  It makes us stronger and more authentic healers, parents, and partners. It makes us more complete people.

So the next time you are tempted to shove down the darkness to make yourself or other people comfortable, do yourself a favor and stop.

You’re doing the work and you are feeling your way through the darkness.  It doesn’t have to be pretty. Just keep going and know that you aren’t walking alone.